5
" You believed you could transcend the body as you aged, she tells herself. You believed you could rise above it, to a serene, nonphysical realm. But it’s only through ecstasy you can do that, and ecstasy is achieved through the body itself. Without the bone and sinew of wings, no flight. Without that ecstasy you can only be dragged further down by the body, into its machinery. Its rusting, creaking, vengeful, brute machinery. "
― Margaret Atwood , Stone Mattress: Nine Tales
6
" Suddenly, the man was thrown off her. Darcy looked around, but saw nothing. She rose up on her elbows to see the man climbing to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. His four comrades were looking up to the sky nervously.
A huge, dark shape descended from the sky, vanishing quickly. Along with one of her attackers. Darcy was afraid to move and be taken as well. She remained still, her chest heaving.
Another shape formed out of the dark sky. She could only stare openmouthed at the dragon coming right for her.
Just before he touched down, the dragon shifted, taking the form of a man—a man that left her breathless and awestruck.
There was no denying she was looking at a Dragon King.
He stood naked, his hands at his sides while his gaze was riveted on the men who accosted her. The shadows kept much of him out of sight, but the streetlamps shed enough light of the hard sinew of his body that she wanted to see more.
His lips peeled back in a snarl as he fought the four remaining men. He moved quickly, as if it were as effortless as breathing.
The men began to throw huge bubbles of magic at the Dragon King. He dodged many of them. The few that hit him barely made an impact other than to infuriate him, if his bared teeth were any indication.
The man—or whatever he was—who had stopped her in the pub was struck down with lethal force by the Dragon King. Darcy almost cheered, but it got lodged in her throat when she saw something out of the corner of her eye.
Had she not turned right then, Darcy would never have seen the second dragon swoop from the sky and wrap its talons around another of the men before flying away, crushing him.
That left just two of her attackers. They and the Dragon King circled each other on the street.
“She’s ours,” one of the red-eyed men said.
The Dragon King merely raised a brow. “Think again, Dark.”
More globes of magic flew from the two Dark, but the Dragon King was too fast. He came up behind one of the Dark and ripped out his spinal column. The same instant the dragon grabbed the other. Both Dark fell lifeless to the ground a moment later.
Darcy hadn’t moved a muscle in the few minutes that had passed. The need that had assaulted her earlier with the Dark was now gone. But she wasn’t alone.
The Dragon King’s gaze turned to her. Darcy watched him standing in the glow of the streetlight, completely mesmerized by the dragon tat that ran from the King’s right shoulder, under his armpit, and down his side to the top of his right thigh.
The dragon’s head was at the front of the man’s shoulder and had his mouth open as if on a roar. He was rearing with his wings up and out. It was his long tail that stopped at the King’s thigh.
The King glistened with sweat that made his muscles gleam in the light. Darcy had the absurd notion to run her hands all over his body, learning the feel of his hard muscles and warm skin.
Her gaze traveled down his wide chest to his washboard stomach and narrow waist. Then lower... "
― Donna Grant , Soul Scorched (Dark Kings, #6)
8
" All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves.
Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks.
Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create.
So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry?
-- The Desolation of Tolkien "
― , Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
9
" Age, that brings a dwindling to most forms of life, is at its most majestic in the trees. I have seen living olives that were planted when Caesar was in Gaul. I remember, in Illinois woods, a burr oak which was bent over as a sapling a hundred years ago, to mark an Indian portage trail, and the thews in that flexed bough were still in the prime of life. Compared to that, the strongest human sinew is feeble and quick to decay. Yet structure in both cases is cellular; life in both is protoplasmic. A tree drinks water as I do, and breathes oxygen. There is the difference that it exhales more oxygen than it consumes, so that it sweetens the air where it grows. It lays the dust and tempers the wind. Even when it is felled, it but enters on a new kind of life. Sawn and seasoned and finished, it lays bare the hidden beauty of its heart, in figures and grains more lovely than the most premeditated design. It is stronger, now, than it was in the living tree, and may bear great strains and take many shapes. "