The Dragons Play Towers of Hanoi and discover colour theory, pinkness and powers of 10

One new year's eve, it was just about bed-time for me, but the young dragons wanted to stay up to watch the fireworks at midnight. So Rubeus handed them a Mystery Box and told them to open it and play quietly together until the new year.



Well that's got their attention!

They're trying to figure out what it is. And what to do with it...



Iggy thinks those empty rods at the ends might be involved somehow...



That Raven thinks he can see a bit of paper tucked underneath the baseboard.

Vermelha just can't wait to get her teeth into it...



They pulled the whole thing out of the box. Then the girls pulled the disks off to examine them, which was far more difficult than they expected, and Iggy had a look at the instruction sheet.

He wasn't too sure what a FAX was, but he read the instructions out to everyone so they could figure out what they had to do next.

When Roxa realised that the puzzle involved moving the disks on and off the rods, she knew that she had a job to do before they could solve it. The rods were a bit too big to easily fit in the holes in the disks, which was going to make the whole thing difficult and frustrating. So the first thing to do was to ask Austin if she could borrow the right sort of tool to fix the disks up a bit.

This screwdriver doesn't seem to be quite right for the job...



Seeing as Austin's toolkit seems to be inadequate, Roxa flew over to Alan's place to borrow a set of drills.

One of those is bound to help!



Austin tried a smaller drill fitted with a bit of sandpaper.

But it proved inadequate for the job.



I think the next size up might do the trick.

Only Roxa wants to help.

Best let her, Austin. You know what she's like...

Roxa selected the next size drill up.

They seem to be making good progress now!



Excellent job Roxa!

Only there is an awful mess accumulating on my laptop...

Rosa is fascinated by the proceedings but she doesn't like mess either. So she swept it all up and flew off down to the shed to add the shavings to the bag of cover material for the humanure buckets.

Waste not, want not.

The problem is the solution, and all that!

Roxa is busy testing the disks to make sure they all fit easily over the rods, and has declared the operation successful!

Meanwhile, Iggy is getting a little frustrated as he wants them to play with it properly, although he admits that at least she has stacked them appropriately in descending order of size.

Rosa is totally unconvinced that the biggest and smallest disks are coloured appropriately and feels that they are a distraction. I suspect she's planning on confiscating them as soon as she thinks she can get away with it.

And there was me hoping that they would all work together on it...



Rosa seems to have disappeared, along with the biggest and smallest disks, which she says are the wrong colour.

The other dragons think she's bonkers, but I assured them that colour is important to her, and in any case I think they will learn how to solve the puzzle more easily if they start with fewer disks.

Vermelha says the more the merrier, but then she's a super-charged highly energetic sort of dragon. The rest of us like to find short cuts!

Even Serra seems quite fascinated as she watched Iggy and Vermelha moving disks around trying to figure out the best technique. When they began to get the hang of the sequence of moves needed, she smiled fondly and said it reminded her of the pattern of green LED lights that used to be on the side of the old VAX 11-750 in the computer room in the university that would count up in binary as some sort of visible check that it was working correctly.

Iggy, who is rather a black-and-white sort of thinker, liked the idea of binary. And decided to keep a record of the minimum number of moves needed to solve the puzzle for different numbers of disks.

He started with one disk. Which took one move. So he wrote 1 down.

Then he tried with two disks. That involved repeating the move he made for one disk. Then moving the bigger disk. Then moving the smaller one again, onto the bigger one.

So the original one plus two more. So he wrote 11 on his note book, because binary is fascinating and he wanted to practice...

Then three disks, which involved all the moves they did before, ie 11. Then moved the biggest one, another 1. Then all the original moves all over again. Seven in total. ie 111.

Vermelha loves this job and is keen to test things by adding a fourth disk, if she can figure out which the next size up one is. They do all look pretty much the same and she tends to grab the wrong one and not realise in time...

Iggy strongly suspects that it will come out to fifteen, ie 1111. In fact, judging by how the moves always work, he can't see it could be anything else. But he wants to test it to make sure.

Good job, dragons. You're doing brilliantly!



Iggy and Vermelha were getting a bit grumpy because Vermelha kept muddling up which disk was which and messing up Iggy's system. And his record keeping!

Rosa, who had run off with the biggest disk (and the smallest too, but she seems to have conveniently forgotten about that for now...) decided it was time to return it to the experimenters, replete in its new coat of shiny red paint!

"It looks better in red!" she declared. "In fact, I think the whole thing would be better if each disk was painted in its own colour."

And then, in a burst of genius, "In fact, if we chose the right colours then maybe Vermelha wouldn't keep losing track of which disk comes next in the sequence!"

Vermelha had to agree that having the biggest one painted red did seem highly appropriate. And Spot, the chameleon, loved the idea too.

I wonder what colour sequence they should use...

To help the young dragons figure out what colours to paint the disks so they made a good, natural sequence, Spot suggested that they had a look at a diagram of the whole electromagnetic spectrum.

This pleased Nigredo, the raven, no end. He immediately pointed out the teeny little bit in the middle of the spectrum that we can actually see and makes colours. And revelled in the fact that all of the rest of the spectrum was dark. Like him. Which it's why it's so important to acknowledge our dark sides.

Then he burst into his favourite song and wouldn't shut up about radio waves, microwaves, infrared raaaadiation and started hopping all around the bed in delight at being able to tell everyone how important he was.

Rosa rolled her eyes, looked at the colour spectrum of visible light, and wondered where pink was...

Spot counted up all the disks that she could find, and suggested that we needed to pick seven colours from the spectrum to represent the changing wavelength. Starting with red, seeing as that one had already been painted and was, conveniently, the one with the widest diameter.



As the raven hopped around the bed singing the most annoying song ever as raucously as possible, Rosa and Spot noticed that he did in fact come out with a list of colours. So they, rather bravely I thought, found the video and paused it at the right bit so they could see the colours on screen and make a note of their names.

There were indeed seven colours mentioned - Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Rosa remembered that seven was considered a perfect, magical number, which is why so many things are split into seven. Like the days of the week.

"But how many colours are there, really?" she asked Spot. "I mean, there are obviously more than seven, but they all seem to blur into each other."

"Ah, well..." answered Spot. "The thing is that visible light, all electromagnetic waves actually, are analogue, not digital"

"Pardon?"

"Analogue means they can vary continuously. They aren't restricted to set positions. Have you ever played with a slinky?"

"Ooooh yes!" exclaimed Rosa. "They are great fun!"

"How long are they?"

"Well it depends how much you stretch them out..."

"Same as light! Short wavelengths are all squooshed together, long wavelengths are all spread apart. Our eyes detect different amounts of squooshedness or stretchedness and interpret it is as colour."

Rosa thought for a while. It all made sense.

Except for one thing.

"But what about pink?" she asked. almost scared to hear that she didn't really exist. "Where do I fit in?"

"Oh Rosa! That's a whole other story! Are you ready?"

Rosa wasn't quite sure she was ready to hear the reasons for pinkness being banished from the rainbow, and has been distracting herself by painting the disks for the towers of Hanoi puzzle.

It seems to not stick very well, and need several coats. Roxa says that if she'd realised what was happening she would have offered to take them over to Alan's place and sand all the varnish off with his belt sander. Rosa apologised and said that in future she would be sure to keep her in the loop, but in the meantime she wanted to keep adding coats to see if that solved the issue well enough.

There was also the issue of mixing colours. Violet seemed to not work with the paints available and would turn a muddy brown at the first available opportunity. Spot has offered to help later and said it might be because of the sort of red she was using and that maybe Rubeus would buy her some more colours if they couldn't figure it out. Rosa tried all by herself several times and finally came up with pale, greyish sort of purple and used that as a base layer to be going on with.

She wants to wait now, take a break, and maybe ask Spot to explain how pink works. Because she's still a bit bothered how there is no pink in the rainbow...



"It's all down to way our eyes detect colour, and the way our brains interpret the information." explained Spot. "Humans mostly have three different sorts of cells which are sensitive to different wavelengths of light."

She pulled up an image from the Wikipedia page to show her. "It varies a bit from person to person, but mostly they have one sort that detects shorter wavelengths, like blue. Then a sort that detects medium wavelengths like green, and finally a sort that detects the longer wavelengths like red."

"There's a lot of overlap between the medium and long wavelength detectors," noticed Rosa, "and then almost a gap between the short and medium wavelength detectors. Though I guess that's mostly at peak response - there's good overlap at low level response." Rosa peered at the diagram. "In fact, the long wavelength detector seems to have *some* response to pretty much the entire visible spectrum. But that still doesn't explain pink..."

"Oh well the thing is that those receptors are either on or off, they don't record the actual wavelength at all. They just send signals to the brain that they have been triggered. It's the brain that processes all the information and interprets them as colours according to the ratio of firings from the different receptors."

"So colour is in the brain? Not the light?" asked Rosa, somewhat astounded by the revelation.



"That's right," replied Spot "but the really clever thing is that if there is a mix of wavelengths, the brain has a colour code which helps us interpret the mix. If you grab Mom's phone I'll show you..."

I was fascinated by what they were talking about and opened up the phone so Spot could open the colour mixing app...

"The screens we use" explained Spot "have three sorts of teeny tiny light emitters, one for each of the three sorts of colour light detectors humans usually have in their eyes."

"So Red, Green and Blue?" asked Rosa, just to confirm that she'd understood it.

Roxa had noticed the conversation turn towards technical stuff and decided to join in.

"It that why they're called RGB screens?"

"That's right, both of you! Here you are Rosa, have a look at this app that lets you adjust how many of each of the teeny tiny colour light emitters light up on the screen."

Rosa looked at the screen and experimented sliding the red up as high as possible, as she was pretty sure that pink had red in it. Then she slid the green up until it looked about the right sort of intensity of colour to match her hands, even if the colour itself was sort of orange. And then she slid the blue up, very slowly until...

"Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I found it!!!" shrieked Rosa. "I made PINK!!!"

And so she had.

Iggy had shown up when he heard the the squeeee, just in case something was wrong. He realised what was happening and dutifully wrote down 100 Red, 55 Green, 75 Blue on his bit of paper so they would always remember the discovery.

And Rosa went away happy, because pink isn't just an ordinary colour like you get in the rainbow. It's a special one that has to be interpreted by the brain. And therefore only exists within your soul.

Iggy's been thinking.

He's not certain because the paint is drying and Rosa wants to do just one more coat, especially on the sides that are currently underneath, so he can't test it. But he thinks that if you have a set of seven disks in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, with red on the bottom, and do the whole Hanoi thing in the minimum number of moves, then the number of moves each coloured disk makes can be shown by writing this number out in binary as though it was the disks lying side by side, starting with violet.

Meaning that red will move once, orange will move twice, yellow will move four times, green eight times, blue sixteen times, indigo thirty two times, and purple sixty four times.

Is he right?



When the paint had dried on the Hanoi disks, Iggy confiscated them to test his binary colour theory before Rosa could decide that they needed yet another coat.

So far, with Alan being volunteered to do the disk moving and Austin keeping count in the background, it seems that his theory is correct! Notwithstanding the ooopsie move the green disk made at one point...

For some reason Alan headed off home before we could add any more disks to test it any further.

15 moves in total.
8 green moves
4 yellow moves
2 orange moves
1 red move



Rosa has just remembered that there was an eighth disk, the smallest one, that she'd confiscated because it was the wrong colour. After much thought she decided that she should paint it white, to represent that all the other colours build up together to make white light.

Only she can't find it.

And the other dragons are busy getting ready for the Big Experiment tomorrow to see if they can do the entire Tower of Hanoi without making any mistakes and keep tally of all the moves all the different coloured disks make.

She confessed to Rubeus, who told her not to worry about it but that if she doesn't find it she should probably tell them in the morning before the Experiment starts.

Poor Rosa. She feels terribly embarrassed and ashamed. Just when she was starting to feel like she really belonged to the rest of the gang, too....

The dragons have been practicing all night ready to have a go at the final iteration of their towers of Hanoi puzzle.

Rosa still hasn't found the missing disk, so she tearfully admitted to them that she wanted to paint it white so they could use all eight disks and have the colour fit as best as she could make it but now it is lost.

The other dragons mischievously told her the reason she couldn't find it was that they had already found it and painted it the colour it should be to complete the set - PINK! The missing colour from the rainbow, the crowning glory that sits on top of the heap, and the one that does most of the actual work of moving backwards and forwards enabling things to happen. The most important piece of all.

Vermelha fetched the final disk, the missing piece of the puzzle, and placed it right where it should be - on the very top!

Rosa dried her eyes and finally realised how much the other dragons needed and loved her, and where she fitted in with them.

"You're the cherry on top, the thing that makes us so special, Rosa!" they assured her.

"You also make it so I can't fit any more disks into mouth at once." added Vermelha. "Those eight coloured bits of wood make up a complete byte...."

I'm really never quite sure what level those dragons are talking at...



Well the dragons are ready for the Big Experiment - they want to see how fast they can do the entire puzzle, with the full complement of eight disks.

The colour coding has speeded things up tremendously as Vermelha now almost never makes any mistakes about which disk to pick up next. But she was still losing speed figuring out which rod to place it on. It turns out that Nigredo, the raven, is excellent at figuring that out. The only problem is communicating that information to Vermelha, as, being aspects of myself, none of the dragons can tell left from right. They sorted this out quite simply though by having Roxa sitting at one end of the puzzle and Rosa at the other, so the raven can just bark out 'Rosa', 'Roxa' or 'middle' and Vermelha can expend all her energy on getting things moving as quickly as possible without wasting any on figuring out where she's supposed to be moving things to.

Iggy is keeping a colour coded tally of all the moves the disks make. Spot is supervising and assisting wherever necessary. Austin is ready with a stopwatch app. And Vermelha is raring to go!



And they've done it - in four minutes fifteen seconds!

Awesome work, team.

So proud of you all. 💖

And an absolute joy to see them all working together so beautifully at long last...



And here's Iggy's final tally of the number of moves.

255 total moves

128 pink moves
64 violet moves
32 indigo moves
16 blue moves
8 green moves
4 yellow moves
2 orange moves
1 red move



It seems he might have been right!

Thank you so much for sharing this story.

I never really thought about colour before.  But just recently, I have started digging into the science and am shocked by how much is happening in the world of colour.

The dragons are epic!

Thank you Burra, the dragons at play has totally made my day and coloured my weekend.
❤️❤️❤️🍩😊

Loved the story. And the colors are glorious!

Burra - Had you thought about compiling your dragon stories, either as a book or an online magazine perhaps? I think they are great, fun educational resources!

Nancy Reading wrote:Burra - Had you thought about compiling your dragon stories, either as a book or an online magazine perhaps? I think they are great, fun educational resources!

That is a great idea Nancey.  I think kids have lost the art of story telling and fantasy.  At the end of the day Burra has brought something special to me to lift my spirits, so why not others

I would also enjoy more dragon stories.

I learned a lot from this one.

Well I'm glad you all enjoyed the story!

The dragons are a kind of therapy for me, helping me explore different aspects of myself and help me pull myself back together when I get too torn apart at the seams. Roxa, the little purple dragon, is my 'inner child', whilst Rosa, the little pink dragon, represents all the undiscovered and more feminine aspects of myself that I disdained as a child but am turning to in later life. That's why I spend so much time working with her as we have a lot of catching up to do.

Rubeus is a little different. He was the first of the plushy dragon collection, purchased for me by Austin on about the only proper 'date' we ever went on - a trip to the Welsh Folk Museum, so he represents us and our relationship rather than just me. Or maybe my interpretation of it...

The stories tend to happen when I've been ill and am starting to pull myself back up again and my brain is switching back on. It's hard to explain. It's like watching the way my mind works and trying to stop it going off in ten different directions at once and burning itself out again.

Nancy Reading wrote:Burra - Had you thought about compiling your dragon stories, either as a book or an online magazine perhaps? I think they are great, fun educational resources!

Maybe one day. My energy is so low and I tend to crumble under the tiniest amount of pressure - I think it would be counterproductive to me at the moment. I usually write them almost in real time on Facebook, though one or two have been written for permies, mostly in our Matt Walker tiny cookstove build in Portugal thread.

Right now, Great Uncle Bulgaria is busy watching over the three Skye Dragon eggs and says that he thinks something might soon be happening in one of them. Maybe around Tuesday. Time will tell. He also says that the eggs represent three major projects of mine and that I shouldn't be taking on anything else until they've all hatched.



And who am I to argue?

In the meantime, Spot, the chameleon, seems to have a few things she'd like to share with us about colour. And lets face it, chameleons should know a thing or two about that!

But that can wait until tomorrow. And to keep you all out of mischief until then, here's a little video of a boy whose drawings come to life in the form of a very naughty chameleon. I'm sure chameleons aren't really like that, are they? Spot can put us right in the morning, I'm sure.

The stories tend to happen when I've been ill and am starting to pull myself back up again and my brain is switching back on. It's hard to explain. It's like watching the way my mind works and trying to stop it going off in ten different directions at once and burning itself out again.

This is beautiful.

Humans are generally hardwired for storytelling. I love the idea of using stories to let the brain reconnect with the world after feeling ill.   I notice I do that a lot with my wizzard.  It got me planting potatoes yesterday (wizzard loves potatoes)

Sky dragon eggs eh?  Curious.

r ranson wrote:Sky dragon eggs eh?  Curious.

These posts in our rocket mass heater build thread might help explain...

One of the eggs is making cute cheepy noises now and Spot has been trying to establish communication.

The current consensus is that there is a dragoness by the name of Saúde inside, and if she breaks through the shell and hatches successfully she may look a little this...



I await her arrival with bated breath, and suspect she may be a little more ephemeral than my usual plushy sort of dragons.

This picture reminds me that that beauty, coffee and time to smell the flowers are very important in life
Hope you and your dragons have a beautiful week Burra. I look forward to more posts

Ah, a Master Story Teller here on permies.

Such brilliant dragons to stick it out until they came up with the solution, a great way to show how primary colours can be blended into different shades to make thousands of different shades.

My grandkids loved the story and the dragons, needless to say, I loved how they all worked in together :-)

Annette Jones wrote:My grandkids loved the story and the dragons, needless to say, I loved how they all worked in together

I'm so pleased your grandchildren enjoyed the story. All my dragons send them my love.

In fact, little Charlie, the forest dragon, even put in an appearance. He seems to have something he'd like to share with them too. And with anyone else who might like it!

He opened up a couple of files on my laptop and wants me to tell you all about them and share the original for everyone to enjoy.



I can't remember all the details, but Austin supported a kickstarter a while ago for a girl called Keliana Tayler, which involved being able to commission a custom dragon drawing, designed to be printed out for colouring. Or maybe coloured on screen if that's what you're into. So as my Christmas present, he commissioned me a tree-planting dragon. And on Christmas morning I was handed a print-out of this...



He seems to be called Charlie too. And my plushie is usually referred to as 'Little Charlie'. I assume they are related, in spirit at least...

His purpose in arriving here with me seems to be to help and inspire me in my quest to raise an army of trees. He's busy casting ethereal growth rings on Gwern, the first tree he's grown with me, and teaching Rosa and Roxa all his tree growing secrets.

Here is a colouring suggestion by the artist...



I have, hopefully, attached a downloadable file of the original that we were sent. Anyone who wants to is free to print it out and use it to inspire everyone to plant more trees!

In other news, we are still awaiting the hatching of the Skye dragon egg. It seems that the dragon inside, Saúde, has been stuck in there for rather a long time and is finding it very difficult to break free. We have been helping as best we can but my plushy whale, Nemesis, who puts in an appearance in the thread about Seeking the White Whale, has insisted that she needs a bit more help than we have so far been able to provide and that she's waited long enough and that medical assistance may be required to assure Saúde's safe arrival. So I swallowed my pride and have been forced to admit that it's important that she hatches safely. Especially as, according to Spot, who is excellent at languages and alternative means of communication, has assured me that without Saúde's arrival, neither of the other Skye dragon eggs can hatch.

This has been rather difficult for me as I avoid medicine as much as possible, and it's very much felt like facing my Nemesis (are whales sea-dragons?) to agree to some help.

Spot has been a bit wrapped up administering the needed care and treatments, but has promised to come and talk to you all about colour and chameleon skin as soon as she can take a break. I think the other dragons have some posts planned too...

Oh, and here's the file for you all to download and print out - enjoy!

Iggy wanted to know what the flashing lights on the side of the old universtiy comuputer looked like when they would count up in binary, so Serra and I rummaged around on the internet and found this page - binary lights - which has lots of fun resources to help you understand and learn how to use binary.

Here they are watching the lights count up to 63...



Serra just wants to share this too...

I'm afraid Spot is still busy looking after Saúde, the new dragon who has just broken out of her shell having been stuck in there for far too long until she had become almost too weak to break free.

Spot is very compassionate like that and likes to reach out to help anyone in need. She represents the young adult aspect of myself. Her colour isn't as clearly defined as the younger dragons' tends to be - she's more integrated, better at seeing things from different viewpoints and incorporating them into broader perspectives. She's quite widely read, and loves to travel and learn about all forms of communication between species. She's not fixed in her outlook - she develops her own ideas about how things work but is keen to develop those ideas or modify them or even change them completely as her knowledge and experience base grows. She arrived here a couple of years ago to help the young dragons with their education and be a bit of mentor to them.

Iggy in particular was very excited about her arrival as he'd just learned to read and was keen to learn as much as possible about everything he could. He even wrote her a poem to welcome her as he'd also just learned to write and wanted to practice.

This is them, just after she arrived.



At the time, Iggy had been watching a lot of Star Trek. He had made good friends with Mr Data, and assumed that Spot had been named after Mr Data's cat. Personally I think Spot just finds it an amusing thing to call herself, especially when she's hiding amongst the greenery and everyone is playing 'spot the chameleon' trying to find her. Mr Data had written a poem about his cat, which he'd called Ode to Spot and Iggy wanted to write one just like it.

What you have to remember about dragon poetry is that, whilst it's not as bad as Vogon poetry, it tends to be, er, heavily based on other people's work. In fact, their philosophy tends to be - Plagiarise. Plagiarise. Let no one else's work evade your eyes

Anyway, here's the poem...

ODE TO SPOT

Furcifer oustaleti is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an ectothermic quintuped, insectivore by nature.
Your colour changing, vision and olfactory senses
contribute to your hunting skills and natural defences.

I find myself intrigued by your dermal fluctuations,
an iridescent way to aid communications
that illustrates your need to show us how you're feeling
then back to green and pleasant leafy tones to aid concealing.

Your tail is quite stupendous and helps you in your climbing
a true fifth limb which seems to me more use than all this rhyming.
And when not being utilised to aide in locomotion,
it too changes tint and hue reflecting your emotion.

O Spot, the complex wisdom and compassion you display
tell me how awesome it will be now you are here to stay.
For while you're here to teach me things and help me comprehend
I hope that I can be to you a true and trusted friend.

Written by Iggy. Mr Data helped.

Spot would just very quickly like to report that Saúde is starting to feel much better but still has a long way to go to get up to anything near full strength. She's not like the plushy dragons - she's more like Cuca, the dragon who lives in the rocket mass heater, in that you tend to feel her effects and see what she does rather than what she looks like. She is more, er, what's the word. Ephemeral? Ethereal? Anyway, whatever the word is she's invisible to our eyes and needs taking care of. And in return she promises to help me with absolutely anything and everything I choose to do!

I wonder if I should get her her own little place to hang out, her own safe place she can hide away when she needs to rest?  I found this for sale and am wondering if I can scrape the pennies together and twist Austin's arm to go and fetch it, if it's still available.



I think it would suit her. It's very much how I imagine she would look if she were visible to human eyes...

Well it turned out that Austin's arm didn't need much twisting - as soon as we'd finished lunch he announced that as he was booked to go and spend a day at Spirala Ecovillage driving the mini-digger, and it was due to pour down with rain all that day, he wanted to go into town to buy a pair of waterproof trousers. And as I'd been so frugal lately, he had enough money to buy the dragon pot for me. So I immediately messaged the seller, who turned out to live in Lisbon. But the dragon-pot belonged to her mother who lived in our town and might or might not be available. So Austin went to town and while he was in the shop picking up the trousers I had a message to say that yes her mother was in, so ten minutes later they met up and Saúde's new home was making its way home to me in the back of the car.

Some things are just meant to be!



When he got home, he took the lid off and handed me the pot to examine. A moment later there was a whooshing noise as Saúde, who had after all spent goodness knows how long confined to her egg and was probably having trouble adapting to life in the open air, swooped into the pot for safekeeping. Austin seemed rather surprised at this and carefully popped the lid back on, while Rosa went to clear some space on the bookshelf next to Sr Cogumelo, aka Mr Mushroom, commonly known as Cep. Then we carefully put Saúde and her pot next to him to see if that's where she wanted to live.



They both seemed happy there, and Mr Mushroom seemed pleased to have a new friend. But it was just a little bit too far away for me to be able to see the dragon design on the jar, which I was a little disappointed about. So Rosa cleared another space on a shelf a bit closer to me and started to decorate everything just so in a way she thought would make Saúde feel all loved up and welcome and appreciated.

She opened up the retábulo for a bit of inspiration...



Then flew out to the garden to see what flowers were in bloom that she could pick as a welcome gift.



By the time she'd finished, the shelf looked like this and everyone was happy.



Spot climbed up to a nearby shelf to see if she could talk to Saúde and make sure she was comfortable, though ethereal dragons don't talk in the same way we do so Spot was having to learn yet another sort of language.

Rosa was inspired to start tidying up and decorating everything so that everyone felt loved up and where they belonged, but the task was rather daunting so she thought she might just start off with a bit of dusting and changing of sheets.

Old Fortuna, the luck dragon, who rarely interacts with any of the other dragons these days, looked down from the top of her bookcase the other side of the room and hoped that someone had remembered that Saúde would need to be fed regularly.

And Iggy, who didn't really understand who the new arrival was, came up to me to see if I knew what she was all about about.

"Haven't you worked it out yet, Iggy?" I asked him. "The clue is in the name..."

Iggy thought for a moment. Then he worked it out. And smiled to himself.

"We'd better make sure we take good care of her then!"

"I think everyone has a Saúde of their own, even if they don't realise it. And it's up to all of us to learn how to nurture all our dragons as best we can. Don't you think?"

Rosa had changed the sheets and was wondering what to do next.

She'd decided that it was time to break out the old lace-edged linen sheets that had been stashed away in an old treasure chest in the house when we bought it. It had been traditional for girls to learn how to grow flax and spin it into thread, then weave their own bedlinens and decorate them with lace and embroidery in preparation for marriage. And it seemed to have also become a tradition for most of those beautiful bedlinens to be locked away in treasure chests and never used. When the old woman who used to live in this house died, she left behind some absolutely wonderful sheets, and the man we bought the house from, who had been born and raised in the house, must have been told to never open that chest. And I don't think he ever did as I found all sorts of little secrets hidden away in there.

I gathered up anything I found that I thought was valuable and offered it back to him, but he didn't want it. Too many memories for him I guess. But I too felt uneasy about actually using the sheets and had stashed them away in a cupboard.

Rosa, however, wasn't happy about the poor things never being able to fulfil their life's purpose, and decided the time was now right to choose one from the cupboard and make the bed with it. She said it was time for a new beginning, again, and to get around to doing all the things I'd put off in my life so far.



I must admit, the sheet is very comfortable to sleep under, and the embroidery and lace made by the old lady who lived here before me is stunning. And while part of me feels it is a pity to spoil the sheets, I do agree that they've already spent one lifetime locked away in a treasure chest and maybe they'd like to actually do what they were designed to do.

But now Rosa had to decide what to do next.

There is an awful lot of tidying and organising and dusting to be done, but she soon got bored of that. She is rather like me in that respect...  But she was so happy about the new-bedlinens-on-the-bed idea that she thought maybe Saúde would like something nicer than an empty ceramic pot to sleep on.

And then she had an idea!  There was a crate full of sheep's wool that I had scrounged off a friend who had a couple of giant builders' bags full of it for insulating a building, and somewhere there was a damaged old golden silk door-curtain that she might be able to use to cover a golden pillow fit for a special, golden dragon who is the daughter of a dragon queen according to the scroll that came with the eggs.

She knew where the wool was, but she had a nasty feeling that the curtain was buried in the depths of the Heap of Stuff that desperately needed sorting out, and that Nemesis, the whale, was sitting on over in the corner by the window.



Rosa was a bit scared of Nemesis and didn't want to face her to ask if she could rummage through The Heap of Stuff. Plus she spoke a very different, loud, and clicky sort of language that Rosa hadn't learned to speak so it was difficult to communicate with her. So she came to ask me for advice.

"It seems to me," I told her "that if you have to face something you are frightened of you have a choice to make. Do you fight it? Or do you make friends with it?"

Rosa thought for a moment. She didn't approve of fighting. But she was scared to try to make friends.

"But mum, how do I make friends with a whale when we don't even speak the same language?" she asked.

So I taught her how to say hello in sperm whale language and reminded her that Nemesis had been learning human languages, at least English and Portuguese and Welsh, from Spot. And that Spot could now communicate with her fairly well. So Rosa very bravely decided to face her fears and went to see if she could make friends with Nemesis.



Nemesis might be big and scary looking, but she's actually a great big softy and loves to help. When she heard that Rosa was looking for sunken treasure in the form of a golden curtain, she took great delight in leaping into the air and spraying water everywhere before nose-diving into the depths of The Heap to see what she could find.



My bedroom floor was soon littered with old scraps of fabric and torn trousers and offcuts of worn out blankets as Nemesis splashed about in the heap, but soon Rosa thought she'd spotted something glinting in the depths.



Nemesis helped Rosa pull the curtain out to examine it, and Rosa squealed in delight at how beautiful and soft and shiny it was. Except for that damaged bit on the bottom...



Nemesis is looking much happier now she's been able to put her diving skills to use.

Squiggles, who is sitting on fossilised eggs very near to the heap, is less happy. Sperm whales diving and hunting for treasure is not what he likes to have happening right next to him. Ammonites are very similar to squid after all, and sperm whales eat squid...

Rosa is very, very pleased with herself. She'd not only found the gold curtain, she'd also faced her fears and made a new friend.

Which, after all, is probably a far more valuable thing than any piece of fabric, no matter how shiny and golden, could ever be.

Rosa and Nemesis picked up all the mess on the floor that they'd generated and threw it back on top of the heap.

Except for a lovely little silk handkerchief, which Rosa brought to me and suggested I put into the pocket of my fancy coat so I could pretend to be a lady sometime.

"It is very pretty Rosa. But it's not the sort of thing I'd usually use. It has stains on it so I don't suppose anyone else would want it. I think you're right. I can put it in my coat pocket, just in case, and it would look ever so pretty if ever I took it out of my pocket when anyone was watching."

I wonder if I'd ever dare blow my nose on it though? Maybe it's for drying my eyes if ever I cry in public. It has been known, after all...



Then they brought the golden curtain to me so we could figure out where to begin.



The bottom edge of the old silk door curtain was damaged all the way along, and one end was very damaged for quite a way up, but it turned out there was a fairly deep triple-layered hem along the bottom, which contained some potentially useful golden silk fabric.

So I showed Rosa how to use the seam-ripper to undo the stitches along the hem and we cut along what was original bottom edge of the curtain until we reached the manky bit. Which gave us a nice but narrow bit of fabric with lots of fold marks.

Must be good for something though, and it hurts to throw away golden silk so we're keeping it!



Rosa remembered making a pin-cushion last year by wrapping stretchy cloth around some sheep's wool and pulling it until it looked round, then covering it a bit more neatly with some prettier fabric.

She thought the same idea would work well for Saúde's sleeping cushion, so she pulled out a nice big handful of fleece, cut a square out of an old worn out mattress cover, and got to work.



First she sewed together two opposite corners to make a big fat woolly sausage. Then she pulled one of the other corners into the middle and stitched it into place.



And then the other corner...



And then the new corners, adjusting it as she went to make it as round as she could.

Though it's going to be stuffed into a round pot so it's not overly critical if it's a bit lumpy around the edges...



That's looking quite round-ish now.



She turned it over so all the stitching was underneath and sorted out a bit of fabric for it.

The strip we cut off the bottom of the curtain wasn't really right for it because of all the ancient fold marks, but we cut another bit from near the bottom of the curtain, level with the damage, leaving as much as possible of the undamaged curtain in case we find a use for a big bit. It would be a shame to leave not quite enough for a project by cutting a bit out unnecessarily.



Rosa wrapped the cushion in the golden silk fabric. She put some stitches in and pulled it into place as best she could.



Then she trimmed off the surplus fabric.



There - a cushion fit for a dragon princess!



She popped it into Saúde's pot but her arms weren't long enough to adjust it perfectly so I offered to help.



Perfect - all shiny and golden and leafy and soft and warm.

I also discovered that the pot operates like a monkey trap. I can put my hand in ok, but unless I relax my hand totally and leave my fist open, it won't come out.

It does look rather lovely in there though. And much more comfortable. I think Saúde will like her new home even better now.



Meanwhile, Nemesis is testing the rest of the old gold curtain and confirms that it's very nice to lie on.

Thankyou for your help Nemesis! So glad Rosa plucked up the courage to talk to you.

I needed to rest now.

Rosa was very pleased with her work, but she had a nagging feeling that she'd forgotten something.

Was there anything else that Saúde would need? What had she forgotten?

It was my bedtime, so I settled all the dragons down as best I could and draped a black woollen shawl over them to encourage them to sleep and stay asleep. It works quite well for budgies, but it's not always completely effective for dragons. Especially if they have something on their mind.

It does help though.

When the dragons were drifting off to sleep, and I was all snuggled up cocooned in my new sheets, I too wondered about Saúde and what I could be doing to help her. I also wondered how I could communicate better with her so I could ask her more directly what she needed. But I needn't have worried. She'd been resting all day on her new golden cushion and when the dragons had gone quiet, she slipped out of her pot and came to snuggle up next to me so we could learn to talk. I closed my eyes and tried to hear what she had to say, and although she doesn't speak the way we do, I did think I could begin to hear her words deep inside me. Like a gentle whisper lulling me sleep and giving me sage advice to guide my steps.

It sounded a bit like this.

I drifted into a half wake, half sleep state. Unbeknownst to me, the girls were only half asleep too. And had pushed their covers off so they could listen in.



At some point I was slightly more awake than asleep and thought I heard that soft and gentle voice still there, still guiding me.

...
And when you wake,
follow your impulses,
follow your inner guidance.
...
Everything around you is already blooming and growing in the form of energy.
...
Remember that you are a powerful creator, manifestor....

When I woke the next morning, I felt better than I'd felt in quite a while, with more energy and gentler breathing. It didn't last though as Rosa and Roxa bounced up onto the bed telling me that they'd listened in to what Saúde was saying to me and they think they've figured out what I need to do!

"She says that everything around you is blooming and growing, and will give you energy!" declared Roxa.

Then Rosa added, somewhat predictably for a little pink dragon who loves flowers so much, "So obviously Saúde needs more fresh flowers to get her energy back!"

"So you think you should go and find more flowers in the garden? There are quite a few pretty ones that the old lady here before me planted. Do you think they are the right ones?"

"No, no, no!" explained Rosa. "She said everywhere around, so it's not just around the house. You need to go and find some wild flowers if you want to find real energy!"

The girls are probably right. Rosa had just flown down the steps to pick some garden flowers last time. And now my energy was starting to come back, maybe I'd be able to walk to visit my old friend Icarus. I'd managed to get over to Alan's place a couple of days ago and supervised while he planted a little bay tree near his kitchen door, and I hadn't even got out of breath until I was very nearly home, so I was obviously getting stronger again. So I thought for a while as I had my breakfast, then donned my walking shoes and took Rock, my sheepdog, out to supervise me as I ventured out in the hope of getting further than I'd been all year so far.

It wasn't far at all, and I used to walk it every day. And before that I'd do a much harder walk up the mountain but I'd had to cut back a bit. But it had been over four months since I'd had the energy to risk setting off to see Icarus. And Saúde was right, there were wild flowers blooming everywhere.

I took it very gently and made sure I walked slowly enough to not risk getting out of breath, and before long I met up with my old friend Icarus.



He was a bit hot-headed and, as you probably know, he'd once built himself a set of wings and attempted to fly to the sun. But the heat of the sun had melted the wax that held the feathers in place and he had fallen back down to Earth.

When I'd told the girls his story, Roxa was keen to point out that when you make anything it's important to check the thermal properties of the materials involved and to take into account the temperature extremes you might encounter else your wings might fall off, or your rubber O-rings might go brittle and fail and let fuel escape and make everything blow up. And either way it's going to mean that you're not going to fly as high as you'd wanted to. But for now I was just pleased that I had managed to reach Icarus without over-exerting myself. I paid him my respects and recommended to him to maybe start with smaller steps next time and build up gradually, like I was having to do.  He seemed to think this involved aiming for the moon rather than all the way to the sun, but maybe he'll learn. Or maybe he'll achieve it. Who knows?

On the way back, I picked some flowers, which Rosa gleefully relieved me of so she could arrange them in her little mini vase and give them to Saúde.



As she admired her creation, she wondered if that was all that was needed or if there was something else she'd forgotten.

And then she remembered.

Old Fortuna had said something about hoping that someone had remembered that Saúde would need to be fed regularly.

"I wonder what she meant?" thought Rosa. "Saúde isn't the sort of dragon who needs to eat, is she?"

Rosa was a bit nervous of Old Fortuna, who lived up on top of the other bookcase and looked down on everyone like the moon looks down on us all, shining and silent, wise and loving, but a bit beyond reach of young dragons. But then, Rosa was learning to face her fears by befriending them.

So there was only one thing for it really - she needed to make a little visit of her own to ask what ethereal, ephemeral dragons needed to be fed.

"O Fortuna!" called Rosa to the old white dragon. "Are you awake? Can you hear me?"

Fortuna opened her eyes slowly and saw the little pink dragon looking up at her full of hope and trepidation.

"Why hello young Rosa. How lovely to see you!" the old dragon replied. "Is there something I can help you with?"



Rosa shuffled awkwardly. "Well yes actually. I'm a bit worried that we're not doing everything we can to care for Saúde. And I thought I heard you say something about how we had to feed her. Only we don't know what she eats. Can you remember?"

"Hmmm. Let me think..."

Old Fortuna rubbed her sleepy eyes and tried to remember. But it was as though her memories were all gradually being buried and they were difficult to find.

"My memory is a bit dusty, but if you could help me down and help me dust them off a bit I might be able to remember something useful..."

Oh dear. Fortuna was right. She had got terribly dusty in the time she's been sitting up on top of the bookshelf. I guess a lot of things have happened since then, like fires, and replacing the roof, and renovations, and the general passage of time. Rosa called to the other dragons for a bit of assistance and they gently helped her down while Rosa rushed off to find a brush to dust her off a bit so they could settle down for a good chat.

"O Fortuna, just LOOK at the state of you! You're supposed be all white and luminous and shining like the moon, and now you just look like a big white dog with fleas..."

Not to worry, Rosa will soon get you sorted I'm sure...

The dragons laid Fortuna gently down on the bed, and Rosa began to brush her, singing quietly to herself as she did so.



"O Fortuna...Fel y lua..."

Dragons aren't too particular about which language they use, so long as it sounds about right. And I think this was a mixture of at least three different ones...

Very soon Fortuna began to look, and feel, a whole load better.  And so she began to shine...



Fortuna looked all  white and gleamed like the moon, beaming down at dear little Rosa who has been diligently brushing her and making her feel a bit more, er, human? Or at least, like her old self...

"I don't remember much about Saúde," she remembered.  "But I do know she has a sister. I can't remember the sister's name. But if you research the story of the Baba Yaga and especially the story of Vasalisa, I think you might find her."

"The Baba Yaga?" asked Rosa nervously. "Isn't she the evil old witch in the story of Hansel and Gretel?"

"Possibly..." replied Fortuna. "Though maybe she wasn't as evil as she was made out to be..."

Rosa knew the story of Hansel and Gretel quite well.

In fact, she was pretty sure that the old witch's sieve was downstairs somewhere. But she didn't know the story of Vasalisa.

"I'll go and ask the other dragons if they know the story. I'm sure one of them will!"

"Oh I'm sure some of them will, too." agreed Fortuna.

"But Rosa, you must remember when you read it that you can't always take things at face value. Take the time to sweep away the layers of dust as and when it seems appropriate to do so."

Rosa thanked Fortuna for her advice and was just about to scurry off to report to the other dragons and see what they knew about Vasalisa and the Baba Yaga when old Fortuna called after her one last time.

"Oh, and Rosa!" she called. "If you sweep enough dust off the layers of the story, you will find a gift in it for you."

"A gift? For me?" asked Rosa, not quite believing her ears. "Really?"

"If you can find it. And if you can give it a name..."

The dragons have all got together, except Fortuna who has retired back to the top of the bookshelf, and are researching Vasalisa and the Baba Yaga.



It turns out that Branwen, the parrot, has heard the story before and is busy repeating it verbatim, much to the delight of the rest of the dragons.

Except Negredo, the raven, who has keeled over in disgust and is loudly bemoaning the way his sister destroys stories by having them carved in stone rather than re-telling them afresh and anew for each new listener and each new step in their lives.

Oh for goodness sakes Negredo, stop wallowing in self pity and melodrama and give the parrot a break - she's doing her best in the only way she knows how!

Rosa wasn't sure if she liked the story of Vasalisa and the Baba Yaga. It left her feeling most uncomfortable, disturbed even. She told me about it and I assured her that I'd read a similar story when I was very young in my Big Book of Fairy Tales and had had similar feelings about it. But Fortuna had promised Rosa a gift that was buried in the story, one that she may only find after she had cleared away a layer of dust, or maybe several layers. And she had explained that the gift would be like a seed that, if she planted it and cared for it, would grow and bloom and help her to do the same.

Rosa was a bit nervous of entering the story again, so I opened up the laptop and let Rosa snuggle up with Spot, who is a little older than her and has more experience of interpreting stories, and also that raven, who despite his controversial stance on things actually has a heart of gold and tends to offer surprising insights and alternative views.



She decided to read the whole thing through again with her friends by her side and this time look for the gift that was hidden in it. A lot of the story was still quite scary and disturbing, but Rosa very soon realised that there was indeed a gift involved - the doll that Vasalisa's mother had given her to help guide her when she lost her way. Rosa had never had a doll, and suddenly she wanted one with all her heart. But then, how could a doll from the story be an actual gift to her in real life? And if the gift she was to receive from the story was a doll, how could that doll be like a seed?

She asked Spot about it. "Do you think the doll was really a doll? Or did it symbolise something else?" Spot replied.

"The story says it was a doll, but it also said that Vasalisa should feed the doll when it was hungry. And dolls don't need feeding!"

"She also said that the doll was to be kept with her at all times. And the doll was dressed the same as Vasalisa." noted Spot.

"Almost as though it was really a miniature part of her that she could ask advice from..." contemplated Rosa.



"It seems to me," suggested the raven, "that when Vasalisa was very young her mother made all the decisions for her, but when the time was right for her to begin to make her own decisions her mother gave her a way to help her make those decisions for herself. A way that she had shaped with her own hands, but that Vasalisa could nurture as she grew to womanhood and and went out into the Big Bad World. A mother cannot protect her child forever, after all. Sometimes things happen that make that impossible."

Rosa liked that idea. So the doll itself really was a bit like a seed, that would grow if she looked after it and in time would become strong and begin to bloom. Maybe the doll was just a symbol of something that the mother had planted in Vasalisa. Or maybe we are all born with that seed inside us and it's up to us to realise it is there and learn to how to find it, and nurture it, and learn to let it guide us as best it can.

That was quite a deep thought. It seemed to Rosa as though a layer of dust had been brushed off the outer layer of the story and begun to reveal something a little deeper. And it felt, just for a moment, like a little voice inside her was saying 'Yes that's right - I'm here, right inside you, just like Fortuna promised...'

"Does the doll have a name?" asked Rosa suddenly.

"Oh I guess so..." thought Spot.

"How do we find out what it is?"

"Well how did you find out the names of the sea-dragons holding up mom's writing table?"

"Mom asked them, and they sang to her. They sang that their names were Imaginação, Observação, Percepção and Criação."

"Would they know the name of the little doll that lives inside me?"

"Why don't you ask them?"



So Rosa asked the magic dragons of imagination, of observation, of perception and of creation. And they began to sing back to her. They sang of hidden depths, of ever changing currents, of time, of experience, of doing the work that needs to be done, of trusting yourself to know even when you don't feel sure, of learning to tell the good from the bad, the sound from the unsound, of knowing when to ask for help and when to accept responsibility, of learning from mistakes and absorbing that knowledge and putting it to use. Look inside, and the answer will come to you. And then in time you will begin to shine with your own light...

And then she knew. The little doll's name was Intuição, and although the seed had been planted long ago the gift of the story was to help her recognise that seed and to name that part of her so she would tend it, and feed it, and learn to communicate with it and trust it. And also to understand that, like a real mother, her intuition would sometimes make mistakes and was far from perfect. But nevertheless it would grow and bloom alongside her and do its utmost to protect her from harm and guide her path.