The four adventurers were exhausted by the time they'd arrived home and slept soundly all that night. In the morning though, Índigo and Vermelha were back to their usual ways, zooming around the place and chattering endlessly to each other. Eventually I'd had enough and shooed them outside to go and play so I could have some peace. Rosa and Roxa were happily rummaging in the new treasure chest playing with springs and new dragons, and Iggy had decided that he needed to come up and tell me all about their adventures.
"Well Iggy, did you all have a lovely time? Did you learn anything new?" I asked him.
"Lots of things happened. Mostly because Índigo and Vermalha were so naughty. They were having such a good time zooming all over the place at the speed of light that they wouldn't stop! They would zoom off, zoom back again, and carry on straight past us laughing and refusing to stop when we called them. Actually, it was really odd because I noticed that they seemed to get longer and longer when they were zooming. You couldn't really see where their noses started and their tails ended. As though they were stretched out along the whole length at once. Like beams of light.."
"Well they are photons when they go that fast so I suppose it's hardly surprising, though I'd never really thought about it." I admitted.
"I guess so, but that's not the strangest thing. Shiva got fed up of them not coming back when he called them and they were laughing at him as they zoomed past him. And you'll never guess what he did!"
"Um, no I probably won't. What did he do?"
"Well it turns out he has an electro-magnetic lasso! And the next time Vermelha tried to zoom past him, he caught her with it!! And she zoomed round and round and round him until she caught her own tail!"
"Oh wow, now that IS interesting!"
"Then when she'd calmed down a bit, he switched the elctro-lasso off and she shot off at the speed of light again!"
"Well I hope they learned their lesson and behaved themselves after that! Did they?"
"Um, no. Not really. Because then Índigo wanted to try it so Shiva caught her with the electro-magnetic lasso and let her spin around him for a while. Then when he let her go they'd be racing past him and getting him to it again, and again, until they were all laughing and having a wonderful time. Actually, while they were chasing their tails round and round, they seemed to calm down a bit but they kept going at the same speed until Shiva released them and they zoomed off into the distance again."
"Well to be honest it sounds like they were all having fun!"
"Yes they were. But what I really wanted to talk to about was this..."
Iggy pushed a paper towards me, one that I'd seen him reading before. I think he'd been rummaging on my bookshelves and dug up some old stuff I'd been working on years and years ago.
The diagram on the page he'd been reading did look rather familiar and I squinted at the title page -
Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology by J.G. Williamson and M.B. van der Mark. I did recognise it, but I don't think it's the sort of thing I could get my head around any more.
"Where on earth did you find that Iggy?"
"It was hiding on your bookcase..."
"Hmmm, sounds about right. There's lots of stuff lurking on that bookcase that I never finished dealing with..."
"But the thing is mum, what it's suggesting is that if a photon catches it's own tail..."
But before he could finish what he was trying to tell me, a little nose appeared on the page...
"Oh hello, Luz! Have you come to see us?" I asked her, pleased to see her interacting a bit more.
"It's not Luz, it's Electra!" Rosa explained as she chased after the escapee. "She stopped chasing her tail and shot off to find you"
"Oh no, I'm sure it's Luz."
Poor Rosa was very confused as she was pretty sure I'd said that her name was Electra when we'd first found her.
Luz slithered up onto the page and started curling around following the lines on the diagram. She circulated twice, a bit like a cat does when it wants to curl up and go to sleep, until she managed to close in on herself and catch her own tail. Again. And there stayed, apparently quite happy to return to her old configuration.
I looked at her again.
"Oh maybe not. She seems to be Electra again now!" I announced.
At which point poor Rosa nearly gave up in despair...
Iggy stared in disbelief at the new dragon, who he hadn't met before.
"Well that's exactly what I was trying to tell you mum - this paper is suggesting that an electron is just a photon of light that has caught its own tail. Just like that! That's why she's Electra when she's going round in circles and Luz when she's going in straight lines!"
"The only thing is," he continued,
"the paper is very difficult to understand..."
"Physics papers tend to be like that." I admitted.
"I don't think I could read that one even when I first had it. There was a book here somewhere which explained it in simpler terms. Alan might have it. Maybe you should ask him."
"Or we could ask Idris!" suggested Rosa.
"He's been up on the wall above the whiteboard for ages and never talks to any of us. He just sits there biting the end of his tail. Do you think he would talk to us if we asked him nicely?"
"Oh I'm sure he would. Why don't you girls go and ask him?"
And so the young dragons went off to try to persuade Idris, who I've had for nearly forty years and used to live in the old bread oven in the alcove by the fireplace in the old farmhouse I lived in when I was eighteen, on a bed of hay and guard my collection of pretty rocks, to come down and talk with them and tell them what he knew about dragons who catch their own tails.
I wonder what he'll be able to tell them...
