this iron saber was forged and wielded by the tortoisewoman soldiers of Mars, and as you hold it, you think of that planet, remembering memories that are not your own. the training camps of Mount Olympus and the labyrinthine fortifications and burrows worming under its foundations, with rumors of a dragongirl asleep at its nadir like the vast bulk of the mountain was a weighted blanket. the steppes of the northern hemisphere, with shepherds and camelherds and llamaherds eking out a simple existence and trading with the miners and salvagers who live in caravans of treaded transports the size of hills. the monasteries and villages on the slopes of Elysium that have drawn countless pilgrimages from all over the solar system. the martian capitol, the vast u-shaped strip around the Bay of Isis, a jumble in concrete and bronze and steel and gold, baking bread smells wafting from the tandoor ovens and weaving through the domes and mosques and synagogues and factories and refectories and tenement halls, where throngs of Girls and Beastgirls and Robotgirls and Ghostgirls work and play and learn and love. the carcinogenic southern highlands, so bitterly arid that even the miraculous hexavalent chromium sequestering roots can find no purchase in most of its rusty soil, and treasure hunters need sealed suits to track down and salvage centuries-old derelict warships. the northern Utopian and Arcadian and Acidalian shallow seas, where snow leopardgirls sail from port to port weaving through field ice and dodging wrathful auroraserpents who come down from the northern magnetic city. the northern and southern magnetic cities themselves, connected via a shaft dug by industrious molegirls and rabbitgirls through the planet’s long-cold core, a miracle of socialist labor. the mysterious and unmarsly Mariner’s Valley, a forest bounded by sheer cliff faces, where deer twenty feet tall at the shoulder bound and boars as big as houses snuffle through the undergrowth. all these places and more you consider, and then you put the sword down once more.
in the Serpentine Mountains, which stretch from the far north where they veer east and trail into the ocean til their peaks barely rise from the waves as islands, down to the southwest where they shelter a rich and fertile land of rice and beans and maize from endless western stretches of scrub and grassland, there are monks. this comes as no surprise, for the world over it is hard to find some mountainside that has boasted a monastery, cloister, shrine or temple at some point in its life. specifically for the Serpentine Mountains, there are an unusual number of aspirants to the dragongirl state, perhaps drawn to the mountain range by its name, which some say comes from the green and glossy stone found there, others from the winding path it traces. regardless of the origin of the name, a number of dragon-schools can be found in those peaks and valleys:
the Sophists seek to assume the dragon mantle by contemplation of Sophie the First and Final Dragon, the broken ouroboros that uncoiled to swallow her own (non)existence, the origination and embodiment of all disparities the synthesis and resolution of which, it is said, are the fundament of our universe.
the Aggregationists emulate dragons in their meditations on and indulgences of greed and lust and hunger, what they call the inward-gathering desires, which they aim to synthesise into a single Want that they believe is the key to their apotheosis.
the Panthalassics use incredible amounts of drugs to attain draconicity and have a great deal of exchange of prospectives with other schools, especially the Aggregationists. they have the best music by far, also.
the Sunbathers occupy a single compound with catacombs sunk deep into the mountains’ foundations, where lead-bearded goatgirls and blue-basking alligatorgirls seek to transform themselves body and soul with nuclear alchemy.
all these esoteric schools and sects and others make their homes on the slopes of the Serpentine Mountains, where quiet dark pine forests stand tall, where pilgrims climb the same paths that goatgirl llamaherds descend, to trade their wares with llamagirl goatherds in the northern foothills or coyotegirl spice merchants of the southern vales
Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973)
