Enchanted Dragon Towers

Many of you know I am HUGE when it comes to stories. . . especially in relation to the thing si create.

Well, I just finished this little tower and it's dragon guardian, Amethyra, the other day and wrote the accompanying tale to go with it this morning so it is now listed in my shop.

This is rare. I have, at last count, a dozen completed items here that are awaiting stories before being sold/listed in my Etsy shop. Some have sat for weeks. . . waiting.

I cannot seem to list anything if it does not have some sort of tale to go with. The stories are, ultimately, what I feel give a bit of spirit to the work. I don't want to define everything I make in detail because part of that is, indeed, for the new owner. . . but at least something to offer a starting place for their own adventure to take root.

I am trying to get better at letting go just a bit on it but, when a story comes together like the one for these towers did, I feel like it is worth waiting for when it is not exactly there at the start.

So, without further delay or blather on my part, here is the Enchanted Dragon Tower and it's accompanying tale. : )

It's 6" tall and about 3" at the widest point of the dragon's body

I've been wanting to make dragons for some time but think I finally like the version I have here.

Coiling it around the tower works well but I also intend to make a few with the dragon perched/coiled on the roof top!

 I really enjoy the look of the offset doorway for an even more enchanted effect. :) 

¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨  The Enchanted Dragon Tower  ¨¨°º©©º°¨¨¨

There are so many stories and tales about dragons in the world that to try and convince you there might be one more you haven't heard would seem a bit presumptuous. . .

But this little enchanted dragon tower is really born of a dragon story unlike any other that I, personally, knew of before hand.

Seems that a little, creative elven girl named Alythia had been having a hard time of late with her magic studies. She wasn't really very much into the books and lessons that other young creatures of the Pine seemed to so easily grasp. It wasn't so much that she felt badly about this as she had many, many other things that interested her far more than study.

For one, she loved to tell stories that she made up during her time alone at home. She also loved to spend as much time as she could wandering the countryside and talking to all of the creatures she encountered. Fauns, fairies, brownies, gnomes, sprites, goblins. . . made no difference to Alythia as she had a real knack for making friends and she often found herself telling her made-up stories to the new friends she met along the way. They always hoorah-ed and clapped at the end. . .

One day while venturing further into the surrounding forests than she ever had before, she came upon an old stone tower deep in the pines. It looked like it had been abandoned for eons with browned, dry moss, dead weeds filling the flower boxes and a lack of luster that only comes with years of neglect.

Stepping up to the door she recognized the faint markings she found there from one of her "Ancient Spells" textbooks. Theses symbols were enchantments that, as she recalled, were supposed to keep whatever had been locked inside.  .  well. . .  inside. The seals had been broken though and so, ever the adventurous spirit, she cautiously forced opened the heavy, creaky wooden door and found her way thru the dark lower level and up the stairs to the lookout window high above the forest floor.

When she got to the top, she was completely transfixed by the view! Such beauty and gentle hills sprinkled with wildflowers all around for miles. She had never known the landscape to look like that from the ground.

She made a wish, right there an then, that she could spend her life in a tower like this one just creating her stories day after day for it was truly the thing she enjoyed most of all.

Well, after a bit of daydreaming, Alythia eventually made her way back down the stairs but, as she did, she felt that something was. . . different now. . . the tower itself no longer seemed old, musty and dilapidated but, instead, seemed light, airy and almost like new!

She walked outside to discover the outside too looked rather refreshed with bright green moss and colorful stones and, the flower box that had only held dead weeds when she entered, was now overflowing with juicy red flowers!

And as she stared up at the beautiful scalloped rooftop with it's clinging moss, she felt a warm East wind blowing on her neck. . . except, it turns out, it wasn't an East wind at all.

Nooooooo, it was, as she saw upon turning around, a very beautiful, purple dragon with golden horns, eyes and wings!

The dragon, without speaking with a voice, introduced herself as Amethyra and she told Alythia that she was the guardian of the enchanted tower.  A tower that could grant almost any wish a being made while looking out it's "dream Window".

Alythia was startled. . . but not afraid. "But what of the sealing spells on the door? So they not speak of "keeping something inside"?

"Ahhh" said Amethyra, "Actually the spell was a warning to keep folk OUT of the tower. Because what is kept within is the power to grant the enchantment of one wish. But the spell is a little. . . off, shall we say? It grants the wish, but it only does so if the wish-maker stays within the tower."

"So", Amethyra continued, people have wished for great wealth, great bounties of food, fine clothes, great power even. . . but they may only have such things as long as the remain in the tower."

"And what is your part in this?" Alythia asked.

"Ohhh, I am the guardian of the tower" said Amethyra. "It is my charge to protect the tower and anyone who dwells within it. But should they leave, all they have wished for ends up turning into dust."
 
"I wished I could stay here forever and write stories." said Alythia "Can that really be a dream that the enchantment can make come true?"

Yes, that is why I appeared to you." Amethyra answered, "If you wish to stay, you may. The tower would be your only home and you would want for nothing as long as you remain inside and do not break the seal once the enchantment is enacted."

Alythia thought long and hard about this while Amethyra coiled around the tower to await her decision. In the end, after much internal debate, Alythia decided to take up the offer and she lived, for the rest of her many years, in the solitude and beauty of the Enchanted tower.

She thrived in the solitude and she was quite content with Amethyra as her only company. She took very good care of her little tower home and wrote stories, every day, without fail.

It is said that what she created lives beyond time and measure. The root of those stories, older than can be traced and forever retold in our times thru our own creations, link us together across worlds and dimensions.

Her gift became the very essence of what we call inspiration and, to this day, people seek solitude (mostly sans dragons like Amethyra, sadly) for the time and space to create their own stories and offerings to the world.