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U. K. Le Guin's writing may have been deep but it was her dragons that first seduced me all those years ago. When i read the books it was "YES! Of course, this is how dragons are; she knows!" Yet she hardly wrote of them at all; these passages come from the end of her third book and there is more here than she wrote in the rest of the trilogy combined. That's what made them exotic; Le Guin's dragons lived apart; you didn't ride them like a pony nor did you steal from them.
"At last he sat up, and as he did so he saw on the far side of the stream, immense, a dragon.
It's head, the color of iron, stained as with red rust at the nostril and eye socket and jowl, hung facing him, almost over him. The talons sank soft into the deep, wet sand on the edge of the stream. The folded wings were partly visible, like sails but the length of the dark body was lost in the fog.
It did not move. It might have been crouching there for hours,, or for years, or for centuries. It was carven iron, shaped from rock - but the eyes, the eyes he dared not look into, the eyes like oil coiling on water, like yellow smoke behind glass, the opaque profound eyes watched..
...There was a noise as of metal rubbing against metal, the grating whisper of crossed swords. The iron colored dragon had risen on it's crooked legs. It moved and crossed the rivulet, with a soft hissing sound as it dragged it's long body through the sand. Arren saw the wrinkles at the shoulder joints, the mail of it's flanks scored and scarred like..armor and it's long teeth yellowed and blunt. In all this and it's sure ponderous movements, and in the deep frightening calmness that it had, he saw the signs of age; great age, of years beyond remembering.
The old dragon Kalessin looked at him from one, awful, golden eye. There were ages beyond ages in the depths of that eye; the morning of the world was deep in it. Though Arren did not look into it, he knew that it looked upon him with profound and mild hilarity."
Well, anyway, for me, it's gospel. While typing and re-reading i realize that she taught me how to write. I'm not saying i was a good student but here is my DNA; long descriptive sentences full of breaks and comas.
"At last he sat up, and as he did so he saw on the far side of the stream, immense, a dragon.
It's head, the color of iron, stained as with red rust at the nostril and eye socket and jowl, hung facing him, almost over him. The talons sank soft into the deep, wet sand on the edge of the stream. The folded wings were partly visible, like sails but the length of the dark body was lost in the fog.
It did not move. It might have been crouching there for hours,, or for years, or for centuries. It was carven iron, shaped from rock - but the eyes, the eyes he dared not look into, the eyes like oil coiling on water, like yellow smoke behind glass, the opaque profound eyes watched..
...There was a noise as of metal rubbing against metal, the grating whisper of crossed swords. The iron colored dragon had risen on it's crooked legs. It moved and crossed the rivulet, with a soft hissing sound as it dragged it's long body through the sand. Arren saw the wrinkles at the shoulder joints, the mail of it's flanks scored and scarred like..armor and it's long teeth yellowed and blunt. In all this and it's sure ponderous movements, and in the deep frightening calmness that it had, he saw the signs of age; great age, of years beyond remembering.
The old dragon Kalessin looked at him from one, awful, golden eye. There were ages beyond ages in the depths of that eye; the morning of the world was deep in it. Though Arren did not look into it, he knew that it looked upon him with profound and mild hilarity."
Well, anyway, for me, it's gospel. While typing and re-reading i realize that she taught me how to write. I'm not saying i was a good student but here is my DNA; long descriptive sentences full of breaks and comas.