We are excited to feature "Furnace Dreams" by Jasmine Arch in the fabulous February 2022 issue of
Electric Spec. Jasmine was kind enough to send along some comments about her story.
Furnace Dreams is not the only dragon story I've written, or the first of my dragon stories to get published. You could say dragons are a mild obsession of mine. I've written poems about them as well. Heck, my friends and I started an entire podcast just to have an excuse to squee about dragons and dragon mythology from all parts of the world.
But Furnace Dreams was the first piece in this series. Kona was the first dragon to appear inside my head and start talking to me. While she doesn't vocalise, I've found that eloquence and silence are not mutually exclusive.
I'd read a space opera in which unicorn horn is used to power the FTL drives of spaceships. Humans being humans, you can probably guess that it doesn't paint a pretty picture.
So I thought, "What if I placed that premise in a historical fantasy environment?" and there she was. A juvenile dragon chained up in the engine room of a steamship, sad, scared, and completely unaware of how strong she is or what she's truly capable of. Treated like a furnace--named for one, even.
Because, let's face it: if dragons had been real, if they'd truly existed at some point in history, Western culture wouldn't have eradicated them. Knights wouldn't have hunted them down. Instead, they'd have found a way to capture these magnificent creatures, break their spirits, and turn them into a commodity.
After all, it's how Europeans have historically treated indigenous cultures across the world, wherever their ships landed. Actually, you can forget historically. It's how we're still treating the entire planet.
And unless we start trying on someone else's shoes for a day, or a year--in Kona's case, her claws and wings--it's how we'll keep treating anything we don't know or understand. We tend to conveniently forget about our ability to empathise, both with our fellow humans and with other creatures, but the moment we stop thinking of them as living, breathing, feeling organisms, is the moment we allow ourselves and our peers treat them as objects, resources, commodities, toys even.
The minute you realise, not just cognitively but with every bone and sinew in your body, that you have more common ground than differences with the organism you don’t quite understand, is the moment you start seeing them as deserving kindness, compassion, empathy, and everything else you’d hope to receive for yourself, if the roles were reversed.
That, I believe, is where the power of stories lies. It can take us out of our own lives and worlds for a bit. While that in itself is an adventure every single time, it’s not just about the adventure and the escape.
Even though none of us know what it's like to be a dragon, let alone an enslaved dragon, a story like Furnace Dreams can help us imagine it. When I read a book like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, Michelle Obama's Becoming, or Rebecca Roanhorse's Trail of Lightning, the story doesn't just take me on an adventure. It shows me a struggle I wouldn't experience on my own, living in Belgium, working in a radiology department, or walking my dogs, and it shows me in a way that puts me in the middle of the struggle, rather than watching from the sidelines.
Storytelling enriches lives, and teaches empathy, rather than facts. No wonder it's the oldest tradition known to human cultures across the world. It's how we remember every other tradition.
Very interesting! Thanks, Jasmine!
Be sure to check out "Furnace Dreams" and the rest of the Electric Spec stories on February 28, 2022!
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