Black Dragon: The Legend of Vusi Thembekwayo
How do you hatch a dragon egg? Yes, a dragon egg. As in the mythical, monstrous lizard-like creatures that are often winged, breathe fire and have been the subject of everything from children’s nightmares to scientific study from ancient China to Europe for as long as stories have been told. Well, the answer to that question depends on which origin myth you’re going with and as any true comic book fan will tell you, origin stories are everything because they explain a lot about the eventual outcomes of a character. Going back to the dragon question, for example, if you read the book Eragon by Christopher Paolini, you’ll discover that the way a dragon egg is hatched or comes into the world is when it comes in physical contact with its eventual rider. The hatchling inside the egg chooses a worthy rider and then hatches for it and will hatch for nothing less than a human or elf rider that it deems worthy. Perhaps my favourite dragon origin myth, however, is from George R.R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and in the television adaption of the story, there is an epic scene where a grieving Daenerys Targaryen sets the body of her dead husband alight with three dragon eggs on the funeral pyre and they hatch due to a combination of the heat and magic. In many ways, Vusi Thembekwayo can be said to have hatched due to a combination of the heat of circumstance and the magic of time and chance.
