Cyberdragon poem; postscript...
Thank you for all your kind, and very interesting, comments in response to "For Jedella, With My Very Best Regards." I just want to mention a couple of things here.

Michael Farris raised the question of why the human beings in this fictional universe bond with the cyberdragons, saying, "To understand the stories, I accept the hold that cyberdragons have over the humans that .... bond(?) with them. But there still seem to be missing elements on just how that bonding (or whatever it is) happens. I don't know if you've worked that out yet or are just as in the dark as I am..."

And then houseboatonstyx mentioned the gecko animation in the Geico commercials, which made me think of how crazy I am about that little gecko -- I am for sure bonded with that little gecko -- and the contrast between that reaction on my part and the creeped-out way I react to Golem in "The Return of the King."

If you've read the earlier posts in this fictional universe, you'll remember that the cyberdragon/human bonding phenomenon was an accident; the company that made the cyberdragons had intended them to be toys for children, and was taken by surprise. ["We had a dozen of the dragons in an observation room, and we brought in a dozen adults, and what happened next was beyond belief. We'd told them that the dragons were kids' toys, of course. Standard procedure. But in oh, two minutes flat, every single adult in the room was either sitting there with a dragon in their lap or walking around the room holding a dragon's front paw the way they would have walked around holding a child's hand. With big happy smiles on their faces. We'd never seen anything like it. And we sure as hell couldn't have predicted it."]

The company immediately made some modifications. ["We went back and made them softer, and lighter, and more ... more cuddly. And of course we re-did their front paws to make them exactly like a little child's hands."] That paw makeover, it seems to me, was a stroke of genius. There's something about the way a tiny child's hand, offered trustingly and without hesitation, feels to an adult human that -- at least for me -- has a very strong appeal. And the company would have known to make modifications that would trigger the standard human hard-wired reactions: the small round head; the big round eyes with the long silky eyelashes; the slightly-pouty rosebud mouth; and the irresistible little soft voice. And the programming that guaranteed impeccable Good Behavior, always. All those things, it seems to me, would lead to bonding.

I know there is a subset of adult humans who are immune to these characteristics, and who find little kids icky at best, and even repulsive. But the majority of us -- fortunately for the survival of our species -- don't have that immunity. Whether, in this real nonfictional world -- we'd be likely to bond with cyberdragons and perhaps treat them more lovingly than we treat our biological children, I can't say. I can only say that I hope not.