The children within us

and the doors to enchantment and magic

Georgie and the Dragon - ©Emily Charlotte Powell

We walk through the threshold between childhood and adulthood and the doors of magic and enchantment swing shut behind us. We must learn to survive in the ‘real world’, a world that teaches us that reality is composed entirely of objects that can be quantified and managed. Where time becomes money and value is measured by a price tag.

Yet adults need stories of enchantment and magic as much as children do. We need stories of that which lies beyond our comprehension, stories that do not fit neatly within the physical, the logical or the deconstructable. Stories that connect us back to a broader way of attending to the world, where a thing is more than the sum of its parts. Where poetry and music carry meanings that lie beyond explanation. Where children lead us by the hand through their imaginings and remind us of something we have forgotten how to reach…

Once upon a time, there was a little girl born of dragons¹. She arrived in our world curled within an invisible egg and taught to roar by her human grandmother. She had travelled through a portal of flesh and blood into the human world, carried here by a human mama who loved her before she had ever seen her face. She was chosen to live in a human body and experience a human life. To swim in the ocean and eat every flavour of ice cream, to learn what it is to hold hands and get butterflies in her tummy and love as a human.

But the little girl grew homesick. She missed her dragon mama and her family. She was scared that she would forget what they looked like, the sound of their roars, the shape of their wings, their magic and everything that connected her to them.

The Universe, however, is ever wise. It had been no accident that the portal opened into this particular human family. It knew there was only one human mama perfectly suited to raise a dragon-child far from home. One who understood enchantment and belief and magic in a way that many human adults have forgotten.

So when the dragon-child confided her fears, her mama set about weaving a thread between the worlds. A dragon-child far from home needed a way to send love across the stars and receive it in return. The Universe, being ever wise, had already begun gathering the people and stories needed to make such a thing possible.

Many miles away, across land and sea, there lived a woman born of fae. Though her home was on a small island in the human world, her mind and heart dwelled between the worlds. So strongly did she feel the pull of Fae, that when she made things, they became bridges between realms.

She had first glimpsed into the dragon world when she was only four years old. In a dream that seemed not a dream, curled between her parents in their bed with the velvet dark pressed in close, she opened her eyes and saw dragons.

They were all around her, stretching away into the darkness beyond. Great wings folded against great bodies. Black scales caught what little light there was. Yellow eyes gleamed.

No words were spoken. No great adventure unfolded. There was only the certainty of their presence and the feeling that she was safe among them. It was as if the worlds had briefly converged and not only was she curled in bed between the warm comfort of her parents, but also within the great cavernous dwelling where the dragons sleep.

When morning came, the dragons were gone. Yet the memory remained, an ember carried through the years that is still smouldering.

She understood longing and loss, for she had felt them herself.

As a child, she had loved her teddies with a fierce devotion that blazed within her, bright and unquenchable. They were not toys to her. They were companions and confidants and friends.

One day, she noticed that older children no longer played with their teddies and adults did not sleep with them held tight in their arms. Many no longer kept them at all. The realisation struck her with such force that she wept.

She gathered her teddies and made them a promise. She would never stop loving them. She would never leave them behind. She would never forget them.

But the human world has a habit of teaching its children to leave daydreams behind. Imaginary companions fade away. Toys are packed into boxes and stories of dragons and faeries are dismissed as childish things. As the years passed, the fae-born girl learned that enchantment belonged to childhood and practicality to adulthood. She learned to value facts over fairy tales and certainty over mystery. Enchantment and magic faded to myth.

Yet somewhere beneath the practicalities and responsibilities of adulthood, the ember continued to smoulder.

The fae-girl gave birth to her own children, a girl and a boy. Something in the poetry of their smiles and the music of their laughter, in the solemn certainty of their belief, swirled in the air around a door that had swung shut long ago. An enchanted breeze drifted through a gap and breathed upon the ember, and it glowed brighter once more.

With their tiny hands, they held her heart and led her back through the door to the worlds she had almost forgotten. Beyond magical wardrobes and down rabbit holes. To lands where the mountains whispered, dragons guarded their hoards, and faeries lived as long as someone believed in them.

The years passed. Her children grew older. But the door remained ajar.

The ember glowed ever brighter and the pull of the fae world grew ever stronger. It found its way into her stories and her drawings and the things she made with her hands.

And so it was that when the fae-woman wandered through the woods, because her heart and mind dwelled between the worlds, she saw more than trees and woodland paths. She heard the soft tread of elves among the roots and glimpsed sprites darting through shafts of sunlight. She returned home with pockets full of treasures. A sliver of silver birch bark became a faerie door with a tiny window, a lichen-covered twig became a lintel and a tussock of moss a front step. With the ember, the fae-woman drew windows and ivy, gilded stars and a crescent moon onto a small wooden mushroom, and piece by piece, a faerie cottage emerged beneath her hands.

Because the ever-wise Universe had already begun to gather the people and stories needed to weave a thread between worlds, the little faerie cottage soon found its way across the sea to the dragon-child’s home.

There it waited beneath the light of the moon. And whenever the moon was full and silver light pooled around the little faerie door, a portal between the dragon world and the human world would open. If the dragon-girl left a letter for her dragon kin beside the mushroom and rang a tiny silver bell, the faeries would take the letter and slip through the portal to travel moonlit paths and deliver it to her dragon family. The faeries would return with letters from her dragon kin, bringing news of home and reminding her that she was so loved and would never be forgotten.

With every letter, the thread between worlds grew stronger.

And somewhere, on a small island across the sea and many miles away, a fae-woman smiled, because what could she want more for her tiny creation, than for it to become part of the enchanted story of a dragon-child searching for her family.

The dragon-girl is real, and so is her story. It was written by her human mama, Kendall Lamb, with imagination, love and a deep respect for the inner world of childhood. If you have not already read it, I hope you will.

I Believe Her.

I Still Believe Her

The dragon dream and the promise that was made are real moments from my childhood. Stirred back to life and made bright once more through the story of a dragon-child on the other side of the world.

Modern western society prizes the logical and the measurable. These things matter. They help us navigate the practical realities of adult life. Yet some of the most meaningful parts of being human resist measurement. How do you measure joy? How do you put a value on sending a little mushroom cottage across the ocean and watching a story flourish around it? How do you measure the distance between a seven-year-old child in the US in 2026 and a four-year-old girl in England in 1982?

As children, we are granted permission to inhabit enchanted worlds. We talk to dragons and with our teddies. We believe wardrobes open into other realms and that letters can travel between worlds. Somewhere along the way, many of us learn that adulthood requires us to leave such things behind. Yet the stories endure. Adults still return to Middle-earth. They still walk the halls of Hogwarts. They still wander through Narnia. The capacity for wonder does not disappear. Nor does the human need for it.

The pictures I draw look like they belong in children’s books. Yet they hang on my walls. They are the wallpaper on my phone and my computer. They have found homes with many other grown-ups too. The older I get, the more I suspect that the appeal of dragons and faeries and enchanted cottages has very little to do with age.

The pictures I draw have never really been for children. They are for the four-year-old within me who dreamed of dragons. For the child who promised her teddies she would never stop loving them.

They are for wonder, for enchantment.

For the children within all of us.

with love,

Georgie and the Dragon is available as an art print from Ink & Oddments² and is one of the gifts annual paying subscribers can choose from my portfolio. The dragon illustrations are included in the welcome illustration bundle for new free subscribers, and the dragon dividers, created especially for this post, have been added to the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery for paying subscribers.

Little mushroom faerie cottages can also be found in Ink & Oddments alongside art prints, cards and other handmade things.

If you choose to support my work, thank you. Each subscription, print and oddment purchased grants me another moment of freedom to draw and write and make things, and perhaps weave a few more threads between the realms.

1. This story is shared with the permission of the dragon child and her mama.

2. If you are outside the UK and would like to purchase something from Ink & Oddments, please get in touch and I can work out international shipping and duties.