am Scorch son of Singe and Carmen and heir to the noble family name of Smogblartt. This is my story... I am the youngest member of the oldest race on Earth. The history of our magnificent Dragon people goes back before the dawn of time. (Ooooo, THAT was bright.) We fire-breathers are considered to be the missing link between dinosaurs and ...Magic!       We dragons once roamed our earth as a small family group. We have always been a solitary people, especially around humans and other lesser species. No offense. We are motivated by our sense of the artistic and the aesthetic. We dragons revel in appreciating pretty things. The first humans were not pretty. Not by a long shot. I mean, who wanted to hang out with smelly, hairy, monkey-faced, sloped-headed 'homies' who picked their noses as well as other private parts that we dragons didn’t even have? The first human men and women could barely stand on two legs. They slumped over like the folks who shop the “Relax The Back” stores. The average early Homo Sapiens were practically helpless, too. We just knew they were doomed for extinction. Humans couldn’t even snort flames or make fire, although to my way of thinking they seemed to manufacture enough methane to pull it off. So we dragons did what we dragons do in these cases. We ignored those first humans. ).     Big mistake. We didn’t know anything about 'evolution’ back then. How could we? Everything was new. Not one of us guessed that some day the Hominid people would evolve and eventually rise to the top of the food chain to suck up diet sodas and drive Volvos. We Dragons never evolved. We didn't need to. We live to be many thousands of years old (baring any accidents or bad marriages) so Dragons haven't changed at all over any part of recorded history.   In fact, some of us are so old that there are still two or three us Dragons around from back before the dawn of time, who have NEVER died. Much like your Jesse Helms. Even though our population was always small, we considered ourselves to be the dominant species on Earth. Mankind's ancestors were no threat to us. We could have interfered with mankind if we had wanted; but we kept putting it off, and putting it off. Instead we grew curious about all of his evolutionary changes. We waited to see whether mankind would survive without our help. The way I see it, we're still waiting.