Fire of the dragon

 This must have felt like heaven promised to Adam and Eve. As humans crossed the equator once again and entered the Australian mainland, they found a strange world. A snapshot of a world long vanished in the rest of the world, a place ruled by marsupials. The seas and rivers were filled with fish and land was aplenty with birds and animals. There were few threats, no large felines, no wolves, what a world!

But the serpent did inhabit heaven. In the grasslands lived a giant dragon. As they moved deeper into the continent, they came across this terror.

The casualties were relatively few, but the psychological toll was humongous. An animal that the bravest warriors couldn't fight, whose poison the wisest couldn't counter. However it could be countered by... fire! 

Large fires were organised on a regular basis. The charred remains of the dragon were proof that it was working. Larger areas were being rid of the monster. To make sure that the dragons never returned fires were set on the grasslands season after season, year after year.

The dragons were gone, but maybe it cursed the land and its people. The grasslands turned to desert. 

The time was 50000 BC. The place: central australian plains. A lesson was learnt at a big cost. Humans learnt to balance their fears with reason and co-exist with their fellow creatures. For roughly 50 millenia that is, till others of their kind arrived, who had yet to learn these lessons.

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