Lester D. Crawford
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lesterdcrawford.com
Lester D. Crawford
@lesterdcrawford.com
68 followers 92 following 230 posts
Writer of stories involving dragons, mostly, that use themes of love, loyalty, friendship, kindness, acceptance, family of origin, and family of choice.

www.LesterDCrawford.com

Related Bluesky accounts:
@thedragonuniverse.com
@dracotation.com
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lesterdcrawford.com
#WIPSnips December 16 - moist
Why is there Monsoon?
Do people feel the same about the word moisture as they do about moist? Forecast here is moisture from the sky for the foreseeable future. It makes everything moist. 😀
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The baby dragon said, "Why is there Monsoon?" "The science books I read say Monsoon is caused by an atmospheric circulation that pushes rivers of moisture into the valley and up against the mountains causing the atmosphere to drop the moisture. The circulation oscillates back and forth bringing Monsoon and then dry. Most of the time, it's dry. "What is science?" "Science is a way to understand the world using observations, conclusions, testable explanations, and testing those explanations through experiments and analysis. It's also the knowledge gained by that process." "How does the water get into the sky?" Hope described the water cycle of evaporation and condensation that caused water to fall from the sky. Baby kept asking questions as she did her best to answer them. Hope liked science and its disciplined knowledge about the world based on testable explanations. In a dark world, it was nice to know some things made sense. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 16, 2025 at 6:39 PM
lesterdcrawford.com
#WIPSnips December 15 - blanket
I did my best today.
This paragraph in no small part is based on me.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: Finished with reading, Hope checked her emergency grab-and-run carrysack and the sling she had devised to carry the dragon egg to ensure they were ready if she had to escape in the middle of the night. Then, after performing her calming exercise and singing her nightly song, she nestled against the dragon egg with her mountain fox toy in her arms, and covered herself with her favorite soft, pink blanket. As she closed her eyes, she whispered, "I did my best today. I'm safe and have a warm bed. So, now I sleep." She went to sleep in preparation for surviving another day. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 15, 2025 at 6:49 PM
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#WIPSnips December 14 - line
Geometry lessons.
All writing is an experiment.
How goes your experiment?
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: Miss Livia and Mister Finn gave Hope more lessons about geometry. She had had geometry lessons before when she studied points, lines, planes, distances, angles, curves, and surfaces. Her teachers had also gave her a compass for making circles and arcs, a protractor for measuring angles, and a straightedge ruler for drawing straight lines and to measure length. This time the lessons were about spherical geometry. The concept of n-dimensional surfaces of higher dimensional spheres fascinated Hope. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 14, 2025 at 7:30 PM
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#WIPSnips December 13 - control
Inner peace.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: Miss Nella taught Hope that inner peace makes everything possible, and to achieve inner peace she needed to be calm, quiet, and patient; free of resentful thoughts; and indifferent to things she couldn't control. Hope had embraced that philosophy, which had helped her cope with the despair she faced everyday as she struggled to survive. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 13, 2025 at 7:04 PM
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#WIPSnips December 12 - smash
Nose goes smash.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The baby dragon turned, fell over, got up, trotted toward Hope, and collided snout first with the wall. "Are you okay, Baby?" He was a resilient little fellow and unconcerned about having smashed his snout. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 12, 2025 at 5:54 PM
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#WIPSnips December 11 - full
Dragons are 12% air.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The baby dragon was still not much longer than an adult person was tall, and his body was still not proportional to his big hands, feet, and head; nonetheless, he was thicker and his hide was no longer wrinkled, as if he was now fully inflated. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 11, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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#WIPSnips December 10 - pipe
Splashing water everywhere.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: "This nozzle is where the water comes out." Hope indicated the end of a pipe a little higher than she was tall. She turned the faucet on. The baby dragon startled, his ears folding back as he pushed himself away. "It's okay, Baby. It's water. See?" She put her hand in the flowing water and splashed it. Through their connection came a feeling of excitement as the dragon came to the nozzle and stepped under the flow so the water washed over him. He said, "Squawk, squawk," opened his wings, flapped them to splash water, and repeated, "Squawk, squawk." "Oh my!" Hope flinched back from the spray and waved her hands. "Shhh. Be calm. Be quiet. Be patient. We don't want anyone to hear us." — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 10, 2025 at 6:29 PM
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#WIPSnips December 8 - fourth
Hope has journals. Writing things down comforts her.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: One journal contained an inventory of Hope's supplies and food caches, as well as a list of her assets, which were primarily gemstones, repaired items, and coin. In the second, she used what she had learned about accounting to record the transactions related to selling or trading assists, and earning or spending coin. The third contained maps she had drawn of the City-State of Tossal and the Worthless Mountains' foothills on which she marked the locations of resources, dangers, and her hidden caches. In the fourth, she documented her experiences and observations. She also used several journals as sketchbooks to draw pictures of things she saw. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 8, 2025 at 6:21 PM
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#WIPSnips December 7 - empty
How could he possible know? It's a mystery even to the author.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: Ready to enter the garden, Hope climbed the wall, hid among the decorative vines, and observed. The garden was empty except for a man sitting with his back to her. She watched him. "I know you're there, Child," said the man. He always said that. How could he possible know? Maybe every few minutes he said, "I know you're there", knowing that eventually he would be right. She stayed hidden and quiet. After a moment, he said, "You can't fool me. Come down. It's safe." Mister Emery always knowing she was there was eerie, but she trusted him to the same extent as the other nice riffraff that helped her, so she climbed down. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 7, 2025 at 7:00 PM
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#WIPSnips December 6 - hook
Holding hands by holding the tip of a dragon's tail.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The baby dragon hooked the tip of his tail over Hope's hand. It was like holding hands. She had seen people hold hands. While sitting in their garden, Miss Livia and Mister Finn often held hands. Hope couldn't remember ever holding anyone's hand. It felt nice. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 6, 2025 at 5:38 PM
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#WIPSnips December 5 - screen
Finding semi-precious gemstones.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The next day was a gemstone day. Hope and Baby traveled over the ridge and went north to the gemstone cave. Baby had only experienced the cave through their connection. Being there in person excited him. He pranced around the entrance eager to go inside. "Be careful in there. I've been systematically screening the gravel and sediment to find gemstones. Don't mess it up." Baby stooped as low as he could, and careful to not mess up the piles of gravel and sediment, followed Hope into the cave. Their connection filled with curiosity and excitement. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 5, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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#WIPSnips December 4 - city
Books banners ban books.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: The City Lords had banned books along with banning education, so having a book was dangerous, but Hope was careful to keep the books hidden because the risk of having and reading a book was worth the reward of acquiring knowledge and experiences. Besides, how much more trouble would she be in for having a book considering the trouble she would be in for being an orphan child, and a girl. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 4, 2025 at 5:47 PM
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#WIPSnips December 2 - percent
Being good at math is a dragon trait.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: After learning the ten numeral symbols, including practice writing them, and the concept of the ones column, the tens column, the hundreds column, and so forth, Baby could count. He had mastered numbers and counting easily. Next, Hope taught him the symbols used in mathematical operations and they did simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems. Baby quickly mastered those, which meant they could move on to number lines and fractions and decimals and percentages and negative numbers. Baby was having fun doing math. It was obviously another dragon trait. Hope already had plans for teaching him measurement and algebra and geometry and trigonometry and even statistics and probability. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 2, 2025 at 6:52 PM
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#WIPSnips December 1 - belong
Sentimental yearning.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: The room felt ... safe. It felt like the right place to be, the place where she belonged. A sentimental yearning for her former hiding place and the time she spent there swelled up inside her. Yet, this was not a now place; it was a then place. She missed this lair, but she knew the cave lair was better. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
December 1, 2025 at 6:32 PM
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#WIPSnips November 30 - number
Math was fun.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Hope returned the history book and complained it was incomplete. Mister Finn told her there would be more history lessons later. Then, Miss Livia began a math lesson about algebra. Hope liked math and its principles of good reasoning and the truths of number theory. In a world of calamity, math represented order and stability. Math had meaning whereas the world did not. And, math was fun. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 30, 2025 at 7:17 PM
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#WIPSnips November 28 - zigzag
Playing tag with a baby dragon.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: "I can catch you." Hope charged the baby dragon. "You can't catch me." Baby dashed away in a zigzag, occasionally pausing to let her come close, and then dodging while making his goik, goik laugh. Hope, laughing with him, was unable to keep up. Then he stopped, swung around, and said, "I can catch you." She had no doubt he could. She stopped laughing and ran. Behind her she heard the squelching and splattering of his hands and feet on the rain-soaked grass coming closer as he galloped on all fours. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 28, 2025 at 6:48 PM
lesterdcrawford.com
Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for:

Family
Friends
Followers
And, many other things, including Hope and the baby dragon she calls Baby, the main characters in my current writing project.

#AmWriting #Dragons #Fantasy
Standing on a night-time medieval street, a girl dressed in dark gray pants, shirt, boots, gloves, and broad-brimmed hat is standing with a young dragon only half her height, wings spread, tail and neck bent around the girl, as he looks up at her with a dragon smile and the girl smiles at him. The dragon has red, green, and blue highlights on his head and torso. The end of his tail is red. The trailing edges of his primary and tail wings are blue.
November 27, 2025 at 8:07 PM
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#WIPSnips November 22 - crystal
Dragon senses are useful.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: Hope retrieved the geodes from her carrysack. "Mister Tymon asked me to look for rocks like these." She handed Baby the geodes. "Do you think you can help me find some?" He shifted his body back and forth as he used his dragon senses to analyze the rocks. Then, he said, "They have holes in the middle." Hope jumped into her connection to his metal map to see what he sensed, but to her, the patterns of the geodes looked like every other rock. She handed him another one. "This one has been cut in half. They're hollow." "I like the colors, and the shiny crystals in the middle. I will search for them." — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 22, 2025 at 6:10 PM
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#WIPSnips November 21 - direction
How a dragon shows affection.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The baby dragon woke. Hope said, "Did you have a nice nap?" "Squawk." He tumbled off the sleeping pallet and staggered in her direction. Eventually, after veering left and right a few times, he reached her and rubbed his head on her almost knocking her over. "Oh my!" — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 21, 2025 at 6:22 PM
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#WIPSnips November 20 - special
The inverse square law. One of my favorites.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: Eager to learn things only special people learn, Hope opened Esoteric Physics, read the table of contents, and then leafed through the pages. The book was full of illustrations and diagrams that excited the baby dragon. She stopped on an illustration of lines spreading apart from a point, first passing through the corners of a square, then the corners of a square that consisted of four squares the size of the first, and then the corners of another square made of nine of the small squares. "This explains why our connection gets weaker when we're far apart, and why your dragon senses get weaker for things farther away. It's a geometric dilution of point-source radiation into three-dimensional space." She read further, sighed, and said, "It still doesn't explain what our connection or your dragon senses are." — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 20, 2025 at 5:33 PM
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#WIPSnips November 19 - third
The baby dragon saw something move.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: The baby dragon lurched around swiveling his head to look at everything, although there wasn't much to look at — the lair was empty, except for the sleeping pallet. He stopped and spun around, swinging his head left and right. A sense of having lost something filled their connection. He resumed lurching, but again stopped and spun round. This time Hope knew something moving had attracted his attention and he was trying to see it, but each time, it was was gone. After the third time, she understood. He kept getting a glimpse of his tail, but when he spun around to look, it was gone. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 19, 2025 at 6:31 PM
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#WIPSnips November 17 - spend
The most delightful place in the world.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: At the top of the wall, Hope paused to admire her teachers' garden. The gardens of the neighboring shanties did not compare. Multiple varieties of fruit-bearing trees, vines, and shrubs, and plots of vegetables, filled the garden. Clusters of colorful flowers occupied any extra space. Sometimes when she arrived, they weren't there. On those days, she would spend time enjoying the garden. It was the most beautiful, most peaceful, most delightful place in the world. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 17, 2025 at 6:25 PM
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#WIPSnips November 16 - run
Danger, run or hide.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: Hope's parents disappeared when she was very young. They had taught her that if they said danger she was to reply run or hide and then do what they said. One day, they said danger. To her run or hide they responded hide, which she was good at doing -- no one found her. She hadn't understood what was happening nor did she remember much about the event. When she came out from her hiding place, she was alone and never saw her parents again. Her only link to them was the stuffed toy she had with her when she hid. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 16, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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#WIPSnips November 15 - progress
Monsoon is coming, you better be prepared.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky
Text that says: Monsoon was coming. Hope paused to admire the artistic flair of the writhing and spiraling grey clouds displacing the orange-haze overhead. She should draw that someday, maybe with a panicking person, their hands on their face, screaming. This monsoon was on time, if you considered the average arrival day to be on time. This will be Baby's and her first monsoon in the cave lair. The experience will be a change and maybe a challenge, but she had a plan. The typical everyone running around in a panic preparing for monsoon slowed her progress as she maneuvered through the chaos to get out of the city. In the farm fields, workers scurried between the sluice gates setting them to handle the monsoon runoff. When she came to the forest, she saw something new: the animals were also doing everyone run around in a panic making their own preparations for monsoon. The indigenous animals being attuned to monsoon cycles had never occurred to her. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 15, 2025 at 6:45 PM
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#WIPSnips November 13 - build
The baby dragon wants to play in the monsoon, but Hope is hesitant.
#AmWriting #AmWritingFantasy #AmWritingScifi #WriteSky #Dragons
Text that says: Baby began entertaining himself by chasing his tail. Round and round he went more enthusiastic with each spin. He caught it, bit it, squealed, ran to Hope, and tried to climb into her lap. "Aw, did Baby bite his tail?" She got as much of the him into her lap as she could, which was mostly his head, as he wrapped the rest of him around her, which showed how long his neck and tail had grown -- they now touched. "Let me check your tail. See, it's okay. Next time you catch your tail, don't bite it." Ears drooping, he whimpered, and said, "Don't bite tail." Hope gave the baby dragon a loving hug. She had spent so much of her existence merely surviving, she hadn't actually lived. Now, she knew what living meant, what life meant. It was more than simply existing, simply surviving. For the first time, she felt she was alive. When Baby went to his corner and began building an elaborated structure using all his toys at once, Hope began the task of convincing herself to do what she needed to do. Sometimes, things she didn't want to do were things she had to do. Baby needed to experience monsoon. He craved experiencing monsoon. That experience wasn't about existing or surviving. It was about living life. He'd been patient. It was time. — The Dragon Universe Hope (working title, work-in-progress)
November 13, 2025 at 6:35 PM