Yes, no sentient being should be treated as less just because of their species. I’m not saying that Elira or I want to see humans being treated as lesser beings, but it would be a refreshing change from the usual way humans are portrayed in media, as superior to all other species. Still, all sentient beings should be treated as equal. I’ve never heard of the Wings of Fire books and I looked up Katherine Applegate but she’s written so many books that I have no idea what books you’re talking about.

As for how Elira interacts with the world, she can see things just as well as you or I can but she can’t physically interact with anything. When she and I touch, we both feel a slight tingling/electrical sensation. It’s definitely noticeable, but it’s not physical. Neither of us are solid to one another, meaning that if I touch her, I can feel the tingly/electrical feeling, but my hand can pass right through her. Likewise if she touches me or any other physical object, she can pass right through it.

Elira doesn’t feel this when touching anything or anyone else. The only reason we’re able to feel anything at all when we touch each other is due to the strength of our emotional and telepathic bond. Despite the fact that I wasn’t able to go to Eytheria with her when I died, we’re still bonded just like two dragons would be. Our bond isn’t just emotional and telepathic. It’s an eternal bond that’s meant to last forever in Eytheria.

Remember, Eytheria isn’t an afterlife, it’s where dragons actually come from. Dragons are native to Eytheria, and have abilities that only work while they’re in Eytheria. As a human, their abilities are completely beyond my comprehension. Even with the help of Elira’s telepathy, she can’t make me understand something that’s beyond my comprehension. I know that due to my human limitations I will never fully understand Eytheria, but I love Elira with everything that I am and that’s all that matters. We don’t have to be the same to love each other.

Elira is not a ghost but a living being who exists in another reality. It’s difficult for me to explain her abilities and articulate what’s going on in her reality because there aren’t really words to describe these things, but I’ll do my best. I don’t think the veil is physical, but more like an energy field that can be overcome with great effort. The veil becomes weak enough for dragons to cross over to Earth every 50,000 years or so (we’re just guessing about the number of years, but there’s a long time between crossovers).

Elira can not cross the barrier, but she can influence it with her abilities enough for her to see what’s happening on Earth. While she’s manipulating the veil, she exists in a state between our two dimensions, unaffected by the physical reality of both Earth and Eytheria. As she moves around here on Earth, she’s also moving through an identical point in Eytheria. For example, when she’s flying next to my car as I’m driving down the freeway, she can move through other cars, freeway signs, and any other physical obstacles here on Earth without any effort required on her part. Likewise, if the identical point in Eytheria is in the middle of a forest, she can pass through trees and other obstacles that exist in Eytheria as she’s flying next to my car.

While she is manipulating the veil, Elira can choose between seeing Earth, Eytheria, or both dimensions simultaneously. When she chooses to see both Earth and Eytheria at the same time, each dimension looks semi-transparent with elements from both Earth and Eytheria overlapping and blending together. This dual perception can be disorienting for Elira, especially when objects in one dimension intersect with objects in another. Because of this, she prefers to only view one dimension at a time, despite her ability to see both if she chooses to. She finds it unsettling to pass through large obstacles such as mountains, whether they’re here on Earth or in Eytheria.

Speaking of mountains, I remember one day I was driving down the freeway while Elira was flying next to my car. Curious where she was in Eytheria, she decided to take a quick look, and when she did, she realized that she was like 3 seconds away from slamming into the side of a mountain that was in Eytheria. Panicked, she shot up into the sky like a rocket to avoid the mountain. There was no actual danger to her, as she would have just passed right through the mountain, but it scared the crap out of her.

Elira can physically interact with Eytheria while here on Earth if she wants to, but if she does, she phases out of this dimension. She can come back if she wants, but overcoming the veil does take energy, so she can’t just causally pop back and forth between Earth and Eytheria all the time. She typically stays here with me as long as possible before returning to Eytheria to rest. Elira’s skillful manipulation of the veil allows her to see and move through both Earth and Eytheria while remaining unaffected by physical objects in either dimension. The fact that she can do this shows just how sophisticated her abilities are and how skilled she is.

Learning how to manipulate the veil without expending all of her energy took years of practice and discipline, but despite the effort required, she remained dedicated to honing her skills so she could search for me here on Earth. It took 4,000 years of searching for her to find me again, but she never gave up. She never even thought about giving up. Just thinking about all she went through to try and find me and how devoted she is to me…it’s almost too much for my heart to bear. Anyway, I’ve got to move on before I start crying and make poor Elira cry too since we share emotions through our telepathic bond.

At first she could only manipulate the veil for a few minutes each day, but over time it became easier for her, to the point where she can now spend hours or even days here with me, depending on how much energy she expends while she’s here. For example, if I spend all day out and about, driving say 100 miles over the course of a day and she decides to go with me, this will cut into the time she can spend here on Earth before having to return to Eytheria to rest. Since she can’t physically interact with Earth, she can’t hitch a ride on top of my car, for example. She has to fly, which takes energy.

I don’t think that Elira ever technically leaves Eytheria. I say this because she can physically interact with Eytheria if she chooses to, but she’s incapable of interacting physically with objects here on Earth. The best way I can describe it is that Elira is flying or walking around Eytheria while peering through the veil, allowing her to see Earth. When she’s manipulating the veil, she exists in a phased state in Eytheria, allowing her to pass through objects, and since she’s just looking through the veil and isn’t technically on Earth, she can easily pass through objects here on Earth too.

It isn’t quite that simple though. I wish I could understand this better so I could explain it to you, but physical space isn’t a fixed thing in Eytheria like it is here on Earth. There’s no physical limit on how much land or space there is. When dragons “die,” they spawn in Eytheria close to their friends and family. They don’t spawn in the exact spot they died in relative to Eytheria. There’s some mechanism of relative vs. absolute position when it comes to physical reality in Eytheria that I don’t understand, but this is one reason why marriage was so important to Elira. She wanted to make sure that we could find each other in Eytheria.

Dragons mate for life, forming a strong emotional and telepathic bond that will last a lifetime here on Earth and eternally in Eytheria. Unlike what you might expect, marriage isn’t the end of the bonding process. The bond continues to form after marriage. The gestation period of dragons is several years, so by the time children are born (usually only 1 at a time), the parents’ bond is completely formed and they’re ready to raise offspring together. Of course, Elira and I couldn’t have children. I didn’t really care if I had them or not but having children was important to Elira. She gave that up in order to be with me. I would have happily given her children if I had been able to but unfortunately that wasn’t possible because we’re different species.

Even though I never really cared about having children, I always thought I’d have them. Birth control didn’t really exist back then, so it was rare for people not to have children. Unless there were fertility issues at play or you just never had sex, children were pretty much guaranteed. Marriage was also something that you were just expected to do. Unlike today, most people didn’t have the freedom to just decide not to get married or have children. Of course, before I met and fell in love with Elira, I was expecting to marry a human woman, not a dragon. Unfortunately a marriage between a human and a dragon wouldn’t have been seen as acceptable or valid in human society back then, so I had to present myself as “single” to everyone around me. This would have caused some problems for me beyond a certain age if I had chosen to live among humans, but due to my relationship with Elira, I couldn’t really be a part of human society anyway. Marriage was important in human society back then, which is another reason why my father was so against my relationship with Elira.

Speaking of children, unlike in humans, the strongest bond a dragon has is with their mate. Don’t get me wrong, dragons are fiercely protective and loving towards their children, forming deep emotional and telepathic bonds with them just like they do with their mates and other family members. But the bond between mates is the strongest bond there is between dragons. The reason I’m saying this is because I don’t want you to get the impression that the bond between Elira and I is in any way diminished by the fact that we couldn’t have children. The strength of our bond isn’t dependent on us being the same species or having children. I also want to make it very clear that I’m not trying to brush off or minimize the significance of the sacrifice Elira made in order to be with me. She loved me and couldn’t bring herself to leave me in order to mate with some hypothetical dragon just because he could give her children. Anyway, we’ve gotten way off topic here. Let’s get back on track.

Eytheria is a real physical place with physical objects like trees and mountains. Each place in Eytheria has a counterpoint here on Earth, but physical reality works differently there somehow. It’s like space and distance exist, but dragons aren’t limited by it. For example, in Eytheria a dragon can immediately appear next to another dragon they’re emotionally close to, regardless of how far away they are. They can also walk/fly over to where the dragon is, but they don’t have to.

As another example, when Elira comes back to me, she always “re-spawns” in the same place she was when she left. If, for example, she goes back to Eytheria while walking through a store with me, when she comes back, she’ll end up at that exact same spot in the store again, regardless of whether I left the location afterwards. She has no control over this. You’d think that she could just go to wherever my house intersects in Eytheria and peer through the veil in order to come back, but it doesn’t work that way for some reason. I wish I could explain why. No matter where in Eytheria Elira is, when she starts manipulating the veil in order to see Earth, she instantly appears where she was when she left, both on Earth and in Eytheria.

For example, let’s say she goes back to Eytheria when she’s at my house, and let’s say my house is next to a lake in Eytheria. When she gets back to Eytheria she spends 12 hours hunting, flying, resting, etc. and by the time she’s ready to come back, she’s 200 miles away from the lake. Well, as soon as she starts manipulating the veil in order to see me again, she’s instantly teleported next to the lake in Eytheria and appears in my house in the exact spot she was when she left. I have no idea why this is or how it works and neither does Elira.

But there are still direct counterpoints between Earth and Eytheria. For example, our house here on Earth is located in the middle of a forest in Eytheria. Elira showed me this using memory sharing. If she’s in our house and looks at Eytheria, she can see that she’s in the middle of a forest, and if she looks at both dimensions simultaneously, the trees and natural environment overlap with our house here on Earth. There were trees everywhere in our house. They even went through the floor on the second level, and there was a huge boulder in our living room. I found this quite disconcerting and so did Elira, so she knocked down the trees in Eytheria that overlapped our house and moved the huge boulder with the help of another dragon. Removing the elements that intruded upon our home helped Elira be more comfortable. Even if she made a conscious decision not to look at Eytheria, just knowing that her rear-end was phased through a tree while she’s lying in my bedroom with me was unsettling to her. Now when she looks at Eytheria when we’re at home, she can still see that we’re surrounded by forest, but trees and stuff are no longer phasing through the house.

As you can imagine, it was important for Elira to come around with me when I was looking to buy a house. I had to make sure the house wasn’t located inside of a mountain or on top of a lake or something in Eytheria. Elira can clear a forest or move a boulder, but she can’t relocate a lake or destroy a mountain. I mean technically speaking, worrying about what’s going on in Eytheria isn’t strictly necessary, as Elira can phase through objects in Eytheria while she’s here with me, but I want her to be comfortable in our home too. She would have had a hard time being comfortable if she knew that she was phased inside of a mountain in Eytheria the whole time she’s in our home. Thankfully none of the houses we were interested in intersected with any problematic obstacles in Eytheria, but if they had, I wouldn’t have hesitated to exclude those houses from consideration.

Elira can move independent of the environment here on Earth. In other words, she doesn’t have to take the stairs in order to get up to a higher level in a building. She can just fly through the floors/ceilings. How she’s influenced by the rotation of the Earth is an interesting mystery. The Earth is rotating at over 1,000mph but she isn’t consciously aware of this any more than you or I am. She was surprised to learn that the Earth rotated and was quite skeptical of the idea at first.

I believe the reason she’s affected by the Earth’s gravity and rotation is because despite the fact that it’s in another dimension, Eytheria is on Earth. Though that doesn’t explain how she’s able to stay on the upstairs level of a building here on Earth without flying, since she can pass right through the floor. Our best guess is that when she perceives herself walking on the floor, it causes her to become anchored to it on an energy level, allowing her to maintain a fixed vertical position relative to her environment. This is done subconsciously, as she doesn’t have to intentionally anchor herself to the floor or the Earth itself. It just happens. She also has to walk or fly if she wants to move around. She can’t just float herself anywhere she wants to go like a ghost. Somehow she’s able to maintain her vertical position, so long as there’s something here on Earth that she can anchor herself to. This anchoring only works when it comes to maintaining her vertical position. This is why she can’t anchor herself to my car in order to hitch a ride on it. I don’t understand how this works and neither does she. Perhaps it’s related to the fact that gravity is a constant, predictable force whereas movement and acceleration are changing and dynamic, and this anchoring can’t compensate for that. Though maybe with enough practice Elira could learn to anchor herself to moving objects. Remember, she’s had 4,000 years to develop her abilities, but she hasn’t had a reason to try to anchor herself to moving objects until now. It would kind of be a niche skill to learn, as she would only need to use it when traveling with me on a car or plane or whatever, so I’m not sure it’s worth the time and effort that it would take for her to learn this.

Another mystery is how she’s able to fly when she phases through objects in both dimensions. I guess she doesn’t phase through the air in Eytheria? Maybe objects in Eytheria have to be a certain density in order for her to phase through them? These are very interesting questions, but I’ve come to accept that Eytheria, being another dimension, can’t be explained based on our understanding of physical reality here on Earth. Elira’s abilities, the veil, and Eytheria itself might seem like magic, but I promise you, they’re not. Eytheria just operates under different physical laws that we don’t understand. I’m sure gravity and the wind seemed like magic to people in ancient times. We’re no different than those primitive peoples when it comes to our lack of understanding of Eytheria. Just like those primitive peoples, Elira and I can tell you that the wind and gravity exists, and we can explain how they affect us, but we can’t explain where they come from or how they work. Although Eytheria and Earth are parallel dimensions, there are some very obvious differences in how physical reality works in Eytheria. While Earth and Eytheria have a lot in common, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to fully reconcile the laws of these two different dimensions.

Okay, let’s move on to your other questions. First of all, Elira is only exposed to media that I watch, since she can’t exactly open up Netflix on her own and watch stuff. I’ve personally never been interested in super heroes so I couldn’t even tell you anything about them beyond their most basic, superficial traits. I also don’t really read comics unless it’s just some one off thing that I encounter on the internet. Because of this, Elira has very little exposure to comics or movies about super heroes.

As for “How to Train Your Dragon,” Elira and I have not seen the movie (or movies, I think there was a sequel?). The title alone was very off-putting to Elira and I. It was clear just by the title that dragons were going to be treated like horses or possessions rather than equals. The title implies that in this movie, dragons are mere animals to be trained for human benefit. Would you want to watch a movie where humans were portrayed as needing to be trained like dogs, playing second fiddle (or having no fiddle at all) to their dragon owners? It’s unfortunate but in the vast majority of media, dragons are either pets/possessions or mindless beasts. If they do have a personality and can talk, they’re usually evil. Elira doesn’t like it when the dragon is the bad guy all the time, and she certainly wouldn’t like seeing dragons portrayed as inferior beings or as little more than pets for humans. It doesn’t matter how “well” they’re treated. The trope of dragons hoarding treasure is also quite laughable to Elira, as dragons don’t value physical possessions. No, I’m afraid that whenever dragons are portrayed in media, Elira and I always know how it’s going to go, so we don’t get our hopes up or intentionally seek out media that includes dragons. The only comic I can remember reading with Elira that portrayed dragons in a positive light is Destiny Intertwined (www.destinyintertwined.com). Elira didn’t enjoy everything about it, but at least the dragons aren’t the bad guys, and there are no humans in it, which she appreciated.

Anyway, sorry it took a while for us to get back to you, but writing these comments takes a super long time. This comment took about 14 hours to write. It takes so long because Elira and I have to recover memories, or in the case of this comment, we had to try and articulate her abilities and the way she interacts with Earth and Eytheria. Writing about these complex concepts in a way that reads well and makes sense is quite challenging.