Well, actually I am only a part-time dragon now. The rest of the time, I am a mineralogist - that's the name they give to someone who studies minerals. I started collecting minerals not long after I hatched out of my egg; like most young dragons, I just couldn't resist the sparkly ones. I wasn't too bothered what they were; I just thought they looked beautiful. For years, I hoarded them up in my cave and enjoyed stopping anyone else from seeing them
After a while, I started wanting to find out a bit more about them. In my spare time, between fighting with knights in shining armour who falsely accused me of eating young ladies (totally ridiculous, because I am a vegetarian anyway), I started sorting out the shiny minerals ones from the dull ones, the metallic from the glassy, the pink from the green. Then I started to wonder what they were called, what they were made of, and why they were different from each other. That was only the beginning......
I had to study and read lots of books of course but , once I found out how to identify different minerals, I discovered that they had a lot to offer. Some minerals, like gold and diamonds, are very valuable; others, like the ore minerals for copper, tin and zinc, or deposits of salt, are the raw materials which whole industries depend upon. Minerals, in some form, are all around us; they make up rocks and soil, and they can tell us a lot about how those rocks and soils were formed.
So, now, instead of frightening people away, I ask them to come into my cave to look around, and to find out all they can about minerals.
