R. A. MacAvoy

“He told me he used to be ten yards long and solid black, with a head like a chrysanthemum. Not any other flower—he insisted it was a chrysanthemum. He also thought it was important I knew that he had had five toes on each foot. As a dragon, that is.”
The worry had cleared from Martha’s brow. “Oh!” she breathed. “I see. Well, Jerry, me boy. This night he told me that he was personally acquainted with Thomas Rhymer. Or at least knew his son,” truth compelled her to add.
[Jerry] Trough stared blankly. “And he doesn’t?”
“Not likely. But don’t you see where his head is at, when he says things like that?”
“No. Where?”
She gestured in the air above her head, as though calling all available Muses to her aid. “Why he’s … exercising a scholarly imagination. He’s smashing the world, to recreate it in his own pattern. That man is an artist, and conversation is his medium.
“If he appears a bit crazy it’s only because he’s too much alone,” she concluded. “I understand him. Or I think I do. I can’t explain any better than that.”