Dragons!

My entry for the Reinvent the Dragon Contest.
By Hazel Furness.



That irritating thing was buzzing round my ear again. I swatted at it madly with my sandwich and a piece of crust flew off, closely followed by my intended target. I crouched down to observe what had been pestering me all morning, then sat down suddenly in shock.

A dragon! Surely not! This wasn’t what they were meant to look like! Dragons were supposed to be big scary monsters that breathed fire and stomped on houses. Apparently not. Standing protectively over my crust was a tiny creature, about the size of a mouse, but most definitely a dragon. It had a delicate lizard head on a long neck, four slender legs, a tail and, most importantly, wings. Beautiful furled wings that looked like rainbow plastic, all folded and shimmery. It was a wonderful grass green colour and had an irridescent, bug-like sheen to its scales. Its tail curled over its body like a scorpion and ended in a little barb. I made sure not to move, thinking perhaps it was poisonous.

The little dragon looked at me for a minute, then it unfurled its wings and flapped them, just once. It rose gracefully into the air then flew straight at my face, causing me to scoot backwards rapidly. It circled my head a few times before landing softly back on the pavement, wings open like a butterfly, regarding me carefully.

The dragon appeared to lose interest in me, my statue-like figure obviously posing no threat, and sniffed at the ground like a dog. It relocated my crust, munched it, then regarded the source – my sandwich. I placed it slowly on the pavement in front of the tiny-but-meanacing dragon. The pretty head raised up, small mouth opened, and out came a series of squeaks, very high pitched, some almost too high for me to hear. After a few seconds I heard a familiar buzzing sound that got louder and louder. As I listened and watched, the buzzing sound reached me, along with a swarm of other dragons. They squeaked as they circled, and my little dragon squeaked in response. The flying dragons formed a long line, then one by one alighted on the pavement and moved in for the kill on my sandwich.

It turned out that green wasn’t a common colour for dragons. The majority were shades of brown and grey, some slightly blue, others slightly yellow. All had perfect shimmery wings that fluttered like a butterfly’s, then folded up neatly next to the body as they landed. My sandwich disappeared surprisingly fast, eaten with little snapping bites. Once it had gone and all the crumbs were nibbled up, the collection of dragons milled around for a bit, preening their wings and interacting with each other like a miniature herd of horses.

I located the little green dragon and watched as it unfurled it’s wings and then flapped a few times, lifting it way above the others, reaching almost my head height. From there it called down, squeaking like it had before. The rest of the group snapped to attention, alighted and hovered around the first. The buzzing was intense, then faded as the dragons swarmed away after their green leader.

Dragons!