Woes of a Hydra

         You are sick of it; sick of all the jokes about your seven heads sneezing at once or if one head catches a cold do all of them? You are sick of having it flung into your faces that you are not one of the ‘mighty reptiles’ simply because you are not a dragon and cannot possibly do what a dragon can. So you decide to shut them up. What is it that separates a dragon from the rest of the world? What is it that only they can do? Sleep on a horde of treasure. If you want to be a dragon, all you have to do is sleep on a mound of gold, silver and jewels. That’s a sign of a real reptile, your scaly, snot horned cousins declare.
         Fine, you say. You will get a treasure pile to sleep on. You’ll show them. But here’s a problem. Gold is not comfortable to sleep on. You are not covered with the same hard scales as your greedy relatives. You can’t imagine spending the night on a pile of pointy jewels or scratchy gold nuggets. And you can see yourself flying, despite your lack of wings, if you tried pearls. Coins are like sleeping on pebbles; you’ve tried that before and you’re not doing it again. It took you a long time to get the kinks out of all seven necks.
         So where does this put you? It calls for some creative treasure hunting. You begin sending out inquiries to see if anyone needs a guard for their treasure. You have a pretty decent resume You’re in luck. Something comes up pretty quick through the Naga channels. Someone needs a monster to guard fleece: gold fleece. Some unlucky idiot managed to shave the golden ram before he became mulch for its field. Fleece! That’s soft. Gold! That’s treasure. You can’t imagine finding anything more perfect. And it gets better. Your first night sleeping on it: Wow! No more cricks in your necks, no more allergies in the morning. It’s as soft as the finest moss in the woods. Life is good. And the best part is: for the price of a goodnight sleep it will shut all those snouts.
         Then you realize there’s catch. You’re not the only one the Naga have talked to. All of sudden heroes are crawling out like termites, a batch of Jasons. (They weren’t even Georges!) And to make things worse, you find out there’s a catch to the whole horde thing. You have to sleep on it for at least ten years before it’s your horde.
         So now you’re stuck with this mess. If you stay, you have to deal with dork after dork who thinks he is the chosen one. To complicate things even more, human meat really bothers your digestive system. But if you leave now, your relatives will never let you forget it. Ever. And that’s even worse than indigestion. Well, at least you’ll be well rested for the next ten years.