by Lance O. Redding –
Hi. My name is Loralee and I need to tell you something. Can you keep a secret? I hope so, because I don’t have any other friends and there is no one else in my family or school I can trust. But I can’t keep this inside any longer. I HAVE to tell SOMEONE or I’m going to explode! I think I might be going crazy, or something, so I need your help.
Okay, are you ready? I have a pet dragon. No, no, don’t go away. I’m being totally one hundred and twenty-three percent serious. It’s okay if you don’t believe me. At first I didn’t believe it, either. Just hear me out, though, and you’ll see what I mean.
It all started a few weeks ago when I got a surprise package for my birthday. I have never gotten a birthday present before, but that’s a whole different story. Needless to say, I was super-duper curious about what was inside, especially because I didn’t know who had sent the package. When I reached into the box to pull out the present, something poky and spiky squirmed and squiggled in my hand, and out came what looked like a lizard. It had brown, scaly skin, but the scales were big and pointy and jutted out from its body. It wasn’t pointy enough to really hurt, but it’s definitely not normal lizard skin. I know this because I have seen a lot of lizards. Since I don’t have any friends, I go to the pet store a lot. Animals don’t think I’m weird, and as far as I’m concerned, animals are a lot nicer than all those mean kids at school.
Anyway, so there I was, all alone in the house with a brown lizard thing on my table when suddenly, she spoke to me! Not with her mouth, but, you know, inside my mind. It wasn’t really words… it was more like pictures. And the first thing she told me was…
POTTY!
I guess she’d been in the box for a really long time. I took her into the back garden and let her do her business. When we came back inside we sat down and just sort of stared at each other.
That’s when the second picture came into my mind.
BUGS!
Ew, I hate bugs. But I knew my new friend was hungry, so back outside we went to hunt some bugs. Unfortunately, I had to touch a couple of grasshoppers and some slimy earthworms, but all in all it wasn’t too bad. At least I didn’t have to deal with any nasty spiders!
Once we were back in the house things started getting weird.
“Hello,” said the lizard. By this time I knew she wasn’t a normal lizard and something in my mind kept repeating the word “dragon” over and over and over and over and… well, you get the idea.
“Um, hi,” I said. “I’m Loralee. What’s your name?” I kind of felt weird talking to a lizard, but since we had only just met I didn’t know what else to say.
She sent a picture of a sword into my mind.
“Sword?” I asked, a little baffled. What a weird name for a dragon.
She shook her head. Hmmm… what else could it be?
“Dagger?” Nope, wrong again. “Blade? Spike? Metal thingy? Long poky stick thing?” I tried about twenty other names but none of them were it. She was obviously getting frustrated toward the end because she kept biting my finger – not hard, mind you, but hard enough for me to know I was wrong.
“Can I just call you sword for now?” I finally suggested. She rolled her eyes, which I think meant okay, because she didn’t bite me anymore.
Follow me, she sent.
I followed her out into the garden, grateful that Mum wasn’t home yet. She would have freaked out if she saw a lizard in the house. So there we were, in the garden for the third time in half an hour, when my little lizard dragon thing looked up at me and her black eyes sort of glossed over. She got this really far away look in her eyes.
Touch me, she sent.
Weird, I thought. What’s going on here? But I was so curious about this animal who could talk to me that I reached out and touched the tip of my finger to one of the scales on her back.
That’s when I started falling.
I hit the ground but it didn’t hurt, and at the same time a loud bang sounded in my ears. It was still ringing as I opened my eyes and looked around to see what had happened. Immediately I knew I wasn’t in my garden anymore. I didn’t know where I was, but I was fairly certain we weren’t even on Earth because I could see two suns blazing in the sky.
It looked like we were in some kind of forest. The trees were tall and dark green. Very little light made it all the way down to the forest floor because there were just so many trees. I stood up, wiped the dust off my knees, and turned in a circle. Where was I? How was I ever going to get home? Panic welled up inside me, pushing up past my beating heart, past my voice box that wanted to scream (but I was too scared to do that cause who knows what kind of beasties lived in this forest) and all the way up to my eyeballs where tears started to form.
That’s when I saw her. Sword, my dragon. This time it was easy to see she really was a dragon because she was about a million times bigger and she had beautiful swirly colors all over her body. Oh, and she had wings that sparkled in the sunlight. That was a big clue.
She saw my tears and sent, it’s okay. Don’t worry, I’m here to protect you. A sense of peace settled over me, and I realized I could understand her here – not just pictures and images in my head, but actual words!
“Hey, I can understand you here!” I said.
Yes, she sent.
“Coooool.”
Come.
She only said the one word, but along with that I saw an image of me flying on her back. Now things were getting exciting! Of course, I was a little bit nervous deep down inside but at the same time I still felt calm, like everything was going to be okay. I knew I could trust Sword.
Stop calling me Sword, she sent.
“Well, what’s your name then?” I asked.
Razor, she sent.
“Razor? A girl dragon named Razor? Weird. Can I call you Razy instead? Or maybe just Raze? Oooh, I know, how about Raz?”
She laughed as I climbed on her back. It was a clear-as-crystal, pure-as-spring-water sound and it filled me up with bubbles of laughter inside. I could feel everything my dragon felt, like we were connected at the hip, or brain, maybe. Or better yet, we were connected at the heart.
That’s when I felt the sadness. Somewhere deep down inside Raz there was a dark pool of sadness.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Come, she sent again. So I climbed up on her back and off we went.
Now, I have to tell you that flying is absolutely amazing – probably the most awesomest thing I’ve ever experienced in my whole life – but right at that moment I couldn’t pay attention to how cool it was because of two things.
First, it was super-duper cold and flying through the air only made it colder. Plus, the farther we went, the colder it got! Pretty soon we were flying over land covered in snow, heading high up into a mountain. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. I couldn’t take this much longer!
The second reason I couldn’t pay attention to flying was because the pool of sadness inside Raz grew bigger and bigger the farther we flew. Something was wrong and wherever we were going, it made her think more and more about it.
Finally we landed in a small cave in the middle of the large mountain. It was big enough for Raz to fly straight into and land. I was so frozen that Raz had to crouch down super low so I could sort of slide off, like a pile of frozen ice cream falling onto the floor. She blew fire up at the ceiling, which radiated heat through the whole cave and warmed me up in just under two minutes flat.
Then she walked toward the back of the cave and pointed at a pile of rocks.
There, she sent. My baby. Please help.
I looked closer and what I first thought was a round rock on top of all the others was actually an egg. A dragon egg!
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She’s not hatching, Raz sent. It’s too cold. The weather has changed. She needs sand, not rocks. She sent me a picture of a warm beach with the sun shining down on an egg half-buried in the sand.
“Hmmmm” I said. I was stumped. I had never even been to a beach. But then I remembered a lesson from school from two years ago. Yeah, I’m kind of a geek that way. I remember stuff. That’s one of the reason other kids don’t like me very much.
“I know of a beach we could take her,” I said. “Turtle Island Beach! I remember exactly what it looks like. Let’s go there right away!”
Razor smiled a big dragon smile, which would have been super scary if I hadn’t felt how happy she was on the inside, because on the outside all I could see were big dragon teeth that looked like they were ready to gobble me up in one big gulp!
Going to the island was a bit harder than I thought it would be, though. Raz couldn’t just transport all three of us while we stood there. I had to lift up her baby egg, and man, that thing was heavy! I’m talking, like, five bowling balls. Or maybe a hundred! I lifted the egg and she got down really low, again. It was hard work, but I finally managed to climb on top.
“Do we have to fly through all the cold air again?” I asked.
No, she sent. Just think of a picture of the island and we’ll go straight there.
I imagined the picture from the text book. The island was famous for how pristine it was. It had only been discovered a couple of years ago and was too hard for most people to get to – even with boats and airplanes. The picture in the book was so beautiful I had stared at it for a whole week in class. I had dreamed about running away and living on the island. A perfect paradise! And that meant it was the perfect place to hide a dragon egg. It had to work. Besides, it was the only beach picture I’d ever looked at, so it was the only choice we had.
“I’ve got the picture in my head,” I said. The falling sensation came again. Transporting sure is weird. I held on tight to the egg, and when the loud banging noise sounded I scrambled to my feet and looked around, worried someone else might be there. We couldn’t risk anyone else seeing us.
The beach was beautiful and warm, and most importantly, empty. Still, we took our time and found a nice hidden spot, just in case there were visitors. We went back and forth between my house and the island every day to check on the egg, and after a week I was used to the falling sensation of transporting. I also had a nice pair of earmuffs to cancel out the loud banging noise.
We would sneak away during lunch at school – nobody ever noticed I was gone – and I would eat and talk with Raz on the warm sand of Turtle Island Beach. After a month we saw the first crack in the egg. The next day there were three more. Raz, of course, stayed with the egg every day from then on and only came to get me during lunch time.
I was there when it happened – when the baby dragon finally came out of its shell. You’re probably thinking, oh, how sweet! Well, it really wasn’t cause it was all gooey and slimy and honestly, it looked really weird. But I could feel love filling Raz up to the very tippy top of her wings, and it helped me a lot. Otherwise I probably would have run away I was so grossed out.
Raz began a beautiful crooning song, and the baby dragon walked over to her. She licked the goo off, and the baby’s scales shone and glistened in the sun. Its wings were so small and weak it couldn’t open them yet, but they were the prettiest part on the baby – see-through and pearly and glossy, all at the same time, like a beautiful wet jewel shining in the sunlight.
The baby dragon looked up at me and smiled. I decided it looked much better now that all the gunk was off. I reached out and patted it on the head. It crooned along with Raz, and the three of us just sat there and enjoyed the moment. That was last night. After that, we all went home to my house so we could stay together.
Raz and her baby are wrapped up now in my underwear drawer. I figure that’s the safest place in my room. Mum never looks in there – she makes me do all my own laundry.
It’s morning now and I woke up feeling better than I’ve felt in a long time. Not only do I have two amazing new friends and lots of adventures sure to come, but I have a secret that no one else knows! Well, except for you. But you’ll keep my secret, right? After all, that’s what best friends do.
the end.
Question Time:
1. What did Loralee think she got for her birthday?
2. How did she discover that Raz was really a dragon?
3. Where did Raz take Loralee? Why?
4. How did Loralee help Raz with her baby?
