Bear With Me - Visiting for Christmas

     Now, nearly everything was ready for Christmas. Decorations were up, cookies were baked, snow was swirling, and everything was cozy and cheery. Everyone was looking forward to Christmas Day and working on little, last minute projects. But three little characters seemed to be expecting something more. The wizard had noticed that Flicker, Aeglos, and Blueberry had spent the last few days looking up every few minutes to check the skies. Finally, he asked them what they were watching for.

     “Well, when we were on our way back from our trip, we stopped and- Hey! Look!” Aeglos pointed up at the sky. 

     There, against the clear blue-grey of a winter sky, a blue streak was bolting straight at them. It came faster and faster, then, just as it was about to hit the ground, two wings popped out and phwoosh! a small dragon was there, floating upright in the air and gently landing on the ground. He was greeted with an explosion of exclamations.

     “Titan!" Aeglos shouted. Then, looking at the wizard, "He's what we were waiting for!”

     “You made it!”

     “We were wondering when you were going to get here! How did you drop down so fast?! I can’t even do that!”

     “How do you like the snow?”

     The wizard chuckled, “Whoa, boys, slow down. I think he can only answer one question at a time.”

     Aeglos quickly remembered his manners. “Oh, sorry. Titan, this is the wizard we told you about. Mr. Wizard, this Titan. Remember how we met Flicker on our way back from Antarctica? (author’s note: http://dragonsofcwmjones.blogspot.com/2013/09/bear-with-me-adventures-of-blueberry.html) Some of the other dragons there told us about an island even further east. It’s called Komodo, and it’s full of dragons, so we thought we’d stop by and see it. We flew over it – the water around it was beautiful – and we stopped on the shore. The beach we stopped on was pink! Arianne would have loved it. We explored around and met a dragon or two, but they were kind of scary. Polite and wise, but a little scary looking. They were a totally different kind of dragon, which was interesting. They're mostly greenish, brownish grey and don’t have any wings. We didn't really fit in there, but there were lots of islands around, so we picked another one to explore. When we got to it, it was full of different dragons! It was pretty even from the sky! You see Titan here? How he’s shiny and metallic-looking? They all look like him, but all different colors, and all different sizes, of course, because every age group lives there. There were flashes of color everywhere! We were kind of shy of meeting them, but you could tell from a distance that they were friendly. You could hear them laughing and singing. Blueberry wanted to grab his guitar and join in, but I didn’t think that was such a good idea.”

     "It would have been great! They like music! I can't believe you kept hiding my guitar while we were there." protested Blueberry.

     “I had to try to hold the two of them apart while they ‘debated’ that time,” added Flicker.

     “And I heard some noise by the shore and voices I didn’t know, so I went to go look, and I found these three all tangled up and wrestling,” finished Titan. “They broke apart when they saw me, and I asked where they’d come from. I still can’t believe you guys flew that far! That was a long trip just making it here! Anyway, I invited them to come into our island and introduced them to everyone. Nearly everybody there is friendly, and it was great to get to meet other dragons from so far away, and we never see bears. These three stayed for about a month, and I showed them around, and Aeglos and Blueb learned how to swim. It's a beautiful island, but we don't get snow. They said I should come up here for Christmas, so I could see snow. So, here I am. It was a long flight up here. I'll have to tell you about it all later. I saw all kinds of interesting things along the way. And I didn’t realize how hard it can be to fly in snow!”

     “Yeah, but it’s great, isn’t it? Look what you can do with it!” exclaimed Blueberry, as he made a snowball and threw it at Aeglos, just missing as Aeglos ducked.

     “And remember how we told you about igloos?” said Aeglos. “We built one the other day. Want to see it? You can help us make it a double-decker.”

     The wizard laughed and said, “Well, I’ll leave you to catch up. Come on in when you get cold. Do you need anything to eat, Titan?”

     Titan said, “Yes, please!” so they all got some food and Christmas cookies first, then went and explored, introduced Titan to the other dragons and other animals, and spent a lot of time together over the next month, swapping stories, snowballing, igloo-building, sliding on ice, and doing all sorts of fun winter activities.

Decorations

     Decorating for Christmas was now in full swing. Most of the cookies were baked, but there were still good smells of spices, chocolate, and apple cider all through the house. Upstairs in the attic always smelled good in the winter, and no decorating was needed there. It was a big room under the roof, and all the produce from the garden was there, heaped on the floor, filling boxes, strung from the rafters... The box of Christmas decorations was up there as well. Some of the decorations were made new every year, like the wreaths and garlands, and the tree was cut from the woods, after having been carefully pruned through the year. The box was full of ornaments, ribbons, tinsel, and magical strings of little bulbs of differently colored lights – one of the wizard’s own inventions. 
 

     Some of the dragons were helping with the decorating, and a few were helping in the kitchen. Some were having a snowball fight. Sandy, Calumet, and Gil were exploring and gathering things in the woods. Forager and Linus had moved to another family’s house and were probably exploring all the new things there. Blueberry was, of course, getting in the way, or standing on the mantle with his guitar and singing slightly off-key Christmas carols. Aeglos and Flicker were outside, safely out of earshot, and they seemed to be watching for something. They were building an igloo with Neville and Tuor, and they kept looking all around at the edges of the sky.

     Back indoors, there were two new dragons who were especially enjoying helping with the decorations. Their names were Holly and Jolly, which presented Blueberry with all sorts of song options. They were quite an unusual pair of dragons, nearly twins. They had hatched on the same day, at the same time, in the same place. One hatched from a red egg, the other from a green egg. Holly was green with red spikes, wings, feet, and belly, and Jolly was bright red with green wings, spikes, belly, and feet. They had hatched in the box of decorations. Ever since, they had been joyfully running and flying all over, doing their best to be helpful. Of course, as they were so young and exuberant, they more often found themselves tangled in the lights, stuck inside a wreath, or wrapped up in a garland, which provided plenty of comic relief for the others.

Snow and Christmas Cookies

     The air was chilly, snow was falling, and Christmas was getting near. Today, the snow was falling gently in big flakes. It was a good day to be outside or inside. In fact, nearly everybody was alternating between being outside and inside, which made both of them better. You could go outside and work or play in the snow and then come in and get toasty warm again by the fire and maybe get some hot chocolate, hot cider, or cookies (or all three). The wizard was tromping around the barnyard getting chores done, Buster the dog was following along, and a few of the dragons were playing in the snow. The snowflakes were so big that they made flying a bit of a challenge for the little dragons. They dodged and wheeled and rolled through the air, trying to miss all the snowflakes. Sometimes they managed to miss all of the snowflakes on one flight. Other times, they got hit smack in the face with a big, fluffy, icy, wet cluster of flakes. And sometimes they tried a little too hard, spun out of control, and did a marvelous face-plant into the snowy ground. 
 

     Aeglos was enjoying seeing the snow again and so was Blueberry. Flicker had hardly seen any snow before. Some of the other little dragons had all hatched in the spring, summer, or fall, and they’d never seen any snow at all! They were jumping, flying, and trying to run through it, tasting it, throwing it at each other, wrestling, dodging the tiny snowballs Blueberry was throwing at everyone... Neville, Eustace, Dominic, and Lucas, some of the oldest hatchlings, were having a snowball fight in mid-air, catching the snow as it fell, forming snowballs, and pelting each other.

     Inside, a few other dragons were drying off and warming up. The whole house smelled good because cookies were baking. The wizard’s wife was a great baker, and she always made a huge selection of Christmas cookies. Many were given away, but many were kept for the family as well. Today, gingerbread cookies were being baked and decorated. Two girl dragons, Arianne and Pearl, were helping. Arianne had come back from spending the summer with the wizard’s niece, and Pearl had hatched only a few days ago. She had hatched next to the jewelry box on another snowy, icy day – one of those days when the snow sparkles as if it’s been strewn with a thousand diamonds.

     Pearl looked different from the other dragons. She was all white and covered with delicate, shimmery swirls. She was having fun decorating some of the cookies with similar swirls. It was entertaining watching the tiny dragon working on the cookies that were as big as herself.

      Another dragon was in the kitchen as well, but he hadn’t hatched yet. The egg was still pure white. It had been seen in the window box outside the kitchen window. Dragons are usually fine hatching outside on a cold day (like Aeglos), but everyone always felt better when the eggs were brought into the warmth if they were found on a winter day.

     After a couple hours of cookie making (and chasing away of Blueberry and some of the boy dragons who liked playing the game “let’s try to be a nuisance in the kitchen”), Arianne looked at the egg and squealed, “Oh, look! Look at the egg!”

     The egg was slowly changing from white to a rich brown. The white slowly receded away and the brown became darker and richer and covered the whole egg. Even more exciting, a little spot of white appeared on each pole of the egg. Little tendrils of white reappeared, grew out from the spots, and spread and curled over the egg, until it looked almost just like the cookies they’d been decorating. Then, the egg began to shake. It shook and shook and small cracks began appearing. Then a nose stuck out of a hole, then the whole egg cracked in half, and a new little dragon was on the kitchen counter. He looked like a living gingerbread cookie! Accordingly, he was promptly named “Gingerbread” and was soon filled in on where he was, who everyone was, and he was given a cookie and eventually went outside to see the snow and join in the snowball fights.

Sunshine

    The wizard’s wife was busily making Thanksgiving preparations, which included making a batch of one of her most famous recipes: candy corn. Not only was it popular amongst her family, friends, and neighbors, but the little dragons quite liked it as well. Fortunately, it was a very nice day, so most of them were off exploring or playing games outside. Blueberry, Aeglos, and Flicker, however, were determined to snitch some candy. Flicker wasn’t as bad, as he was, after all, a visitor and didn’t want to offend his hosts. Blueberry and Aeglos, on the other hand, could be little trouble makers.

    Finally, with a mixture of fun, laughter, and irritation, the wizard’s wife succeeded in shooing them out of the kitchen, though they each departed with a sugary trophy. Settling back into the candy making process, with some peace at last, she noticed some movement back over by the bowl of completed candies. Sighing and rolling her eyes, she walked over to see who had snuck back in this time.

    Moving closer, she saw that it was a new dragon. In fact, he could have been there quite a while without being noticed, he blended in with the candy so well. He had just been sniffing the candy and looked about ready to try a nibble when he realized he was being watched and looked up.

    “Well, hello there. I haven’t met you before. Where did you come from?” asked the wizard’s wife.

    Momentarily frozen, the dragon backed away from the candy and said, “Just from over there,” pointing with his nose to the grass outside the window, where some eggshells lay. “I heard some noise in here, so I came up to the window and looked in, and I could smell these,” pointing at the candy, “so I came in when the other dragons and the bear went out. Can I try one?” he asked, pointing at the candy.

    “Sure, you can have one, but only one. They’re so good we have to set limits so everyone gets one and no one gets too much of a sugar buzz. Those little rascals were just playing a game. Some of them prefer to have a challenge getting their candy, and I think they wanted to be the first to get some from this batch.”

    As the little dragon nibbled his candy, he sat up on the window sill and watched as the candy was made and learned about the valley, the other dragons, and the wizard’s home and family.

    “Now, all the dragons get a name, how would you like ‘Sunny’ as a name? You did hatch in the sun on a nice, warm day after all, and that’s a nice, sun-yellow egg you had,” asked the wizard’s wife. Sunny agreed, and that was his name from then on.

Pumpkins

       The wizard loved growing pumpkins. Every year, he would grow at least a few pumpkin plants. Sometimes they would be mostly the traditional, orange kind. Other years, he would grow dozens of pumpkins in every variety available: orange, yellow, white, red, even the Australian blue kind. He even discovered his own varieties and would grow turquoise, hot pink, purple, bright yellow, or even multicolored pumpkins. One year, when his niece was younger, he grew a magnificent gold and silver pumpkin, which he made into a carriage for her.

       This year, the crop was mostly orange with a few other colors dotted in amongst them for some extra fun. The wizard spent many hours tending the plants and teaching the dragons and local children about them. The pumpkin patch was a famous site in the autumn.

       One day, the wizard was out in the patch, occasionally being buzzed by chirping and chattering dragons, and humming contentedly. Thanksgiving was coming soon, and that was always a special holiday. He was looking forward to seeing everyone again, and his wife knew some very good pumpkin recipes.

        Around one corner of the patch, near one pumpkin that looked like it would be turning out particularly splendidly, he came across some shimmery pieces of eggshell. “That’s odd, looks like these are a couple of days old. Strange no one’s seen him or her yet.” As he stood there, thoughtfully turning a piece of eggshell over in his hand and looking about, he noticed that a pair of leaves on one of the nearby pumpkins that didn’t exactly look like leaves. Looking closer, sure enough, there was a little dragon there, blending in quite well with his chosen pumpkin. The dragon turned his head and looked back at the wizard.

        “Hi there,” said the wizard.

        “Hello,” replied the dragon. “Is this your pumpkin?”

        “Well, the whole patch of pumpkins is mine, but you can have that one if you like. Most of the land in this area is mine, and that’s my house over there. There are quite a few dragons like yourself who live there, or use it as a home base. You can come join us anytime you want. Have you met any of the other dragons yet?”

        “I met one of them, I think he said his name was Forager, but I’ve been happy here for now.”

        “Can’t say I blame you. I quite like it out here myself. You’re welcome over at the house any time you want, though. It’ll be nice and warm there if it starts getting too cold at night over the next few days.”

        “Okay, thanks.”

        They continued chatting for a little while, and the wizard taught the little dragon a bit about pumpkins and gardening. Soon, the sun started getting low, and the wizard had other things to attend to. He said goodnight to the dragon and went back toward the house.

        The dragon remained in the pumpkin patch, settling down to watch the night. He watched the sun set, and then watched as the stars came out. He watched the pumpkin leaves stirring in the night breeze and walked around the patch seeing what the pumpkins looked like in the starlight. As the night drew on, he curled up on top of another pumpkin and settled down to wait for the dawn. Suddenly, he woke with a start, thinking one of the pumpkins had lifted off the ground. Shaking his head, he saw that it was the orange sun rising again and it was starting to warm his face and tail. He stretched into the sunlight, shook himself again, and decided it was time to fly over to the house and explore something new.

 

Bear With Me: The Adventures of Blueberry and Aeglos, Part One: Homecoming

     Late one night, most of the wizard’s household was awakened by sudden cries of

    “Hey! Wait! Slow down! Brake!! No!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”
    *plop*

    “AEGLOS!”

    *chuckles* “Oh, c’mon Blueb, you know that's fun.”

    “If you warn me first!”

    “But what would be the fun in that? Besides, considering you do handstands on my back while I’m flying, you’d think you wouldn’t mind a little dive-bomb every now and then.”

    “Yeah, but it’s dark!”

    "You know dragons have excellent night vision.”
    “But teddy bears don’t!”
    “Oh, right, sorry about that.”
    “Oh, never mind, but do you really have to call me Blueb?”

    “Yes. Blueberry Ice takes entirely too long to say. My mouth just gets tired before I even get halfway through it.”

    *sigh* “Fine, where’s Flicker?”

    “Right here,” said another voice, which sounded as though it was trying not to laugh.

    “Good, so you survived the flight too, then? Can we go inside now?”

    “Sure, I wonder if they all still sleep in the same place as before.”

    A light suddenly flickered in the window of the wizard’s workshop.

    “Yup, looks like one of them just lit a candle for us. C’mon Flicker, time to meet everyone!”

    “...and time for bed,” muttered Blueberry.

    On coming inside, the three travelers were greeted with cries of:

   “Blueberry!”
   “Aeglos!”
   “Haven’t seen you in forever, how are you!”
   “Hi! I’m Lucas. We’ve heard all about you; it’s great to meet you!”
   “How was the trip?”
   “Who’s your friend?”  
    Eventually, the general hubbub subsided, after the travelers had met those who had hatched after they left and caught up a little with the ones they’d known before. Eustace was finally able to ask, “So, where exactly did you two go when you went off exploring?”
     Aeglos yawned and said, “Well, I’m tired, so we should tell you the whole story later, but the basic gist is that we flew straight down to Antarctica and-“
     Blueberry muttered, “Sure, let’s just leave out all the times we almost died...or that incident with the water buffalo, or the-“
     “Right, like I was saying, we’ll tell you all that later. Mainly, we wanted to see Antarctica, so we flew more or less straight down, all the way over Africa”
      “Remember meeting the crocodile?”
      “I still say it’s too bad he didn’t eat your guitar. Anyway, Africa was way too hot, so we tried to get over it as quickly as possible, and we did fairly well. Antarctica was awesome. We’ll really have to tell you about that one later – it really needs a long time to tell you how cool it really was, and I want to tell you guys where Hobbes came from. We met him on the way back. We decided to tour around some other parts of the world before coming back here, so we went up the coast of Africa and over to Asia. We were debating whether or not to go all the way up north through the Arctic Circle before coming home when Flicker just appeared out of nowhere.”
      “In other words, I came and sat down and watched them because I’d heard a lot of sudden noise, and I was wondering why there was a blue and white ball of fur and skin rolling around the jungle floor and shouting at itself.”
      “Okay, so the debate might’ve been more of a wrestling match...you’d think a teddy bear would be easier to beat. You want to finish the story, Flicker?”
      “Sure. When they finally noticed me, they stopped fighting and we all just sort of stared at each other. I’d never seen anything like them, especially Aeglos, and all of you guys here are different to me, too. My tribe of dragons all look more or less like me – we’re tiger dragons, mostly orange with black stripes, and we have ears. I’ve heard tiger dragons are sometimes white with black stripes, but that’s usually not good because it makes it harder for them to hide. I guess we look like this because we all hatch near tiger dens, but I never knew that until Aeglos told me about how you guys get your colors. These two really stood out in the jungle. If Aeglos had been bigger, I might have been afraid of him. But we’ll have to tell you the whole story later. Pretty soon, curiosity got the better of us, and I wound up inviting them back to stay with my family. We usually all live together in a big cave network. When Blueberry and Aeglos decided they wanted to come back here, I asked if I could come with them. I wanted to see what your land is like, and I’ve never seen so many different dragons!”
      Soon, as it was quite late at night by this point, the questions and stories were saved for the coming days and everyone got some well-needed sleep.

(Author’s note: Stay tuned for more short stories detailing The Adventures of Blueberry and Aeglos (aka Bear With Me))

Forager

                One day, the wizard and all the little dragons were out in the woods. They were helping the wizard’s family replenish their pantry with all the sorts of things that grown in the woods in spring, especially morel mushrooms. Mushrooms are much easier to find when they’re almost the same size as yourself, so the wizard and his wife always greatly appreciated it when the little dragons helped. On this occasion, the day had pretty successful so far, and the wizard was teaching the younger dragons various useful tips about finding food of all sorts in the wild. Small dragons primarily eat things like bugs and worms, but there are loads of other food sources in the woods, if you only know where to look and what to look for.

                Around midday, Sandy and Gil were nosing about around the roots of a great tree when they came across a shiny, brownish-green egg about their size. 

                “Hey, that must be another dragon egg. You haven’t seen one from the outside yet, have you?” said Sandy.

                “No, I haven’t. So that’s what they look like, huh? And they’re always the same color as the dragon?”

                “As far as I know. It seems our eggs are usually white for a long time, then they change to a color related to the things around them just a couple hours before they hatch. I have no idea how that works. You don’t remember changing colour before you hatched, do you?”

                “No, but I don’t really know how I would have noticed. I don’t really remember much from before hatching.”

                “Yeah, me either.”

                The two sat, each lost in thought, for a few moments, when both noticed that the egg had begun to shake. They moved off a bit, to give the new dragon some privacy, but came back over to investigate pretty shortly after he was out of his egg. 

                “Hi. Where am I?” He asked in reply to their greeting.

                “In the woods. We’re all out here today, hunting for food.”

                “Who’s we?”

                “Us, the wizard, and a bunch of other dragons. Just a minute. Mr. Wizard! There’s a new dragon here!”

                The wizard came over in response to the call and introduced himself and the rest of the other dragons, who had also gathered round.

                “So, that’s who we all are. You can meet my family and the other animals later, if you decide you want to live with us for a while, like these other ones have done. Any other questions you’d like answered right now?” finished the wizard.

                “Yeah, lots. I don’t even know which ones to start with.”

                “Oh, don’t worry, we’ve got lots of time for answers. Why don’t you join us with our hunting? I’ll start by teaching you about these woods, and you can ask me anything else you want.

                The little dragon went off with the wizard and the others, and they all learned a lot that day about the forest and the things in it. The new dragon found it especially fascinating. Later, he was often found in the forest, and there was never any lack of forest food in the pantry as long as he was around. Accordingly, the others called him “Forager”.