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.