In the Forest

One sunny morning, by the creek in the forest, nestled amongst the roots of a shady oak tree, there was a small egg. It had turned a deep green, matching the moss it was snuggled into. The surface of it was shiny, reflecting some of the dappled light filtering through the leaves. Then, it began to move. It started rocking, then a small hole was poked through the top from the inside. A small claw came through, scratching and poking at the hole, then a paw. Another hole was made, and another paw came out, and both paws continued scratching and pushing and breaking off chunks of eggshell until there was a large hole in the topside of the egg. After more scratching, pushing, and thrashing around, the egg broke in half, revealing a crumpled, slightly slimy, dark green little animal.

The little dragon stretched, stood up, shook itself, and looked around. It spread out its wings for the first time, shook them, and turned its head to look at itself. He was still a bit slimy from the inside of the egg, so he tried rubbing some more of it off on the moss, but the moss just stuck to him. Looking around, he saw the creek and, intrigued, walked down to it. He put his nose in to sniff it and sneezed. He stuck a paw in, and saw that it came out cleaner. Getting an idea, he stepped into the clear water and stood on the sandy, pebbly bottom scooping water up with his wings and throwing it over himself until he was nice and clean.

Leaving the water, he climbed back up onto the bank beneath the tree, looked up at the tree, and decided to test out his wings. He spread them, flapped, flew, tumbled through the air, caught himself, flew up, fell down, and finally made it up to perch on a low branch, where he had to sit and pant and shake himself again. He flew from branch to branch, getting less clumsy each time, until he made it to the top of the tree.

The tree he was in was one of the taller trees in the forest, and he could see a little bit of the lie of the land around him. Up behind him, the hills sloped up to distant mountains. Below, the creek ran sparkling in and out of the shade of the trees on its banks. On the other side of the creek, beyond many more trees, there was a curl of smoke rising. Curious as he was about everything, the dragon decided to explore the smoke first. He took off, flew higher, and looked around from this new height. He could see now that the woods sloped down to a meadow valley, and there were many more colors there. As he flew closer, he could see a bright flower garden that surrounded a snug wooded cabin. The smoke was rising from the chimney.

Gliding down, the little dragon cautiously approached one of the buildings and landed on the roof. And then...the author thought for three days and couldn’t decide what should come next.

“WHAT?! You’re not ending it there!?” Squawked the little dragon on my keyboard, nose pressed to the screen. “You haven’t even told them my name yet!”

“Um, no, it’s not ending, but...you have any ideas? And you’re getting my screen dirty.”

“I don’t know. NEVILLE! Come here, look at this, she’s not finishing my story!”

A small black dragon flies over, lands on my desk, reads my screen, and looks up at me, shocked and slightly concerned.

“Really? Are you feeling okay? You’re really ending it like this?”

“Well, no, or maybe. You guys have any ideas? I really don’t know what to write next. What do you want to do?”

“I want to get off the roof at least. And isn’t the wizard supposed to show up and meet me sometime? And I thought I was going to get to set something on fire.”

Sitting on the roof, the little dragon heard the sound of a door closing, then the sound of whistling, then saw the top of a straw hat. Under the hat was a middle-aged man with a bushy beard and cheery, crinkled eyes, wearing overalls and brown work boots. He walked off toward the vegetable garden. Curious, the little dragon flew after him, keeping his distance. He landed behind a large . . . “pumpkin bush.” “Pumpkins don’t grow on bushes.” “Pumpkin plant?” “You’re looking for a pumpkin vine. I guess one would be big enough to hide you... You can hide behind some leaves.” pumpkin leaf. Peering around his leaf, he watched as the wizard examined, pruned, and checked over the various vegetables. Then the wizard looked up and said, “I wonder where they are...they said they’d help out today.” He lifted his head and gave a clear whistle. Soon, there was a small commotion in the distance, growing louder as a few little spots appeared in the sky not far away. Quickly approaching, the spots showed themselves to be more little dragons, all bouncing off each other and squabbling and trying to get there first.

“Ah, there you are. You remember you said you’d help me with the weeding today?”

“Yes!” “No, you forgot, I remembered!” “We got distracted!” “We were about to come!” Chorused all their little voices.

The wizard chuckled. “Well, now you’re here, you know what to do.”

The little dragons all nodded and set about hunting down all the weeds in the garden and carefully setting them on fire. The wizard supervised to make sure nothing got out of hand. “When do I get to set something on fire?” “Be patient...”

Still behind his pumpkin leaf, the new little dragon watched. “Wow,” he thought, “I wonder if I can do that...now, how...?” Looking around, he spied a plant that looked similar to what the others were burning, turned to face it, and tried to figure out how to breathe fire. The first attempt didn’t go so well, and he wound up coughing with his nose in the soil. Picking his head up, he faced the plant again, opened his mouth to try, aaaaannnnd...sneezed. He sneezed so hard he shot backwards into the vine, but he also shot a good amount of fire out! Unfortunately, he set a small pile of dead leaves on fire, which caused a mini blaze.

“Whoa!” the wizard exclaimed, running over to put it out. The little dragon tried to hide behind his leaf again, but wasn’t quick enough.

“Well, look at that. Hi there!” the wizard greeted the newcomer.

“Mm, hi,” the new dragon squeaked.

All the other dragons had now crowded around, excited to see what was happening.

“Where did you come from?” the wizard asked.

“Over there, in the trees. There was water, then I flew up into the trees and came here.”

“Oh, you’ve just hatched then?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, welcome to the valley of Cwm Jones! I’m the wizard around here, and I usually help you little guys out and look after you a little bit. You’re welcome to join the household here for as long as you want, if you want!”

Pleased at being welcomed so warmly and expecting that things would be fun in this group, the little dragon thought he would stay. He spent the rest of the afternoon with the other dragons, working on weeding the vegetable and flower gardens and having lots of fun doing it. It wasn’t long before he fit in with the rest. It also wasn’t long before he acquired a name. As he had come from the forest, still loved the forest, and blended in very well in the forest, he came to be called . . . Gump. "Just kidding, Forrest."