Oceana

The wizard of Cwm Jones was not the only wizard who helped raise and care for baby dragons. There was another not too far away. He lived in a tower on the coast of the sea. There was no village nearby. It was just the wizard, the dragons, and the wild and lonely cry of the gulls and crashing of the surf.

Not all the dragons who lived on this rocky, wild coast were babies, either. Some had been there longer than the current wizard had been. Dragons live a tremendously long time, and they grow very slowly. Some of these adult dragons were only the size of cats. Others were the size of a cart horse. And one or two were the size of...dragons. These were enormous, old, and very wise. They lived farther away, some of them on islands, but they often came back to the coast for a visit.

Because of this variety, the young dragons at this coast were a bit different from the dragons of Cwm Jones. The dragons of the valley were well educated by the wizard and learned much about the earth and its plants and small woods and streams. And they benefited from knowing several humans and other animals. The dragons of the coast were sometimes a bit more somber and had more of the wildness of wind and wave in them. And they had the benefit of learning years of wisdom from the other dragons and the human wizard.

The two wizards visited one another fairly regularly, and the wizard of the valley had just made his way up the coast for the first time in a little over a year. The two wizards were standing together, looking out one of the tower windows at the surf crashing on the beach. Soon, the valley wizard noticed that there was a little dragon flitting around by the surf. She was hard to see because of her grey and blue coloring, but there were occasional flashes of a jewel-bright blue-green as she tossed and twisted, riding the wind, splashing down in and out of the wave crests.

“Who’s that down there?” he asked. “I don’t think I’ve met that one before.”

“Ah, that’s little Oceana. She’s hatched since last time you were here. She had a beautiful egg, it was a shimmery greeny-blue with just a little gold – you know how they can be. Hatched near some of those colorful rocks down there, where the tidal pools are. She loves being out in the surf.”

As they watched the little dragon playing in the waves and wind, another dragon landed on the beach. This one was about the size of a sheepdog and a green-grey streaked color.

“Say, is that Charlie? I haven’t seen him in a few years.”

“Oh yeah, that’s him. He’s generally around here somewhere, but he likes being up on the cliffs and in the moors behind. Still knows an awful lot about the beach, though, you probably remember. He’s been teaching Oceana and some of the other little dragons about the tidal pools. We have a pretty unique array of things that live in the pools here.”

“Think we could go down and join them?”

“Sure, don’t see why not.”

And so the two wizards went down and joined the two dragons and spent the afternoon discussing all of the amazing features of that special stretch of beach.

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."

Bonsai

Spring sometimes comes early to Cwm Jones, and it did this year. Everybody has been enjoying the warmer weather, sunshine, fresh spring air, and all the new green.

The wizard was in the forest one day, looking for some herbs and examining some saplings for his Bonsai collection, when he noticed some eggshell pieces. They were a shiny, light green color and obviously from a dragon egg. But there was no dragon. “Well now, I wonder where he is...” the wizard said to himself, while scanning the forest for any clues. “Looks like he hatched a couple of days ago, hope the little feller’s alright.” There were very few clues anywhere as to where the little dragon may have gone, and the wizard, finishing up gathering his wood sorrel, went back to the house to enlist some help in the dragon search.

On coming back out of the pantry, he was met by Eustace and Neville, who were busy chasing each other around the house. In fact, he didn’t exactly meet them; they more collided with him. After laughing at the two dragons, he asked if they’d like to help him look for a new dragon.

The three of them went back to the woods where the wizard had found the eggshell, and the two dragons picked up the scent of the new dragon. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to follow the scent of a dragon, as they typically get around by flying. But new dragons have to take frequent rests, so they were able to track him from patch to patch, or tree branch to tree branch. Finally, they arrived in a small clearing with a few young saplings in it. And there, hiding in the leaves of one of the young trees, there was a small dragon. Not wanting to alarm him, the wizard stopped and held still while the other dragons flew forward to introduce themselves. Once the new dragon was assured that they were friendly, he came out and began talking to them, and the wizard came up and joined in the conversation. He had hatched a couple days ago and had begun flying around and exploring the forest. He’d stopped when he reached this clearing because of all the small trees, which he liked because they were more his size than the rest of the trees in the forest. On asking the wizard about them, he found out that, naturally, only very young trees were this size, but that it was possible to grow miniature trees if you applied the right art to them. The young dragon was fascinated by this and spent the next several years learning the art of miniature tree growing, so that he eventually took on the same name as the art form: Bonsai.

of the Breaking of Peace and of its Restoration

It has been some time since we last heard a tale from our friends in the valley of Cwm Jones. I assure you that they are all well, though most of the baby dragons we knew last time have now grown up and moved to new homes. However, some of our old friends are still around, and the wizard and his family are all still there and well, though a little older, more worn, and wiser.

We have not heard from them in some time because things have been a little rough in the valley lately. Things were so unsafe that the wizard warned the dragons against laying any new eggs in the valley, as he could not guarantee the safety of any eggs or hatchlings. You may wonder why the fully grown dragons could not themselves come in force and set things to rights when there were evil people causing such trouble, but there are times when such force is not wise and may only cause more harm. The wizard would only call on the power of the dragons in a case of full war.

The circumstances of this time were thus: a group of ruffians decided to set up camp near to our wizard’s neighborhood, and they caused much trouble in the forest and in the town. It began simply with noisy revelry in the ruffians’ camp shortly after they arrived. And this was not revelry of the joyous kind, where there is laughter and merriment and drink is responsible and adds to the joy. This was the sort where there is roughness and coarse laughter and drink turns seething anger into violence. After being sternly reprimanded for such behavior, for it was enough to disturb all those in the countryside nearby and even in the village, the ruffians still did not amend their ways. They merely shouted the louder and threatened all those who objected to their behavior.

Seeing that things were tense, and not knowing whether real harm would be done, the wizard watched the newcomers closely and used some simple spells to protect others from them. But that was not enough, and one night a barn was broken into and three horses stolen. The thieves could not be found, and even the horses could not be tracked, though the best of the dogs and dragons followed the trail as far as they could.

The wizard then took steps to protect all the inhabitants of the valley, and even did his best to remove the ruffians. However, even a wizard has his limits, and he may sometimes exercise restraint in the hope that people may be changed for the better and no longer need such strict governance. This made for a tense summer, but nothing of too terrible a nature occurred, other than many good things being destroyed, for these people seemed to delight in the breaking of things and in creating piles of rubbish. But then, one of the inhabitants of the forest was killed. It was one of the rabbits (there are talking rabbits in the vale of Cwm Jones), and that was a sorrowful day indeed. The perpetrator was caught, and he was soundly punished and banished, the valley was sealed from him by magic, and a spell was placed on him to prevent him from ever injuring any creature again. But even this did not fix things. One night not long after, the wizard’s barn was set on fire. Fortunately, if something has to be set on fire it is best if it belongs to a wizard, for he can put it out before too much damage is done. It was also fortunate that it was done on a fine, warm night when all of the animals had decided to stay out for the night. Be that as it may, it was not a pleasant event in any way, and it was clear that things had gone too far.

All of the ruffians were brought before the village council, of which the wizard was the head. Those with many severe charges against them were banished, those who had committed minor offences were given the option of leaving or else remaining and working to repair things in the community, and those who had not been charged with anything were given leave to remain, but were told they would still be watched. After this, most of the ruffians left together and moved on, but some were glad of the second chance and stayed and became part of the neighborhood and peace was restored.

After this period of unrest and trial, the wizard and his wife were tired and sorrowful that evil should exist, but they had been through trying times before, and they were glad that peace could be again, though it may be a watchful peace at times. Shortly afterwards, the wizard sent word to the dragon community that the valley was again a safe place for eggs to be laid and hatchlings to be raised. Soon, there should be many baby dragons flying about the valley and its woods and meadows again.

Frost

Christmas had come, and the new year had begun. Depending on where you live, January can be a wonderful month of the year. It can have blue skies and sparkly white snow and be absolutely beautiful. The air can have just the right amount of crisp coldness, and there can be lots of snow to play in. Sometimes, the temperatures can be warmer and the snow packy enough for snowballs, snowmen, and igloos. Other times, the snow can be fine powder, or there can be sparkly icicles everywhere. 

Everyone liked this time of year, but Aeglos possibly liked this weather the most. After all, he was an ice dragon, and he had hatched around this time of year last year. And now, there was another winter dragon in the mix. A sparkly, frosty blue egg had been found on a clear, crisp day with lightly swirling snow, and it had hatched into a beautiful pale blue and white dragon. This dragon was one of the more unusually colored ones. He wasn’t just solid colors, but had gorgeous, shiny snowflake patterns on his skin and wings. This made him very well camouflaged for this time of year, and he and Aeglos and Blueberry often ambushed the others with surprise snowball attacks. In all, winter was a very fun time of year at the wizard's home, if sometimes a little dangerous, as you never knew when a small dragon might appear out of the snow with an arsenal of snowballs.

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))