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.