By 5th and 4th Grade Students at Regnart Elementary
November 2014
The dragon guarded her cave. Skylar, the soldier, watched. She had seen the dragon before, but she did not know her name! Skylar had seen the winged hippo fly into the cave with his extraordinarily large diamond. She assumed the dragon saw him too and was now guarding the hippo and his diamond because dragons loved large diamonds.
The dragon was at least ten times bigger than Skylar, and she was a dark, midnight blue. She had a spiked ball tail and dangerously luscious lips. She had straight orange hair that was as long as a school bus, and orange eyelashes that were so long they ended a few feet away from Skylar. She had tiny golden wings.
The dragon looked fuzzy to the touch. The spikes on her tail were long and pointy, and Skylar imagined that they might even be poisonous.
The dragon smelled like a waterfall. It was a beautiful scent, but it brought back terrible memories. When Skylar was a child, she and her brother were ice skating on a lake, and the ice cracked and her brother fell in. He survived for a few days but the hypothermia got him, and he died. That was the day she decided to become a soldier so she could save people’s lives.
The dragon farted every minute. The odor was disgusting. However, it brought back good memories. Skylar had many funny memories from her childhood that had to do with farts. Her father was a big farter.
From within the cave came the constant loud noise of a snort. The dragon flinched every time the winged hippo snorted.
Also, there was a slurping sound coming from within the cave. And Skylar smelled cheese. Aha, she thought. The hippo must be eating that cheese ice cream that he loved so much. Skylar was more of a chocolate lover than a cheese lover when it came to ice cream. She thought it would taste too salty for her. She liked her ice cream sweet.
Skylar was desperate to steal the diamond that the hippo and now the dragon guarded. She needed that diamond. By selling it she could raise the funds necessary to purchase equipment that would allow her to save lives.
Skylar crept furtively to the dragon’s eyelashes. She eased onto one and crawled along it until she reached the dragon’s head. She was so silent and careful that the dragon didn’t notice a thing. She continued down the dragon’s back and onto her tail.
The dragon swung her tail back and forth, making it very difficult for Skylar to keep her balance. She wobbled one way and then the other and finally managed to work her way to the tip and jump quietly to the ground. She was now between the dragon and the cave’s entrance.
Suddenly, Skylar had the sensation of being watched. She looked over her shoulder. The dragon was staring at her, her lashes nearly touching her.
Skylar dived for the cave. It wasn’t as dark as she might have expected. The diamond was so huge it was refracting light throughout the cave. The first thing she saw besides the diamond, was the winged hippo who was now asleep.
Skylar ran further into the cave because she knew the dragon was close behind. The dragon popped her head into the cavernous space, but she couldn’t fit her whole body inside.
When she saw Skylar and then the hippo, the dragon looked disgusted. Why was that? Was she disgusted with Skylar? Disgusted with the Hippo?
The dragon roared and tried to flame Skylar. Skylar ran as fast as she could, serpentining around the cave. The flames landed on the walls.
Suddenly a camera man popped into Skylar’s vision and yelled, “Cut!”
What the heck? What was going on? Where had the camera man come from?
Skylar looked at the dragon and realized that it wasn’t a dragon at all. It was an animatronic stuffed animal.
The camera man stared at the scene and yelled, “Where did this winged hippo come from?” He seemed disappointed. “My scene is ruined!”
The hippo woke up. He was clearly disoriented. He saw the camera man, the dragon, and Skylar, and he went nuts. He swallowed the diamond whole and then ran like crazy all over the cave, bouncing against walls and thundering back and forth. He slammed into a wall so hard that he fell to the ground and went unconscious.
Suddenly, a trap door opened beneath him and he fell through a large hole. Skylar ran over to the opening. It looked as if it was the below stage area in a theater.
Gosh this was confusing. What was going on? She would never have imagined that the winged hippo would fall through a trap door. Was this actually a huge theater and not a cave at all?
She pivoted around and raced to the cave entrance. The fake dragon blocked her way so she squeezed past. It was a very tight squeeze.
There was a huge crowd of people on the other side, all with backstage passes. They screamed at her, begging for her autograph.
Holy moly! She turned back the way she came and squeezed back into the cave. This was so confusing.
Suddenly she gasped for breath and felt herself wake up from a deep sleep. Where was she? She looked around. She was floating off the ground. In front of her was the dragon—the midnight blue dragon. And it was guarding a cave. She thought it was the same cave that the winged hippo had flown into. She thought the hippo must still be guarding a diamond. How had she fallen asleep? This was totally bizarre.
She’d heard of things like this happening before. One story was that when King Kong fell, then dust would rise, and it might cause people to fall into a strange sleep and even levitate. Maybe King Kong had fallen nearby.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
She heard a terrible stomp from afar but it was getting closer. Oh oh! Was King Kong approaching? She was still floating.
Suddenly she saw him. He was stomping toward them and grunting!
At that precise moment, the winged hippo ran out of the cave and morphed into what appeared to be Katniss Everdeen with bow and arrow notched.
Skylar noticed that there was a huge button on the ground that said, “Press me in case of emergency.” She thought this was definitely an emergency. She pressed it. A gigantic block of cheese fell from the sky and immediately everyone was frozen in their place, except for Skylar.
The huge diamond flew out of the cave and Skylar caught it mid-flight.
At that moment she realized that it wasn’t a diamond at all. It wasn’t going to save anyone. In fact, it was just rock candy. She chewed it down. Darn, she was sad. But then she let out an atomic fart. She said, “That’s what we’ve all been waiting for.”
Surprisingly, Elmo appeared. He handed her a check for $5000. “Go save some people with this,” he said in his high-pitched, squeaky voice.
Hurray! Thought Skylar. She turned away from all these monsters and ran to use the money for good. She was going to save as many people as she could. After a hundred yards, she looked over her shoulder to see what was happening behind her.
There was nothing to see. Everything and everyone had disappeared.
Was everything that had happened just something she had imagined? She looked down and saw the check in her hand.
No, that wasn’t it. But she couldn’t explain any of it.
The End.
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