By 3rd Grade Students at Bubb Elementary
February 2018
The dragon guarded his cave. The warrior, Zelda, watched. She knew this dragon. It was Jake. He guarded a magical sword and she wanted it.
Jake was ugly, and he was 100 feet tall. He was rainbow-colored. He had spikes everywhere, and each one was bigger than Zelda. His wings were spread out. For such a huge dragon, he looked awfully squishy–like white bread or marshmallows. His spikes, though big, were blunt on the end.
Jake smelled like raw fish. She gagged. There was no scent she hated more. When she was a child, all she ate, it seemed, was raw fish–everyday, over and over. GROSS!
Jake kept snorting–SNORT, SNORT, SNORT. Like a pig. But he didn’t seem angry. She thought it might be his way of saying Hello.
All of a sudden, a rabbit hopped up next to Zelda. The bunny was eating a carrot. Yum! Zelda loved carrots–they were such sweet snacks.
It was time for action. Zelda had a plan. She knew that Jake was very ticklish. She would tickle him and make him turn away from the cave. She snuck up to him and tickled. As with most of her plans, her tickling worked. Then she squeezed past the snorting dragon.
The cave was pitch dark. She couldn’t see anything. Even when her eyes adjusted, everything was shadows. She did not see the magical sword. It had to be farther in the cave, otherwise she would see it gleam.
Suddenly the outline of a strange creature appeared. She had never seen such a strange creature before. It had three heads, three eyes, five ears, and two tails. It began to blow fire. Zelda jumped back and used her shield to block the fire. She stumbled away toward the back of the cave.
There were two tunnels. She took the right. She ran down the tunnel. It led her into a bright room with rainbows painted on all the walls. A small panda danced under one of the rainbows. It pointed down another path.
“This way to the magic sword,” it sang.
She ran down that path.
A huge dog-man jumped in front of her. “I will kill you!”
Oh no, she’d fallen into a trap!
She fought as only she could, and knocked him unconscious. She kept running deeper into the cave. Then there were three paths. She took the middle. She ran and ran.
Suddenly, it dumped her outside of the cave right in front of the dragon, and he was no longer snorting. He glared instead. She whipped around and ran back the way she had come, into the tunnel, into the cave.
He was too big to follow. Zelda ran back to the beginning of this tunnel and then ran down the left hand tunnel. But there was still no gleaming, magical sword. She had never felt more disappointed. What if she never found it? She forced herself to keep going. She never gave up.
And lo and behold at the very end of the tunnel, something gleamed. It was the sword. She had found it. She marched right up to it.
But then she saw a shadow, flickering just out of her corner of her eye. Uh-oh! This did not look right.
The “To Be Continued” End.