By 3rd Grade Students at Bubb Elementary
February 2024
Lightning the Dragon guarded his cave. The Captain of the ship watched. He did not know what the dragon guarded, but he was determined to find out. Though the Captain had seen Lightning before, he thought him a very unusual dragon. For one thing, he was teeny-tiny. He couldn’t have been more than 3 centimeters tall. He was a golden yellow. And he had three heads, but each head looked like a cat!
The hair on the dragon’s cat heads looked coarse, not soft like a kitten’s but more like that of a wild cat’s. And Lightning’s body was scaly.
He stank of flowers…fortunately it was just the cat heads that smelled so disgusting. The body wafted the perfume of very strongly rotten eggs. The Captain loved rotten eggs. He ate them all the time.
The dragon kept squeaking: squeak, squeak, squeak. It was a tiny sound. The Captain was sure he hadn’t been spotted, but he did think the dragon was worried. And he didn’t blame him. Because the dragon was teeny-tiny whereas he was huge and mighty.
While the Captain contemplated his next move, he took a swig of coffee–hot, hot, hot, and very sweet with lots of sugar added–just as he liked it.
He decided to swagger up to the cave. It was such a tiny dragon. A nothing. He went to flick him away.
But…
The dragon hissed and shot a bolt of lightning at him.
“AYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEE!” yelled the Captain. He flew backward into the air and when he landed, he squashed a golden retriever.
“Wooof! How dare you,” said the golden retriever. “I’m on a mission to sneak into the cave and retrieve the golden treasure.”
“Whoa!” said the Captain. A magical talking dog! Still, now that he knew there was treasure, he was going to get to it first.
He started to dig. He would foil that cat-headed dragon and go under and into the cave.
The golden retriever looked at him in disgust as he raced straight for the cave entrance. “I’m not afraid of no teeny, tiny lightning-spewing dragon!” he yelled.
Suddenly, a huge dragon appeared near the cave. “I will protect Lightning!” she cried. She was shiny, shiny black with golden-yellow wings. And she was fifty feet tall and ten feet wide. “My cousin, I’m here for you. Always!”
Yikes, thought the Captain. This huge dragon was a whole other situation. He turned to the talking dog. “We should be allies! Together, we can defeat these dragons and take the treasure for ourselves.”
The golden retriever looked at the teeny-tiny dragon. Then he looked at the huge dragon. Then he looked at the Captain. “I am out of here. That huge dragon is beyond anything I would ever want to deal with.” And with that the golden retriever loped away.
The Captain returned to his ship. He would order his shipmates to come back with him and defeat the dragons so they could take the treasure. When he arrived, he yelled, “My friends. There is treasure awaiting us. Come with me. We will fight the two dragons and take away golden treasure not to be believed.”
The shipmates looked at each other and then at the Captain.
“No!” yelled the first mate. “We would never fight dragons. That’s way too scary.” Together they grabbed their biggest fishing net and flung it over the Captain.
Oh no! He was caught! What to do?
Then he saw the border collie in the distance. Now that he knew one magical dog, he recognized that the collie was magical too. Magical talking dogs were shiny around the edges. He cried, “Border collie! I know of treasure beyond belief. Will you free me so we can steal it together?”
“WOOOF!” said the border collie. “Yes, I will. I love treasure. All magical talking dogs do.” He charged at the shipmates and scattered them. He bit through the net and the Captain was free!
They raced to the cave. And lo and behold, the dragons were both fast asleep.
The Captain tiptoed inside with the border collie padding next to him. There, they found a mountain of gold coins! They started to load up sacks with the coins and when two giant sacks were full, they snuck back out of the cave. “This will set us up for life,” whispered the Captain.
As they stepped into the light, an elf magically appeared. The elf whispered in both dragons’ ears, “Wake up.”
And they did. The first thing they saw was the captain with the dog with two sacks of gold coins.
The huge dragon roared. The teeny-tiny dragon squeaked.
“You will not steal from us,” squeaked the teeny-tiny dragon.
The Captain and the dog ran. With the dragons close on their heels.
Dun. Dun. Dun! To be continued!
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