By 4th Grade Students at Bubb Elementary
May 2023
The dragon guarded his cave. The Hydra watched. The hydra didn’t know what the dragon guarded, but he sure wanted it, whatever it was!
The dragon was dark red and huge. The Hydra was big himself, but the dragon was even bigger. Still, the dragon only had one head, and The Hydra had two–for now. The dragon’s spine was covered in spikes and he had very sharp teeth. But not as sharp as The Hydra’s.
The dragon’s skin looked so rough, not at all like The Hydra’s smooth and silky, but still tough skin
The dragon reeked of gooey bloody raw food that he must have eaten recently. Such bad breath. But also, strangely appealing. The Hydra wouldn’t mind eating whatever it was that the dragon had eaten.
The moment The Hydra had arrived, the dragon had started to make rumbling, roaring noises. The Hydra was pretty sure he’d been spotted and the dragon didn’t much like him.
In addition to the roaring, The Hydra heard so much more. He had such good hearing, he could hear the scurry of thousands of ants inside the cave. Right now, he only had two heads, which translated to four ears. One day, he might have many more heads, translating to many more ears. At that point, he’d be able to hear things that happened miles and miles away.
Just then, a human walked by. He was chewing on a pork chop. Yuck. The Hydra liked protein, but he liked his to come from an ocean or a river and he mostly liked it raw. A cooked pork chop was too meaty and salty and weirdly ground up. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. A human would actually taste so much better. Or a raw pig.
In The Hydra’s experience, the only way you could get past a dragon was to fight a dragon.
The Hydra charged. He slammed into the dragon. But, the dragon managed to chomp really big and take off a head.
Aha! That must have been The Hydra’s plan all along. With a loud pop, one head grew. And with three more pops, three more grew too.
Now The Hydra had five heads! And he used all of them to bite the dragon. Bite, bite, bite, bite, bite, bite, bite…
But the dragon wasn’t deterred. He fought back.
The Hydra summoned one thousand naked mole rats to jump onto the dragon! While the dragon tried to throw them off, he skirted past the dragon and ran inside the cave.
The cave was dark, but with a tiny stream of light coming from outside. The Hydra saw a huge mound of wood and lots of tiny ants climbing all around and on it. The Hydra realized that the dragon guarded wooden treasure.
Suddenly, the human arrived at the cave opening. “Hey, Hydra, my name is Bobby Joe and I’m very curious about what is going on.” He took another bite of pork chop.
The Hydra knew he should be focused on the treasure, but he hadn’t met a lot of humans before, at least not living ones. He asked, “Where’d you come from? And why are you called Bobby Joe? Why don’t people call you, The Human?”
“I live in a village nearby and there are lots of us there. We can’t all be called The Human. That would be very confusing. They call me Bobby Joe as a nickname. But it’s also my real name too. Well, not my last name… just my first and my middle.”
The Hydra could tell he was nervous. He could smell his sweat with his five noses.
Suddenly, the dragon lumbered in. He looked mad. Maybe fighting naked mole rats did that to a dragon. He roared and breathed fire.
Oops.
A wooden chest burst into flame!
The poor dragon. He burst into tears.
The Hydra had never seen a dragon cry before. He’d never seen anything sadder.
“I’m so sorry that happened,” the Hydra said.
“Me too,” said Bobby Joe.
“It’s okay,” the dragon said, but the Hydra could tell that it wasn’t.
“We could help you find more wooden treasure!” said the Hydra.
“I’ll help too,” said Bobby Joe.
They all became good friends and they went on many treasure hunts together and found mounds and mounds of wooden objects for the cave.
The End.
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