Summer's Dragon

“Come out and face me foul beast!” A voice called through the dull grey air of the windy mountain top. A chill sharpened everything. A warrior sat astride his glowing, white stallion. His armour smooth silver under the thick layer of mud from his weeks of hard travel.

A spurt of fire shuddered out of the dark cave, lighting up the golden creature inside for just one second. Just long enough for the knight to get its measure.

“If you do not come out, I will come in!” He threatened, loosening his lance in its holder. No other weapon would be enough to get through the creatures thick hide.

Stones and dirt rained down on the lonely knight. The projectiles bouncing off his shining armour.

“You can come in, but you will never defeat me.” The dragon roared back, stone crunching under its massive claws as it moved towards the mouth of the cave. Wings spread it roared.

A childish estimation of a roar filled the space but was broken by a burst of giggles as a little girl toppled off the top of a stack of hay bales. She had overbalanced as she attempted to impersonate the dragon she was pretending to be.

A million dust mites drifted lazily in the shafts of sunlight. Undisturbed by breeze or wind.

“‘Lissa!” Tommy shouted up at her from the ground. “Do it properly!”

“I am!” Alissa argued, flipping over on her bed of hay, resting her face on her hands, and glaring down at her brother. “I just fell over, that’ all!” She giggled again, rolling in the hay a few more times until golden straw was her curly brown hair was bristling. “Look, I’m a lion!” A new roar filled the building, floating up through the holes in the roof where shingles had become loose and been lost in storms-past.

“And I’m on Safari!” Tommy called back, he darted behind one of the supporting posts, and curved his hands around his eyes in place of binoculars. The dusty bales of hay melted away to be replaced by sunburnt savannah grasses, and the other posts supporting the upper floor where Alissa was, transformed into soaring Acacia trees. “Look at the giraffes.” A herd wandered out from underneath the tree bound lion.

One of the large animals bent its head to sniff and lick at Tommy, nocking his binoculars out of his hands. “Hey!” He laughed.” Blinking from the change of focus, their dog Sam sat in front of him panting. Dropping to one knee, he ruffled the large dog’s ears. “Who’s a good boy?”

There was a soft thump and puff of dust as Alissa dropped to the ground. She flopped onto the thick layer of dirt that covered the half-rotted boards. “Do you think we will ever actually see giraffes?” She asked, a lazy finger moved through the air, tracing a bunny rabbit in the white fluffy cloud drifting through one of the holes in the roof.

Tommy flopped down beside her. “That one’s a train.” He pointed at his own cloud.

“I want to see real giraffes and lions and dragons.” Alissa continued, ignoring her brother’s obsession with transportation. Boys were weird.

“There are no dragons. They aren’t real.” Tommy argued. Turning his head to glare at his sister.

“Yeah they are!” She sat up to have a better vantage to glare at him from. “They were in that movie we watched.”

“That’s not real. That’s a movie.” His voice had taken on the annoying ‘I’m older than you so know everything while you are a silly little girl’ tone that Alissa loathed. Or would loath if she knew the word, but she knew she hated it with everything she had.

“Kids! Dinner.” Mum’s voice floated across the wild grass.

Sam jumped up with a bark and raced off, a streak turned ruddy gold in the setting sun.

“Last one in is a rotten egg.” Alissa shouted as she jumped to her feet and sprinted out of the wide-open doors of the old barn.