By Suzanna Leigh
My name is Puff. Well it used to be. That’s what Jackie Paper called me. Such fine times we had! Sailing the high seas, getting homage from pirates and princes. Sometimes I took him flying high over the land and we looked down at the little towns and villages below.
It was so cute, the way he brought me strings and ceiling wax. Who knew dragons and humans could be friends, even companions?
Ahh, but humans have such short lives, and little boys in particular grow up faster than you can imagine. When Jackie abandoned me for his soccer buddies and motorcycles, it broke my heart for a while. I felt betrayed. I slipped into my cave, thinking I would just stay there forever. And I did stay for almost a millennia.
Then it happened.
I was discovered by a little girl.
How she found my cave I will never know.
It was an accident, she said. She was running away from a terrible monster who had moved into her home and eaten her mother. She ran into the forest (Forest? There was no forest around my cave when I crawled into it) and had run for a day and a night and another day. She only rested for a short time before she continued on. During the second night, she was thrashing through the underbrush when she fell through a hole.
At first, it was so dark she couldn’t see anything, and she was scared! There was no way she could climb back up. She felt along the sides of the hole and found a passage. She felt along the passage for what seemed like a long ways, until she saw a faint glow ahead. It was the glow of my scales!
This was one courageous girl! I was asleep, and had been for a few hundred years, so you can imagine it was no easy job for her to wake me up. First she tapped on my thigh. No response. Then she tapped on my paw. I stirred a little bit, she told me. Then she took a deep breath and began stroking my nose! Ah! Mmm! As anyone knows, or used to know, if you want to wake a dragon up gently, and in a good mood, you stroke his nose.
I was dreaming that Jackie came back, ready to play. Imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes to see, not Jackie, but a little girl!
She was shivering, and looked as though no one had given her a proper meal in days. Which was probably true even before she ran away. I expected her to turn around and run when I opened my jaws, but no! She stepped back and stared into my left eye. She seemed in no hurry to leave.
Had no one taught her about dragons? No stories about dragons eating princesses or little girls?
“Who are you?!” I asked in my most threatening voice. It didn’t scare her.
“I am Melody. Who are you?” She asked.
Oh goodness, who am I? I used to be called Puff, but wasn’t I someone else before that?
“Um, I … my best friend … called me Puff.”
“Puff? As in puffball? As in Powderpuff? No way! I name you my fierce friend, Fireball.”
Hm. Fireball. I like it. Never mind that I haven’t breathed fire in over 300 years. Fireball.
I looked at her quizically. “OK for you I will be Fireball.” What was I saying? That I was expecting her to be around for a while? That I would indeed be her friend? Until she grew up and betrayed me like Jackie did? Was it worth the risk?
She stroked my nose again and then reached up on tiptoes to scratch gently behind my eye. Jackie never did that. He was all “Ok let’s go!” as soon as he saw me. It couldn’t hurt to get to know her a little bit.
And so we began a friendship that lasted her lifetime. And we did have adventures! Our adventures had a different flavor than mine with Jackie. Gentler and somehow deeper – less roaring and more singing. Ah, the stories I could tell you!
