Within minutes of the arrival of the two near breathless Peeps the whole Settlement was a hub of excitement nearing hysteria as the news of a recently hatched dragon’s egg being found so near to where they live spread at a speed only a small community can manage. The one place of calm in the entire community however, was the Council Chamber where all the elders were now gathered, but even in this hallowed hall there was a hum of excitement, albeit faint and everso respectful. That hum stopped the minute the Chief Elder, Boss, rose from his chair at the head of the grande table.
‘My fellow elders, as you may have already gathered we have been or are about to be visited by a dragon. We do not know for certain that it is The Expected Dragon of Legend and if it proves not to be then it’s a damned odd coincidence, nevertheless, we had better prepare ourselves for the worst, just in case.’
The unseen listener, who had followed the two Peeps, suddenly felt a shiver when the word ‘Legend’ was uttered. It rang a bell in the growing memory. I’m a dragon then. Of course I am, now stop thinking and listen.
‘As you all know.’ Boss continued, ‘dragons are tricky creatures to deal with and considerably larger than us. Therefore great caution is called for and if there’s even a hint of its fiery breath being emitted then the only course left to us is to run and run like the wind!’
‘Fiery breath.’ indeed. I certainly wasn’t expecting that. Clearly there’s much to be learned here.’ Thought the unseen visitor.
‘Now,’ Boss was in full flow , ‘We need to locate this beast before it locates us and we need to establish its breed. We can be fairly certain it’ll be big, ferocious, scaly and probably green and positively unpleasant, at least that’s what my spotter’s guide on dragons says. I actually haven’t seen one personally,’ he said, clearing his throat in an important boss person way.
‘Now just a moment there, I think I must object!’
There was a communal gasp followed by a stunned silence for in an instant there appeared before them something completely off the agenda of the meeting but pivotal to it. There, in the middle of the room, at what must have been a little over six metres high, stood a beast that wasn’t in Boss’s ‘spotter’s guide’ of dragons but was most definitely a dragon. If Boss had bothered to renew his annual subscription to The Dragon Spotters Guide he would have received edition 12 ‘Update’ in which he would find the very dragon now standing before them. The relatively rare ‘Arctic Dragon’, sometimes called The Rainbow Dragon due to its colourful appearance .
(See footnote*: For those not familiar with this species a brief description follows. The Arctic Dragon has been known to grow to thirty metres in height, though this has not actually been officially verified but they do get pretty darn big. Unlike other dragons the Arctic Dragon is not scaly, green, ferocious and generally unpleasant. They are quite hairy and can be any colour or many, the rarest being blue and really quite friendly. Or so some say but we all know what folklore is like.)
The ‘gathered’ soon became the ‘tangled’ as they all huddled together in one corner of the Round House, it’s amazing what a little fear can achieve. It was Matty who came closest to a return to normality proclaiming, ‘It speaks!?’
The dragon, crouching on its haunches due to the rather low ceiling of the Chamber said, in a quiet, calm but firm voice, ‘Sorry if I frightened you all just now. That was not my intention but I just had to put you straight on a couple of points you made back there about dragons.’ All the elders, cowering in their hastily constructed corner, were all ears, which incidentally were quite large, a distinctive feature of Peeps, you know.
Their uninvited guest continued. ‘As you can see, I am not green and scaly and all the other stuff you described, quite the opposite in fact. I am furry, blue, a rather nice shade of blue if I do say so myself.’ It was becoming very self aware, growing in confidence for one so fresh from the egg. Also noticeable was the lack of any threat in its steady quiet voice. ‘Also,’ it continued, ‘To the best of my knowledge I do not possess anything resembling a fiery breath, though I may get back to you on that one,’ he added as an afterthought.
By this time the Peeps Elders were also growing in confidence too and began to move away from the huddled herd model and back to the loosely collective. It was Boss who, regaining a modicum of self control, found his voice while treading very carefully, so to speak.
‘What a pleasant surprise to meet you, er, O Mighty Dragon.’ He uttered rather weakly and not very convincingly.
The Visitor was quick to respond. ‘Likewise I’m sure but please, drop the ‘O Mighty Dragon’ stuff will you. Sounds a bit freakish? Anyway, perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me where, exactly, I am and in whose company. This may sound a bit daft to you but as I’m only recently out of my egg I have so much to learn. I do have some stuff banging around inside my head that I guess has been put there before, er, whenever, but there is so much I still don’t know. In fact it wasn’t till you addressed me that I learned I’m a dragon. Yeah, silly isn’t it, but there we are. I don't even have a name?!
Everybody was beginning to relax now, taken by the easy nature of this strange creature. It was so polite for a dragon but, there did arise a fundamental problem. Not only did the creature not have a name but no one knew whether or not ‘it’ was a he or a she? Before they could say anything else the dragon said, quite casually, ‘Oh, by the way, in case you are wondering, I am, again as far as I know, not female but then that could change,’ He stopped for a moment, crossing his short arms and resting his chin on his hand and thought aloud, ‘Now what do I mean by that, I wonder? Oh never mind.’ Turning back to the Peeps, all agog that he seems to have read their minds. ‘You were saying something?’
Again it was Boss who spoke up. Clearing his throat in the most important manner he could he said, ‘Well then, O Mighty…er, sorry, Mr Dragon Sir, welcome to Windy Ho, home of The Peeps, pride of the far north.’
‘Then I shall honour your community by taking my name from it and call myself ‘Windy … er, Blu, if that’s okay with you?’
At this everyone cheered, so pleased with this great honour that a mighty dragon would wish to be named after their humble community. The whole atmosphere changed there and then, There was a feeling of great relief, joy even, and someone suggested there be a celebration, or something, to mark this truly amazing and wondrous occasion. Matty, sitting at the back, was shaking his head, not knowing what to make of the whole thing and musing on how everything has changed so dramatically since the morning. He could hardly wait to see Marc’s reaction to all of this, after all it had all started when he had stumbled on the broken egg.
