Georgie and Her Dragon Read Free

forked and moist appendage waved
threateningly in their direction. They tended to walk backwards in
a hurry, which was fine by him.
    But then something odd happened.
    The tiny critter reached out a little hand
and grasped the tip of his tongue, curling minute fingers around it
and holding tight.
    Theo froze as something that felt distinctly
like - affection - curled deep inside his body. A pang of
protectiveness darted up his third horn and made his ears ache. The
little creature still held his tongue but shivered, so he carefully
took one claw and recovered it with the soft blanket.
    Then, ever so gently, he curled his body
around the entire kit and caboodle, cradling it against the sharp
winds that racked the old stone walls.
    “Hello little thing.” Theo spoke the words
in his head of course, since firstly dragons couldn’t speak the
human language and secondly it was hanging on to his
tongue.
    “Goo goo, ga ga.” He heard the sound in his
head quite clearly.
    Well now, this was unique. Theo
gently eased his tongue from the vise-like grip of the tiny human
and considered the implications. It would appear that there was
some kind of communication possible, although God knew what
language was being spoken.
    He was about to try another experiment -
something along the lines of “take me to your leader” - when a
female bustled out onto the flagstones, muttering fiercely.
    “Oh there you are. Goodness gracious,
the Queen would have the King’s balls strung up from the turret if
she knew what he’d gone and done.” She shouldered her way past
Theo’s coiled body and retrieved the blanket.
    He snorted, thus getting her attention with
a whiff of hot air up her skirt.
    “Now you stop that, you nasty old dragon.
This is a princess . Just because the King doesn’t want her
around don’t mean that you can have her for afternoon tea, you
know.” She shook an admonishing finger at Theo. “He may have given
her to you, but you’ll not see her for years an’ years. She’s got
to go to Princess School along with the other ones, no matter what
her father says.”
    The “princess” emitted a sound that
resembled a small mud geyser blobbing up ooze and the woman held
her nose. “Ooof. They should’ve called you Stinky instead of
Georgiana.” She held her away from her body. “Now wave bye-bye to
the nice dragon, sweetie. I reckon he’ll be around when you get
back and for a good many years after that too.”
    “Bye-bye, little Georgiana. Bye-bye .”
Theo flapped one ear, then caught himself and tried to look
ferocious.
    “Goo goo gaaaaaa ...” The wail
followed the two females as they departed down the staircase and
back to the human residence within the castle leaving Theo
alone.
    And, for the first time in one hundred and
several years, lonely .
    From that day on, Theo felt a little empty
spot someplace in between his sixteenth and seventeenth ribs. He
put it down to indigestion, cut back on the yog-boars and began a
regular flying program. He developed an interesting maneuver all
his own that involved a swoop combined with a roll and followed by
quite a sharp dive.
    The other dragons were impressed in spite of
themselves and began calling him “Ace”, which he liked much better
than “Unlucky”. A villager, awed by his aerial skills, wove him a
rather long white silk scarf to wrap around his neck while
flying.
    It was flamboyant but Theo was quite proud
of it, and did an extra swoop along with a wing dip over the
villager’s hut, trailing the fringed ends of the scarf along with
him.
    A nice gesture, but one that scared the
chickens so much they didn’t lay any eggs for a week. He earned no
points with the villager’s wife for that little episode.
    So for the next few years, Theo worked hard
at his dragon skills, noting the firm body that flexed beneath his
rather attractive blue scales, and the horns along his snout -
fully developed now as Theo approached his prime. And his sexual
maturity.
    Of