Eventually everyone had ordered their pizza, filled up their salad bowls and had started on their second or third root-beer floats. Boo had spotted a list of party games on Mommies table. This was going to be fun.
With a flourish, the pizza’s arrived, each one was a steaming mound of delicious gooey, cheesy food, except of course the one that was destined for daddies table which by anyones standard, was a nasty looking pizza.
The pizza was delicious, everyone ate way too much, swapping slices and drinking yet more root-beer for the next half hour or so. Boo held back a couple of slices for her dragon and suddenly realized that he was nowhere to be seen. She checked behind the curtains. No dragon, she checked under the tables, once more, no dragon, she looked outside and could not see him. That left only two possibilities, he was hungry and had gone off to find some sheep, or, Boo realised, he was in the kitchen. This could become a problem.
Boo did not have to wait too long for her answer, the kitchen doors flew open and six people wearing tall chef’s hats ran out of the kitchen at high speed, straight past the party goers and straight out of the exit. Boo and Penny looked at each other and shrugged at exactly the same time.
Moments later Boo’s dragon casually emerged from the kitchen with melted cheese all over his tummy and re-hid himself behind the curtains. Boo carefully stood by him ‘Where have you been, what did you do, why did the cooks all run away ?’
‘Well the kitchen used to have cheese in it and bacon too.’
Boo noticed that her dragon did not say that there is cheese, he used the past tense, she suspected that this meant that he had eaten the entire stock of cheese. In a pizza restaurant. ‘Please tell me you didn’t eat all of the cheese’.
‘I didn’t eat all of the cheese’ The dragon smiled, ‘I left that disgusting low sodium, low fat, low taste stuff’.
Boo sighed, then smiled, then sighed again.’Here I saved you some pizza’. She passed him the three pieces that she had saved and watched as he inhaled it. Then she gasped as she watched him drink an entire jug of root-beer with sixteen scoops of vanilla ice-cream.
‘Erm, Dragon’, she began, ‘you just drank fizzy pop, last time you did that, you burped fireballs all over the place’.
‘Yes, but I will be fine as the ice-cream should help’.
Boo was not convinced but it was time for presents.
After the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ and the blowing out of candles on the cake which Mommy had remembered, everyone watched while she opened her presents .
Penny had got her a friendship bracelet and two jumbo-size sketch books
James gave her a voucher for a local book shop
Emma handed her a large box of assorted pencils for sketching
George’s present was a set of charcoal’s and yet another drawing pad
Soon Boo was surrounded by discarded wrapping paper and an ever-growing pile of sketch books, pastels, charcoals and pencils, art books and even a easel.
Eventually however it was time to play some party games.
The first game that they played was musical statues, whenever the music stopped everyone had to stand still. The very first person to be eliminated was of course mommies boyfriend, who simply carried on fiddling with his phone. The game eventually became a battle between James and George, with George finally winning after James was distracted when Emma blew him a kiss.
Musical chairs was won by Emma, who simply barged everyone out of the way or threatened them when they would not give up their seat.
Pass the parcel turned out to be fairly silly too, with several guests (can you guess who) often refusing to let go of the parcel once they had it. Eventually however Penny won the game and with it a voucher for a free pizza once they had more cheese delivered.
Through all of these games, Boo kept a close eye on her dragon, he was, as usual hiding behind the curtain, but he seemed to be watching daddy’s girlfriend rather closely, the frizzy blonde hair and her fake fur jacket made her look rather a lot like a sheep, but when you add the skinny legs and the wobbly bottom, the illusion is complete.
Boo approached her dragon with a couple of slices of left-over pizza, ‘You are worrying me, watching her so closely’. The dragon inhaled the pizza, then immediately turned a rather strange shade of pink and pulled a face that somehow reminded Boo of the face that the sheep pulled when scared.
‘What’s wrong ?’
‘That pizza’, he panted, ‘where did you get it ?’
Boo thought for a moment, ‘oh, no, it was Daddies table’.
‘Worst cheese ever’ and he grabbed another jug of root beer and drank it all in one single, rather large gulp.
The root beer did not have ice-cream on top.
At just that moment, daddies girlfriend came over to air-kiss Boo goodbye, she had an emergency appointment at the nail salon as she had chipped a couple of nails, so they had to leave right now. As she bent down to air-kiss he she was bumped by James and Emma who were running around tormenting everyone.
Daddies girlfriend therefore head-butted the dragon in the tummy.
The dragon burped.
The dragon burped fire.
Then coughed a fireball
Then he sneezed because the fizzy pop had gone up his nose
Then finally he burped a second time.
The first fire-ball sailed harmlessly out of the window, over everyone’s heads, only slightly singing the top of daddies head. Luckily he was wearing a baseball cap (backwards) as he thought it was cool, so the only damage was some minor burns to the stitching.
The second fireball, oh dear, the second fireball, that too went out of the window, but not before it gave Emma a new parting. She was so scared and surprised that she dived, head-first, into the cake, ruining her hair and her new party dress.
The third fireball flew straight out of the window.
The final fireball flew into the kitchen and melted some of the low-sodium, low-fat, low taste cheese.
All of the party goers thought that the indoor birthday fireworks were a great way to end the party.
Boo, her mommy and her boyfriend collected up all of the presents and ordered a taxi to take them and all home, tidied up the worst of the mess and paid for the pizza and drinks.
Outside as they were loading the taxi up they noticed that the fire brigade were dealing with a man that seemed to be jumping up and down and shouting a great deal. Instantly they recognized Boo’s daddy, it seems that a meteorite had once more hit his car, this time it had neatly removed and entire front corner including several fairly important pieces. One wheel and parts of the engine had vanished entirely. His girlfriend was screeching something about missed nail appointments and buying a more reliable car and he was once more on the phone to his insurance company while also trying to dial the Met office.
The dragon, who was watching all this suddenly turned pink and finally sneezed out the last of the root-beer. The fireball left his nostril at high speed, zipped over the heads of the final few party attendees and hit daddies car, again.
Which was vaporized.
Instantly.
There was nothing left except a small crater inside which was an indestructible ice-cream cone that was left over from a recent visit to Golden cone.
Boo’s Daddy dropped to his knees and started sobbing, his girlfriend stuck her nose in the air and started to walk for the taxi rank, muttering something about Ferrari’s.
The taxi ride home was fairly short, obviously discussion was centered around Boo’s daddies misfortune.
Once home Boo put all of her presents in her room, just as she was finishing up her dragon flew in through the window.
‘I’m sorry Boo, I did not mean to ruin your party’.
‘You know, Dragon’, Boo smiled, ‘I think it was more fun that way’. She scratched his beard and fed him a packed of smoky bacon crisps.
‘Lets go for a quick trip’, he grinned.
Boo grabbed her bobble hat, made sure her pigtails were tight and jumped onto his back.
They left her bedroom at great speed heading south. Boo squealed with delight, high speed low-altitude flying on the back of a dragon is tremendous fun. They skimmed the sea, leaving a wake behind them like a speed boat. Boo was warm and dry, but the sea air did find its way past her sunglasses from time to time, stinging her eyes a little.
Onwards they flew, faster and lower that Boo ever thought possible.
The dragon was enjoying himself and started to show off a little, he arced gracefully letting his wing tips trail in the sea throwing up trails of salty water. The arcs made Boo’s tummy drop and she was slightly worried that the pizza might become re-pizza.
The arcs gave way to little loops, then fast big loops and before long he was flying entirely upside down with Boo hanging on for dear life.
Despite the danger, this was fun though.
‘Let’s do some more’ she shouted as the dragon pulled out of a loop that saw them flying at great speed towards the sea then levelling out with a bump mere inches from the water.
The dragon obliged, he loved to fly and having watched the Red Arrows several times he had started to fly his own crazy stunts. Dragon Loops were his speciality.
The flew low and level, then they speared upwards, very, very quickly, while rolling. At the very top of the loop they almost stopped, the dragon folded his wings and they dropped out of the sky, hurtling towards the sea at dizzying rates. At what seemed to be several moments beyond the very last possible second, he opened his wings again and with a jolt they were once more flying level and true just a couple of feet from the sea.
‘Time to go home’
Safely back home, Boo fed her dragon several granola bars. ‘Thank you, that was fun’.
‘I realized that we have not done any serious flying in a while, so I thought as a treat, I’d take you stunt flying.’
What an amazing Dragon…..