Boo was bored, she was so bored that she was thinking about trying to do next weeks homework which the teacher had not even set yet.
There is after all, she thought, only so many times that a girl can re-plait her pigtails, tidy her room and take out the rubbish.
‘Mommy, can we go to the ice-cream place please, I’ve been really good all week and I got eleven gold stars on my homework and everything ?’
Her mommy looked up from the book she was reading, ‘Sweetie, we have an ice-cream date tomorrow, I’m not sure that we should be doing it twice running, we have some granola bars in the cupboard if you are really hungry’.
Boo sighed a very grown-up sigh. She knew that there were granola bars, she had taken half of them, along with three protein shakes, two kit-kats, a creme egg and several bags of crisps and placed them all in a small backpack that she kept hidden under her bed.
This same backpack also contained a pair of sunglasses, a waterproof jacket, a notepad, several pencils, ranging from 2H all the way to 3B, as a budding artist can never have too many pencils, and also a towel, just in case.
Boo had a secret you see, she had a dragon hidden in her room.
Not just any dragon, but her dragon.
Boo’s dragon is about ten feet tall and has piercing green eyes and he takes her on regular adventures.
‘It’s OK Mommy, I think I will just go to my room for a rest, I’m a bit tired, the swimming lessons wore me out and I think I need a nap.
‘OK Sweetie, sweet dreams, I’ll wake you up for dinner in an hour or so’.
Mommy went back to her book, Boo glanced at the cover it was one of mommies romantic novels that her boyfriend had suggested she should read. Boo rolled her eyes, ‘romance, romance, romance and ice-cream’, she thought.
Secretly she liked the ice-cream bit and was happy to see her mommy happy, but bletch, she was never going to kiss a boy in an ice-cream parlor. Especially if someone was watching.
As she opened her bedroom door, the dragon, who was once more curled up on her bed let out a slightly smoky snore. Boo hoped that her mommy did not hear it, as explaining why you have a ferocious looking dragon sleeping on your bed is not something that she wanted to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Thinking this out a little more, she realized that this is not something she really wanted to do on any Saturday afternoon, rainy or not.
Boo closed the door with a gentle click and gingerly approached the sleeping dragon. She suddenly realised that waking a sleeping dragon might not be a good idea, although he seemed to be very tame and well behaved, she had noticed a glint in his eye from time to time that made her rather nervous, each time she had fed him chocolate or a pie until the glint had gone away and she felt safe again. An idea occurred to her, maybe she should wake him up with chocolate. Carefully, quietly, Boo unwrapped a small chocolate bar and held it near to the Dragons’ nostrils. The result was as instant as it was scary. Upon smelling the chocolate, the dragons eyes opened instantly, focusing on the bar, he inched his head forwards and simply inhaled the bar straight out of Boo’s hand.
Boo did not spot any sign of chewing or savoring, it simply vanished.
The dragon smiled ‘thank you, I needed a quick snack’.
‘I’m bored today, its raining outside, mommy is reading her book, she wont take me to the ice-cream parlor, I’m bored, bored, bored. ‘ she told her dragon.
‘Lets think of something that we can do then, I’m rested, I’ve had a snack and I too feel like stretching my wings.’
The dragon scratched his chin with a claw that looked like it could inflict serious damage in sheet metal, ‘lets go to the zoo’.
Boo frowned, ‘but its raining and the animals will all be inside and all miserable.’.
The dragon smiled, when the dragon smiles it is something that is both beautiful and terrifying at the same time – A happy dragon is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it is hard to tell if the dragon is happy because he is just about to eat you. There are way too many teeth on display.
‘Rainy days are the best days, fewer visitors and the animals generally do not mind the rain.
Although personally I dislike that you humans keep animals in cages. If you tried to put me in a cage I would melt it and not visit you.’
Boo thought about this for a moment, she had never really considered that animals would mind living in a cage.
‘I’m not sure about the zoo now’. She bit her lip, her wide eyes, looked sorrowful thinking about the poor animals.
‘Let’s go anyway, perhaps we can have a chat with some of the animals while we are there and see how they feel’.
Boo looked at her dragon in wonderment, he can talk to animals ? Once more she realized that this is a dragon who seemed to have impeccable English, why would she think that all dragons spoke only English, she had read about Chinese dragons and she suspected that they probably spoke Mandarin, while Welsh dragons would greet each other with ‘bora da’ and wish each other ‘Mwynhewch eich bwyd!’ (which is welsh for ‘Bon Appetit’) while sitting around the dinner table. She giggled, she had just had a vision of half a dozen Welsh dragons sitting around a dinner table.
Taking the giggle as a sign that she wanted to go to the zoo, the dragon leaped lightly from the bed and crouched down low, waiting for Boo to climb onto her back. Boo grabbed her backback, opened the bedroom window and hopped aboard.
They flew out of the tiny window like a cork from a bottle. Shooting upwards at dizzying speed they broke through the clouds in seconds. Already Boo was soaking wet, she had not thought to put on her jacket or a hat. Once more though she could feel the heat from her dragon and once more the heat seemed to radiate through her. Within a couple of minutes she was dry, her clothes steaming slightly, her pigtails once more streaming behind her. She grabbed the sunglasses that she had borrowed and for the first time was able to see where they were headed without schrunching up her eyes.
The view was amazing, they skimmed the tops of the clouds as the dragon soared with seemingly little effort. His wide wings barely moving.
After just a few more minutes she felt her dragon fold back his wings and they dropped from the sky like a rocket. Heading towards the ground at what felt like hundreds of miles an hour. With almost no warning, the dragon extended his wings and with a beautifully timed swoop they landed as light as a feather in the middle of a rain-swept zoo somewhere that Boo did not recognize.
‘Where are we’, then she added ‘When are we’. From a previous adventure she realized that the ‘when’ bit was important as they had traveled not only 40 miles, but also around 450 years backwards in time.
‘We are at Twycross Zoo’, he announced, and it is still just a few minutes after three.
The weather was worse here, the rain that had been heavy at hope was positively stormy here, thunder rumbled in the background and the rain came down in huge droplets. She sheltered under the dragons wing and pulled out her coat from her backpack.
‘OK, lets go’ he said. ‘We are heading to see someone rare, really, really rare.
Anyone that saw them would have thought it was the strangest sight, the ten foot dragon, with the little girl sheltering under his wing carrying a backpack under one arm while still wearing over-large sunglasses. In the pouring rain. But of course, nobody saw them as hardly anyone believes in dragons any more.
Boo realized that her dragon was probably hungry, so she rummaged in her back and found the creme egg. The second she started to peel the foil, the dragon sniffed at it and inhaled it, wrapping included. Boo raised her eyebrows. ‘Hey, I was hungry and the wrapping is tasty too’. Boo shook her head again in mild disbelief, ‘dragons are weird’
As they approached a large enclosure a beautiful leopard trotted out into the rain, in a fluid movement the dragon picked up Boo and they hopped into the middle of the leopard’s world. For a split second Boo was terrified, the leopard bounded up to them, then it too sheltered under the dragons’ outstretched wing. Inexplicably Boo reached out to the huge animal and tickled its ears and let out what sounded like a very large motorboat engine idling. Boo realized that it was purring.
Dragon whispered ‘a little harder and further back’. Boo obliged.
Boo spent the next few minutes petting the big cat. Eventually the cat lay down and growled gently. Boo was not scared as she realized that the dragon would protect her.
The dragon whispered that the leopard wanted to introduce his sons, and a few moments later, two much smaller cats emerged from the habitat. They too bounded over and before long Boo found herself cuddling three highly dangerous and supposedly wild leopards. All of which were purring when it was their turn to get tickled behind their ears.
All too soon the dragon told her that they needed to depart. Begrudgingly Boo clambered onto the dragon’s back, she waved goodbye to the leopards and the hurtled into the sky.
As they flew, the dragon explained there there used to be hundreds of them, now there are less than a hundred in the world, the humans are trying hard to save them, but it is very difficult. Still they are poached for their fur and for fun.
All too soon they approached Boo’s bedroom window, all too soon she was feeding him crunchy granola bars.
‘I wanted to take you there to meet my friend, that zoo is one of the few that truly try to save animals, that try to build up the population of endangered animals and they try to keep they in as good a habitat as they can, even if this makes them less accessible.
Boo thought about this for a moment.
‘Thank you’
She opened the door and left her dragon who was curling up on her bed again and showing signs of sleep.
She re-plaited her pigtails, went to the bathroom and washed her hands and then jumped onto the sofa beside mommy.
‘Can we have a pet, please ? I want a cat’.