Once Upon A Time, and imagine if you can, a steep sided valley cluttered with giant, spiky green pine trees and thick, green grass that reaches to the top of your socks so that when you run, you have to bring your knees up high, like running through water. Wildflowers spread their sweet heady perfume along the gentle breezes and bees hum musically to themselves as they cheerily collect flower pollen.
People are very happy here and they work hard, keeping their houses cleaner than the emperor's own palaces and their children's faces were dirtier than the dirtiest slum.
This summer had been particularly hot and dry, making the lean farm dogs sleepy and still. Farmers whistled lazily to themselves and would stand and stare into the distance, trying to remember what it was that they were supposed to be doing. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the town would be in a haze of slumber, with grandmas nodding off over their knitting and farmers snoozing on their house steps. It was very, very hot.
No matter how hot the day, however, the children would always play in the gentle, rolling meadows. With skin as brown as the ginormous redwoods around them, they chittered and chattered like sparrows, as they frolicked in the forest.
Now, their favourite spot in the forest is very important to this story because in this particular spot is a large, long, scaly rock that looks amazingly similar to a sleeping dragon.
The children knew it was a dragon.
The farmers and their wives knew it was a dragon.
The dogs and cats and birds knew it was a dragon.
The only one who didn't know that it was a dragon was their overseer, the emperor.
But no one was scared of the dragon (especially the emperor) because it never, ever moved.
The boys and girls would clamber all over it, poking sticks at it and hanging wet gum on its ears but it didn't mind in the least because it had slept for a long, long time. The men folk would sometimes chop firewood on its tail because it was just the right height and the ladies would often spin sheep fleece on its spikes.
