ONC 2024 ~ On Hold
Once upon a time there was a little golden dragon. He was the last of his kind and knew nothing of the ways of dragons. One day his hoard of gold was stolen by some men from the castle down the hill. This is the story of how the l...
Once upon a time, in a labyrinth of caves inside the Dark Mountain where hundreds of dragons had hoarded their treasures, there was a dragon egg. This was not just any dragon egg. It was the last dragon egg, for all the dragons had disappeared from the world. And so when the dragon egg hatched, he came into a world without dragons, and he did not learn dragonly ways.
The dragon spent his days sleeping and his nights looking at his treasure, but not because he liked to be rich. The dragon enjoyed his treasure because the coins were golden like his scales, and the crowns of jewels were red and shiny like his claws. The diamonds were sparkly and white like his teeth, and the fine clothes were velvety soft like his wings. So at night when the world slept, the dragon arranged his piles of treasure into sculptures of golden coins, sparkly diamonds, shiny jewels, and velvety clothes that looked like dragons.
One day when the sun was about to rise and the dragon was just finishing a game of make-believe with his treasure piles arranged to look like dragon friends, two humans came to his cave.
The dragon had never seen a human before, and since he was only a young dragon, he hid away in a shadowy corner of his cave and waited for the humans to go away.
"Look at all this treasure!" the young man said.
"I told you this was a dragon cave," the old man said.
"Do you think it's safe to be here?" the young man asked the old man.
"Of course! Didn't I tell you the dragons are all gone? There's nothing here that could hurt us."
The humans began to shovel piles of coins into their pockets and bags. Then, they turned and ran from the cave. The dragon emerged from his hiding place to look at his poor treasure friend, who was now missing his claws and toes and teeth.
Then there came the sound of many feet climbing up the mountain. The humans were coming back. The dragon took his favorite piece of treasure from the pile—a jeweled mirror which was used to make the treasure dragon's eye—and crawled off to the farthest corner of his cave to hide.
In the next couple of days, the young man and the old man brought more and more people back to the caves to take away the dragon's gold, until there was nothing left but the jeweled mirror. That was when the dragon realized how lonely he was, up there in his cave with no one to play with and nothing to do but stare at himself in his mirror.
The dragon decided he must rescue his treasure from the evil humans. He bravely followed the tracks down the mountainside to a castle made of stone with walls so steep and high that even the dragon could not climb up. The humans saw the dragon coming and pulled up the draw bridge and put down the barred gate to keep the dragon out. The dragon had never learned to swim, so when he tried to walk across the water, he found that it did not hold him up, and the cold water chilled the warmth in his stomach. The dragon crawled back out of the water in a flash.
The dragon went all the way around the castle, but he could find no way across the watery moat. He could see humans watching him from the high towers of the castle, or peering out from the slender windows in the stone. He knew that the humans would need to come out eventually, just as the dragon had to leave his cave to hunt bugs and find berries and mushrooms to eat, so the dragon sat down in front of the draw bridge to wait.
And that is how a dragon came to sit outside a castle wall.
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