Ever since I had met Dragon Father and Dragon Little, Dragon Father had been able to leap into the air, twist around, and return safely to the ground. Sometimes, he would flip over once or twice before landing.
This ist not something I think humans can do, but perhaps they can. I prefer to think he can only do it in his dream, but I do not know,
Dragon Little had always been jealous of his abilities and has tried to imitate this a few times over the years, but it had never worked for her.
She had occasionally asked him to teach her, but he always said she was not old enough.
Now, a bit after her fifth birthday, Dragon Father told her there would be no adventure today and that he would take her to a very special place.
“Where are we going?” She asked as he helmed Bonny’s Revenge and took it out of the water.
“I’m not telling. It’s a surprise.”
“Where are we going?” she asked again a few seconds later.
“I’m still not telling. It’s a surprise.”
“I hate surprises! Tell me now!”
“Well, you’ll have to exercise your patience muscles, that’s what my mother always said. It’s good for you.”
“Dad, where are we going?” she asked almost immediately.
Dragon Father consistently refused to say and Dragon Little consistently refused to hear when he asked her to stop asking.
Dragon Father parked Bonny’s Revenge at the edge of Cloud City.
“What’s in Cloud City?”
“There’s a very special place in the city that you’ve never seen,” Dragon Father told her as they descended the rope ladder into the solid cloud. “A place that only big girls can go to.”
“I’m big now?”
“You’re SO big!”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
Within a few minutes, they reached a huge gate made out of solid cloud. The gate had not been there before. When Dragon Little touched it as it opened, it glowed for a split second. I knew it would.
Beyond the gate, a stream of water ran.
Dragon Father and Dragon Little followed the stream until it fell off the cloud in a big waterfall.
”Now look at this,” Dragon Father said as the two stood on the edge atop the waterfall and looked down.
The water fell a few dozen meters to another cloud where it kept running as a stream again.
Dragon Father said, “At the bottom of this waterfall there’s a gust of wind that is so strong that it can hold a human. Look!”
He jumped off the edge, repeatedly twisted and turned in the air, then, as he almost reached the bottom, his fall slowly stopped even as he was in the air. “The wind makes sure you can’t fall all the way down!” he shouted up. “And then,” he began to float up. “It carries you all the way back up!”
The wind brought Dragon Father back to the edge of the cloud next to Dragon Little and he landed softly.
“See?”
Dragon Little’s face seemed to shine in excitement. “Listen, listen, before you do it,” he told her. “This is where you can practice doing the flip-flops I do and turning in the air and all of that. Got it? The wind will always bring you back.”
“Wow!” she whispered.
“Wanna try it or do you wanna go fight bad guys?”
She tried it of course. Again and again and again that day for hours. And for many days and weeks ahead, when her father was gone and awake in his waking world, she would bring Bonny’s Revenge to Cloud City and she would practice for hours.
—Told by The Red Dragon