“Joy, today we have a great, big adventure in front of us!” Dragon Father told his four-year-old daughter as she finished breakfast.
“Yeah?” she looked up at him with excitement in her eyes.
The two were, as usual in the mornings, on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge, the flying pirate ship that served as their home.
“Yeah. I just heard. We have quite a mission ahead of us!”
“What? What do we have to do?”
“It’s a quest!”
Dragon Little’s demeanor changed immediately.
“A big quest! We have to--”
“A quest?” she asked with a sour voice.
Dragon Father stopped and made a face that mirrored hers. “What’s the matter?”
“You know I hate quests!”
“How would I know you hate quests?”
“The last quest was terrible! I hate quests!”
“The last quest was, like, six months ago. How would--”
“You know I hate quests.”
“Well,” he crossed his arms. “We have a quest. We’re going on a quest.”
She shook her head.
“We’re going on a quest.”
“Nope. You go on a quest. I’m not going.”
“What do you mean you’re not--” he stopped in mid-sentence and thought. “You don’t want to go, don’t go. But I’m taking the ship.”
She shrugged. “Take the ship.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll leave you on that island there?” he pointed below at a small archipelago that just appeared.
“Yeah.”
“Some time alone?” he said to himself. Then, to Dragon Little, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Dragon Father considered this for quite a few seconds.
Then he shrugged as well. “Okay. I’ll go on the quest alone.”
“Okay.”
They both agreed, and Dragon Father dropped off Dragon Little on a small island where he expected no trouble.
She waved at him as he flew away on Bonny’s Revenge.
Tomorrow I will tell you what happened next.
—Told by the Red Dragon