Dragon Little, the name I lovingly give little Joy Shelley who by this time was 4 years old, and her father, which I call Dragon Father, were in the middle of a chase of an evil king. He was called The King Dad, because he fathered a hundred demons, each one more evil than the other.
Dragon Little and Dragon Father were of course in the middle of an adventure, and they had the King Dad on the run.
They entered a huge room that had royal cots for a hundred different babies, when Dragon Father stopped the chase.
“Dad, Dad—” Dragon Little ran past him.
She reached the exit, when she saw he was not continuing the chase. “What’s wrong?”
“That looks exactly… I mean exactly… all of them… Just like the first cot you had.”
“What’s a cot?”
“It’s a bed, a bed for babies. You had one just like that. You know, I hadn’t even thought about those times… we live such a hectic life… I think I forgot almost everything…”
He took her in his hands and they looked down at the cot. “Joy, do you remember sleeping in something like this?”
Dragon Little hook her head.
“You were… this was… I think… just when you were born… I held you tight… and we got home… and I put you in a cot… exactly like this one. And I remember…” he laughed. “I remember that when I stepped away… I looked back… and what I saw was your tongue. It was the only thing I could see over the white thing on the side.”
“My tongue?”
“You have a long tongue, right? You can touch your nose.”
She touched her nose with her tongue.
“Well, I can’t,” he tried and failed. “You have a long tongue, and the cot is not that high.” He laughed. “It’s the first thing I saw about you after I put you down.”
He looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her in a long time. “Jeez, how you’ve grown. Joy, you’re so amazing. Look at you! Just look at you!” He had tears in his eyes. And Dragon Little herself seemed uncomfortable. She slipped off his arms.
“Come on, let’s chase the King, Dad!” she said.
Dragon Father wiped away a tear, and nodded. “Let’s go!”
—Told by The Red Dragon