Dragon Father could not find his four-and-a-half-year-old Dragon Little.
It did not matter how many giants he conjured and beat up, none of them could tell him where his daughter was. They came from his mind, after all. They were his dreams. If he did not know something, then neither did they.
That ist some of what I have learned from living centuries in others’ dreams.
Dragon Little watched her father get angrier and angrier, more and more worried, as time passed. He had never been away from his daughter for such a long time. He had never not known where she was.
Dragon Little sat on the leaf and did not move from it, for that ist what he had taught her to do if she was ever lost. She no doubt trusted him to return.
But as the hours passed, she began to lick her lips.
And then her father disappeared. He was flying above the forest in Bonny’s Revenge looking for her with special binoculars that had appeared in his hands just before he vanished.
When he did, Dragon Little fell backwards to lie on the leaf. She would not leave it. The ship was too high above her. And when her father wasn’t there, the forest had no life.
She lay on her back on the leaf. She knew, just as I did, that her father would not return for sixteen more hours.
“Water…” she said to no one.
“Water…”
“Water…”
“Water…”
After a few more hours, she fell asleep, hungry and thirsty.
This ist not an easy story to tell. It was not easy to watch and do nothing. But I knew then that I had to prepare Dragon Little for the hardships outside her father’s dream.
I am not strong. Tomorrow I will gather my strength and tell you what happened the next time her father showed up.
—Told by The Red Dragon