Dragon Little and Dragon Father boarded the Pirate Ninjas’ empty ship, which lay in the shadow of the much bigger Bonny’s Revenge.
The Pirate Ninjas had run away from the lava creature and had abandoned their ship.
Somewhere aboard the ship were the toys the Pirate Ninjas had stolen, toys that had now been gifted to Dragon Little by the Dollies and the lava creature.
“I can’t find it, Daaad!” Dragon Little searched all over the cabins.
“Here it is!” Dragon Father dragged a big chest from behind one of the rum barrels. “This is where they put all their treasure.”
Dragon Little ran to her father and together they opened the chest.
“Oooh!” she said, her eyes seemingly shining with excitement.
Dragon Father sat down on the deck and began to pull out games. “Let’s see what we got here. These are building blocks… but they look strange. Oh! Each building block is a cloud! You can build a cloud city!”
Dragon Little gasped. I now realized that she had never had games before except for her Dollies.
“And this… Look: alien fighter spaceships!” They were small enough to fit in his hand.
Dragon Little jumped up and down, “I want them! I want them!”
I have seen a few toddlers’ dreams in the centuries I have lived, and they almost always dream of their parents and their toys. Perhaps toys are very important for children. Perhaps Dragon Father did not even know how much she needed them.
“And look at this…” Dragon Father pulled up a collection of toy swords and toy soldiers.
“Mine mine mine mine mine!”
“Whose the hell toys are these?” Dragon Father peered into the treasure chest. He took out more toy soldiers, trucks, tractors, and a fake laser gun.
“What’s going on? Don’t we have normal toys for a little girl? Oh, here’s something,” he pulled out a big fuzzy bear. “A teddy bear!”
Dragon Little was trying to hold all of her new toys in both hands, and toys kept falling. She looked at the teddy bear and said, “Pfah!” in disgust.
“It’s cute!”
“It’s not cute! It’s pfah!”
Dragon Father stood up. “Well, it’s the last of the toys. We’re taking everything and we’re taking the teddy bear, too!”
“I’ll just throw it overboard!”
Dragon Little carried half the toys and he carried the other half. “You will do no such thing, young lady! You’ll give it a name, that’s what you’ll do!”
“I’ll call it Pfah and throw it overboard!”
“Come on, it’s so cute and fuzzy!”
And so they continued to argue about it as they boarded the ship and put all the toys in Dragon Little’s cabin.
At the end of the day, when Dragon Father disappeared, the toys all remained, but the teddy bear disappeared and never returned.
—Told by The Red Dragon