“The bad dreams, dearie, are called ‘nightmares’,” Mary began.
It was still the same day. Dragon Father had disappeared early into his waking world. Mary and Dragon Little had begun to talk about dreams, and Mary had shared her dreams with Dragon Little.
Now she was about to share her nightmares.
“In my nightmares…” she began. “I am walking in a big city… I’m not sure where. Certainly nowhere I’ve ever been.”
“A-ha!” My sharp dragon eyes could see through the curtain from my high vantage point that Dragon Little, only 2 years old at the time, was sitting up in her cot.
“I’ve only been in my home town in Ireland… Cork… and here. I have never been in a big city. And… there are cars… so many cars… so much traffic… cars the likes of which I had never seen… and then I cross the street… and a car hits me from the side… and I feel my leg hurt so much… and I know that it’s broken… And I think it’s forever… and then I wake up and I have to catch my breath.”
“You dream you get hit by a car?”
“Aye, lass. It’s always the same dream. I always feel… the same… And I always get hit by the car.”
There was a short silence, then Mary laughed awkwardly. “I hope I’m not putting the fear in you. I don’t want to give you nightmares.”
Dragon Little shook her head. “I don’t dream, Mary. I don’t dream night-rames.”
“Night… mares,” she corrected her, then I could see her approach the cot and tuck Dragon Little in again. “Of course you do, dearie. You just don’t remember them.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Nightmares help us face our fears.”
“I don’t have fears.”
“We need fears.”
“I don’t.”
“We need nightmares.”
“I don’t.”
“Aye,” Mary sighed, clearly not believing a word of it. “Well… if you don’t today, lass… you will need them in the future. Now go to sleep.”
Tomorrow I will tell you the last thing that happened that day before Dragon Little fell asleep.
—Told by The Red Dragon