A Family of My Own
My name is Sunna, which is short for Sunnamar. I’m a young dragon. I have a human family and I want to tell you some things about my life.
I have a bed of my very own. It’s called a basket and it sits on the floor, right in front of the big glass doors in the living room. When I go to sleep at night, I look up and see all the bright stars. If I curl up in it to take an afternoon nap, the sun shines right on me so I feel warm and cozy. And when the glass doors are open, there’s a wonderful breeze that brings the smells of the grass and the trees to me and makes the sheer curtains flutter, just like the wings of a butterfly.
My basket is round and it’s made of rough bumpy stuff. If I rub the side of my head on the bumps, it feels very nice...just like a good scratch.
Since it’s as wide as one of the doors, it’s exactly my size. It’s big enough for me to get into and then walk in a little circle, but small enough for me to feel the sides curve around my back, my wings and my tail when I curl up inside it. There’s a thick blue quilt in the bottom that’s so soft, I could stay in it forever.
I have a favorite human in this place, too, and her name is Olivia. She was right there the day I broke through my shell and came out of my egg. It was her voice I heard calling to me in that dark place.
That was my Awakening Day and it made a magic connection between Olivia and me that only we can feel. Because of it, I can always tell where she is and how she’s feeling, like if she’s happy or sad or scared and she can tell the same thing about me. What’s really fun is that we can talk to each other with our minds.
When a human talks to me, I can understand what they are saying. But, when I want to say something to a human, my dragon mouth can’t form the words, so I just think them to Olivia and she talks out loud for me.
She has human boys and girls she hangs around with sometimes, just like I have other dragons my age that I can be with; but, we’d rather be with each other because we’re best, best friends.
When Olivia’s not in school, she’s almost always at home where I am. Sometimes she reads aloud to me so I can learn about the human world. Other times we get to go outside where we can run and I can spread my wings all the way out and pretend I’m flying. Someday I’ll be able to fly for real, but right now, I’m just too little.
Olivia says that next year I’ll be old enough to go to dragon school. That sounds kind of scary, but exciting, too, because then I’ll be able to teach her all kinds of things about the dragon world.
In the house, there’s a kitchen with a huge fireplace that Olivia’s parents sometimes use to make special meals. It’s so big that it takes up almost half of one of the walls. Olivia’s mom says it’s just like the ones families used a long time ago in the olden days. I get to practice my fiery breathing in the kitchen, as long as I aim at the big fireplace and don’t roar too loudly.
One time, I heard Olivia’s mom tell Olivia’s dad that maybe I should practice my breathing on Uncle Frank’s ugly and noisy old car. Olivia’s dad laughed and said that might be the only way to make him get a new one.
As a surprise to them, I tried it one Sunday afternoon when Uncle Frank came over for dinner. I waited until everybody was busy and then I ran outside. I took a deep, deep breath so my dragon fire would be big enough to cover his whole car.
When I pushed the air out of my special dragon-fire lung, it made a big flame and a really, really loud and scary noise. The outside of the car got all melted and the horn started beeping and wouldn’t stop. It was stinky, too.
I thought they’d be happy about what I’d been able to do, but Uncle Frank got very, very mad and waived his arms around. He yelled out a lot of words I’d never heard before and when I looked around, no one was smiling.
I was afraid I had done something very bad and I’d be sent away, so I ran and hid behind a big tree in the woods near the house. Olivia found me and we stayed there together for a long time. We tried to be very quiet so no one would know where we were. We saw a big truck come up the drive and when it went away, it took Uncle Frank and his car with it.
After the truck left, Olivia’s mom and dad came looking for us. When they found us, Olivia talked to them for me. She told them that I didn’t mean to make Uncle Frank so upset and that I thought I was doing something clever and good. They explained that it was never okay to break something on purpose that belongs to someone else. They said it was going to be okay, though, because we are a family and families love each other, no matter what happens.
Then, Olivia’s mom and dad looked at each other and started laughing really hard. They laughed like that for a long, long time and then Olivia, her little brother, Jaxon, and her mom and her dad all gathered around me and we had what they called A-Family-Hug.
I’m very happy that I have a family. I wonder what we’ll do next!