Too Many Dragons

Too Many Dragons

- Debbie Urbanski

SKOKI LIVED IN another world not far from our world but far enough away. Her world had many things our world has, like green grass and apple trees and fluffy clouds. But her world also had something we don’t have: dragons. Lots and lots of them. When Skoki woke up in the morning and looked outside, she saw at least a dozen dragons, blue and green and orange ones, perched in her backyard. One larger dragon usually was crouching on top of her family’s garage, flapping its silver wings and breathing out bright flames.

Sometimes, she even found tiny dragons tangled in her hair.

Skoki was pretty happy in her world except for one thing: she was sick of all the dragons. She was tired of them crawling across her bedroom ceiling at night. She was tired of finding a dragon curled up on her porch in the morning, blocking her way to school. She was tired of dragons being all sorts of colors— pink, grey, violet, silver—but never brown, her favorite color.

To be honest, she wished the dragons would go away and be replaced by the strange creatures she had only read about in books.

Brown creatures with six legs and the cutest antennae coming out of their heads.

Rare and mythical creatures called stinkbugs.

In her bedroom, Skoki drew pictures of stinkbugs, filled her shelves with books about stinkbugs, and piled stuffed animals in the shapes of stinkbugs onto her bed. She loved their stripes. She loved their beady eyes. She loved their spindly legs.