IMMY GOES FLYING

Hau! Let me post this quickly from the leptorp before I try and fire up the returned main computah again.  The latter has had a very thorough gut transplant indeed.  Anyway, here is the final Immy instalment, for now:

 ‘You have wings, so why can’t you fly?’ Immy asked her dragon friend Fernis. She was riding on his back as she often did, and he had opened his wings to jump over a log.

   ‘Mine are too short to lift a dragon,’ Fernis replied. ‘I am the sort of dragon that can’t fly.’

 ‘A pity,’ said Immy. ‘One expects dragons to fly, somehow.’

 ‘I think Mommy and Daddy were able to,’ said Fernis. ‘There is a picture cut into the wall in my home cave that looks like a dragon flying, with some funny marks under it.’

 ‘Why is it that you don’t know?’ Immy asked.

 ‘My parents went away when I was very young and never came back.’ Fernis said sadly. ‘Maybe they got slain by knights with lances. Anyway, I grew up alone. That was the main reason I was always so cross.’

 ‘I would love to see that picture,’ Immy said.

 ‘Too late to go now, but I’ll take you there tomorrow,’ her friend promised.

 He was as good as his word, and the next day Immy found herself on a path just wide enough for Fernis, which led up along the face of a high cliff. The path ended at the mouth of a cave.

 ‘Come in,’ said Fernis. ‘That is my new bed, over there in the corner. The picture is on this wall.’

 The picture cut into the rock showed a dragon just like Fernis, but with much bigger wings. It did seem to be flying.

 ‘I think the marks under it are writing, but I can’t read it,’ said Immy. This is what she saw: 

Dragon wings
Are magic things
All dragons fly
If they try

 ‘I know,’ she said, ‘let’s come back tomorrow. I’ll bring a piece of paper and a crayon. Then I can rest the paper over the marks, and rub the crayon across the top so that the marks show up on the paper. I’m sure Mommy or Daddy could read it.’

 This plan went well, and next afternoon Immy and Fernis showed the piece of paper to Immy’s mother. ‘It says, “Dragon wings are magic things; all dragons fly if they try,”’ she read out to them. ‘I wonder what that means?’

 Immy jumped up and down. ‘It means you can fly, Fernis. You can; you can!  You just have to try hard so that the magic works!’

 Fernis flapped his wings for a while. Nothing happened, and Immy couldn’t make herself heard above the ‘flap-flap’ noise. ‘Let me up!’ she called.

 When she was on his back, she said, ‘Now, try again. That’s right. But you still think you won’t be able to fly, and that’s why you can’t. You know now that there is magic in your wings, so use it, and fly!’

 A second later, Immy said ‘Aaaaaaaah-eeeeeeek!’ The reason was that they were high in the air. Fernis’s wings had suddenly grown much longer, and the dragon had simply shot up. ‘Put me down!’ she yelled. He was wobbling a bit.

 ‘Why?’ said the dragon, filled with joy. ‘Isn’t this just wonderful?’

 ‘Yes, but I want you to learn properly before I ride with you!’ Immy said. ‘You might go upside-down by mistake or something!’

 It wasn’t long before Fernis was flying so well that Immy dared to ride him again. The wonder of being so high, and of seeing so much, took her breath away. They both had more fun than they could dream of.

 Immy’s mommy and daddy had given up being surprised or worried about almost all that their daughter did. They did shake their heads a lot, though.

 When Immy told them that she wanted Fernis to drop her off at school the next day, Daddy said, ‘Wouldn’t that be showing off a bit too much?’

 ‘Maybe,’ Immy smiled, ‘but there are some show-off-too-much things too-much-too-good to miss!’

 Almost all the parents and teachers and children were outside the school when they flew there next morning. There were shouts, and squeals, and shrieks. Some people ran away, and others rushed forward for a better look. Most just stood there, unable to believe their eyes.

 Fernis flew in a wide circle above them for a while. Immy was waving and had a grin almost as wide as the circle they were flying in.

 Then Fernis found a nice open place to land. Immy climbed down, and he flew away.

 She soon had crowds of people round her. They were all talking at the same time.

 It was the best show-off ever! 

© Colonialist January 2012 (Letterdash/WordPress)