The Dragon and His Dinner:A Classic-ish Fairytale

  Once upon a time...

  Okay, that’s been done, but do you know a better way to start a fairytale? Not your modern, urban fairytale, but a real classic-ish fairytale, with dragons, and serfs, and an evil sorcerer. So our story begins...

  Once upon a time there lived a Dragon. He was not a particularly nice dragon, nor was he especially mean. He was not a fearful dragon, afraid of his own shadow, nor was he terribly fierce. He was not exceptionally smart, or really stupid. (I think you get the picture.) He was just your average fire-breathing, human-eating, giant, scaly dragon. And he did not have a ridiculous name like Virgil. He was simply known as Dragon, as all the other dragons were at the time.

  This Dragon lived in the time of the Middle Ages around 1050 AD in feudal England near an average size serfdom named Muldenderry. Needless to say, the Dragon fed off the serfs of Muldenderry; serfs being his staple diet.

  Every month or so, Dragon would go shopping for his food in Muldenderry, flying in on his enormous wings. The serfs could hear him coming from miles off, the sound of his wings beating the sky like sonic booms ringing from the air. The serfs really couldn‘t miss it. And they would scatter like the four winds when they heard that Dragon coming.

  He, the Dragon, would swoop down on the fleeing serfs, his huge claws going snap as he plucked them off the ground, their little legs still in mid-run.

  With several serfs in each grotesque claw, and a few hanging from his salivating jaws, he would fly back to his lair on the top of Dragon Mountain, where he could prepare them for his next meal.

  Dragon never ate the serfs right away. He thought it was unhealthy to eat them straight off the ground. So he would make sure they were properly cleansed, by feeding them plenty of high-fiber grains, and lots of fruits and veggies for a few days. That way the Dragon knew they were clean inside and out, and ready to eat.

  When that time came, he would cook them up just the way he liked ‘em, crispy on the outside, not too well done inside. (Many of his friends preferred them rare, or even raw, but he never did acquire a taste for that.)

  The Dragon, being the fun loving guy that he was, particularly enjoyed playing with his food when he finally got to eat it. "This is the most pleasurable way to eat," he would think to himself, as he delicately picked the serfs up by an arm or leg, then fling them straight into the air. In mid-flip, he would blow out a puff of fire and smoke, frying them perfectly. Then, catching them on his enormous tongue, sizzling and hot, he would savor the flavor and aroma of each charred serf. With one last sniff, he would chomp down on their little bodies and swallow with a gulp. He had not quite perfected the two-serf-fry yet, but he was working on it.

  Dragon liked the taste of serfs better than any other animal he ever tried. He even liked to eat the little children, especially the fat, juicy ones, because they would go ‘pop’ in his mouth like caviar when he bit down on them.

  The Dragon’s main problem with eating serfs was that he was so big he needed to eat about 120 adults to get even a little full, and he could only transport about ten at a time. The back and forth was killing him. This was the same problem that many of his friends had to contend with as well. Several of his dragon friends decided simply to eat out instead, which meant eating a whole small castle in one trip. But that too was becoming a problem, as there were only so many small castles around. The serfs started to develop new and better technologies, and were beginning to build increasingly bigger castles with harder stone materials, which was not good for the teeth, or proper digestion. Luckily, because they were reptiles of a sort, they only ate once a month. Still, he thought, there had to be better ways to obtain larger numbers of food at one time.

  One day it took the Dragon twice as long as usual to collect his supper. Most of the serfs somehow disappeared when he had gone down to gather them up, and he was at a complete loss as to where the puny serfs had gotten to.