This story begins with "Once Upon A Time," as the best stories do.
Imagine a steep-sided valley, cluttered with giant, spiky green pine trees and thick grass that reaches your socks, making you lift your knees high to run through it. Wildflowers spread their sweet, heady perfume on the gentle breeze, while bees hum musically as they collect pollen.
The people here are happy and hardworking, keeping their houses spick and span and their children's faces clean.
That particular summer was very hot and dry. The lean farm dogs grew sleepy and still. Farmers whistled lazily, staring into the distance, trying to remember their tasks. By two in the afternoon, the town was in a haze of slumber—grandmas nodded off over their knitting, and farmers snoozed in the haystacks. It was intensely hot.
No matter the heat, the children always played in the gentle, rolling meadows. With wide-brimmed hats and skin slippery with sunblock, they chittered and chattered like sparrows as they frolicked in their favorite spot.
This spot is crucial to our story, for there lies a large, long, scaly rock that looks remarkably like a sleeping dragon.
The children knew it was a dragon. The grown-ups knew it was a dragon. Even the dogs, cats, and birds knew. But no one was scared, for it never, ever moved.
The boys and girls would clamber all over it, poking it with sticks and hanging wet gumboots on its ears, but it didn't mind in the least. The men would sometimes chop firewood on its zigzagged tail—it was just the right height—and the Ladies' Weaving Group often spun sheep's fleece on its spikes.
On cool nights, when stars twinkled in a velvet sky and the children slept peacefully, the grown-ups would settle in with a mug of steaming cocoa. Then, the stories about how the dragon got there would begin. No one knew for sure; there were many versions depending on the family telling the tale. But one thing everybody agreed on was this: