Chapter Text
Once upon a time there was a little boy named Ridoc who lived on a farm. His mom had been eaten by a dragon, but that was okay because he was a very, very brave boy, and he knew that if you were brave enough you could talk to a dragon. He just had to find the dragon, and ask for his mom back.
He packed his bag full of all his most important things (a sandwich, an apple, some sundries—that’s what his mom called them—and his lucky socks) and headed out the door.
Ridoc trudged along a mountain path as he looked for a dragon. Well, a high-hill path.
...Okay, it was just the path along the creek about a mile from his farmhouse, but he lived in farm country and there weren’t a lot of mountains around, so there.
Suddenly he heard a rustling in the bushes around the bend. Little Ridoc puffed up his chest, wound up his bravery, and shouted—
"I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU!"
He squeezed his eyes shut, his small fists clenched by his side (because okay, maybe he was a teeny little bit afraid). He waited, trying not to tremble, and then something soft and wet nuzzled his forehead. Ridoc's eyes sprung open in surprise, and he found himself staring into the big round eyes of...
A cow. On a dark red leash. With a bell on its collar.
Ridoc blinked. That’s not how any cows on his farm went around.
Ridoc stared at the cow. The cow blinked slowly at Ridoc, lazily chewing some grass. And then a small figure stepped out from behind a tree, and Ridoc saw who was holding the leash.
It was a boy with curly dark hair. Ridoc had never seen him before, but there was something about him that he liked instantly. Maybe it was because the cow obviously trusted him. Cows had excellent instincts.
“Excuse me,” he said, because he was not only a brave boy but a polite one, “I’m looking for a dragon. It ate my mom. Have you seen it?”
“Nope,” said the dark haired boy. “But if you want, me and Alejandro can help you look.”
Ridoc thought seriously about this for five whole seconds. Then he nodded. “Yep. C'mon.”
And the two boys and Alejandro the cow set off down the creek to look for a dragon.
***
After a while it got hot and Ridoc sat down. The other boy looked at him. “What’re you doing?”
“Snackin’,” said Ridoc. He brought the apple out of his backpack. “A’venchrers gotta keep up their strength to talk to dragons, y’know.”
The curly-haired boy considered this, and then sat down next to him. “Have you ever talked to a dragon before?"
“No,” Ridoc said. “But my mom read me a book where someone did, so I’m pretty sure I know what to do.” He chomped on his apple and continued, “We have to say please. And wash our toes. Also, dragons like shiny things? So we should maybe bring it a present.”
The other boy nodded. He didn't blink at the fact that Ridoc was saying "we" like they were partners in this. No, not partners—something even more important. Buddies.
He stuck his hand out. "I'm Bodhi," he said.
Ridoc shook Bodhi's hand. "Ridoc," he said, around a mouthful of apple.
"Nice t'meetcha, Ribbit."
Ridoc didn't correct his new best friend, because he liked him so much, and also he liked frogs, so this was a pretty cool name.
They got up and continued along the creek. Bodhi told him about the town he came from, all the way on the other side of the hill, and his two friends Caden and Garrog. What kind of names were those? Ridoc thought. No way would they be brave enough to go dragon-talking.
When their feet got tired of walking, Alejandro let them clamber onto his big warm back. Ridoc wrapped his arms around Bodhi, looking this way and that for any sign of a dragon...
...When all of a sudden, the boys heard an earth-shattering ROAR.
“Duck!” yelped Ridoc as he dove off Alejandro’s back and tumbled onto the grass.
“It’s not a duck, it’s a dang dragon!” Bodhi shouted, diving off the cow onto the other side.
They scrambled to both get behind the cow and then slowly peered over Alejandro, gazing in awe at the giant-goshdarn-dragon that was now perched on the other side of the creek. It had shiny red scales that glittered in the evening light, and brilliant golden eyes. It was beautiful.
“Say something,” Bodhi whispered in Ridoc’s ear. “You’re the expert.”
Ridoc suddenly felt like maybe dragons in books were different from dragons in real life. But they’d come all this way, and he really wanted his mom back, so he cleared his throat and opened his mouth.
“I will trade you”—he checked his backpack quickly—“six—no, seven pairs of underpants if you give me my mom back!”
That was a lot of underpants, he knew, like a month’s worth, but it would be totally worth it to get his mom back.
Bodhi looked at him. “That’s a lot of underpants,” he whispered. “You must really like your mom.”
The dragon stared sternly down at Ridoc. Ridoc gazed up at the dragon. He tried to look unafraid, because in the dragon book it had said dragons could sense fear. The book hadn’t said anything about whether dragons liked underpants, though. But they were the best he’d got.
Ridoc crossed his fingers and tried to cross his toes in his boots too. He was so nervous—what if this didn’t work?—but then Bodhi reached out and squeezed his hand, and he felt a little better.
Suddenly, the dragon made a sound like a cough, or a sneeze—
—and then it said, quite clearly, in a wheezy-old-librarian sort of voice, “Dragons do not require underpants.”
Ridoc’s heart fell right down through his chest to his lucky socks. He’d worn them because they were lucky. They were supposed to have helped him. Now he’d never get his mom back.
Bodhi stood up straight beside Ridoc and squared his little shoulders. (He was littler than Ridoc, but the littler the kid, the bigger the brave, Ridoc’s dad always said.)
“I got some cool rocks!” Bodhi shouted. His voice cracked and the sentence ended in kind of a yelp-gulp.
He dug about in his pockets and held up a handful of rocks before him. There were red, smooth rocks, sparkly jagged silver ones, and little black pebbles flecked with gold—they were the coolest rocks Ridoc had ever seen.
“Rocks, you say...?” The dragon leaned in more closely, its golden eyes fixed on the rocks glittering in Bodhi’s small hands.
Bodhi swallowed audibly.
“I happen to adore rocks,” the dragon murmured. “I have a rather magnificent—if I do say so myself—collection, back in my cave.”
Ridoc and Bodhi looked at each other. Was the dragon inviting them to see the collection? And if so, was it really a good idea to follow a dragon back to its cave?
Ridoc thought of his poor mom, all eaten up, and said, hooking his thumb at Bodhi, “You c’n have his cool rocks, but ONLY after I get my mum back.”
The dragon narrowed its golden eyes to slits and shuffled its feet on the ground. Then it sneezed again. “You drive a hard bargain, boy.”
“His name is Ribbit!” Bodhi shouted. Or squeaked maybe.
And at that moment, something burst out of the trees and set all of their jaws a-dropping.
A cotton-candy-haired girl chased a dark-haired boy with a snorkel—a snorkel?—on his head like a bat outta hell, shrieking like the devil was in her, as he covered the back of his head with his hands, shouting, “I didn’t FUCKING do it, Pinky!!”
The two other kids disappeared into the trees on the other side of the clearing and were gone.
Bodhi and Ridoc stared after them. So did the dragon.
“That was Garrog,” Bodhi whispered out the side of his mouth.
The dragon shook its big head. “How strange. No matter. If you want to see your mother again, come this way,” it purred.
Ridoc did really want to see his mom again, because she was the best mom in the whole wide world and he didn’t want her to be all eaten up forever, and so he set out to follow the dragon. Bodhi crept along with him, the super cool rocks clutched tightly in his hands. Alejandro ambled behind them, mooing every so often. Alejandro didn’t seem worried at all, which was encouraging.
The dragon slunk along the creek bed towards a large opening in the mountainside. (Fine, fine, it was a little hillside.) He and Bodhi watched as its long red tail disappeared into the dark cave entrance.
“Okay,” Ridoc whispered in Bodhi’s ear, right outside the cave. “You distract it with the rocks, and I’ll distract it with my sandwich, and we’ll get my mom.”
“What kind of sandwich is it?”
“Ham,” Ridoc said.
“Oh. That’s my favourite too,” Bodhi nodded seriously. “That’ll work for sure.”
They leaped into the cave, each of them shouting “RAAAAAAAA!!” as they brandished their Ultimate Distractions.
But there was nothing there. Only darkness.
A sinister chuckle echoed through the cave, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. Even though the dragon's voice was still old-wheezy-librarian-ish, an old-wheezy-librarian chuckling sinisterly was definitely creepy. The creep factor was like thirty-seven . That was one of the highest numbers Ridoc knew.
He gulped. Lucky socks, don't fail me now, he thought.
The boys linked arms without a word, and they stepped forward into the cave, eyes wide and round as they peered into the dark, looking for the dragon—or Ridoc's mom.
There was a little curve at the back of the cave. Ridoc slowly poked his head around the wall of rock and saw...
Something magical.
Every nook and cranny of this part of the cave was covered with coloured rocks, pebbles and crystals from the dragon’s collection. A faint glow lit the cavernous space, and everywhere Ridoc looked a different colour of the rainbow caught the light, glittering, sparkling.
His mouth dropped open. He heard Bodhi gasp next to him.
And what he saw in the back corner of the cave made his eyes widen like saucers. My lucky socks must be the luckiest socks in the whole entire world, he thought, because sitting there, opposite the dragon (drinking a cup of tea? Huh) was his mom.
Ridoc stared at his mom. The dragon stared at him. Bodhi stared at the truly awesome rocks. From outside, Alejandro gave a distant "moo".
"MOM!!" Ridoc hollered, and ran pell-mell toward her, throwing himself at her as she very quickly put down her teacup and hastily scrambled to her feet only to be bowled over by her son's enthusiastic hug.
"Ridoc!" she exclaimed when she got her breath back. "What are you doing out here, pumpkin?"
Ridoc blubbered. He was suddenly crying so hard he couldn't even breathe right. And he didn't even care that he was crying in front of his new friend, because his mom was here and she was okay and she was definitely not eaten.
It took Ridoc three ginormous hugs and a huge mug of hot chocolate (don’t ask where it came from, Ridoc had no idea) to be able to breathe normally, with only the occasional hiccup! making him jump on the spot.
His mom was just explaining to him that she hadn’t exactly been eaten, but rather just transported (soggily) when the dragon had “gotten” her, when the little boy with the snorkel on his head came running into the cave, shrieking bloody murder, with the cotton-candy-haired girl hot on his heels. They both skidded to a stop upon seeing the small group gathered around the pot of tea.
“Garrog!” Bodhi exclaimed.
Ridoc felt a pang of sadness. Bodhi was just going to go home now, and he and Alejandro would forget all about him and go back to playing with stupid Garrog .
Stupid Garrog and Pinky (Ridoc was sure he'd heard Stupid Garrog call her Pinky, so that must be her name) took one look at the dragon, both shrieked in unison in exactly the same pitch, and turned around and ran like rabbits out of the cave. Ridoc could swear he almost saw a cool whirlwind effect whooshing after them.
Bodhi turned to follow his friends. Ridoc's heart sank. His shoulders slumped. His lucky socks drooped. He was the very picture of dejection. It was so obvious that his mum even patted him on the back, in a soothing kind of way.
But...at the cave entrance, Bodhi turned and looked over his shoulder.
"You comin', Ribbit?"
And he smiled.