How I Did Not Kill A Dragon

So, when I was a little child, I wanted to kill a dragon. Why did I want to kill a dragon- I don’t really think I know. There were vague things about them breathing fire and destroying crops and stealing sheep etc, but to be frank, no one had seen a dragon in a very long time, and my parent, who told me these stories, did not really know what dragons were, on account of never having seen one.

Well, I grew up like that, hearing stuff like dragons, and of heroes in the ancient days who had killed dragons and brought peace to the country. And Maize and rice and wheat had flowered and we had grown into a prosperous country populated with obese farmers like my father. Well, that would have been it, but they did tell me about dragons, and it was a bad year for crops, and I blamed it all on the dragons and, ergo, I decided to go to the northern islands where the last few remaining dragons were to be found. To try and slay all of them.

***

Well, if you have heard as many stories as I have, you know, that real life doesn’t work like stories. In a fairy tale, I would have reached the dragon island with a silver sword, a brass shield and an invincible aura, with all the people on the way helping me out just because I was out to kill the dragons. Sadly, it was not so. I reached the northern islands in rags, without a sword (because I had lost it in my last shipwreck-iron is heavier than water), not a shield (same reason), and tattered clothes (because I had travelled in the same clothes for three months. 

Well, I landed on the island, and saw no one around. So I shouted and shouted. ‘Is anyone around?’, I said, and ‘Are you dragons listening to me?’ and ‘Hey, come and fight me.’. But no one came. And so, (remember that I had no sword or shield), I walked inward. And what should I stumble upon, but an elephant’s trunk! I fell over it, got up, kicked it, and said some words I would rather you did not know. And then the trunk parted and showed itself to be a part of a mouth, and full of foot-long, razor sharp teeth.

***

‘Who are you?’ the mouth asked.

‘I….I am here’, I replied, trembling, ‘to kill a dragon. I am the last dragon hunter of the world.’

‘And I…am the last dragon of the world’

‘How…how’, I said, ‘do you speak human?’

‘Spent many centuries, listening to your fears.  Watched you grow stronger, and stranger. I am surprised not more of you want to hunt me down and kill me.’

‘I do not really want to kill you. You seem a nice enough chap.’

‘Then why are you here to kill me?’

‘Ohh, because no one has killed a dragon in a few centuries. And the maize is failing. And we think it is you. Have you been breathing fire over our crop?’

‘Look at me. I am a tired old body which cannot even move itself. Do you think I would find fun in trying to ruin your crop?’

‘Maybe your kids.’

‘You mean there is a dragonina, somewhere?’

‘I am here to kill you, not to matchmake.’

 ‘So go on.’

…

‘Did you know I have 76 kinds of teeth and 284 scales on my back?’

‘…’

‘Did you know that had I half the mind to do so, I could eat you alive?’

‘…’

‘Did you know, I never hurt your corn, I never tried to kill you, but I could eat you alive in 30 seconds?’

***

And that was how I did not kill a dragon. Or how a dragon did not kill me.