Thread by @artbyailbhe

Once upon a time there lived a wide (ooh, keeping the typo) old dragon.

The dragon lived in a nest of grapevines, twisted and knotted together, which floated on the surface of a lake so deep it was purple.

Also in the lake lived a team of mermaids, who played water football against the seahorses on Wednesday evenings after school.

(they didn't use a ball, that would be silly. They used a pufferfish).

One Thursday morning, the dragon was woken by a cold, wet spot, under her left wing. She rolled ripely over like a watermelon, rested on her right wing, and tried to go back to sleep.

But the cold crept across to the ridges on her back.

She sat up.

In the middle of her nest, where the oldest vines and brownest, driest leaves had been, a puddle was creeping up and spreading out. "OH NO YOU DON'T!" she roared, and poof, 🔥 🐲 the water was blasted to steam ♨️

But it came back. She blew gently on the place the damp was coming in, and thought for a bit, and then decided there was only one thing for it.

She puffed out all the lovely hot air that kept her so light and cosy, and slithered, deflated, off the nest and into the cold, dark lake 🐉〰️❄️

She dived into the darkest place, under the nest, and saw that there was a tangle of hair, bits of fabric and a horrible, gouged ditch, right in the middle of the underside.

Football hooligans again.

(are you asleep yet?)

The dragon gathered the scraps of evidence with her claws, swam beach to the surface, and laboriously climbed out -- all that muscle is heavy when you're not lighter than air to compensate.

She lay on the edge of the nest, avoiding the weak spot, and it lurched unsettlingly. 🐉🌅🍇 This was the newest bit, not dead yet, so she ate some grapes.

When she was warmer she raised herself up on her front legs, threw back her head, and drew a huge breath in through her fire.

🔥🐲🎈

She grew huge and fat and shiny and spread her wings out wide in relief.

With the locks of hair and scraps of fabric hooked on a claw, she took herself up into the morning sky to look for the ball players.

🤽🤽‍♀️🤽‍♂️🐡🥅 They were not easy to find, negate after being up brawling all night they were absolutely exhausted and stayed in bed 🛀

Negate? Because.

So the dragon blew the surface of the lake up into a small ripple 〰️ and then another going the other way 〰️ and then they became a great wave 🌊

And so all the creatures who lived in the lake were woken up, however tired or grumpy they were, and those who weren't amphibian dived deep into the dark, but the mermaids had to surface.

As she did in natural storms, the dragon dragged her huge trail across the lake for them to cling to, and thirty-five or forty of them escaped that way.

She brought them to a little pond above the waterfall, to keep their tails wet, and then sat back. When they stopped chittering about the weather and the chill of the wind as they flew, she sat back more, and raised her head, and dangled the rags in front of them.

She said nothing.

One of the very youngest mermaids started to cry.

One of the oldest mermaids lashed her tail and tried to jump over the falls but the dragon's claw thumped down across her back and stopped her.

"It wasn't ME," whined the mermaid. Of course she was lying -- mermaids always lie -- and so the other mermaids, in their rush to contradict her, told all.

The pufferfish didn't want to be a football, and tried to swim away. It hid in a tangle of branches and vines and almost succeeded, but the oldest and bravest mermaid went looking.

Obviously she should have gone to the dragon and said "Excuse me, our ball has gone under your bedroom, please can you kick it back?" but, mermaids. Uff.

So she went underneath. And the pufferfish caught sight of its own reflection in her gleaming scales and in its shock at seeing a rival, PUFF

it exploded into a huge fishballoon and pricked itself to death on the twigs it was hiding in.

The biggest, bravest mermaid was terrified and swam straight up to the surface, but the dragon's nest was in the way.

She got stuck.

None of the other mermaids were quite brave enough to go under someone's house without permission, though they thought she was taking a long time.

And none of them were brave enough to ask permission, either.

And it was getting dark.

And the seahorses were trying to argue that the mermaids had lost by default.

But the biggest mermaid didn't know any of this, because her hair was caught across her face and tangled in vines and she couldn't see properly, and her team jersey was caught up under her clamshell bra

So she just got her tail behind her, clenched her fists, and pushed down with all her might, leaving hair and clothes and a big, loosening mess of nest.

She was so angry with herself for being silly that she turned the seahorses' argument into a full fight, when she got back, and the mermaids chased them all the way past the moonpath into the shadows of the cliffs.

Then the mermaids bickered all the way back to the low side of the lake because they had no ball AND no opposing team. And school tomorrow.

And they all went to sleep in a terrible temper, because there's nothing quite as unpleasant as knowing you've made all your own problems.

And then they were woken by quite a serious storm 🌊🌊🌊and rescued by someone who clearly knew it was one of THEM who'd broken her house.

The dragon was warm and full of fire and righteous anger, which feels quite good. But the mermaids were still chilly, and silly, and bitter and resentful.

So the dragon raised her huge head 🐲 and stretched her scaly wings🦇and bared her great black teeth

And her righteous anger floated her gently up as it swelled her even wider

And she said

"Serves you right."

And she said, "It is easier to ask permission than beg forgiveness, especially from that poor dead pufferfish."

She dipped her tail into the sand and flicked a cloud of it into the sky.

🏖️🔥🎆

She blasted the sand into a ball of glass, fragile and shimmering and hollow.

"Now," she said, "you will first repair my nest, using kelp - NOT the otters' kelp, I'm watching you, get your own - and then you will send one of your number to promise the fish you will never do that again.

Fish are friends, not footballs.

And when you have done those things, you can have this ball, which is too fragile to pay a game of brute force, and you can apologise to the seahorses and maybe they'll agree to play nicely.'

And she put the ball in the top of a tree🌳 and went and lay on a rock to soak up the sunshine, while the mermaids slinked over the waterfall to do their work.

They were all HOURS late for school, too, and got a detention.

The end.

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