Janets’ Dragon
By D.R.Sag (Richard)
and Zi Qiu Huang (Janet)

Some characters are from actual beings others are from legends and dreams some are drawn from active imaginations while others exist in the same context that love and honor exist.

Janet (Zi Qiu) lives with her brother Ken ( Zi Hua)and parents near a beach on an inlet on the coast of a great nation. They live in a little stone house with a shinny red metal roof and a yard covered with flowers and neatly trimmed rose bushes.

Janet’s mother and father craft beautifully woven baskets that they sell to tourist that visit the beach on their vacation. Janet helps her parents with what she can and loves living near the beach with all its excitement but with it all she dreams of friendly dragons that enable people to fly and discover the wonders of the whole world. Janet wishes she had her very own dragon and the adventure it could bring. Other children would dream of puppies and kittens even horses but Janet only dreamed of a dragon of her very own. She knew that you could never own a dragon all she wanted is a dragon that would be hers alone.

Janet’s mother would have Janet go to the market and purchase the food for the daily meal it was the a responsibility she took very serious and once a week she would give her a small coin to spend any way she wanted.

On the way Janet would stop to watch the neighborhood boys fly their dragon kites, watching the kites reach into the winds and fly high almost touching the clouds. I wish I had a dragon than I to can fly up into the clouds. In the market square their we lots of children purchasing sweet things to eat, little flat honey cakes and rock candy on little sticks. Janet passed a little old woman in the corner of the market with a little wooden bowl on the ground near where she sat and a small sign that said please help me I need food for my cat and myself. Janet dropped her small coin in the bowl and went on home carrying the groceries her mother had asked her to purchase that day.

Janet liked walking through their garden full of flowers she liked the colors and the fragrances her mother and father picked some of the flowers and made dye to color the grasses they used to make their baskets. The garden’s flowers were enjoyed by; butterflies, birds and the bees that lived in a wooden hive in the back yard. Janet’s parents would harvest the honey the bees had made from the sweet tasting pollen gathered all season long.

Janet looked to the flying things and wished she had a dragon so she to could fly and visit distant gardens she had read about.

In the mornings Janet and her brother would go down to the beach and gather shells that had washed up with the nights waves. It was a fun time of the day and the exciting variety of shells they gathered made them giggle with delight. Mother and father would fill some of their baskets with the shells its seems that the tourist were delighted with the variety of shells as well.

Janet liked the picture on the side of the box of tea leaves she had purchased for mother it had a dragon design on it; she impatiently waited for the tealeaves to be used up so she could have the box all to her self. She wished for the day she could have a dragon friend that looked like the picture on the box.

It was Janet’s chore to go to market again and again her mother gave her a little coin to take with her to purchase something sweet like the other children she took her brother along with her and he to was given a little coin, which he tucked into his shirt pocket. On the way they stopped to see the dragon boats practicing for the dragon boat festival. Ken liked watching the gaily-colored boats racing on the smooth water. Seeing the dragon boats Janet wondered what color would the dragon she wished for be.

Week after week Janet would head to town, watching the dragon kites in flight and the dragon boats skimming on the smooth water. He brother would tag along looking forward to spending his coin on some sweet tasty treat. Janet would purchase the family needs from mothers list and on the way home would drop her coin into the bowl where the old woman sat.

One day when Janet finished shopping she looked around and the old woman was no longer sitting where she had always been. Janet finally saw the old woman walking towards her with her usual smile the old woman than held out her hand toward Janet and when it opened out of it flew a small fluttering humming bird that started darting in and around and circling the two of them. The old woman said six words to Janet and than with a wave walked away “hummingbird to dragon, dragon to humming bird”.
The old woman had disappeared but the humming bird still fluttered around Janet’s head and her brother laughed at the little bird’s attraction to his sister.

When Janet arrived home she saw the little bird dart off to the tallest flowers in the yard poking its long beak into its juicy nectar cups. Janet pointed out the little bird to her mother and father who were delighted at the presence of the humming bird in their garden.