The Girl and the Dragon

Once upon a time in the land of Nod, there lived an evil dragon that spat out great fiery flames at people for fun, it seemed. He lived all alone in his lair deep inside the Gefilte-fish caves, guarding a hoard of gold and basically doing all that dragons normally do.

Sometimes he would come out of his cave to roast up a town or some carts or some fields or some filet mignon, and of course this frightened the poor citizens of said towns.

One outstandingly handsome prince decided that he would hire a knight errant in search of fame and fortune to go and kill the dragon. The only problem was that most of his knights were old and decrepit, and no one in his right mind in the town was willing to don some armor and poke at the dragon.

But salvation came in the form of a little girl, who did not know that her name would go down in the annals of history- and this story –as the one who saved the land of Nod from eternal fiery peril.

It was a nice spring day, and Linda Girlahand was out carousing with the bunnies and butterflies and picking flowers, doing everything that is so characteristic of romantically-inclined young women, when she heard a tear fall to the ground. Being the wonderfully sensitive and unthinkably dim-witted young woman that she was, she went to find out what had made that tear splash to the ground.

She saw the dragon in all its scaly glory, nostrils spurting out pepper and fiery eyes steaming. And the dragon was indeed crying, though as everyone should know when a dragon cries large rocks fall out of its eyes.

“Why are you crying, mister dragon?” she asked in a sweet and innocent voice.

“Because I am so alone and bored. I have burnt up all the fields and carts and towns and filet mignons in the valley. I have nothing left to do, and now I am persecuted everywhere I go.”

She thought about this a while, then said

“Why don’t you make friends?”

“Because I’m scared I might fry them to death.”

She thought again, then said

“Just hold your breath then.”

“No; that won’t would,” replied the dragon dramatically.

“Then go and find another dragon to be your friend,” she said, smiling in her innocent, dim-witted way.

The dragon looked at her, and then let out a riotous laugh.

“That’s it!”

He took off flying into the air, and while the sight of him scared the people, replanting fields, building new carts and houses, and preparing their filet mignons, they were very much relieved when they saw that the dragon was flying away.

The outstandingly handsome prince found the girl and gave the choice of anything in the kingdom that she wanted for saving them from the dragon; and being the dim-witted young woman that she was she chose to be his wife, and subjected herself to a life of politics and masked balls.

As for the dragon, he never returned. But the citizens of Utorpia were most unhappy when they realized that their fire insurance had skyrocketed, and that they were out of filet mignon.