Nerdychicken and Dugbear spent the rest of the evening pacing and sitting, interspersed with nervous, impatient chatting and vigorous thumb twiddling. They tried to make the time pass more quickly by popping popcorn and having a popcorn fight but when Trevor got home they had to stop. The last time they had a popcorn fight with him, he ended up paralyzing both of them for 20 minutes and setting their big comfy couch on fire.
“That’s okay,” said Trevor with a sheepish grin, “I’m too excited to play any games anyway! I knocked on every door in our neighbourhood! I even went to see that ‘Mr Grumpypants’ chimera out on the bluff! I don’t know why he’s always being such a poophead. We all try so hard to make friends with him and he just wants to be alone. Should we go over there tomorrow with some of our fancy monkeycakes? Maybe he would like us better then! Remember the time when we all went out to the bluff with the balloon bombs filled with skunkjuice and paint? Boy, he really hated….”
“Trevor!” yelled Nerdy and Dug in unison, trying to bring him back from his tangent.
“Haha, sorry… I did it again…um, yeah, so ahhh. Oh! Right! Nobody knows anything about the egg!” he squealed. “I’m pretty sure it’s just for us!”
They all smiled at each other and turned to look at “their” gift from Santa, all snuggled up next to the fire. Happy in the knowledge that the egg would be staying with them, they set about cleaning up from the night’s activities. Once the house was neat as a pin, they bid each other and their sweet little egg goodnight and headed off to their cozy beds. All thinking to themselves how excited they were and planning to sneak down by themselves later to check on the egg. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.
The next morning, the friends all jumped out of their beds and ran to the egg at almost precisely the same moment! They were so preoccupied by getting to the egg that Dug still had his ‘binky’ wrapped around his neck and Nerdy still had pieces of straw and fuzzy feathers from her nest-bed stuck with dried drool to the side of her face. Nobody cared because …
THE EGG HAD HATCHED!!!!!!
There, in the middle of their family room surrounded by broken pieces of egg shell, was the sweetest, most beautiful, most adorable baby dragon! Finally, their dreams were coming true. They’re little friend-family had grown again and they couldn’t be happier.
Nerdy’s eyes welled up with tears as she rushed toward the little wyrmling. Dug was right behind her, but he was trying to slow her down.
“Wait! Nerdy! We don’t want to scare the baby!”
Almost as if on cue, the dragon let out a little ‘yeep’ sound, and at what seemed like an impossible speed, crawled into the crackling fireplace and flew up the chimney.
Panic ensued.
To be continued….