The Orange Dragons

The Beginning:

Grand-daddy Royston rocked and he rolled and he tumbled over and over, firstly to his left, then to his right as he fell into the under-water darkness of the small pond not very far from the house where he lived. It felt to him like he was inside a washing machine, but one with a huge difference. This one had flashing orange lights – bright lights at that – and they pierced his eyes from outside through the wall of the glass bubble he was inside. The flashes were so intense and fast, they turned his eyes from a rapid blink into almost completely closed ones.

He fell face down onto the bottom of the glass bubble then managed to lift himself a short distance up onto his elbow’s. For a split second only, he saw two other glass bubbles far to his left, disappear into the mud at the bottom of the pond. His heart sank. Teddy, his grandson and Busy-Bea, their new friend inside those two glass bubbles had gone – he knew not where, or whether he would ever see them again. He felt a very short vibration in one of his pockets. He felt inside – nothing, except an image of Mr. B, Teddy’s school teacher, appeared in his mind.

The glass washing machine started up again, it rocked Grand-daddy Royston this way and that. Now, there were many more orange lights surrounding his bubble - in fact the whole outside of his protective globe shone bright orange. Then, a small dot appeared in amongst the mass of orange and grew. The dot was soon joined by another one. Together the pale green dots not only grew larger, but the hue of their green colour intensified. The dots stared at Grand-daddy Royston like a pair of alien eyes, and followed his every movement until his glass bubble came to an abrupt stop, then the eyes disappeared.

Grand-daddy Royston was no bigger than the head of a pin. He’d been shrunk down in size by Busy-Bea’s magical powers so that he, and his grandson Teddy, could go off on an exciting adventure to the Land-of-Santamonious, the home of a colony of friendly bees and help break a curse holding them tight to a colony of nasty creatures called dragasps, and their home called the Land-of-Nowhere. Now though, cast off from Teddy and Busy-Bea by some bright orange and black creatures, he wouldn’t get to go on the exciting adventure – or even to know how it worked out, so he thought at the time.