‘And what is a Fur-Dragon?’ you might ask.
Fur-Dragons are like normal dragons, but they are covered in fur.
Short Fur.
Long Fur.
Stripey Fur.
All-the-same Fur.
And sometimes, on very special occasions, Spotty Fur.
They live high in the clouds, at about the same level as Castles-In-The-Air and Pies-In-The-Sky.
Indeed, what Fur-Dragons live in, are Castles-In-The-Air, and what they mostly live on, are Pies-In-The-Sky.
Princess Prancie was not what you would call a bad Fur-Dragon.
She just wasn’t what you’d call a very good Fur-Dragon.
She stole Pies-In-The-Sky from the table in the Big Kitchen.
She liked to jump up and down on the good settee in the Big Hall.
And when she fell asleep she would sprawl out over the whole bed and leave no room at all for Little Hoo.
This is Little Hoo.
Little Hoo, as you will know by now, was also a Fur-Dragon.
But he was a very little Fur-Dragon. At least when he had to squeeze into one corner of the bed.
Little Hoo was not what you would call a bad Fur-Dragon.
He just wasn’t what you would call a very good Fur-Dragon.
He wrote his name on everything, especially trees, lamp-posts and fire-hydrants.
His favourite game was Tunnels. (You play Tunnels by digging a lot of tunnels in your back garden.)
At night he would creep into the bedroom of the King and Queen, and try to sleep on their bed.
But he wasn’t a baby and they told him to go and sleep in his own bed.
Little Hoo thought of his own bed, which was mostly covered by Princess Prancie, and he felt very sad.
So he thought he would climb out the window and go play Tunnels.
This is one of the things that make him not a very good Fur-Dragon. You know, he had been told many times by the King and Queen that he was never, never to go outside at night.
Because the sky is different at night. And you can fall through it.
***
Princess Prancie woke up very early, as she usually did. Usually, she woke up before everyone else, and went down to the Great Hall to jump up and down on the good settee. But today she didn’t do that. Instead, she noticed that Little Hoo wasn’t in his corner of the bed. She got up and looked under her legs to see if she had been lying on him, but he wasn’t there either. Then she went to the bedroom of the King and Queen, to see if they had let him sleep in their bed. But they hadn’t.
Princess Prancie, though not a very good Fur-Dragon, was not a bad Fur-Dragon. She thought of Little Hoo, and then she thought of No Little Hoo, and the second thought made her very sad. So she leapt out the window to go and find him.
Little Hoo wasn’t in the garden. But Princess Prancie wondered if he was playing Tunnels, and if maybe he was down a very deep tunnel. So she found the deepest tunnel there was, and started to climb down it.
It was very deep, and very dark. There were scary roots.
At last, Princess Prancie heard a faint noise, and she saw a faint light. And then she fell.
She spread out her wings and flew over a strange country, with green fields and blue mountains.
Little Hoo might be down there, she thought to herself. And if he was down there, how would she ever find him?
She thought of all the things that Little Hoo liked, and the places he might go.
He liked cheese, which was made by cows. Princess Prancie looked down, over the whole big green blanket of land, and she saw a field where cows stood, chatting with each other and chewing cud. But there was no Little Hoo talking to them.
He liked digging, which was what gardeners did. There was a beautiful garden at the edge of the horizon, all overflowing with blossoming flowers and big stretching trees. It was hard to see if Little Hoo was in there, because of all the leaves. Princess Prancie decided she would search the garden last, if she did not find him anywhere else.
Little Hoo liked meeting other Fur-Dragons, but Princess Prancie couldn’t see any of them about. That made her feel strange. And he liked having his belly rubbed by the King and Queen, but of course they weren’t here either. Princess Prancie sniffed, and began to cry. She couldn’t find a hankie (in fact, she never really carried one - remember she was not an overly-good Fur Dragon) and it became hard to see where she was going, because of the tears in her eyes. She stopped beating her big wings and instead she held them up, like a soft sail. This brought her gently to the ground. When she landed she felt soft green grass under her paws. She looked around and found she was in the beautiful garden.
The air was full of strange, enchanting smells, and Princess Prancie’s nose began to twitch uncontrollably. Her nose wanted to run down along the flowerbeds, and rootle through the undergrowth, and find things. Her nose wanted to do this so much, it made her forget about Little Hoo. She became very happy. Fur-Dragons are naturally inclined to be happy, not sad. It’s the way they are made. She snuffled through bushes and snootled into dead trees; she sniffed dark crumbly soil and snooped under stones. Fur-Dragons like to smell things almost as much as they like to eat things - to Fur-Dragons, smells are the same as music is to you (if you are a Human, and not some other animal). So Princess Prancie felt the way you might, if you were surrounded by the most wonderful music you had ever heard. (Assuming, of course, that you are a Human, and not some other animal).
She was so happy, she began to prance through the garden, taking in big, greedy sniffs with each bound. And that was when she fell over the mole hill.
She had never seen a mole hill before. But it looked like something Little Hoo would make, when he was playing Tunnels.
‘Little Hoo!’ Princess Prancie called.Well, it wouldn’t sound like that to you. When Princess Prancie called it sounded like someone playing an oboe. But I have been translating all this into Human, so you can understand it. (You are a Human, aren’t you? And not some other animal?)
A little animal trundled out of the hole in the ground, but it was not a Fur-Dragon. It was black and velvety, and it squinted up at Prancie as if it could not see her very well, and was, moreover, in a bad temper.
‘Do you own this?’ it squeaked. (And I wonder how what it spoke could be understood by a Fur-Dragon, because it didn’t speak Dragonish, now that I think about it. Because it was a mole, as you already knew, you clever Human, you.)
‘Do I own what?’ oboed Princess Prancie.
‘This! It must be yours! You smell the same!’ and it pointed to something nearby, which was covered in very special Fur Dragon spotty fur, but which had no head. Princess Prancie gasped, and all the happiness that had filled her up like a balloon, escaped again in a big sigh. Little Hoo Had No Head!
‘It’s been digging in my garden all day!’ the mole went on, waving its little arms about. ‘And disturbing all the worms before I can get to them!’.
‘What do you want with worms?’ Princess Prancie asked, momentarily forgetting about Little Hoo and his missing head. You will think that this was not quite loving of Princess Prancie, but it was not unlovingness, it was just that she forgot about things very easily.
‘I eat them,’ the mole snapped, as if this was the silliest question he had ever heard.
‘Well that’s very mean of you!’ she said.
‘I. Bite. Off. Their. Heads.’ the mole said.
‘Oh! Like you bit off the head of Little Hoo!’ she cried, and wondered to herself if she would bite off the horrible mole’s head. But just then, hearing his name, Little Hoo pulled his head out of the hole he was digging, and looked around.
‘Prancie!’ he exclaimed (he sounded a bit like a tin-whistle, because he was only a very little Fur dragon, and smaller things usually have higher voices than bigger things, have you noticed?)
So Prancie forgot about the mole, which was just as well because it wasn’t really his fault he ate worms, nobody ever made him dinner. And she helped her little brother get up into the air (which he wasn’t very good at, yet, being only very little) and they flew up into the clouds to their Castle-In-The-Air, and had Pie-In-The-Sky for tea.
p.s. Greyhounds deserve the name Fur-Dragon for a good few reasons:
Like dragons in books...
...they sleep all day
...a lot of people think they're scary, when in fact they're not at all
...a lot of greyhounds will steal little things and hoard them in their beds
...sadly, they're often treated badly by people. Dragon rescue groups are well-funded by the P.U.A.O.P.K. (Princesses United Against Overly Protective Knights) but greyhound rescues could always do with help.
...they have wings!*
(* invisible wings. And they can only fly if you're not there, so don't try to throw them out of trees or anything.)
