41 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
41 lines
2.5 KiB
Plaintext
THE RED DRAGON
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Once there was a time, thousands of years ago, when animals were not the
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same as they are now. Except for a few like the lion, the tiger and the
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butterflies, they all looked alike. All were more or less the same height,
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everyone had four legs and it wasn't easy to tell which was which, even though
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the elephant did weigh more than the hyena, and the hippo more than the
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gazelle. One day, while all the animals were relaxing in a field, along came a
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red dragon, out of breath, crying,
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"We're in danger, folks! The world is about to come to an end!"
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"How do you know?" everyone asked. The dragon replied,
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"I read it in the stars. We must escape!"
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"But where can we go?" they asked him.
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"To another world," he replied. "I'll take you there. I can fly and I'll
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take you to a planet that is safer than this one." Frightened, as they were,
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all the animals climbed on to the dragon's back.
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With a bored look, the lion said, "I'm not scared of anything, so I'll just
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stay here on Earth." The others, however, were fighting to get on the dragon's
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back.
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"Don't push, you behind!" shouted the crocodile.
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"Hey, move that paw!" It was just like people today pushing and shoving to
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get onto an overcrowded train. At last the dragon cried,
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"Ready! Off we go," and started to run for takeoff. The first and the
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second runs weren't fast enough, but at the third try he finally got off the
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ground, flapping his wings and waving his tail.
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"Not so fast!" shouted somebody, and another voice yelled: "Faster, or we
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will end up in the trees!" The dragon replied,
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"Oh, bother! I'm doing the best I can. Why don't you lot keep still, for
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once." The fact was that because they were frightened, they did everything but
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keep still, and so, after a while, the poor red dragon, now very tired, simply
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could not flap his wings any longer . . . and crashed on a lovely green meadow.
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All the animals shrieked with terror. Nobody lost his life . . but the
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snake lost his legs and slithered away through the grass. The rhino bumped his
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head and grew a horn. All the elephant's teeth fell out, except for two which
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became very long. The giraffe sprained his neck and it grew to a great length.
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The hippo rolled about so much he became nearly round, ended up in a pond and
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didn't come out, he was too ashamed to be seen . . . Well, in that fall, all
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the animals took on a different appearance and became what they are today. And
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when the lion saw them, what he said was:
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"Oh, how funny you look!"
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