Lucy and The Pink Dragon

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Lucy whose father owned a Chinese Restaurant called The Pink Dragon.

And, one day, in through the doors of the restaurant , to the amazement of Lucy, her father and the guests eating at their tables , there came a real, enormous pink and golden dragon.

“I have heard good things about this restaurant”, said the dragon , laying its long pink body along three chairs and examining a menu from one of the tables, “I’d like to try all of your dishes. Bring me everything on the menu”.

“Everything?”, asked Lucy’s father, startled, “That’s a lot of food”.

“I have a big appetite”, replied the dragon.

And so, going into the kitchen, Lucy’s father told the chef that he would have to prepare everything on the menu.

The chef wasn’t happy about having to do so much cooking at such short notice but Lucy’s father said, “Don’t argue. Do you want the dragon to burn down our restaurant with its fiery breath?”.

So the chef started to prepare everything on the menu and, when the food was ready, Lucy’s father and two other waiters started laying out all the dishes on the table in front of it and, greedily, the dragon pressed its scaly pink nose into each of the plates and began to gobble up the food like a pig feeding from a trough.

Lucy laughed when she saw the way the dragon was eating but her father told her off.

“You don’t want to make the dragon angry. There’s no telling what he might do”, he said.

But when the dragon finished eating all the food that was on the table, giving out a long, loud burp of flame, it just said to Lucy’s father, “I’ll have the same again please”.

“The same again?”, replied Lucy’s father, horrified, “But Dragon, sir. You have eaten up all the food in the restaurant. There is no more food”.

“Well”, said the dragon, “You shall just have to get some more food from somewhere, won’t you”.

Lucy’s father threw his hands up in despair.

But just then, Lucy went up to where the dragon was sitting and said to it, “You don’t impress me, Mr Dragon. I know something that I can do that you can’t”.

“Something that you, an impudent little girl, can do that I, a powerful pink dragon cant”, scoffed the dragon, “Impossible”.

“It’s not impossible”, replied Lucy, “It’s true and I’ll prove it if you will go away and leave our restaurant”.

“If you can do something that I can’t do, little girl, then I’ll leave the whole world; I’ll fly up to the moon and never come down again”, said the dragon.

So then, Lucy took a pair of wooden chopsticks and used them to pick up a little grain of rice.

“There”, she said to the dragon, “Now you try”.

But the dragon had claws, not hands and, however he tried, he couldn’t hold the chopsticks; he just kept dropping them.

Then, reluctantly, after trying and failing thirteen times, the dragon admitted, “You win, little girl” and, spreading wide and flapping it pink and golden wings, the dragon rose up into the air and, turning its long pink body around, flew out of the restaurant and up to the moon where it stayed forevermore.

After that Lucy’s father’s restaurant was always packed with customers as people came from far and wide, not just to eat Chinese food but to see Lucy, the girl who had defeated a dragon with only a pair of chopsticks.