Some months ago, I was looking for a birthday gift for my baby niece. Just around the corner from where I live, there's a really tiny toy store, and I thought I might as well try there before I go to the huge stores.
From the moment I entered the store, I felt myself inexplicably drawn to a dimly-lit corner of the room, and more specifically to a huge cardboard box that was standing there. It was full to the brim with stuffed toys, down-priced because all of them were either damaged, dirty or simply hadn't sold for a long time. It certainly didn't look as if I'd find the gift I was searching for there, but I felt a need to rummage through the toys, anyway. Finally, nearly at the bottom of the box, I found two small dragon plushies. They didn't look like much, but I knew in my heart that I simply had to buy them! So I did that and took them home, and that night, I let them sleep in my bed.
The next morning, I woke up with an unfamiliar weight on my left arm, and you can imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes to see a living, breathing dragon baby snuggled against me, sleeping peacefully! I pinched my arm until it was black and blue, but the baby dragon didn't disappear... It was as real as me. Then I remembered the other plushie, but when I looked to my right, there wasn't another real dragon, but the unchanged plushie. Now I know that I simply wasn't meant to be this dragon's owner, but back then, I was puzzled.
I called my best friend and told her what had happened. She thought I was having her on, understandably, but she agreed to come over, anyway. When I opened the door, the still-sleeping dragon in my arms, she looked at it, shrugged, and asked me if I wasn't feeling well! Only after asking her to describe what she was seing did I realize that she couldn't see the dragon - to her, he still looked like an ordinary plushie. Then, however, I invited her into the living room, where I had left the other plushie on the sofa, and as soon as she saw that, she apparently fell in love with it and asked if she could have it. I gave it to her, thinking that I would have to find another gift for my niece, and she took it home.
Four days later, she called me on the phone - her plushie had turned into a real dragon, too! This time, when she came over, she was able to see my dragon, so we figured that you had to know and believe the secret to be able to see them.
Since then, I have opened my own toy store, and I've been going from store to store in our city, trying to find more of these enchanted dragon plushies. Soon, I may venture out to other cities, and who knows, maybe even other countries! Who knows how many more dragons are out there, waiting to be awakened?
The store, btw, is a story of its own... I was thinking about putting an add up to buy or rent a small store after I found the first few dragons. So I wrote the ad, put what I'd written into an envelope, adressed it to a local newspaper, and gave the envelope to a friend who was going into town anyway. Two days later, an old man visited me, saying he had just what I needed. He said he'd used to run a very small toy store for all his life, but now he was old and wanted to retire. He showed the store to me, and it was ideal - two rooms, one small and one tiny, all very cosy with lots of wood with old-fasioned carvings. Just what I had pictured. I told him I'd take it, and he smiled and said he'd send me the contract in the mail. We exchanged phone numbers. Everything seemed perfectly ordinary.
A day later, I got the contract alright - but it was a contract that said that he gave the store to me for free! When I tried to call him to ask him why he'd done that, I realized that the phone number he'd given to me was fake, and there was nobody with his name in the phone book. Even more mysterious, when I called my friend to tell her the good news, she exclaimed: "Oh! Your ad! I completely forgot about that... Mala, I still have the envelope in my handbag!"
The oddest thing I have yet to tell you, though! A few days after I'd opened shop, a customer came into the store and greeted me - in english. (I should tell you at this point that my store is in Germany, in a little town called Vallendar.) I thought he was a tourist, of course, but I soon realized that the customer apparently thought he was in Southport, in England! Over the next couple of days, this happened a lot. People from Japan, Spain, the US... everybody seemed to think that they'd simply entered a store in their home town! I cannot explain it. I don't know who that old man was, but I like to think that he was a magician. Who knows, maybe he had a hand in the creation of the enchanted dragons?
Recent developments:
* My dragon Mordion and me have since found out that if one of us concentrates on where we want to go, the shop door will lead there, allowing us to travel anywhere in the blink of an eye. Who knows, it might work for you, too.
* There is another shop, called "Cursed Dragons". We suspect it might have an evil owner who sells demonic dragons exclusively. This store seems to be very hard to find!
* I have found a plushie that looks different from the others... a different breed?
