Two Dragons, One Planet

• Hugh Ruckert, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2016

A long, long time ago the sun rose over the mountain where a fire dragon lived. Every morning the smell of burnt ashes and smelted stone came creeping down his burning mountain and into the valley where the village of his worshippers the Summer Tribe lay. There was a point where the village met 900 metres of grassland and on the edge of that various outposts where placed to protect the tribe from the savage Winter Tribe, who were at the mercy of the cold hearted ice dragon.
The two tribes had been at war for 10,000 years and the two dragons had disliked each other for a million more. Every so often the Winter Tribe would send war parties to attack the Summer Tribe, but the almighty fire dragon would swoop down from his mountain temple and fry them. While these tribes existed long ago and we now live in the 21st century it is important their story is told.
To truly understand this conflict we must go back in time to the very beginning of the universe.
In the beginning there were only two things, the outer cold of space and the radiating heat of the sun. Over time the cold would meet the heat and cause great explosions occasionally creating a planet or two. One day though the biggest explosion occurred, creating Earth. The sun saw that this was good, but the cold wanted to control it. It swarmed the Earth trying to freeze it over but the sun would force it back to the icy cold of space.
Eventually giant lizards roamed the earth later to be called dinosaurs.
The cold hated this and summoned all its power to create a meteorite to kill the dinosaurs. It saw its chance and attacked the Earth, freezing it over, creating the ice age.
The sun let this be for a few hundred years but eventually it created a fire dragon, to force back the ice. His name was Flareoso. He purified the earth and created the first humans. The cold mustered all of its strength and created the savage ice dragon. The cold was very careless and did not name its dragon so he named himself Arctic.
The two dragons fought for thousands of years making armies and building fortresses. The Summer Tribe was more delicate and careful about what they made where the Winter tribe would make tents and carve mountains to suit their needs. They had carved bones to use as weapons and crude armour. They tortured their prisoners, forcing them to bathe in freezing rivers and streams that where not frozen over. The Earth at the time would look half snowy white and the other half as it does now, that is without the cities.
Eventually the fire dragon and his army declared war on the Winter Tribe, forcing them back to the top and bottom of the earth. The two dragons went into a deep sleep and no one knows when they will wake, but we should all pray they don't, because if they do, it would no longer be fun to live.