“I hate staying indoors all day, Em,” my pouty dragon stomped his heavy foot.

What Drag didn’t know was that I felt exactly the same way.

“Daddy said it’s so cold that there isn’t much air to breathe.”

“Well that doesn’t make sense.” His eyes rolled.

I shrugged my shoulders glad for once that I didn’t have a little brother; a little dragon was enough.

I could see his mind working. “Okay what if we go outside and I warm up the air, Em!”

“Mmm, I don’t know. If it’s too cold for kids to go out to school, it’s…”

“It could work, Emily. Let’s at least try.”

My good friend has a big german shepard puppy who always wants to go for walks, but she doesn’t know how lucky she is that he can’t talk.

“Ok Drag, you win but you have to do it in invisible mode.”

So we went outside while everyone else was bundled against the cold. We made snow angels,  a big snow man, and played’ catch the dragon.’

****

“Hmm that’s strange,” dad said as he walked in the door. “Em, did you by any chance do anything crazy with Drag today?”

“Ummm no, dad.” I looked very innocent. aAfter all where is the harm in playing in the snow?

“How about you, Drag?”

Drag looked down just a little bit guilty.

“I thought so…” He stroked his chin. ‘Who would I call? Geo intelligence, the weather bureau…?’ 

The next day on the front page of the newspaper the headlines read: “Unusual Global Warming Phenomenon in Springfield County.”

“Dad what happened?” It was getting hard to not look guilty for stuff that happened because of Drag. “I promise all we did was play out in the snow.”

“Em, there was a gaseous cloud over the county that grew and grew with an orange glow. Some people thought it was a weird weapon.”

I chuckled. “Well Drag decided to make the air warmer so there was oxygen to breathe. We couldn’t see the cloud I promise.”

“Oh my” dad chuckled to himself. “No one was hurt. So everything is fine.”

Raising a dragon in the 21st century is full of unseen challenges…