Horns

A/N: Okay, so I tried writing a children’s novel. Or at least the beginning of one. My first try since elementary school, so let me know what you think 🙂

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The day started with an impossibility and it just went down-hill from there.

RSP was currently standing in his room, heart racing and wings flapping in panic as he stared into his bedroom mirror. Staring at what he couldn’t see. His horns. The horns that he should have gotten last night, on the night of his one thousandth birthday, but which were lacking as surely as every one of his future prospects. What kind of dragon didn’t have horns?

He had to hide them. Though they never said anything, he knew his parents had to be disappointed by their only son’s utter failure as a dragon. Not only was RSP the worst flyer in his class, but his flame was so weak that it could hardly light a match. The lack of horns, however, was the worst of it all – what kind of dragon would he be without magic?

Desperately rummaging through his closet, he found a jungle hat that he‘d stopped wearing when Raoul had told him that he looked like a toddler with wings. For now RSP only cared that he looked like a dragon at all, toddler or otherwise.

He just barely got the hat down over his lack of horns, when his mom burst into the room. His father was right behind her, eyes shining and wings flapping in excitement.

“What are you doing with that old thing on your head?” his mother asked. “Take if off and let us see your new horns.”

“I… I… you can’t,” RSP stammered, trying to come up with an excuse.

“Why not?” The disappointment in his mother’s voice was clear.

“I… I…”

His father sighed. “They don’t look as you hoped?” he guessed. “I remember when I first got mine, and one was slightly bigger than the other. It took my family two weeks to convince me to show them.”

If only RSP’s problem was horns varying slightly in size.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t like them. I don’t want people to see them.”

“You’ll have to show them sooner or later,” his dad argued. “Might as well get it over with. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you make it out to in your head.”

This was the first time RSP would have felt comfortable making a bet of any kind.

“I just… I just don’t want you to see them,” he begged. “Not yet.”

His mom looked like she might be ready to argue, but his dad held up a hand to stop her.

“If you say so, son,” he said. “You just show us whenever you feel ready for it. Now come down. We’ve made pancakes. We have to celebrate. If nothing else it’s still your one thousandth birthday, and it’s not every night a dragon grows his horns.”

“Yeah, I’ll be… I’ll be right down.”

His parents left, and RSP stumbled towards the door and locked it, before sliding down on the floor. He’d only bought a few weeks’ worth of time, and perhaps his dad was right. Perhaps it would be better just to show them. Get it over with.

Still. A lot could happen in two weeks. They might grow out tomorrow, though RSP was only too aware of how low the chance was of that happening. He was not a good enough dragon to get horns. It really was as simple as that. But he still had to do something, and if he’d been a smarter dragon he might have been able to come up some sort of solution, before everyone truly realised what a failure he was.

But though RSP wasn’t a smart dragon, he knew somebody who was, and though it would be tough to show his deformity to anybody, it would be worth it if his parents never discovered his failure as a son.

He had to go talk to the Professor.