This contest is a clever idea, so I was very excited to join. Thank you for the opportunity! My entry: “Home” Within and without, the girl knew she was home. Compared to the glittering, yet gaunt palace the girl had once resided in, the little cove that was hidden away in the dense bracken of the forest wasn’t much. And yet… Aoi was there. The small blue dragon that played with fireflies in the night and chased after birds in the evening, and the one that caused gusts of wind to blow with his gleeful, burbling laugh. The one that jumped at every creak of the trees or rustle of the dry bushes. The one that slipped down the river like a fish, only to get tangled up in its current trying to swim back upstream. The one that gazed at the mountains with a dreamy look in his eye as though the very stars were his, as though when he reached the grand, snow-covered peaks, the whole world would be in his claws. No, the forest that was withering away with time wasn’t much– the girl could see that in the way the colorless flower petals carpeting the grass could no longer rival the intricate tiles of the castle in the distance. But she remembered once hearing a phrase, “Home is where the heart is.” Aoi had her whole heart, and so he was her home.
