Pick an opening to a children's book I'm writing!
Flotsam House
Mistlewoods Rest Home for Dragons
Ector the Balloonist
Voting ended onJul 30
The third thing Ferret did before she ran away was pick a new name.
It nearly had been the first, but Ferret was a little more sensible than her family tended to believe. Instead, she packed her schoolbag with clothes and snacks and trinkets and then wrote a short, but important letter. She’d left it on her parents’ bed before she’d walked out the door and into the swirling afternoon mist.
That mist had rapidly become fog.
Now, it was something even thicker that made Ferret wish she’d packed a dictionary so she could accurately complain about what it was. It was silver and cold and grasped at her tufty brown hair and bright green raincoat. Little drops of water kept finding their way into her hood and rolling down her spine, making Ferret jump and squeak every few feet.
Ferret was starting to realise that, even if she wanted to turn around and go home, she had no idea what direction to go.
Mistlewoods Rest Home for Dragons
Making a dragon their afternoon tea was a very fiddly operation. Especially if that dragon hadn’t yet burnt off all their tastebuds and tended to be prone to grumbling flame if it wasn’t done just right.
Sorrel Thistledale took her duties extremely seriously.
First, she tied up her golden plaits, put on her father’s spare apron (the blue one), and fetched the stool from the pantry. After that, she put the full pot on the fire without catching her sleeves alight. Then she ground the coal and the quartz and the little red flowers into a gritty, sweet-smelling paste and scraped every bit into the now-boiling water. The last step was to stir and stir with the long wooden spoon until the water turned a pretty pale pink.
Once it was done to her satisfaction – and, hopefully, Old Ember’s – Sorrel very carefully poured the brew into a teacup the size of a bowl and carried it towards the big dining hall where the earliest riser of the dragons would be waiting.
Ector the Balloonist
Ector’s first solo flight began on a cold autumn afternoon when Grandma Elaine discovered she’d been sold an improperly stored phoenix feather – just as it blew her clear across the workshop, singeing her eyebrows and breaking her right leg in two places.
Even Ector heard the explosion. He’d taken his hearing aids out to better be able to focus on the details of his newest project, but the deep boom rattled his head and the walls.
It took a few moments of ringing, stunned stillness before the smell of smoke knocked him from his daze. Ector scrambled to his feet, heart thumping painfully against his ribs, and burst out of his room. He hurtled down the corridor – almost knocking into his older sister, Linet as she staggered out of her room – and threw himself at the workshop door.
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