Halle's Fiery Friend

One day, a little girl named Halle decided to go on an adventure. She had heard that there was a fierce dragon living in the mountain near her home. She didn't want a mean, smelly dragon in her neighborhood! So she decided that she would find the dragon and scare him away (she was sure that she was fiercer than he was!). Off she went, climbing up, up, up the mountain. Sometimes there were loose rocks and she had to be careful, but she was an excellent climber and soon made it up to the dragon's cave. She could hear him inside, snoring loudly (she didn't like snorers very much). 'HEY DRAGON!!!' she yelled with a lovely roar. 'Come out and face me if you dare!' She waited. Then she waited some more. At least the dragon had stopped snoring, she thought impatiently. Coming a little closer to the cave, she roared again 'DRAGON!!! I SAID 'Come out!'' Again she waited. She had had enough of this waiting around. She marched right into the cave and looked around. She didn't see any dragons anywhere! Then she heard a noise. It was a small, tearful, scared whimper. And some snergally sniffles. 'Dragon?' she asked in a kinder voice. She moved closer to a pile of rocks in the middle of the cavern. The sniffling and whining were behind the rocks. 'Oh PLEASE don't eat me, human girl!' the dragon wailed tearfully. 'I'm a small dragon and I really don't taste good at all!' 'Eat you?' asked Halle the Brave, 'I thought YOU were going to eat ME!' she said. 'Oh no,' said the dragon, 'I'm a vegetarian and a horticulturalist. I just eat green veggies and grow flowers. Do you want to see my flower garden? Huh? Huh? Do you? Do you?' the dragon rambled breathlessly. 'Sure!' Halle replied, 'I LOVE flowers!' So the dragon led Halle through a secret tunnel in the back of the cave that led to the other side of the mountain where he grew the most fantastic flowers! There were orange hibiscus flowers, a bee-hive with buzzing fuzzy bees making honey from the nectar and pollen they collected from the hibiscus, there were dozens of strawberry plants, and beyond a cluster of lemongrass stalks, a grand passionfruit tree! There were tiny pink and purple and yellow fairy flowers scattered everywhere and the air smelled lovely. The dragon loved his flowers so much that he had given each one of them names. Unfortunately, he only knew one name - his own - so every flower, plant and stalk of grass was named Bernie. There were about 5000 Bernies and it took some time to meet each one. Soon it grew dark and Halle began to worry how she would get home in the dark and not fall down the mountain and get hurt, but Bernie (the dragon) had a plan. He would (carefully) breathe fire near the path so Halle could see where she was walking. Soon she was back down from the mountain. With a last wave goodbye to Bernie (the dragon), she scampered off back home. She needed to go to bed soon, because she'd promised Bernie (the dragon) that he could finish introducing her to all the bees, tomorrow. Can you guess what THEY were named? (If you guessed 'Bernie', you'd be right!) THE END

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