Destiny

By Lorna Wood

Its the warm, lazy days of summer and Destiny is on her back in a field of tall flowers watching the puffy clouds go by overhead. She marvels at the interesting shapes the clouds create. She sees a snail, baby pollywogs, a white beaver, a swan, and a real-life dragon.

As she enjoys the lovely day, she meets a new friend, Danny, a dragonfly. She admires his wings and wishes she could fly, too. They embark on a quest to ask a dragon where they can find Destiny a pair of wings to fly.

A work of childrens fiction, Destiny tells the story of one little girls search for her own destiny while including fascinating information on how different cultures incorporate the fantasy of dragons into their histories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532043895

Lorna Wood

Lorna Wood grew up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She is a licensed practical nurse now working in a long-term care facility.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 LORNA WATERS.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4388-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4390-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4389-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018904189

iUniverse rev. date: 04/27/2018

Contents

1 Forest

2 Clouds

3 Dreaming

4 Slovak

5 Wish

6 Hunters

7 Gerda

8 Rover

9 Doyna

10 Quest

11 Chang

12 Puff

13 Bibi

14 Sunset

15 Gryphon

16 Sonny

17 Amir

18 Promises

19 Little Owl

20 Crows

21 Ruzha

22 Sparrows

23 Carlo

24 Jay-Jay

25 Scotty

26 Briton

27 Lilly

28 Francois

29 Kinu

30 Cocoon

1

Forest

Tall blades of grass bent and swayed slowly back and forth with the warm summer breeze. They danced together in perfect rhythm to a tune as old as time. Moving to a melody that was first heard when the world was just beginning to come alive.

This was the music of the forest that grew more and more, day-by-day and year-by-year, full of wonder and new life.

The wind whispered through the trees and carried the sounds of dutiful ducks hurrying along their darling ducklings that were waddling behind them as fast as they could and crying for them to wait. Grand geese honked orders at their gangly goslings that were busy scrambling to keep up the very fast pace. Robins ranting and raving at their rowdy young ones that it was time for them to leave the safety of their warm feathered nest and start a new life of their own. Spunky little sparrows were happily cheering from the sidelines for the baby robins to begin their exciting new adventure.

A big black crow calling to his friends interrupted a blue jay jabbering back at the boasting, cocky red cardinal. His cronies were busy picking on a little owl that was trying very hard to get away from the bunch of bullies. Then a single loud cry from a lonely seagull echoed through the air, as it headed back to the sea in search for a lunch of oysters and clams.

The soft whirring wings of a flying grasshopper, as it jumped high into the air for a speedy but quick flight that ended much too soon, joined their song. For as soon as it landed on the ground and took a few steps, it just jumped back up into the air and tried all over again. A nearby cricket chirped a little song, restless for the night to play in the wonderful cricket choir. Busy bees were humming from flower to flower, as they worked all day buzzing from the dandy dandelion’s yellow petal mane, to the dazzling daisy with its big brown eye and, then finally over to the giant sunny sunflower. They were drinking just a little bit of juicy nectar from each flower, to carry home and make sweet sticky honey to feed their growing hive.

2

Clouds

The little girl was lying on her back in the open field of tall grass. Her long beautiful hair was spread out around her rosy colored cheeks and large round eyes. She was watching puffy white clouds, float dreamily across the bright blue sky that covered the world like a big downy sapphire blanket. As they slowly drifted across the sky, the sleepy clouds began to melt together into many different shapes, traveling on a never-ending journey around the big, wide world for other little boys and girls to see pictures of their own appear, as if by magic right before their eyes.

The slow moving snail cloud was dragging along the weight of a large, heavy shell on its back leaving a thin wispy white trail behind it so other clouds would get caught in its sticky path. Cotton baby pollywogs grew up and turned into hopping frogs. They were trying to leap over the shimmering oyster shell of a wrinkled, old turtle with its pearly head and legs sticking straight out of it shell in surprise.

A fleecy white beaver was busy cutting down chalky sticks and branches and then stacking them high up on top of each other, building a giant ivory dam to stop the never-ending river of milky clouds from flooding out the sky.

The snowy hairy cat caterpillar was slowly creeping toward a beautiful silky butterfly, with large satiny wings that were unfolding wide open to carry it away on its very first flight.

Then there was a beautiful swan white water lily that was swirling around the bright blue sky stage, with its petals fanned out in a soft misty display, gently turning and spinning in its quiet graceful cloud ballet.

But the biggest cloud of them all, had a head that was shaped like a big dog resting on a long thin neck that went down to a full round belly. It had gigantic wings, almost like the ones on a bat but much bigger and a long, skinny tail that was pointed on the end. This cloud was in the shape of an honest-to-goodness real-life dragon. It was fighting in a brave battle with a noble knight and breathing out big white puffs of dragon fire in a mighty roar. Just then as if by magic, a black dot started to grow right in the middle of the last dragon puff cloud. The little black dot grew bigger and bigger, and then as it got closer she saw that it was just a little dragonfly.

The small dragonfly zigged and zagged back and forth as it came down for a closer look at the little girl lying in the field. She watched as the dragonfly landed on a pretty purple clover that was right next to her. The dragonfly was so close that if she reached out her hand she would be able to touch it. She could see that it did not have any feathers on its wings like birds had or even two wings at all. It had four wings that were so thin they were almost see through like small glass windows but with many tiny fine lines running through them.

Just as she was getting a closer look at the dragonfly, it flew up and back over to look at her again, then quickly zipped away. It scooted off to a much safer distance from where it might easily get caught. Then waiting just a