The house had grown too quiet, the kind of quiet that makes Grandma pause mid‑stir of her tea. Maxamalkin, Max for short, hadn’t been seen in hours. He wasn’t in his dragon‑bed upstairs, where the blankets still held a faint warmth. He wasn’t in the kitchen hoping for crumbs, or in the living room pretending not to nap by the fire. Grandpa checked the basement, calling gently into the dim. No chirp. No glow.
Outside, winter pressed cold against the windows. Grandpa pulled on his boots and heavy coat, stepping into the snow with the slow determination of someone beginning a small but important quest. Tiny claw‑prints dotted the yard — unmistakably Max’s — but every trail ended abruptly, as if the little dragon had simply vanished. One set circled the oak tree twice before stopping entirely. Grandpa frowned at the sky, which offered no answers.
Inside, Grandma searched with quiet persistence. Behind curtains, under blankets, inside baskets. Then, in the master bedroom, she paused. A faint warmth drifted from the floor. She knelt, lifted the bedspread, and there he was: Maxamalkin, curled into a perfect dragon‑crescent, fast asleep beneath the bed.
“Found you,” she whispered.
Max blinked awake, stretching with the wobble of someone still half‑dreaming. He toddled downstairs, wings drooping, tail dragging softly behind him. At the front entryway he paused on the indoor doormat, the long carpet runner Grandma insisted on calling a mat, and relieved himself with the weary resignation of a creature who had waited as long as he possibly could.
Grandma sighed. Grandpa sighed. Maxamalkin blinked up at them, unbothered.
Adventures, even the under‑the‑bed kind, were tiring work for a little dragon. And sometimes, when you’ve been lost and found again, all you can do is pee on the floor and hope your grandparents still love you.
(Of course they do.)
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