Story Hour
Nicker Meets Gracie
Written by Gene B. Williams
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To get there, he had to swim across the Atlantic Ocean. For you, that would be very difficult. For Nicker … well, he IS a SEA dragon. As he neared Scotland, he thought about his friend *Tess in Paris.* This time, instead of going into the English Channel (that’s water, not a television channel) he went up into the Irish Sea. (It’s called the Irish Sea because Ireland is there, if you look just off to the left.)
Well … Nicker didn’t look off to the left. Instead he looked off to the right. Oh, my, it was beautiful to see, and for a while Nicker drifted there in the water and just sniffed. And he listened. And he heard.
“Yip,” he heard.
“Splash,” he heard.
“YELP!” he heard.
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Nicker forgot all about his relative and went up a river that ran into the sea, and eventually into a stream where he found a very wet black and white dog, caught in deep, fast water. It might have been okay, but the little dog was determined to keep hold of a ball. The dog had chased that ball in the water and wanted to play with it. That was the splash and yelp that Nicker had heard. The fast water had carried the dog away.
Up on the shore a worried voice shouted, “G r a c i e! Gracie where are you?”
It was Elanna, of course, the lady Gracie owns. She didn’t know where Gracie was, but Nicker did. He put his nose beneath the little dog and lifted her safely from the current. Then, with the ball still in her mouth, Nicker brought her gently to the shore.
“GRACIE?” Elanna called from the distance.
“Woof?” Gracie asked Nicker.
And then she jumped off of his nose and into the mud.
Well, you can guess what happened next. Gracie scampered one way, Nicker slid the other. They made circles around each other in the mud, both having a great time until they were so covered that it would have been hard to tell the difference between dog, ball and sea dragon (except that he was longer).
“GRACIE?” Elanna called again, but a little closer.
“Woof?” Gracie asked Nicker.
I don’t know if you know dog talk, but Nicker does. In fact, Nicker can even talk octopus! Anyway, he knew what Gracie meant.
He took the ball into the water, washed off the mud and tossed it up onto the bank.
“GRACIE?” Elanna was coming closer. The ball was clean, but Gracie wasn’t.
“Woof, woof?” Gracie asked Nicker very quietly.
Well, Nicker tried. He did his very best. He took little Gracie into the water, oh so very carefully, to wash her. If you’ve ever tried, you know that it is more difficult to wash a muddy dog than it is to wash a muddy ball. It’s worse when the dog is having far too much fun and keeps wiggling. This was hard work for Nicker … well, imagine doing all this if you have no arms or hands! And, he had to hurry.
“GRACIE?” Elanna was now very near the bank of the stream.
Nicker brought a thoroughly soaked and still muddy (but cleaner) Gracie up to the shore beneath some reeds growing there. Gracie grabbed the ball, ran through the mud, through the reeds and up to Elanna’s feet, then rubbed mud on Elanna’s legs.
“WOOF!” she told Elanna. That should have explained the whole thing, but it didn’t.
“GRACIE! YOU’RE A MESS!” said Elanna, maybe a little too loudly.
“Woof,” Gracie tried to explain.
“And why are you all covered in mud, but this ball is clean?” asked Elanna.
“Woof,” Gracie said. Then “woof woof.” She didn’t have fingers – well, not pointing fingers, anyway – you know what I mean – so she used her nose, pointed to the reeds and tried to explain to Elanna all about the sea dragon hiding there who had saved her life, and played with her, and they’d romped in the mud, and …..
“Woof!” Gracie said happily.
Elanna looked at the reeds, saw nothing, and said to Gracie, “It’s home and a bath for you! No more ball playing for you today!”
Gracie looked back at the reeds. Nicker was peeking out at her with a grin. “Woof?” Gracie asked Elanna, hoping to play with her friend more.
Elanna said, “I can’t believe you got this messy so fast.” She picked up Gracie, getting herself muddy, too. “Strange,” she said. “Most of you is a muddy mess, but parts of you are clean, almost like someone started to wash you?”
Gracie looked over into the reeds, did her best to smile at Elanna, and answered, “woof.”
Elanna and Gracie went home. Gracie got her bath, and was a sparkling clean beauty once again. A real prize winner. But she never forgot her new friend there in the stream.
Sometimes in her sleep, when she dreams, if you listen closely, Gracie will whisper “woof.”
You and I know exactly what she is thinking about when she does that.
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