Girl dragons also need a place to build a nest. That's what Melissa's dragon was, a girl. She didn't know that there weren't any other dragons around to be her mate. She just kind of assumed that if she built a nest, some boy dragon would turn up and they would raise a family of little blue and gold baby dragons. After years of looking around for just the right spot, the dragon flew south to settle down.

A very long time ago, a greedy old woman named Lilith Friman built a factory on the top of the highest hill along the Copper Ridge in Northern Tennessee. In case nobody has ever told you, Tennessee is a primitive, uncivilized place in the Southern United States. You don't want to go there.

Miss Friman (no man would ever marry her even though she had a lot of money) built a town around her hilltop factory where her workers had to live. None of them lived there very long. Most of them died young. She named the village after herself, Lilith Hill. It had the most graveyeards of any town in America, and so, it also had the most ghost stories.

At first the Lilith Hill factory only made tobacco products, but later on it also manufactured othe kinds of poison, mostly made from the toxic minerals mined from the mountains of Copper Ridge. In modern times, the plant had to close. Nobody, would work where all those deadly chimicals were mixed with tobacco to make cigarettes and snuff and other stuff. Then, last year, a musician (there are lots of musicians in Tennessee, it doesn't require a lot of brains) bought the abandoned Lilith Hill. He converted the deserted factory into a museum to snuff and chewing tobacco. The top couple of floors of the old plant were converted into apartments before "Chilly-Willy" Bo-Bob Filch (the musician) went back to Nashville to play poor-dead-honey songs. A poor-dead-honey song is some lonely whiner's moaning about a lover who croaked. Most people think they're silly, but Tennessee loves them.

When Laura Selig (the heroine of the story) moved to Tennessee, she found her way to Lilith Hill and took the top floor apartment in the converted factory. She didn't know anything about the area or the museum. She certainly didn't know anything about dragons. She just wanted a quiet place where she could make pots and sculptures, vases and dishes. She a potter who spun clay around, fashioning it into beautiful objects.

At first everything was pleasant. She didn't mind the stink of tobacco and poison clinging to the ancient timbers. She didn't even mind the stories of ghosts and hauntinqs which populated every corner of the village. She just made clay pots and took care of her family.

Laura had a husband named Todd. He drove a tractor-trailer truck back and forth to Iowa. He often left his family alone for days on end. Laura also had a seven year-old son named Richard and a nine year-old daughter named Leah. Seven is one of the best ages for little boys and nine is a great age for girls. Unlike their mother, the children didn't like their apartment's musty tobacco smell. They really hated the idea of spooks and ghouls. They were practical, down-to-earth children, the kind who are cheerleaders and ballplayers.

The only thing that Laura Selig didn't like about her apartment was that, sometimes at night, there were thumping and banging noises on the roof over her bedroom. Sometimes it sounded like trees were being crunched, munched and wings beating. It was a flat roof, so even from the outside, Laura couldn't see what was up there making the commotion. She figured that it must be some piece of old machinery leftover from the factory.

Then, while Todd was driving to Iowa, Mrs. Selig fried up a sKillet full of eggplant. Beinq more the burger and fries kind of kids, Leah and Richard, the Selig children, hated it, but they needed the vitamins. What Laura couldn't have realized was that of all the things that have ever been fried, dragons like eggplant the best.

The dragon smelled the eggplant. It smelled delicious In case you've never been lucky enough to eat eggplant, it's something like a gigantic purple tomato, but shaped like a pear. It's sliced up, breaded and fried in butter and spices. You'd like it, at least you would if you were a dragon.

Melissa's dragon was 13 years-old, a very good age for dragons. Most animals are adult by the time they're thirteen, but, like reptiles, dragons never get finished growing up. They just keep growing and growing, So, by thirteen years-old, the dragon was really big, almost like an airplane, and strong enough that when she built her nest, she uprooted whole trees and hauled them up to the factory roof.

Smelling the delicious purple aroma of frying eggplant, the dragon hung her head down over the side of the building and squinted into Laura's open kitchen window. It's really not a thing that dragons should do. Mrs. Selig, dressed in a pink shirt and yellow apron, shrieked! My lord, it must be an outer-space alien! The poor woman ran a few step, crashed into the kitchen table and fainted like a limp rag.

The dragon was startled by the screaming. She didn't like people. They smelled funny. She avoided them. One just might be a knight like Saint George who wanted to slay a dragon. But, like elephants, dragons never forget. As soon as she saw Laura dressed in yellow and pink, the dragon remembered Melissa. She still thought of Melissa as her mother.

Being summer, the kitchen window was partly optened, but a dragon's head is bigger than you think. When it poked in to look around, the glass and the frame shattered with a great noise. Leah, Laura's nine year-old daughter, rushed to see what had happened. She got there just in time to see the dragon scooping fried eggplant from the skiilet with its long blue tongue. One slurp and the sizzling vegetable was gone.

The girl screamed! What was poking it's huge, ugly, pointed head into her kitchen? She was instantly convinced that it was some horrible mutation; a lizard turned into a monster by the tobacco and poisons polluting the environment. Grabbing a chair, the girl bravely dashed forward to shoo away the mutant.

The dragon had never actually seen a knight or a Saint George, but she thought that this midget girl waving a weapon might just be one. It seemed to the dragon that the bellowing midget was about to attack her pink and yellow mother. With one nip of the dragon's mighty lips, the beast snatched the unconscious Laura out the window and dropped her safely into the rooftop nest.

Richard (everyone called him Dicky) and his friend Jack Jackson, were playing trucks outside in the gravel. Leah's shouting brought them running around the building in time to see a dragon's tail slither gracefully up onto the roof and out of sight. The noise also attracted the attention of the visitors in the museum. There were only two of them, snuff and chewing tobacco aren't major tourist attractions. Mrs. Jackson, Jack's mother also responded to the clamor.

Jabbering, everyone stared toward the roof, but no one knew what to do. They couldn't see anything except the Selig's broken kitchen window. The adults certainly didn't believe Leah's account that there was a giant mutant, or little Jack Jackson's surmise that it was a dragon with a gold and blue tail with red stripes. But Leah knew what she had to do. She telephoned her father. That's what she'd always been taught to do; in case of an emergency, call dad. He had a phone in his truck. A flying Godzilla kidnapping mom was surely an emergency!

The phone was noisy because trucks on the highway are noisy, but the girl explained that a gigantic mutant lizard had eaten their dinner and dragged mom up onto the roof.

"Say what?"

"A lizard, a dinosaur, big as an airplane," Leah breathlessly explained. "It grabbed mom out of the kitchen and put her up on the roof! I think she's okay. It didn't actually bite her. It's really big!"

Mister Selig, a practical, truck-driving kind of man, was silent for a long time. He didn't know what to make of it. He knew that his daugher was a bright, responsible child, but maybe she'd gone crazy or bumped her head on something. "Are there any grown-ups there?" he wanted to know.

Mrs. Jackson, she was one of those religious crazies who blames everything on God, couldn't shed any light on the calamity. She hadn't seen anything, only heard the screaming. She said that everything was safe in God's hands. That didn't exactly satisfy Todd Selig, so Mrs. Jackson promised to call the police and the fire department. Thanking her, Mr. Selig said he was returning home right away. He didn't get there in time.

Mrs Jackson was a well meaning woman, but not very bright. She didn't realize that the police are predators and bullies who like to kill and hurt. When they can't do that, they like to bully and boss people around. It was a mistake to call them. It almost always is. They are much more deangerous than a dragon.

Taking their time, the police gathered up a lot of guns and started on their way. Luckily, the fire department got there first. There were only four firemen. They were all volunteers, some of the best kinds of people. They couldn't make much of Leah's bizarre story, but they figured that something was going on on the roof. They decided to take a look.

By the time the firemen pulled a ladder off their old truck, they could faintly hear a woman's voice from the roof. She seemed to be hysterical. It sounded like she was pleading "don't lick me!"

What you really shouldn't do if you're a fireman is plunk a ladder up against a roof where a dragon is protecting it's mother. The fireman was only a few feet up the ladder when the dragon's huge head peeked out over the edge. It saw the fireman. The fireman saw the dragon. Both froze in fear.

What you really don't want to do if you are a fireman who is going to spy on a dragon is to dress up in a helmet and carry a pole. That's just like Saint George! Grabbing the top rung of the ladder in it's powerful jaws, the dragon shook it around before tossing it out into the yard. The fireman went sprawling and everyone started a mad dash for safety.

IT was all too much danger for the dragon. She gently picked up Mrs. Selig in her mouth and leaped into the air like the space shuttle on it's way to the moon. What was gentle for the dragon was terrifying for poor Laura. She tought the beast was going to eat her so she kicked and struggled to get free. She succeeded. The thing was that when she pulled herself out of the dragon's mouth, they were 500 feet in the air. Screaming wildly, the woman plummeted like a stone toward certain death among the forest branches.

Not to worry, the dragon wasn't about to let her mother get harmed. She zoomed down in a spectacUar power-dive and gulped the woman out of the air only a few feet above the tree tops. Gracefully, the gigantic beast banked and headed up the Clinch River toward Virginia.

The police had arrived at Lilith Hill in time to see the dramatic mid-air rescue. There were two car loads of them with a lot of guns. They arrested everybody, even Dicky and his little friend. They missed Leah only because she'd been trying to run after the dragon. With all the innocent people safely handcuffed and beaten up with nightsticks, the cops opened fire on the deserted roof with a machine-gun. Therre was nothing there except trees that the dragon had used for its nest, but the police wanted to make sure that everything was completely dead. They shot so many holes, that the roof leaked ever after.

Like a skilled pilot, the dragon sat down on a lonely gravel river bank. She spat Laura out like a wad of chewing gum. The woman was drenched with dragon slobber and she smelled like a dumpster. Dragons never brush their teeth. Miraculously, she was not injured in the slightest, just scared out of her wits.

The dragon smiled a toothy dragon smile and gave Laura an affectionate lick. By then, the dragon realized that this human might be yellow and pink, but she wasn't her mother. In fact, she smelled bad, like soap and peppermint. Dragon's don't like peppermint. It chases them away.

The dragon decided that it had all been a mistake. It was a little sad, no mate, no mom. WIth a single flap of it's immense wings, it bounded into the air. The wind from the wings sent Laura tumbling down the rough bank and into the chilly Clinch River. She screamed in fury and pain. The dragon circled back just to be sure that everything was alright. It wasn't!

The eagle-eyed dragon saw a party of humans trudging a forest path toward Laura's injured screams. There were two big humans and several small humans. Each one had a long walking stick and a pack on his back. Dragons don't know anything about campers. To the dragon it looked like an army of Saint Georges intending to attack yellow and pink (not to mention dripping wet) Laura Selig.

The dragon had been confrotned by hostile human many times before. She had a strategy. Dropping into the river, she gulped up water and stones and even a few fishes. In her scaly, bird-like feet, she dug up loads of river rocks. Like a fully laden bomber, the dragon sailed low ove the trees. She circled around so that, unseen, she approached the dangerous dragon-slayers from the rear. As she glided silently over the hikers, the dragon opened fire; rocks, water, fish and deafening dragon roars! The startled enemy was pelted, drenched and terrified. One self-important boy, Franky Baney, was knocked cold when a rock the size of a fist hit him on the top of his head.

The campers fled in panic. They didn't believe what they'd seen. They were certain that no one else would believe it either. The dragon turned back, bellowing a hot, blood-curdling shriek and beating it's wings with such force that the trees thought it was a thunderstorm. Satisfied that she had saved her almost-mother from the would-be dragon slayers, the dragon gained altitude and sped off toward Virginia looking for anew place to nest. For all we know, she is someplace even today looking for a mate and a mother.

Poor Laura Selig was abandoned in the wilderness, lost. Rather than being a danger, the campers could have been her salvation. Now she was wet, alone and a forest night was rapidly descending.