Junior Alleynian 2020

House 500 Words Story Writing Competition

Viper Lodge Boarding School Viper Lodge boarding school was a cold wet place, where children were sent to be forgotten. Children of parents who were too busy making money or parents who were dead. lt wasn’t the damp soggy beds or the dark mysterious corridors that were the most depressing, it was the punishments. The school was run like a Victorian prison. There were punishments for being late for breakfast, there were punishments for not doing your homework, and finally the worst of all, you would get a slap of the belt for talking after hours. The worst person for punishments and the hardest hitter was the house master Mr Tank, although every pale underfed pupil at Viper Lodge boarding school understood why he was so cruel. It was rumoured that his poor mum died by a terrible shark attack while he watched from the shore. So here I stood a miserable student of the school, with pale white skin and knotted unkempt hair, named by my mother as Fergus James Duff, but mostly called here Ratty or Boy, and today I wasn’t sure how yet but today I was going to escape! My best friend Worm whose real name was Tarquin Pack and I had just finished our lunch.Well I call it lunch but actually it was only a short stumpy carrot in a bowl of warm water. (yuck). We often escaped to the mystical woods on the edge of the property. No one went down there except us, it was our magical place that the others seemed to be scared of. There were rumours of children disappearing and what was about to happen next was in some sense what the rumours had said, but like themagazines over reacting about the coronavirus, the rumoursmade it soundway too terrible. The trees swayed in the song of the wind and the robins chirped in the distance. It was truly amazing. We sat on a log chatting about our dream food when we heard a distant crying or some sort of strained sound. We looked around but we couldn’t see anything. Where was this strange sound coming from?Wormwas rustling in a bush and I was looking behind trees “l found something Ratty/’ worm shouted in a excited sort of tone. I darted towards him thinking it was a child that had had a terrible punishment, but what I came to find out next was that it was not a student - It was a baby dragon! Tired, defenceless, and caught round it’s poor little legs spiky and jagged barbed wire was wrapped. “9 1 could see it cutting into his skin. Ever so carefully me and Worm unwrapped the poor baby from its cage and with a tiny roar of thanks it flew off into nothingness. Worm looked at me and I looked toWorm, and we both knewwe had done a good thing. As we faced reality and started to walk with our heads down, it seemed that today was not the day we were going to escape. Then from nowhere mother dragon blocked out the sun, her huge wings flapping with joy she beckoned us onto her back. This was it. Worm turned his head sharply and as l nodded we both smiled and jumped on board, and the dragon flew us far far away from that awful place, never to return.

The dragon who couldn’t fly As we all know most dragons know how to fly by the age of five dragon years. But this is a story about a dragon that could not fly until the age of ten dragon years. A dragon year is like four normal human years. I know it seems irregular, but it is true. This dragon was a very unlucky dragon. This all started when he was born in the forest of Digitidoo, which was in the middle of Russia. When he was born he breathed fire and burned his mother’s toes. He was named the day after he was born and he was called James. He was well loved by his parents and loved to play with his friends, but by the age of five he couldn’t fly at all. All of James’ friends could fly. There was his best friend, Peter, who was so lucky and learned to fly when he was only three dragon years old! There was also his older sister Mary who learned to fly when she was five dragon years old. Mary was very kind to James and tried to help him to fly, but that just made James feel even worse. He tried several times. Once he jumped off his home which was on a humungous mountain. He jumped and fell off and banged himself and broke his legs. He had a long and very painful journey to the hospital. At the hospital the doctors did an x-ray. Later he was lying in bed asleep in hospital. His parents had tears running down their faces. Once James had recovered, his parents decided that he must learn to fly. They tried and tried so many times but still James couldn’t fly. They tried everything! Throwing him into the air, flapping his small wings for him, buying him a jet pack (all that happened is that he shot into the air and disappeared!!!!!) and they also tried a catapult (they just managed to shoot him into a big bunch of pillows). James nearly gave up and decided that he’d never learn to fly. He started to look for jobs that dragons could do without flying. He thought about running marathons, but he tried one and his little legs only took him one kilometre. He tried to be a train driver, but he couldn’t fit in the driver’s cabin. There were just no jobs for a dragon who couldn’t fly. He decided he had to try one last time to get over his fear and learn to fly. He climbed up the tallest mountain in Russia, Mount Elbrus, which is over five kilometres high. He finally got to the peak, looked down and saw lots of fluffy white snow and soft bubbly clouds. He jumped … and plummeted toward the ground. He flapped like he had never flapped before, and then suddenly he soared into the sky. He had overcome his fear and now he teaches other young dragons to fly. n There were scary stories, funny stories, exciting stories, innovative stories, terrifying stories, clever stories and sad stories where dragons died. But each of them was wonderful in its own way. Participation in the competition was fantastic this year, with nearly all boys submitting entries.

Noah Flemyng, Year 4

Hugo Williams, Year 3

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