Madison and the Dragon Kite

           Madison followed her sister, Marie, into the backyard.  Marie carried their kite, their very special dragon kite, in her hands.  Madison looked up at the beautiful blue sky and then at the trees swaying in the strong March wind.  This was a perfect day to fly a kite.

            Madison and Marie had worked for two days on their very special dragon kite.  They managed to use every single color in their box of 48 crayons somewhere on the kite.  The tail of the dragon had nine different layers to it.  It was truly a sight to behold.  Madison had worked especially hard on the head of the dragon.  She wanted it to look ferocious.

            When they reached the clearing in the backyard, Marie handed the string to Madison while she held the kite.  “Now you hold onto that string and don’t you let go for anything,” commanded Marie.  “I’ll run behind holding the kite up while you run with the string.  We don’t want it to drag the ground.”

            Madison wrapped the end of the string around her wrist a couple of times and then firmly grasped the coil of string in both hands.  When Marie gave the command to run, both girls took off.  For a while nothing happened.  Then Marie held the kite up a little higher, and it suddenly caught wind.

            “Unwind some string!” Marie called to Madison. 

Madison started unwinding string as fast as she could, but the wind was too strong for her.  The coil of string flew out of her hands and started unwinding at will.  Before long the string was at full extension.  The only thing that kept the kite from flying away was the string that was wrapped around Madison’s wrist.

Madison tried to control the kite, but before long she found that the kite was dragging her along at a run.  Madison fought to control the kite and unfortunately did not notice that she was heading straight for the muddy place right in front of the blackberry vines.  When her feet hit the mud, they slipped out from under her leaving her sliding on her bottom straight for the blackberry briers.  Desperately, she tried to unwrap the string from her wrist before she hit the briers.  Too late.  The string came off of her wrist after she became completely tangled.

“Marie!!!!” screamed Madison, but Marie was already there, trying to gently pull the briers off of her sister.  It took several minutes to free Madison and not before the briers scratched her in more places than she cared to count.

“Where’s our beautiful dragon kite?” Madison cried.

“It’s in a tree over in the neighbor’s yard,” said Marie pitifully.  “Don’t look.  It’s bad.”

Marie gently helped her sister to her feet and walked with her back to the house.  Madison hurt everywhere.  When they reached the house, Marie called for their mom and helped her nurse all of Madison’s wounds.  When they were through, Madison looked like one big bandage.  Mom let Madison put on her pajamas early because they were soft and would not hurt her scratches.  Then she fixed the girls some hot chocolate to drink while she went next door to fetch the kite.

When she walked through the door with the kite, both girls gasped.  “Our kite,” cried Marie.  “It’s ruined.”

“Oh girls,” signed Mom, “I am so sorry.  But you know, you made it once.  You could make it again.”

Madison looked at Marie.  Marie looked at Madison.  “I guess we could,” said Marie.

“Just not today,” said Madison as both girls began to giggle.