The following story is an interpretation of the 1,000 Words image in the October, 2006 issue of Writing Magazine.

A Forest Under The Floor
Story by Veronica Brown, Grade 6 

      "Come on Sara!"  Yelled Alli. "If you don't hurry up and come, I will go to the park without you! ... Sara!" Alli ran into the living room only to find her sister's favorite fantasy book, her sister's journal, grape juice, a shovel, and a hole in the floor surrounded by broken floorboards. Alli peered in the hole. She saw a forest. It was about 5 feet tall and looked as if it went on forever. "Sara! Sara!" Alli called. Alli ran to the garage and grabbed a long piece of rope and hurried back to the living room. She tied one end of the rope to a chair and the other end to her waist. After taking a deep breath Alli jumped into the forest. Alli searched the greenery for Sara. "Sara!" Alli's voice quivered even though she was the older sister. 
       "Alli!" The whisper came out of nowhere.
       "Sara? Is that you?" whispered Alli. 
       "Shh! Come look at this!" Sara shined the flashlight at a glimmer of bronze in what appeared to be an enormous web. "It's a dragon!" mouthed Sara. Alli scoffed but upon further inspection, she realized it looked exactly like a dragon. "We have to save it, Alli! We have to bring him home!"
       "Yeah, we'll bring home a dragon and walk him around on a leash!" scoffed Alli.
       "Please!" Sara begged. Alli realized she had clearly lost this argument. 
       "Fine! Just hurry up! When you grab him grab onto me so I can reel us up." Sara leaned into the web and grabbed the dragon and then Alli. As Alli began to walk towards the hole a 3 foot long and 2 foot tall spider began running towards them.
       "AAAAAHHH" both girls yelled. They ran and ran and finally climbed out of the hole. They quickly boarded it up. Sara promptly made a bed for the dragon in her room. Sara and the dragon nodded off to sleep.
       Alli couldn't sleep. Something in the forest was moaning. After listening to the moans for several hours, Alli got out of bed and tip-toed into the living room. Alli yanked up the floorboards and peeked into the forest. There sat a dragon. It looked identical to the one Sara had saved except larger.
       "Hello." whispered Alli. The dragon sniffed and looked up. "Was that your baby we saved?"  The dragon gave Alli a meaningful look that Alli interpreted as a yes. "Hold on." Alli said. She ran into Sara's bedroom, being careful not to wake her. She rushed back to the hole and lowered in the dragon. "Good luck" said Alli. Alli carefully sealed up the floor and walked back to her room. She would need rest if she was going to explain to Sara what happened tomorrow morning.