Serious Trouble

Taryn Fish

Prince Ernest was born into a family with two very serious parents. The queen was concerned that her son was not taking things seriously enough and asked her husband to talk to his son. The king told Ernest that he will be king one day, but Ernest goes against his legacies and tells his parents he wants to be a jester. This was his first act of rebelliousness, that didn't result in anyone's danger. His father says that this is not a time to be funny, there is a dangerous, fire breathing dragon in the kingdom. Ernest knew this was serious but he wanted to practice his new jokes. So he snuck out of the castle to find an audience. During his walk, he looked up suddenly to find the three-headed dragon right in front of him. The dragon wanted to eat him and began arguing about how they wanted to eat him. While the three-headed dragon was arguing Ernest dashed away. He was caught by the dragon's tail almost immediately. When the dragon caught him Ernest made a deal with the dragon. If Ernest could make the dragon laugh he will let him know. The dragon gave him three tries. The first and second times Ernest was not successful. Then Ernest looks at the dragon's feet and gets an idea, he starts tickling the monster. The dragon was extremely ticklish and begged Earnest to stop. Earnest gave them a choice, he would stop tickling if he stopped eating people, the dragon promised. At the end of the story the author left it up to the reader to decide what happens next, the author gave multiple scenarios and gave the reader two guesses or maybe three to guess what happens. Prince Earnest is a rebel because he wanted to be something completely different than what his family expected him to do. He also went against his parents' wishes to be careful and stay in the castle because he wanted to practice his jokes. In the end, he was able to use what made him different from his family to save his kingdom from the three-headed, fire-breathing, people-eating, dragon.