Bret Hampton

Dragons of Summer

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. The wide river and once fertile grasslands surrounding it, had seen a small community spring up. Slowly the people began to build in the valley, dams to control the spring floods and to harness the river's power. But over time, the people began to take too much from the land, the river began to run dry as they irrigated their fields, not for food, but rather for flowers, grown only for their beauty. The hill tops of the valley, once home to tall forests of ancient trees, had been cut bare leaving a desolate windswept vista.