‘Why has no one been here before?’ I shouted at the dragon.
‘Just keep going Jimbo!’ The dragon responded, locked behind the glass. It refused to call me James, no matter how much I fiddled with the settings.
Constant raindrops made puddles on the sand, but failed to remove the tang of seaweed in the air. Even the dog walkers had avoided the scramble over the dunes today. The soles of my plastic trainers, thinned and polished by a hundred miles of walking, offered poor protection from the rockpools. I tripped over driftwood, and almost dropped my phone. But we got to the marker in the end.
The cave was a broken exclamation point in the cliffside. No signage confirmed if the inside was secure, which was enough warning to stay well away. A large arrow on my screen pointed inside. The dragon popped up again.
‘Just a bit further Jimbo!’ He shouted. ‘Keep up the pace my lad!’
I kept running.
The torch function allowed for brief views of slime and cold rock. At points I had to crawl on my hands and knees. Drops of my blood dotted emerald moss. A terrible panic gripped my heart when I considered the battery dying.
‘Not much further! You musn’t stop now!’ the voice of the dragon rang out again, and the arrow pointed with the anger of a drunken hand.
At last I reached a wider space. A hollowed out sphere with no paths ahead, and nothing but damp on the walls. I switched to camera mode, and with the happy ting of a cash register the treasure appeared on the screen. Gold coins, and ruby encrusted crucifix. With one dab of a thumb the reward was mine.
‘Good job Jimbo,’ The dragon said. ‘Back home now. Before it gets dark.’
The snarling started in a low growl, but soon echoed off the rock. Rattles followed. A few triangles of red dots glowed from the one route back. The word eyespider popped into my mind, even if this description did not correlate to the scarlet fur.
My concerns about battery life proved to be correct.
Line: It refused to call me James, no matter how much I fiddled with the settings.
