‘There were once five great dragons who ruled the world,’ began Flora hesitantly. The kids sat around her, transfixed. She plucked five precious coloured glass fragments from a pocket in her coats, ready to hold up each in turn. Blue is for Water, red for Fire, green for Earth, yellow for Air, and the largest and brightest shard of all, purple, for the greatest dragon of all.
‘Water lived in the oceans but they sometimes swam into the mouths of rivers, and even upstream until they couldn’t squeeze their bodies in any further. They never felt any desire to sun themselves on a pebbly beach.’
Flora passed the glass shard to Spider Girl, who held it up to the meagre light at the den’s entrance. Blue light danced across her face, reminding Flora of the day she found a huge pile of coloured glass. They were in the ruins of a strange building. It must once have been huge, standing tall above all other buildings during the Before. It didn’t have beams of concrete and steel like others, but blocks of stone, elegantly curved or shaped in perfect squares. She’d even found some fragments with strange carvings which looked like parts of birds and animals.
‘Fire,’ continued Flora, ‘lived where the sun baked the Earth and
