Dragon Writing Challenge

Write the beginning of a story using the starting line "you thought dragons didn't exist"
You thought dragons didn't exist. Well there was a time when they truly existed. This was in the past but perhaps there are a few remaining isolated beings in hiding today. As recent as the 15th century there were reports of dragons in Europe. The last believed account of dragons was that of an outbreak of small dragons not much bigger than dogs. It would seem as though the dragons decreased in size throughout time. Still today there are rumors of large dinosaur like creatures in the remote parts of the Amazon and Congo. As well as the infamous so-called sea monsters such as the Loch Ness monster. Which are all completely plausible. There are legends of dragons throughout all of the world's cultures often who hadn't had contact or knowledge of other peoples, and throughout different periods of time. Besides legends of dragons history is full of legends of giant serpents and sea monsters. The maps of old all indicated that dragons existed in the remote uncharted areas of the world. Still able to exist in the wilds and unslaughered by humans. The dragons were greatly respected and honored by the native populations. Only later primarily in the West they became considered evil entities to be wiped out. This belief greatly spread with Christianity and the other Abrahamic religions. Knights were regularly dispatched to go on adventures to rid the land of dragons causing trouble and fear. There is some evidence that they were in the way of increasing populations and the raising of livestock. A large dragon requires a loss of spaces to live and hunt.

There have been many different descriptions of dragons. Primarily they fit into two different groups called Western and Eastern. Those of the East being long and slender and often without wings or only 2 feet while those of the West are more bulky and always have wings and 4 feet. Eastern dragons were considered to be beneficial to mankind and Western dragons were considered vicious and causing evil. The two different opinions seem to have stemmed the dragons giving humanity knowledge which is looked at differently by the different cultures. In one case the knowledge being considered helpful and in the other considered the root of all evil by humans. It is interesting that the very first stories of dragons in Europe they were called giant worms and greatly resembled the Eastern dragons. It is very possible that they evolved with time. Another possibility is that the worms and serpents became extinct and eventually the standard kinds remained. Those that were stronger, more mobile, and greater defenses, and more cunning. Science has proven that it is possible for such creatures were able to breathe fire and have poisonous bites or saliva. As far as bites and saliva one only has to look at some snakes and the Komodo dragon for evidence. The Komodo dragon perhaps being a remnant of dragons. The Bombardier Beetle is where we see the possibility of breathing fire. This beetle defends itself by shooting boiling hot fluids at its attackers. The beetle produces and stores two kinds of chemicals which it mixes when needed. Hydrogen Peroxide and Hydroquinone which do not spontaneously combust on mixing. They only explode when two catalysts are added. A catalase to decompose hydrogen peroxide and a peroxidase to oxidize the hydroquinone to break them down into simpler quinones. The beetle forces the two chemicals into a special chamber where they react with the specialized catalyst enzymes created by glands located there. All that would be required from a creature doing this to actually make it be on fire would be some kind of material to ignite it. It has been proposed that they ate some kind of rock like found in flint which they vomited into the chemical. Similar to how other animals such as birds eat rock material. It has been proposed that raptor and flying dinosaurs did the same as they were very birdlike.

It has been reported that there have been discoveries of fossils which greatly match descriptions of dragons. One theory states that the dinosaur fossils we find are actually the bones of dragon. That all of the reproduced dinosaur skeletons in the museums are put together falsely to hide the truth about dragons. A more likely explanation is that dragons were simply one of the dinosaur species. One that was able to survive into modern times perhaps by hiding underground in caverns when the rest of the dinosaurs went extinct. This could be why all of the stories connect dragons with living in caves.