On the other side of the world with our little friends.

44: On the other side of the world with our little friends.
Today, while stirring a big pot of thick, wintery soup, my little friends did get an emergency call.
How? It went piece by piece, every time given on to the next fire dragon or big, long flying bird.
And before you ask why, I will tell so: Our dwarfs and elf in Holland have a lot of experience with floods, very wet weather.
That they have not so much on the other side of the world on a continent, that is called Australia.
So the last messenger from there was a Storm-petrel, a bird that mostly can fly for days on end on the winds and airflows.
And so it went on until it arrived over here, and had to ask help to get warm, while it so terribly cold now.
The moment it did clapper with his beak, but could speak again, it said: “I am hungry!”
The other birds of the sea, the seagulls, who had flown with him for the last miles, went out and were catching him a lot of herring and other fish.
After eating Petrel the finally could tell what he came for.
“We do know you are terribly busy with winterfeeding, saving animals of the ice and so on, but can you please share some of your dwarfs and elf to help us?”
“What do they have to do? If we know, we wake the right ones. And the ones, we can miss for a couple of months, for Australia is not just around the corner!” one of our friends commented.
“You see, only once in a very large number of years there does fall that much rain, we have a flood. This year there is so much rain, even the dried out seas in the inland, that only had water 2 times the last 100 years, are overflowing now.
That is a tread for a lot of animals, that usually do live on dry land, even desert like surroundings.
Do you have some older and wiser dwarfs and elf to spare, who can give us directions, how we can handle things?
You see, we also like to store the water for next years, while it might not rain for a lot of years to come, so that makes it a double problem.” The Storm-petrel said, looking very hopeful.
Luckily, after some deliberation, they did remember Wander, the dwarf with the fire dragon, that so much liked to travel.
They also remembered, he had studied all the water works over the world, with this making the long messenger trips he had made, les boring. So he was the perfect dwarf for the job.
There also was an very tiny elf, that seldom came out, while he easily was blown away.
By that reason, he wrote all the stories, everybody told him in the books of the dwarfs and elf, so no knowledge went lost.
“But how do you want to bring an elf to the other side of the world, when on the ocean there is always wind, so I mostly glide on it, to use as less as possible energy?” the Petrel asked.
“We do have, from a time about 50 years ago, a kind of armor of leather, which should fit around him and can over your neck and under your belly.
You only have to ask other birds during the trip to feed you, for he cannot hold his breath that long, or would freeze when wet.” The Petrel nodded.
“After a good night rest and some more food from my friends, can we go? It really is an emergency”.
All agreed, and the next day Wander and his dragon, with a small rucksack with food and a book of the elf flew besides the Petrel, with on his back, just before his wings the tiny elf, in thick, warm clothes and also with some elf food on his back.
3 days they flew, and the message went faster, while the birds with nobody on their back, and only a small piece to fly, took care, there was on every resting spot food and for the elf and dwarf a fire, if wood was available.
In Australia they went not only to the wisest of the dwarfs, no they too went to the elder of the Aboriginals, knowing, they also did remember story’s of thousands of years.
So together they found the solution, one that the humans that came to live over there much later than the Aboriginals could not know.
In some parts under the dry seas and rock, there are basins, hidden under big rock formations, and to be sure, the sweet water did not go at once to the sea, the entrances were closed.
But nobody had thought, to ask the people, who did live that long in this country.
And by themselves, there were not enough of them, to open up all the necessary entrances, so the water could go down, but was not wasted.
All and everyone did help, while the other people did see the Aboriginals opening the way to the basins, did lower the water.
They were not wise enough to see the dwarf, only the kids could, but on that moment nobody had time to listen to that stories: the land had to be dry again first.
When all was done, not all the water was gone underground, but most, and the sun would help, even as the new growth on the new harvest, that now could be planted.
And Wander, the elf and the fire dragon?
They had the time of their life: such a large helping adventure.
They did meet a lot of other little people, fire dragons of another kind, and did do as we all try to do: help nature, just when it does need that little bit of extra help.
For the next years there now was stored underground water, that slowly would fill the tiny water wholes in the inland through the small cracks in the mountains.
Nice to know, is it not?
© Nan van Daalen.