The Mythical Creatures Club: A {Kid’s Story}

Written and Illustrated by Caitlyn Elliston. (Introduction by Jennifer Racusin)

Do you remember what it was like to write when you were a kid? How you could take inspiration from things you loved and then make them even better by transforming them into anything that you wanted? And how good it felt when someone took the time to really read your story and experience all of the awesomeness that you packed in there?

Well, my student Caitlyn is a kid that loves to write.

And when I told her that The Prompt was looking for kids stories to publish, she immediately started digging through her stash of story notebooks and selected this one to polish up for your enjoyment.

Her story is an action-packed adventure full of magic, mythic creatures, danger, friendship, unicorns, and rainbows.

It’s a world where pigs fly and the main character is an adorably fluffy puppy with wings. It’s basically got everything awesome, is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and it is the story that your day needs. I hope you enjoy it.

The Mythical Creatures Club: A Kid’s Story

“Bella! Bella!” Mom Pig called.

“Yes?” Bella yipped flapping excitedly up to Gilbert’s mother.

“Bella, the Piglaas are going to the MCC. Do you want to come?” oinked Mom Pig.

“Okay!” barked Bella. “But what is the MCC?”

“Mythical Creature Club!” interrupted Gilbert loudly.

“So let’s go RIGHT NOW!” squealed Violet and Charlotte in unison.

We looked at this map, found the cloud with the rainbow, and took flight on our way to the Magical Creature Club.

So, when we got to the cloud, there were magical, mythical creatures everywhere. We looked around this place. It was so exciting! There were devils to hippogriffs to dragons to unicorns and even the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland. The whole cloud was flashing with different colored scales, fur, and feathers. There was even a legendary griffin!

The family landed on a cloud, folding their wings away.

Bella landed after the Piglaas, but she found no cloud under her paws. She was falling! Bella panicked. She saw the pigs beside her. They had probably walked to the same part of the cloud she was on to see where she went, and fell. She realized, why wouldn’t she just fly? She tried to flap, but her wings did not work. Instead of gliding to safety, she just kept falling.

Bella yelped in a very concerned way. Why were her wings not working?

What could stop her from using her wings? Answering Bella’s unasked question, Violet screamed, “The enchantments of the MCC cloud will prevent us from flying underneath it!”

Just after she shrieked the answer, they hit the ground. Terrified calls of “Oof!” “Aack!” and “Where are we?” rung through the woods for a few minutes until Mom Pig (who’s name is actually Rebecca Pig) called through the din, “I can just see the MCC cloud!”

Gilbert’s two sisters started shrieking, “Oh no! We’re lost! We’ll never get back in time for the celebration!” As Mom Pig started calming them down, I saw Gilbert come closer to me. He whispered in my ear, “Bella, do you know where we are?”

“No. I think we are lost,” I replied.

And that is when Bella noticed that her wings were not looking like they usually should.

The usual shining, golden feathers were now pale and scraped. She saw that her coat was duller than usual and had dirt in it. There were also a few bruises on her tail from her fall.

She barked, “The only hope is to get to the MCC cloud again. We’re too far from home to walk there on foot and that is the closest stop. Since there’s so many magical creatures gathered they’ll probably have a healer with magic potions and stuff.” The others all agreed with her so they started walking towards the cloud.

Two days later, Mom Pig used some of her restored magic to fix their wings a little. They weren’t perfect and able to fly yet, but they were better than they were before. They were almost at the meadowy area of the region when Gilbert screamed “AAAACK! They are terrifying!” Everyone stopped.

There was a large gathering of serpents blocking their path.

Bella scanned the area. There was a large river in front of them and the serpents were slowly  slithering around, keenly guarding the entrance to the MCC. Bella yipped in a concerned way to the Piglaas, “I don’t think we’ll be able to fly over them because our wings aren’t strong enough for high altitudes yet. And, we cannot possibly fight them. We are outnumbered.”

Violet piped up “What if we fly through them like they are trees?”

“Yeah,” snorted Gilbert, “giant, hungry, scaley, trees.”

“Actually,” agreed Charlotte, “That’s a good idea if we can fly fast enough.”

Ten minutes later, they were hovering on the other side of the river.

“Wow!” Barked Bella. “It really worked!”

“Yes!” replied  Charlotte happily. “Now we just need to get to the MCC.”

With a few beats of their feathery wings, they were soaring towards the clouds.

As we fluttered along, Violet squealed “MCC!!!” and the whole group turned their heads to see a small, fluffy cloud with a rainbow extending into a small lake underneath it. Everyone turned toward the cloud and soon they were going very fast. They screeched to a halt over the cloud and bounced into the poofy club, wings at the ready to swoop up if the cloud was unstable.

This time we each had a stable bit of cloud and Bella hovered over the cloud happily. She felt the push of magic on her wings so they didn’t have to flap so hard.

Mom Pig butted into her and pushed her over to meet Uni and Willy, a pair of unicorns, and their foal, Corn.

Mom Pig flapped off to talk with Uni, again, and Bella landed beside Corn.

Corn happily squealed, “Hellllllllllooooooo! Do you want to make cloud pastry with meeeeeeeee?”

“Sure,” barked Bella as Gilbert landed beside her. (He explained that unicorns just speak weirdly.)

Corn laughed playfully and we all went inside her cloud hut and baked some cloud pastry, while Corn explained her family to us.

“It is very late now,” yipped Bella. “We should probably get headed home.” There was a short pause and then Bella asked, “Do you want to come over for a sleepover?”

“Suuuuuuuurrrrrre,” neighed Corn happily.

The trio marched gleefully back to Bella’s treehouse.

The Piglaas also came to the sleepover and the Mythical Creatures met two other dogs, named Roxy and Rocket, who were Bella’s dog friends. They all had a very cheerful sleepover uniting the Mythical Creatures and dogs. They didn’t go to sleep. They partied all night flapping around the treehouse, teaching the other dogs how to fly and special tricks because Mom Pig had gifted them with wings, like she gave Bella.

The end.

NOTE: Bella is a very cute, very real, very fluffy, golden doodle mix. She is the inspiration for this story. This is her picture. (She does not really have wings or pig friends.)