Fool's Gold

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. That was only true up until nine months ago when the Hunter Mining Company came to town and reopened the Boundary Red Mineral Mine. Since then hundreds of people have moved to our little town of Stardew Valley; former population size of 2,133 currently at 2,701 and growing. The mining company says they are here because the mine has some rare earth metals that electric cars run on. I thought electric cars run on electric, but what do I know since I am only 10. What I do know is there is something more valuable than battery parts in the mine. You didn’t hear it from me, but I think it’s gold.

My friends and I nicknamed these new residence “dragons” because they are only here for the gold. The mineral mine has been closed like forever, but once and a while we would hear about some teens getting busted by the sheriff for underage drinking in them. We had a really smart woman come to science class last year and she brought with her some rocks that came from the mine. I really liked the ones that glowed neon colors with a black light. Johnny Vargus, the class clown, had jokingly asked if there was gold in the mind. To no one's surprise the lady said there was no gold and never could be because of the geographic location, rock composition, blah, blah blah.

That might not all be true when old man Petrilak, who has a general store that sells the best live fishing bait, brought in a yellow nugget the size of my big toe to our local museum. He brought it in to have the museum test to see if it is real gold or that fake stuff I can’t remember the name of. The museum says it was fake, but I have my suspensions. Mr. Petrilak claims he found it in an old coffee can he dug up in his backyard looking for worms. Some of us don’t believe him because old man Petrilak has a bad back and the only thing he digs for is his underwear out of his butt crack; we also know he orders his bait from a catalog. The next week the bait store had a for sale sign in the window and we were told Mr. Petrilak left town.

What was I just talking about? Sorry, I have a little ADHD and like to jump arou…that’s right I was talking about dragons.. My best friends Tom, Kurt, Bub and Vincent are really into Dungeons and Dragons adventures, D&D for short, and one cool fact we learned from our games is the reason dragons love gold. Believe it or not the only reason dragons have gold is that it is soft to sleep on and doesn’t easily melt when the dragons belch out fire. My little sister Missy believes dragons also can fart fire, but she is only 8 and picks her nose so what does she know? Since dragons seek out gold and we have new residents who started to show up when “fake” gold was found, you know where I am going with this.

I can draw you a picture if you want, but I find this all really suspicious. The town has a mine that isn’t the gold type that reopened months after fake gold was found and in turn the finder of the fake stuff did a magic trick and made himself disappear.

Like all 10 year old's with free time on our hands, my friends and I decided to see if we could find some gold and set out to do just that. Since the mine was now open, we couldn’t go in the front door so we went in the back one. There is this stream that comes from underneath a rock slide we found a couple of years ago while we were hunting for frogs. We were hoping to see if we removed some of the bigger rocks it could lead to an opening.

It took us a couple of hours searching until we found it. This year has a hot summer and we don’t come out for frog hunting when the stream runs dry. What we found was no longer a pile of rocks, but an opening the size of a garbage truck. All the rocks were pushed to the side by what had to be a backhoe since the etching in the dirt looked like they were caused by the teeth found on the edge of its front bucket. That explains the perfectly spaced long gouges, but it doesn’t explain the long thick drag mark in the middle of the other markings. It looked to me like what you see on the TV documentary on alligators and how they crawl from the water to their nests.

We put on our camping headlamps and ventured into the cave. It wasn’t wet like you expect, but it was very echoey. It also had a smell like rotten eggs when they start to turn rotten. I don’t know what really old rotten eggs smell like since mom throws them out as soon as the date on the carton expires. I have to imagine if they smell bad a day after they can be used then they must smell really bad a week later. I’d say the smell was around three days old, but no longer than 4 days.

We were only 20 minutes in the cave, technically 10 minutes of walking in and 10 minutes of walking back out. Since I lived the closest my friends had to leave to get home before it got dark and so I hung around the entrance for a while longer. I was about to leave when it happened. I know my friends won’t believe me, not because I am a liar which I am not, but I heard something. It was a low sounding rumble that was in and out as if something very large was breathing. I thought it was just the wind blowing into the cave and it still might be since I didn’t see anything.

Tomorrow I am coming back with a new goal. Don’t judge me since you weren’t there, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to believe we might have part of a real D&D on our hands and instead of looking for the gold I am now looking for what might like to sleep on the gold.