If you think that four dragons and four people in a two-man tent would be a bit of a squash, you’d be right. It was a nightmare in fact. The dragons had been quite dozy at first so carrying them back up the moonlit garden was a piece of cake. But it wasn’t long before they started to wriggle and wanted to stretch their wings. Luckily I knew how to calm them down. Or I thought I did.

I’d told the others to come prepared with a shoebox and some broccoli and, because of my status as chief dragon expert, they’d all actually followed orders. I felt as if I could get used to this – my new role as respected elder, the voice of experience and wisdom, leading my minions … Perhaps they should call me something like ‘Commander’ or ‘Captain’. Perhaps even ‘Grand High DragonMaster’. Yeah, that sounded good. I’d probably need a cloak, or a special hat maybe, and a logo, definitely a logo.

‘Oi, Earth to Planet Tomas,’ said Ted, poking me in the side.

Shaken out of my daydream, I saw Ted pulling his daftest face at me.

‘Come on, Pongtastic, what do you think?’ he said.

I waved goodbye to the vision of myself as Grand High DragonMaster. Who was I kidding? There was no way Ted was going to call me Grand High anything, except ‘PongMaster’ maybe.

He was holding out his shoebox to me. And, I have to admit, the little imp called Envy started muttering away in my head when I saw it. He’d painted it in this really cool design, with bright shots of orange flame up the sides, and it was lined with a black silky cloth. Turning round, I saw Kat and Kai, cradling theirs. It looked as if everyone had gone to town on the decorating. Kat had a soft velvet scarf for her dragon to curl up in and the box itself was painted and covered in shiny sticky-back gems. A line of ‘rubies’ and ‘diamonds’ spelled out the words ‘Top Secret’. If that wasn’t guaranteed to make someone go in for a nose around, I don’t know what would! Kai, who tended to have a lot less patience for arty-crafty stuff, had just painted his a dark green, but even he had decked it out with some kind of fleecy material. They all looked way more inviting than Flicker’s shoebox.

‘Right, cool,’ I said, feeling pretty pleased that I’d managed to ignore my little envious imp, who had been all ready to stomp off in a huff at having been outdone. I was glad because everyone seemed really chuffed that I thought they were up to scratch. And then they started quizzing me on what we should do next. I guess I was still Grand High DragonMaster after all, even without a hat.

‘Food and sleep,’ I told them. ‘That’s what’s next. Get your box and your broccoli ready.’

Flicker flew down and tried to pick the broccoli stalk I was holding out of my fingers.

‘Let’s see if we can entice them in. If they’re anything like Flicker, they must be hungry by now.’

The dragons were hungry, but it was soon clear that Flicker was on his own when it came to loving all things green and sprouty.

Ted’s dragon appeared to have a taste for, well, anything and everything. He’d already found and demolished a chocolate fudge bar that must have fallen out of Ted’s pocket, plus most of its shiny wrapper, an apple and some crisps, which Ted assured us he had been saving to share with us later. The dragon was now surrounded by what appeared to be the remains of several small insects and a hairy half-chewed marshmallow and was biting off and swallowing the buttons on Kat’s cardigan. With every bite he took, his belly pulsed with a fiery orange glow that rippled down through his tail, as though flames were sizzling through him.

‘Cheeky thing,’ Ted said. ‘He’s just munched all our provisions.’

‘You’re just mad because he got to them before you could,’ I said with a laugh.

Kat leaned across, trying to reach her dragon, who had settled by the edge of her sleeping bag.

‘Hey, look at this,’ she said.

We peered down to where she was now pointing on the groundsheet of the tent. All around the little purple dragon were patches of ice, the delicate crystals formed into amazing patterns, almost like the creature had been painting a picture in frost. The dragon stretched up, drew back her wings and let out another freezing breath, swinging her head from side to side to build up the icy markings.

‘She’s an artist like me,’ said Kat with obvious delight.

Kai snorted, but before they could launch into a full-on argument, I noticed something.

‘Look what your one’s gone and done, Ted!’

We all looked to the furthest corner, where there was a mound of what looked like cotton wool, but which we soon realised was the downy inside of Ted’s sleeping bag. It had been ripped open. The golden dragon was now happily shredding Grandad’s tent, its needle-sharp claws and teeth tearing into the material, and he had already made a fair-sized hole.

‘How are we going to explain that one?’ said Ted.

‘Never mind about that,’ said Kai. ‘Where’s my dragon?’