Characters: Moon Shadow, Windrider
Setting: They were on the hill and wanted to flew the plane.
How the scene begins: Windrider flew the plane and flew for a minute.
How the scene ends: Windrider crashed onto the hill.
Substitute: What do you think would have happened when they fly beside a river?
It will crash into the river instead of hill.
Modify: What would happened if Windrider is not brave to fly the airplane?
Moon Shadow will fly the airplane for him.
Rewritten Scene:
“All right, father, robin,” Moon Shadow said. They both pulled down at the propellers and backed away. The motor beside me coughed into life, turned over, and caught. The bicycle chains clinked musically as they turned the propellers. The wings began to vibrate, and you could feel the life began to course through Dragon-wings. Robin stepped back and I ran around behind Dragonwings to join her. We were both exhilarated in the wind from the propellers, which rippled across the grass. Suddenly the wind had competition here on the hilltop. The flags on the front rudders stiffened, and we could now see the eyes painted on the flags. It was as if Dragonwings had finally woken.
Dragonwings lurched forward, bumped, stopped, and lurched forward again, like some great lumbering beast coughing to itself as it got up out of bed. I gripped the frame of the wing tightly with his left hand and pulled back sharply with his right, so that the front rudders angled skyward. Dragonwings rolled toward the river. The wooden wheels made crisp, crunching sounds as they crushed the weeds. Dragonwings seemed to teeter for a moment, balancing on the very edge of the river. I wondered if Dragonwings were simply going to crash into the river. Robin crossed her fingers. Silently, father asked Grandfather to help us.
Suddenly the wind blew even harder up beside the river. The nose of Dragonwings suddenly tilted up like some bird scenting the wind that would carry it home. The wind roared over the hilltop, seeming to gather beneath the wings. The canvas of the wings bellied upward, taut and swollen and eager. Dragonwings seemed to leap into the air about five feet and hang suspended. I held my breath. I saw Father twist his hips to the right, and the wings began to curl and the rear rudder curved to the right. Slowly, ever so slowly, I began to bank in that direction. I had controlled my flight! I am free in the sky.
Everyone cheered spontaneously. I turned in a leisurely circle around the river, coming back toward them. In his traces, Red Rabbit stamped and snorted, so that Hand Clap had to run over and quiet him down. Father raced along beside Dragonwings for a moment, his legs pumping, his head dizzy, his heart filled with pride. “Oh, I did it.”
There were a few strands of hair that had slipped down over my eyes, but the wind of my passage blew them away from his face again. He grinned and winked. And then he passed me. My wings brushed the grasstops and then the left side of my wings dipped dangerously toward the river, but he steadied Dragonwings with a shove of his hips. Dragonwings rose into the air as I completed my circle and headed down the hillside toward the bay.
I plunged down the slope after him. I could hear the others pounding behind me. Robin shouted for me to wait, but I ignored her. My momentum carried me recklessly forward. Once I nearly fell, but I caught myself with my hands and scrambled on. By the time we had reached the bottom, where the garden stood along with our stable, I had already reached the road that marked the end of the Esperanza property; I began to turn back over the orchards toward the garden. I am flying as twenty feet now, and the sun, gleaming through the painted canvas, made the wings seem like living flesh. It was as if he were no longer a man, but truly a dragon again.
They watched me fly for perhaps four minutes around the Esperanza estate while they stood knee-deep among the flowers.
“Look at him,” Uncle shouted. He was as excited as a litter boy. “Look at him. Just look.”
“But how is he to come down?” Lefty asked.
Uncle laughed. “Tell this man how he is to come down.”
“He’ll land back on the ground near the river.” Father added, “More or less.”
“More or less?” Uncle asked, puzzled.
“We hope without cracking up the flying machine.”
“Oh,” was all that Uncle said. He began scratching anxiously at the back of my neck. “Whom do you ask to help an aeronaut? The winds? The dragons?”
“All of them,” white Deer said.
But we never did get to see whether I would land all right or not.
I had just completed another circuit of the estate and was banking to the left over the fences, so my nose at the time was pointed toward the hillside. I heard a shrill, high, singing sound as the bolt that held the right propeller to the frame snapped. Horrified, I saw the propeller spinning away from Dragonwings in a lazy arc. The right side dipped dangerously. I cut the motor and twisted the rear rudder hard to the left, tilting the front rudders upward so that the wind lifted the right side even more. Dragonwings straightened itself. It was deadly silent now in the garden. I told father later that I had hoped to glide to a landing. But by now he had come too close to the river. I am twisting violently to the left in his cradle, trying to turn even farther to the left, away from the river. Too late.
The next moment seemed to take forever. Father watched helplessly as Dragonwings started to turn, but the Dragonwing brushed into the river. The wooden frame of the right wings snapped in a dozen places. Broken wooden poles ripped through the canvas as it flapped upward. The left wings rose leisurely until they were almost straight up, and then Dragonwings leaned forward and burrowed nose first into the river. The body of Dragonwings swung back and forth drunkenly and then hung at an odd angle.
