RaW

A woman from Loughton is one of the East winners in the RaW short story competition.

Thirty-four year old Tina couldn't resist writing a story when she heard about the RaW competition. This was her first introduction to the RaW community and was keen to be more involved in the future.

Tina fell in love with the character Baked Bean straight away (her nickname is bean) and loved the idea of creating stories that can help, inspire or give courage to young people. 

Tina had problems learning to read because of a hearing impediment, which held her back for a long time.  She never thought she would be able to write anything worthwhile.  Tina had dabbled with writing stories for a little while but still lacked confidence.

Winning the competition couldn't have come at more appropriate time.  In the future Tina would like to write more and more stories for young people.  She's truly happy when creating stories and if she could bring something positive into the lives of others by doing so that would be fantastic.

Read Tina's story

Inside the Amazing Space Circus, flying dragons create a kaleidoscope of fire. Acrobats perform somersaults between the flames.  The twins, Max and Lara, practice their routine on the magical flying trapeze.

Baked Bean is the only dragon in the circus that cannot fly or breathe fire.  All the other dragons ignore him, or worse, tease him.  As he thought about this, his big black eyes filled with tears, which ran down his face and splashed onto his podgy little feet.

The twins are Baked Bean’s only friends.  They always sit with the little green dragon, during their break.

'Don't worry Beanie, your day will come.'  Max said, comforting his friend.  Baked Bean sighed and a very large tear dropped off the end of his nose.

'Hey, Beanie, will you watch our new routine and let us know what you think?' asked Lara.  Baked Bean nodded, pulling out a hanky to blow his nose.  The twins ran to the floating platform, which zoomed up to the flying trapeze.

As the little dragon turned to watch the twins, he noticed a small golden pocket watch on the seat nearby.  He picked it up and eyed it curiously.

The twins threw each other higher and higher.  Baked Bean watched in amazement. The twins came together in the air.  Max reached for the trapeze and missed.  The two of them plummeted towards the ground, hundreds of metres below.

Baked Bean gasped, his breath icy cold.  The pocket watch felt icy too.  He looked down.  His breath had frozen the golden watch. 

Quickly he looked back at his friends.  Everything and everyone had frozen, suspended in time.

The dragon rushed around getting the safety net in place.  He warmed the icy watch with his hands and it started to tick.  His friends continued to fall, screaming all the way, but landed safely on the net.

'Beanie, you can freeze time.  You're a Time Dragon.  I thought they were extinct.'  Lara beamed.

'Wow that is awesome!'  Max exclaimed.

Baked Bean did a little dance.

Finally, he had found his place in the world.