Nick was kneeling by his bed as he finished saying his prayers. Nick's deep baratone voice whispered as he prayed, "...and that you'll please keep my Granny safe, alive, happy, and healthy..."

Despite the fact that Nick was seventeen and would turn eighteen in a few months he still prayed everynight and had never lost his faith in Christ. Nick had more or less succed in controlling his more human impulses and had done his best to spread the word of god, but with him being an outcast at school he hadn't done much.

As Nick prayed he didn't hear the sound of someone climbing up the side of the house on the ivy his mother had been letting grow there for ages. The man looked in and saw Nick praying and smiled as he quietly picked the lock on the window.

Nick was reaching the final part of his prayer and quietly prayed, "Lord if it your will, when I die I ask that you will please reincarnate me as a dragon. For you know I have always loved them almost as much as I love you and ask that before I join you in heaven that I may spend a lifetime as a dragon here on Earth. So before I say goodnight my lord I will listen for your voice, so if you have anything to say to me I ask that you say it now for I am listening.

Nick suddenly felt a knife blade pressed up against his throat and smelled a man who smelled of beer and sweat behind him.

"If you have anything else to add to your prayers boy you'd best say them now," the man said chuckling softly.

Nick remained silent and the man sliced open Nick's throat and as Nick died he breathed the words, "Amen."

The man chuckled and turned to look for something worth stealing in the kids room. Unfourtunatly Nick had never been very tidy and the man stepped on an old toy that rolled and and stumbled backwards. The man stepped on one of the clay modles of a Dragon Nick had made in art class, this one had a long shrap spin the pierced the man's shoe and made him hop on one foot cursing. The man then stepped on Nick's old hotwheels that he had never gotten around to giving away and slipped completely off his feet cracking his head on the open window.

Now completely limp the man sagged out the window falling twenty feet and cracked his head open on the ground below. Nick's father came in to see what all the noise was and saw his son dead and bleeding onto the bed his hands still folded in prayer. Nick's father was at a loss for words and only hoped Nick was in a better place now.

Little did he know that god had granted Nick's final prayer as a reward for his lifetime of devotion, even if it was short.