There was once a dragon with a broken wing, he lived near a lively village. The people, however, did not like the dragon, they thought he was useless and wanted to banish him from the land. But one of the villagers, a little orphan girl, loved the dragon and swore to protect him. To help him they needed to retrieve a special gem. So in the night, they packed up supplies, including the girl's science books and left for a journey to the center of the Earth.

They roamed a few miles away from the village and started to dig. They dug and dug, until the sun came up. Eventually, they found an opening, like a cave, and they went into it.

This cave was very rocky and would be tough to get by. The dragon and the girl both realized they were in the crust, the Earth's first layer, and a solid one. The dragon worked on moving rocks with his tail.

When the dragon thought he was done moving all the rocks he could, bigger rocks came crashing down and blocked them in. The journey was already to a bad start, leaving them worried.

The little girl decided to examine the rocks and followed along her books, and she learned they were granite rocks. They thought the dragon could break the granite rocks with all his strength, so he did. Once it was all gone, they found a tunnel to go through.

To the dragon and the girl's surprise, there was another cave with more rock, but it was different. The last cave had to have been 40 kilometers tall, but this one was way shorter, like only 6 kilometers tall. The dragon remembered that the little girl had told him about the oceanic crust and how it was shorter than the continental crust. It was also made of basalt instead.

They wondered for what felt like days before falling through a hole into another place. This place was significantly hotter than the crust. They had made it to the next layer, the mantle. And although the mantle is solid, there was a large river of hot magma. The little girl almost fell in, but the dragon saved her.

The dragon got an idea, but they would have to be very careful. He broke off a large piece of rock and made sure it was big enough for both of them to sit on. The girl sat on top of the rock, and the dragon pushed the rock into the magma before getting on it himself. As they rode down the stream, the girl used her books and learned it was an olivine-rich rock and the mantle was 3,000 kilometers thick, but it didn't seem like that just yet.