Challenge #03205-H296: A Parable For All

A village is evacuating en masse. Even the local dragons, normally holding such villages in disdain, are now grabbing as many people as they can safely carry in their paws, allowing humans to strap carry-baskets to their backs, and runners are warning away all travelers. The local mountain is emitting smoke, the rumble and scents mean only one thing, and though a very stubborn few refuse to leave, often to the tears of family members who are begging them to also evacuate, the village is doomed. -- Anon Guest

Arablem was going to die. The mountain that had given the village such fertile fields had been rumbling for decades, but now it was smoking and changing shape. Every seer worth two coppers was predicting that the mountain would "make deadly clouds" any day now.

The local Dwarves, who were a little more intimate with geology than they should have been, had left the area. They took everything with them, only leaving behind predictions of molten rock raining from the sky in their wake.

It was the Dragons that did it for most of Arablem's residents. They landed in the fields, in the town square, anywhere there was space; and offered to fly anyone out of the danger zone. They'd suffer to be laden with anything at all they wanted to take. Nevertheless, there were stalwarts who refused to budge.

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