Ajatar, by all accounts, is not the type of creature who people would want to be close to. By being in her presence, you would be risking becoming seriously ill or meeting a horrible end. However, in one story, a boy called Lassi did become close to Ajatar.

Lassi was a boy whose natural curiosity led him to seek out the dragon, Ajatar who he had heard lived close to his small village in Finland. Children have a curiosity that is so often missing in adults who can have a much bleaker, pessimistic view on the world. It could also be assumed that the adults would be well aware of the stories surrounding Ajatar and deliberately putting yourself in the vicinity of a creature who would give you a life shortening disease or just end your life on the spot would not seem like a good idea. Lassi, however, had none of these concerns when he set off to look for Ajatar.

Lassi spent days searching the surrounding areas for Ajatar until he finally came across her sleeping near a glacial lake. At this point, an older, wiser member of the village would probably have turned tail and ran as fast as they could back home to safety, but Lassi was young and curious. Instead of leaving, Lassi collected berries for Ajatar and played her a song on his flute.

Ajatar did not have many people who willingly approached her, if anything people would run away or try and kill her to stop her from bring death and destruction to their villages. For a child to approach her willingly was something she had never experienced and so she was curious as to who this boy was, and what he wanted.

Lassi was surprised that Ajatar appeared to be as curious about him as he was about her and for a whole summer, Lassi would return to the glacier lake to spend time with Ajatar.

However, Ajatar could not control her nature and over time she saw what was happening to Lassi from spending every day with her. His young body began to be affected by disease and Ajatar did not want her young friend to die because of her nature which was beyond her control.

One morning, Lassi trekked up to the lake and to his dismay, his friend was gone. He returned to the late again and again until he had to accept that Ajatar had left. Ajatar was unable to live with causing harm to the only person who had ever been her friend, and she left the area, never to be seen again. Word had spread around about how Ajatar could be a friend, and for generations stories were told about the boy Lassi and his unlikely friend Ajatar who left to spare her friend and his village from destruction.

Ajatar and the Boy who Befriended Her