The Secret of the Well

Once upon a time, there was a well. One day, villagers heard a voice coming from it. "Help me," it said. "I'm a dragon stuck in this well. Help me get out."
"That explains why we never get any water out of this thing, I suppose." Thus said one villager.
"We'd better get that dragon out," another concluded.
But before they fell to devising a method to accomplish that, Skeptical Leonard spoke skeptically. "If you're a dragon, how did you get down there in the first place? It's a serious question."
"It is," the dragon admitted. "Thinking about it, it's really dark down here. I'm not actually sure I'm a dragon or what I am. I suppose it was more of an aspiration. Aren't dragons cool?"
Even Skeptical Leonard agreed that they were. He and all the villagers equipped themselves with shovels to get digging. They dug and they dug until at last they were able to rescue the creature, which of course turned out to be an oivel, as anyone more educated than the average villager would have guessed.
The freed oivel assisted the villagers in picking a better location for a well. After that, it opened a museum dedicated to dragons and dragon-related subjects which operates to this day, and if you tell them old Millard sent you, they'll knock a bit off the admission fee for you.
Finis

A Perilous Exchange

Fear of invasion was the result when communication ended with the first alien civilization encountered by humanity. Labeled Intelligent Extraterrestrial Lifeform 00001 by the authorities in an excess of optimism and wunners by regular people in need of a shorter name and aware of the impossibility of pronouncing alien words, that species seemed open to peaceful relations. A few exchanges of foods and goods took place.
But then, silence. Military preparations were made even as expeditions went out and found cities empty but not silent, for power hummed and automated factories operated. For all the world it looked as if an entire interstellar civilization had stepped out for a bite to eat.
And such was indeed the case. An expedition at last found a wunner, perhaps the last of his species. This was what he told them. "These peppers you guys grow are too spicy. We can't handle it."
The expeditionary captain scratched his head. "Then . . . don't eat them? I prefer milder flavors myself."
"Nope. Too delicious." The wunner bit into a New Iberia Space Reaper, the third-hottest pepper in the galaxy, and died instantly with a look the xenobiologists confirmed to be pure culinary pleasure on its face.

"That story's stupid. You're just trying to cover up humanity's conquering impulses." The middle schooler crossed his arms, his umbrage caused more by having to go to a dumb museum than by the fate of the wunners.
"What's going on across the street, if that's true?" A passing historian pointed. A wunner shot out a diner with the spiciest meal on the menu in its hands and a bunch of customers on its tail who scrambled to save it from itself. That snotty kid never lived that one down.
Finis

Addendum

A few people, however, should insist that other city stinks and that home city is much better.

Scene Dressing

The easiest way to make your world feel real is for everyone to think some other city is way cooler. We will call this the Paris Method.