In my very first blog post in November of last
year, I wrote about my little grand daughter, who at eight years old wrote an
eighteen-page story. She was then
an inspiration to me to start embarking on my writing with the hope of writing
and finishing a novel one day.
My objective of writing is not only to use my
right side of the brain and express my thoughts, emotion and feelings through
writing, but I also want to tell the stories about some of my passions for the
welfare of youth, children, women, arts and music. There is a mission that I support, namely ZOE International,
mission to fight against child trafficking. I’m hopeful that whatever income I can raise from writing
can be used to further the cause of this mission and my other passions.
Well it’s Emi’s 10th birthday next
week; I have wanted to post her story of “Midnight Forest” since last weekend,
but got so busy I did not get a chance to do it. Now it’s time, enjoy the read from the young author!
MIDNIGHT
FOREST by Emi
Birth and Early Childhood
I was born in a warm stable; I was a Shetland
filly. The other animals in the
barn were: a few cows, two roosters and two hens, the first hen with seven eggs
and the other five. There were two
pigs that were going to have piglets, and there were also ten more horses in
the barn besides my mother and I.
The cows were across from our stall. In the corner, there were chickens, and to our left, there
were the pigs.
The night I was born, except for a drink of
water, my mother didn’t leave me at all.
The hay net was right next to us, so my mother did not have to leave me
for that.
The next day, it was sunny. All the doors and windows were opened,
so we got fresh air. It was then
that my owner noticed me when he came in to watch the little piglets that were
being born. He came to my stall
and mother ran to him. He gave her
some cinnamon sticks, then looked at me. My ears pricked up wondering what he
was going to do. He looked me
over, then said to himself, “A filly…. black coat and a white star on its
forehead…”
“Grace! Lilly! Come over!” He said,
A girl and a woman ran over. The girl nearly gasped. “It’s so pretty!” She squealed.
The girl was Lilly and the woman was Grace.
“What should we call her?” The man wondered.
“How about Midnight Forest?” Lilly asked.
“That’s a great name for her!” Grace replied.
Then the man walked to the pigpen. “Patch should be having piglets either now
or soon.” He said as he walked. Grace and Lilly followed him.
“Patch’s
having the piglets!” he said to Grace and Lilly, when he got there. Soon nine piglets were born—six males,
and three females.
“I’ll
go get Patch and Spot’s feed.”
Grace said.
My father was right next to my mother’s
stall. My mother sometimes stood
up and talked with my father. My
mother was called Ruby, and my father was Rain.
“Mommy,
can I ride Rain?” Lilly asked.
“Okay, but first, go feed the cows and chickens.”
Grace said.
Lilly nodded and ran for the corn. Then she fed the pigs, and rushed back
out with grass and a few kinds of veggie and fed the cows. After that, she got into proper
clothes, and led Rain out of his stall.
Then she sprang up onto the saddle and took the reins.
She was galloping in the field when Grace said,
“Lilly! Want to go hacking? I’ll be riding Rocky.”
“Wait,
first can I jump the fences?”
Lilly asked. “Sure, but be careful!” Grace said.
I looked out the window, and saw my father
leaping the fences. My mother
looked too. Soon, I saw Grace
tacking up Rocky. Grace gave him a
banana, then brought him outside.
“Daddy’s
coming on Chester.” Grace said.
“Okay.” Lilly replied.
Soon, the man came out of the barn with a
chestnut horse. I watched them
leave until they disappeared down the road. Ten minutes after they left, my mother nursed me.
Suddenly a loud rumble of thunder came, and a
flash of lightning spread across the sky.
Then, a gust of wind blew some straw out of my mother’s stall. She curled around me, and whinnied to
me, saying “Snuggle up. It’s
cold.” I snuggled with her until I
was warm away from the gust of wind.
Then Grace, Lilly, and the man came in. Rocky and Rain seemed quite
scared. Rain snorted, and Rocky
whinnied. But Chester nickered, as
if saying, “I’m with my friends. I don’t have to be scared.”
The man filled my mother’s bucket of water and
gave her a meal, that to her, was the best. Grace and Lilly closed all the doors and windows because the
weather had gotten really bad at the first strike of lightning.
“Mom,
how come you didn’t tell me that the weather was going to be like this?” Lilly said, forcing a window to close
over the strong wind that was blowing the horse all over the place.
“Lilly,
I and daddy checked the weather forecast this morning, it didn’t say anything
about the storm.” Grace explained.
The next day, I was turned out into the meadow
with my mother and Chester for the first time in my life. I was excited about how the bugs were
flying, but my mother and Chester were very used to it. So when I saw a bee, I nickered and
pranced after it. The bees thought
that I was going to kill it, so it charged towards me.
My mother whinnied a warning and Chester snorted,
saying “Midnight Forest! Get back here!
Bees are dangerous!” My
mother snorted back at Chester, as if to say, “She’s two days old! You shouldn’t expect her to know what a
bee is!”
Chester snorted back, getting them both into an
argument and saying, “I know what a bee was when I was two days old! She should too!”
“Not all foals are the same!” My mother whinnied.
“Who’s arguing over a bee?” A taller horse asked from the stable.
Chester glared at the mare in the stable, and
said nothing.
Ever since that day, I kept away from bees.
(To be continued)
