The lamp shade was lit with the shadow of an enlarged hand feeling their hand over the energetic light it had proceeded to make appear. This was the room of Mary Gilbert, a child of eight years, bright blue eyes and blonde hair as gold and her mother Fransziska Gilbert, a courteous, fine old lady who cared for her child and various social gatherings when necessary. These two had just been in the midst of an upheaval. A tragic loss. It was September 1902 (the 4th) and it was 9:30 at night. In their cottage in the rural countryside, the wind blew and although one might expect a child to find this severley frightful Mary didn't but instead found it sincerely comforting and impeccably relaxing. She went to sleep in an instant, hoping to dream of putting all of the communication within her thoughts, the imaginative adventures she had, to a real dream, where she could live inside it, until disappointingly waking up to the world. At a moment's thought, after her mother had left the bedroom, she thought she could write some of her ideas down, her communications, her feelings, her everlasting desires to go inside her world. She didn't think it possible before but then Mary thought to herself, grudgingly and supportively, that of course "anything is possible" and the only way to live in my world is to "write it down as a story or perhaps a poem." Her mother was out in the kitchen washing the dishes and slicing some cabbages to eat as a night snack. You see, they had recently became quite devastatingly poor and it was such a lucky charm that they had hopes and wishes that kept them going. They only just had enough to eat. While she wrote it down Mary frowned, first slightly and then fully at the state of her handwriting. "No one can know what I'm feeling, if they can't read what I choose to write down, for heaven's sake." She had thought to herself. Mary got the seemingly hundreds of pieces of paper from her wooden draws and started practicing her skill at being as neat as possible but not going too far whilst the writing would be too small. Indeed it was turning to the tide of being not small but severley miniscule, like an ant wrote it she thought.



Mary continued on her writing. She decided to write about these three special children with extrodinary courage who at once hated each other but ended with a loving friendship that would last forever and never be forgotten, even after death. She came up with the beginning, a middle and end and poured all her heart and soul into this one short story.



The next morning the chickens were sounding their alarm, the birds whistled happily and the sun torched it's light onto the farmhouse where Mary stayed up almost all night writing her short story. She had hoped to write more but it was a start in her gleaming, excitedly imaginative eyes. She went to show it to her mother who thought it was incredible.


"Oh, Mary. This is beautiful. Maybe you could write me one so I could keep it." Mary smiled and ran off into her room to write. Her mother who had a continious passionate love for books and history loved to read in her spare time. Unfortuantley she only had four books to read, couldn't afford anymore so she also, just like Mary, made up her own stories and escaped from this world into a far better, wholesome and friendly one. She always thought the real world could be that imaginative wonder too if we would just be a little nicer to each other and caring and apologetically empathetic as was all of Mary's mother's positive personality traits. When she was up reading "The Tales of Ha G Tousome" and Mary was reading a recent book titled "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and "Adventures of Pinocchio" her mother had thought perhaps they could send it to a publisher. The only reason, not even for money but to see if she could share her imagination and wisdom with the rest of the children of the village and it could be sold as a children's novel. She didn't tell Mary about this, she wanted to leave it as a surprise, for her upcoming 9th birthday. But that could only mean if the publisher would accept it, after all he was very strict and firm but perhaps he was just like that because he also loved stories and books and imagination and was very eager to see the best of it. But Mary would say "There is no best of it. It's beautiful no matter what the story is or how good it is. It doesn't matter. As long as it's yours."