The Nightingale Eggs
by Teodora Toth (Year 7)
Try to imagine a girl so naughty and so little, who always finds herself in the middle of attention. Anyway, let me explain – this story is especially about this thought… you won’t hear a word about her being a “good” person, most likely however, all that you will actually hear is the sad cry of the hopeless animals, the animals that have to survive a drama, a terror. Unfortunately, the story will start with “once upon a time, but it’s no longer the case” instead of the classic “once upon a time” because a little girl overreacted to the least of her problems and got into a big fuss for nothing – yep, that’s how bad things got!
On a beautiful, cool, and humid evening, Sofi, a little girl with blond hair, braided into two pigtails, tied with a long pink ribbon, was sitting at the window of her miserable room. Her room – it was messy – full of clothes thrown all around the room, dismembered dolls : a foot was on her bed, one on the window at which she was standing, the doll’s hands were somewhere with her sister, who was trying to reassemble them into a six armed doll – as her sister did not find a foot and a hand, she used a horse leg and an arm that probably belonged to some type of exotic plastic animal figurine, some type of a feline… – back to Sofi, all she wanted was snow and to be the ‘first’ to step on it. People think they are ‘first’ at everything, however, in nature this absurd concept doesn’t exist, everybody can do whatever they want whenever they want…
The next morning Sofi woke up early. Usually, she doesn’t do it, but this morning she heard a nightingale from her window… like every bird, it sang, it sang beautifully and a lot… but no, Sofi just wished that all animals would disappear. They upset her and, therefore, as her father was a hunter, she always asked him NOT to be gentle with them… the idea is that the animals, in general, had never done any harm to her.
This was the day, the day she could venture into the burnt forest – this forest was full of half-burnt trees and slightly red ones – just her and her robot assistant, Kevin (as Sofi hated animals, for her birthday, she got a robot companion). Back to the subject, they reached the forest and all they saw was snow, a lot of snow, it was like a winter dream, a Christmas movie. Sofi rushed to the snowiest part of the forest, however a wise person would think before stepping on the snow. You can destroy the layout of the snow and it doesn’t look as good after, however Sofi didn’t care and even if she did… that is not as important now… Yes she was first, but not first to step on the fluffy white snow, quite the opposite, she was the first to fall in a tiny pond of frozen water, a dirty slimy and sticky water.
Sofi observed a group of animals gazing at her from a distance. She, however, with her endless hatred for nature had cried out: “What are you creatures staring at?! Have you never seen a human in your life?”. Sofi called her father to rapidly come and pick her up from her exact location and destroy those ‘hideous’ beasts. Her father came as quickly as he got the call and got his girl out of the freezing cold water in which she fell. The little girl mentioned the group of animals as being responsible for whatever happened to her – falling into the water – although they were innocent. All she was thinking about was a young deer with shiny white horns hanging in the living room… ‘POOF’ the gun went off, ‘PING’ it hit a rock, the animals could be heard as they were chaotically running. Fortunately, nobody fell to the ground. However, all the animals were terrified.
It was as if the flowers were laughing at Sofi, which in this moment, was red from head to toes. She ran towards them and pulled the flowers out of the ground with an immense force. All that was left in the forest was a fox that observed everything. Its beautiful tail was seen from behind a bush with tiny orange buckthorn berries randomly arranged on the green surface of the plant. It was just as if the fox was calling Sofi towards her with its bright, hypnotising colour. Sofi approached the bush and touched its tail gently, so she didn’t scare it off. The fox quickly looked at Sofi and then took a quick glimpse of the bush… with a majestic jump the fox disappeared into the darkness of the forest. The girl’s father pointed the weapon towards the red fox, however Sofi made a sign to drop it. Her father did that and a smile appeared on his face. The little girl bent down and observed a nicely built nest. In the nest there were three nicely placed nightingale eggs. She picked up the nest and said: “Maybe we have considered this world wrong, nature is our creator and it is our responsibility to protect and respect it”.
Sofi took her sweater off and placed the eggs on it. “Daddy, let’s take these eggs home!” They carefully took the eggs and left, because they knew that the eggs would freeze before the mother bird would return.
Maybe Sofi was not that bad after all, at least she surely had a good heart, but, maybe, just saying as the narrator “every human, especially children, have a diamond hearth, it’s just that the rock on the outside has to be broken apart”.
Written by Teodora Toth (Year 7)
Illustration by Dall-E
