this story is about DEP
Drawing and short story by Maria Ibrahim Alkhatib (11-years-old)
In a forest where the trees whispered secrets and the moonlight shimmered like silver dust, there lived two very different kinds of magic.
High among the glowing blossoms dwelled the fairies soft winged, luminous beings who laughed like wind chimes. Their most unusual companion was not another fairy, but a small emerald frog named Mumu . She wasn’t just any frog her croak could bend light, turning ordinary dew into floating orbs of color. The fairies adored her, carrying her from petal to petal like a tiny queen.
Deep beneath twisted roots and shadowy caves lived the goblins gruff, clever, and fond of collecting strange things. Among them was a goblin named Grobe , who was unlike the others. While goblins hoarded shiny coins or enchanted bones, Grobe had only one treasure: a smooth, gray rock named Peb.
Peb didn’t glow. Peb didn’t speak. But Grobe insisted the rock was alive in its own quiet way.
“They just don’t listen properly,” Grobe would grumble. “Peb speaks in stillness” The other goblins laughed, but Grobe didn’t mind. Every day, he would polish Peb, whisper stories to it, and carry it everywhere even to places goblins usually avoided… like the fairy glades.
One twilight, when the veil between worlds felt thin, Grobe wandered too far and stumbled into the fairies’ domain. Instantly, the air sparkled with tension. Fairies hovered defensively, their wings humming.
But then Mumu leapt forward.
She stared at Peb.
Peb, of course, did nothing.
But Mumu croaked once a deep, resonant sound and suddenly the rock shimmered faintly, as if remembering something ancient.The fairies gasped.
Grobe froze.
Mumu croaked again, softer this time. The glow faded, but the silence that followed felt… meaningful.
“What did she do?” one fairy whispered.
Grobe looked down at Peb, eyes wide. “She listened.”
For the first time, fairies and goblins sat together under the same moon. The fairies shared light woven from petals, and Grobe shared stories he had told Peb for years.
And Mumu ? She sat between them all, croaking gently now and then, translating silence into something everyone could feel.
From that night on, the forest held a new kind of magic not loud or bright, but quiet and shared.
Because sometimes, the deepest magic doesn’t sparkle or sing.
Sometimes, it simply waits… like a peb … for someone to finally understand it.
*~*~*~*
