Contest| "Moonlight Tales!"

After reading the contest, I was tempted to tell the story between the elephant and the tortoise, with title: “gwo gwo gwo, ngwo” but I know a lot of Nigerians know it already, I decided to go for an old story book, I read while growing up and the title of the book is “sugar girl”. I hope you guys enjoy it…

Let me also invite @dannyben39, @vickyson and @emmaboy23 for the challenge.

There was this great family although they were poor, they had all they ever needed in their pretty daughter. Her name was “beauty”. Beauty was a hardworking girl and she did all she can to help her family in making ends meet. She got a small job in a restaurant owned by one of the most upright person in the village and beauty has been diligent in her place of work. One day, however, her boss badge into her house, accusing her of stealing her money.

Beauty tried to explain herself but no one actually believed her because it was coming from one of the few honest people. The rumors quickly spread around the village and it became hard for her to secure any job. One day while she was at home, her mum came complaining that cubes of sugars was missing in the house. The father was quick to accuse her of being the culprit base on previous allegations and was really disappointed in her.

Beauty feeling so frustrated, ran away from the house with no clear direction and entered into the evil forest to hide. Night fell, and she couldn’t find her way back home from the evil forest but was lucky to see a small hut owned by a fisherman and his wife. They took care of her for weeks and saw her like the daughter they never had. She enjoyed their company but deep in her heart she missed her parents and wanted to go back home. She wondered if they missed her as much as she misses them.

Meanwhile her parents have been searching every nook and cranny of the whole village filled with guilt for not believing Beauty when she told them she didn’t steal her boss’s money. It turned out, someone else did it but the boss accused her because she was the only one who had such tendencies of doing it owing to the fact that she is from a very poor family. The village people also joined in the search for beauty.

Is been a month, beauty is now fond of her new family and has learned a lot about Resilience, forgiveness and determination from them. The thought of her family do cross her mind from time to time and she finally picked up courage to leave her new family to start coming back home because she knew that running away had not solved her problems.

Her new family gave her all the necessary things she needs to survive in the forest including a magical egg. All she had to do was to tell the egg what she wished for and then break it on the floor and her heart desires will be granted. She was so happy that she had plans of getting home and wishing for her family to be very rich with the magical egg.

On her way back, she still couldn’t find her way to the village in the forest. she encountered lots of strange animals, beast and also the witches guarding the evil forest. This three witches love beauty and wanted her to be one of them but she refused. Out of anger, they trapped her in a cage and wanted to eat her for dinner. Beauty knew there was no way out of this, so she brought her magical egg out and wish she was home and broke the egg. Right before the witches eyes, beauty vanished from their cage and found herself in her village. The witches were so mad but there was nothing they could do.

When she found herself home, the parents were overjoyed filled with tears and the entire community celebrated her return. Beauty’s parent and her boss begged for her forgiveness and told all that had happened while she was away. The sugar that was missing was as a result of a rat that was crawling out from a hole to come and steal the sugar.

Beauty was shocked by the revelation but she finally forgave them. The accusations made against her had caused a ripple effect of mistrust and pain, but with the truth finally out, Beauty’s name was cleared. Although her plans of making her family very rich didn’t work out as planned, she was really grateful for been in their arms once again.

The end.

Yes, sharing tales It’s one of the best things to tell kids as they grow up because they have this wild imaginations and whatever stories you tell them is easier for them to create a vivid picture in their minds.

As we all know, telling stories is one of the best way to educate kids in order for them to grasp it easily especially in their formative years. Whatever you teach them during those years stick in their brains forever.

After stories are been told, their is always a moral lesson the kids have as take home and it helps shape their future.

• family is everything. Even though she all she had ever wished for in her new found family, she still longed for her own family. Same way I can do without checking up on my family to know about their wellbeing.
• Never accused anyone of doing anything without investigation.
• One of big challenges of many broken homes is as a result of mistrust. Mistrust almost destroyed beauty’s home.
• Always have a forgiven heart like beauty and that’s one of my best qualities.

Back in the days, one of the best ways my dad use to drag our attention whenever we’re playing is when he says he wants to tell us stories. His stories was mostly about animals, most especially tortoise and some few magical stories.

Sometimes when he starts telling his stories, our mind starts wandering building imaginary creatures in our minds because the stories were easy to relate with. I think that was one of the few times we were able to connect with our dad because he usually disciplined us as kids, so we’d that fear for him. The stories are always filled with moral lessons that you can apply in real life situations.

All images were created by me using “Bing A.I”