It started out like any other day. Fern got up in the morning, had breakfast and went on an adventure. She came back home and had tea with Mama Leopard. She had dinner and then read some books.
Fern was sitting on the couch reading with Mama Leopard. They were reading a book of wild animal music that had just recently been published by an elephant. Elephants love music and have great memories but Fern had never met an elephant. She imagined huge white tusks, big grey storm cloud skin, and tiny black eyes.
Suddenly Fern felt a sneeze coming on.
“Aahhhhhhh…choo!!!”
The sneeze sent the pages fluttering everywhere.
“Bless you!” said Mama Leopard. “You might have a cold coming on. Let me get the tissues.”
While Mama Leopard got the tissues, Fern fixed the pages of the book. One or two of the pages had slid under the couch so she got those pages out with a mop. Fern put the mop back in the garage.
Then Mama Leopard came back holding the tissue box. “Here you go sweetie” she said. “We should move you up to your bed. It’s bedtime.”
So Fern went past the couch, up the stairs and into her bedroom. She brought the tissue box with her and put it on her bedside table. Then she went along the hallway to the bathroom and brushed her teeth with her toothbrush, which was made out of reeds. She used mint flavored tree sap as toothpaste. Then she combed her fur and went back to her bedroom. She snuggled up in bed and blew her nose. Then she drifted off to sleep and started having the weirdest dreams she’s ever had.
Fern is at the beach with Grandma and Grandpa Leopard, and Toco and Bella. It is a calm beach with tiny waves and the water is very warm. Every fifteen minutes there’s a big wave that’s freezing cold and then that wave is just gone and there’s warm water again.
Fern is looking for beach treasures. She holds her breath underwater and looks at the bottom and she looks at the beach treasures. She picks up five pieces of sea glass and one shark-eye shell. She puts the treasures in a tiny little bag. Then she pokes her head out of the water and runs out so the big wave can’t get her. But the big wave does get to her grandparents and Fern’s grandpa is carrying Bella. So they run away from the waves. Toco is flying above them and the wave can’t reach him.
Then he figures out that the big wave is caused by a giant sea elephant. Toco sees part of the trunk spraying the waves at them. They hear a loud trumpeting sound, exactly like Fern imagined in the music.
Every time the elephant sprays his trunk, the big wave comes halfway up the beach. The weirdest part about the elephant is that it is an orange elephant. Nothing like the big grey storm cloud skin that Fern pictured earlier while reading on the couch. She can see the elephant now and it is stomping around, sucking up water in its trunk and blowing it at them.
And then there is a loud roaring sound, and suddenly a huge red lion is galloping on top of the waves toward the elephant. So the elephant starts running as fast as a cheetah and Fern wakes up.
The first thing Fern notices is that her nose is leaking.
“Cough cough” uh-oh. She also has a cough. Fern might actually have a cold, she realizes.
“Yaawn” she is tired. There is a knock on the door and Mama Leopard peeks in.
“Hey honey,” she purrs, “I made you some tea.”
“Thanks Mama” Fern says. “Also, just to tell you, I might actually be sick.”
“I know honey” meows Mama Leopard. “I think you might have gotten it from Toco when you had a playdate with him the day before yesterday. He was coughing and the day after that his mom said that he is in bed and sick.”
Fern chased her tail around in her bed as if she had never done it before. She didn’t seem to hear her Mama or care about anything she was saying. She drank the tea and laid back down.
The next dream came immediately. Fern is chasing her tail around in circles. Fern looks at her tail and realizes she is blue. She’s in the sky. Toco is hovering above her but he is orange and his tummy is red, the blue circle around his eye is now purple and his wings are yellow.
Fern catches her tail in her mouth and tries to get it a different way. She’s snapping at it between her legs. Her tail is just out of reach. She is still all blue and hovering in the sky. She is exhausted and lays down on a cloud. The cloud surprisingly is hard like wood, but white. There is no other animal besides Toco in sight.
Then Toco starts doing acrobatics and rolling around in the sky.
“Hey!” Fern calls up. “Toco why are you doing that?”
“Because you were giving me such a good show of chasing your tail that I decided to give you a show back.”
Then Fern gets up and starts nipping at her tail more. She is running around in the sky and doesn’t even see the elephant until she has raced past it.
It’s the huge orange elephant from the last dream. This time it is blowing clouds at her. Then suddenly she hears the same big roar that she remembers from the last dream, and the red lion scares the elephant away. It runs as fast as a cheetah through the sky. Then Fern wakes up.
It’s like the elephant and the lion are dream-visiting her. The lion is following around the elephant and making sure that the elephant doesn’t mess up her dreams, but every time the lion comes, the dream stops!
Fern feels weird. She takes another sip of her tea. It tastes so good that she takes more and more sips until the tea is finished. Then she goes back to bed.
It takes a long time this time, but finally Fern opens her eyes. She is lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling as a little baby. “Bah bah” she says and rolls over. She rolls onto her knees and elbows and starts crawling everywhere. “Beh beh” she says, “beh beh.” Then she suddenly changes direction, goes over to her toy room, sticks a rattle in her mouth and falls asleep. Then she wakes up, crawls out of the playroom and starts playing with a toy orange elephant. And then a red toy lion comes hurling at the elephant. Fern moves the elephant so fast that it’s moving as fast as a cheetah.
And then Fern wakes up again.
“Wow” thinks Fern, “I certainly have had a bunch of dreams.”
Then she sniffles, and then “Aaaahhhh..choo!”
The end.