By Emelia Helliwell, Y7
As I was eating my breakfast I heard a massive bang, then my little sister Rose scream from upstairs. I ran up to her bedroom to find her holding a huge book in her hand, screaming at the top of her voice.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s that thing!” She cried, pointing to a moth on the wall. “Throw the book at it and kill it!” She demanded and handed me the book.
“Okay Rose, you go downstairs breakfast is ready.” I replied.
As she ran down the stairs, I looked at the moth and saw it had what looked like little orange hearts on each wing. I opened the bedroom window and let the moth fly out. As if I would kill it.
Later that day I was playing in the garden with Rose but we didn’t have anything to keep ourselves interested so we soon got bored. “Let’s go into the woods!” She said excitedly.
“No it’s dangerous and we aren’t allowed Rose!” I told her sternly.
“Please just this once!” whined Rose.
I eventually gave in. We ended up going quite deep into the woods, walking further and further in, and it was starting to get late, I could tell because the sky was beginning to get dark, it loomed over me like a black cloak. Rose suggested we play a game of hide and seek, I agreed, I closed my eyes and started to count to 20.
On opening my eyes, I shouted “coming ready or not” and started to look for Rose, she always hid behind a tree, and her hair always stuck out so it was easy to find her. I searched for 20 minutes but this time I couldn’t find her which was a bit odd. I started to panic, it was really dark now and it was difficult to see.
“Rose, come out now we need to go home it’s getting late” I shouted into the darkness.
No response. I tried to calm down and think of a logical reason as to why I couldn’t find her. I knew that she was wearing her trainers and her feet stomped when she walked in them because they were too big. So I thought back to when she went to hide, which way did it sound like she went? I kept on looking then came to the conclusion that she had hidden somewhere near home and when I didn’t find her she had probably returned there. I made a decision to go home too. All this time I had been worrying for no reason.
Just then, a moth landed on my arm, it had little orange hearts on both its wings. Could it be the same one from this morning I thought. As I began to study it, it started to fly into the sky, as if trying to guide me somewhere. Strangely, though, it was going in the opposite direction to my house, however, I thought I should follow it, and I’m glad I did. I followed it through the wood until it led me to a little girl with tawny blonde hair, sat crying behind some bushes.
“Rose? What are you doing here, I thought you’d gone home?” I said, relieved to see her.
“I was hiding in these bushes but when you didn’t come to find me I tried to look for you and I got lost!”
She burst into tears again. I reached down and picked her up giving her a huge comforting hug.
“Come on let’s go home” I said, but then I realized I couldn’t remember the way home either! Suddenly the moth appeared again, and started to fly in another direction.
“Come on we need to follow that moth!” I cried.
Rose looked at me confused, but didn’t question it. Together we ran after the moth and it lead us back to our house where we were met by two anxious parents.
I thought to myself about what would’ve happened if I had killed the moth that day, I decided to tell my sister about what I thought had happened, she looked at me with a puzzled look , and I could tell she didn’t believe me. From then on Rose started to treat insects a little different, kinder. She still asked me to get rid of insects, but asked me to put them out of the window, rather than killing them!
A simple act of kindness can go a long way.
We hope you felt uplifted by this wonderful piece of writing, which was a runner up in our Positive Words Writing Competition. Check back over the next three days for the rest of the winning pieces.
Photos by Lukasz Szmigiel and Fernando @cferdo on Unsplash