Excerpts from “The Little General and the Giant Snowflake”

The little general drank the last gulp of tea out of his teacup and turned off the television. He had been watching his favorite nature show, "Order in the Wilderness". Today's episode was about lemmings, little animals that look like fluffy mice and live in the Arctic. The little general had been admiring them over his tea and biscuits because the announcer had said that they would follow anything anywhere. But it was 4 o'clock. Time for battle. The troops would be waiting.

"Sergeant Samantha" barked the general. "What are we fighting about today?" Sergeant Samantha got up from her kneeling position and saluted the general. Her cheeks were the color of the little general's roses.

"I believe we're fighting about the imagination again," said Sergeant Samantha.

"The usual position I assume?" asked the general.

"Yes. We don't believe in it. They do." Sergeant Samantha was a tall lady. Whenever she was around the general she slouched so that she would seem shorter and as a result she always went home from battle with a very sore neck.

Across the way from the Realists was the other army, the Dreamers, though perhaps the word "army" was not completely accurate. They didn't wear uniforms. They didn't practice formations and they were always playing games. One of their favorites was The Bee Game, where half the army pretended to be flowers and the other half came and tickled them, pretending to try and get nectar from under their armpits. Today they seemed to be pretending to have imaginary pets. The commander was holding an imaginary toucan on his finger-he yelped whenever he imagined it had bitten him. And his second-in-command appeared to be riding an imaginary whale and shouting "Whoa!" in a most annoying manner.

 


© 2007 Matthea Harvey and Elizabeth Zechel

close window