Short Story for Children – Uncle Parker and the Lotus Bubble
Photo credit: chamomile from morguefile.com
My great Uncle Parker once told me and my brothers a story about him as a younger man. He grew up on the mainland in Hong Kong and says very often how different it was growing up in a distant land like this. We never actually knew if any of his stories are true as he once recalled when he met Felix Montague the prospector, who was a natural sailor on the middle seas of Tanscara. As the story played out you can read between the lines and figure out Felix was actually a Pirate, the name wasn’t real but made him sound pleasant. All three of us decided he was barking after that one and from then on called him Barker Parker.
I don’t suppose this one is true either but he says it is, apparently a Lotus Bubble gets created on a swift wind and carries the riches and fortunes of an oriental Mythical man called Mi Yung Wan. The bubble is very similar to those a child creates when he dips a plastic ring in washing up liquid and blows. Except the Lotus bubble is the only one that is released and no one can tell when or where and for how long it will last.
Barker Parker, accidentally found this special type of Lotus plant when he was deposited in a forest on top of a mountain nick named Nelly’s Nipple. There is a hand cut escarpment on the southerly face right at the top and it is completely covered by the canopy of the trees, however if falling from the skies and have that canopy break your fall and you end up in probably the most infamous and unknown of fantasy places not known to anyone, isn’t far-fetched enough then you need to listen to the rest of his tale.
Anyway Uncle Parker hit the tree tops, fell through the branches and landed on his feet on the ground below. He brushed himself down and checked he still had all of his necessities in the right places and proceeded to leave until he realised that there wasn’t anywhere to go from here. The canopy gave so much coverage that is drowned out all of the natural light and threw an unnatural biological green hue everywhere and blocked out all access to see where the next landmark was to navigate home by.
He checked everything and everywhere, moved rocks aside and moved the leaves of plants until one moved rock had left a white hole beneath it, a hole that emanated an ever so slight brilliant perfect, sharp light. He moved the stones around the top to reveal the special Lotus I don’t know if it turned out to be complete luck or what but the flower spat out one of its bubbles and without actually knowing what he was doing he licked his finger and let the little bubble settle on it. He did also elaborate and jabber on a little here in the story about how someone had one told him that it isn’t possible to catch a bubble with dry hands, if you want to catch bubbles use wet hands or as was in this case a licked finger.
And as he watched it, this is how Uncle Parker told us the story and also part of the reason for calling him Barker, as he watched it the most unusual thing happened. The bubble started to form a shape, bit by bit it moved and changed until Uncle Parker had a fully formed dragon shaped bubble in miniature with that soapy gleam moving all over. It looked up at him winked and said,
“You are an incredibly lucky person and because you have broken my spell I give to you the treasure of Mi Yung Wan.”
On uncle Parkers finger appeared a pure perfect white gold ring with the words, ‘Mi Yung Wan son of Dun and keeper of Master Two Tails.’ Uncle Parker told us that you could only read the ring properly if you rotated it because it was far too small to hold all of that writing, but it also seemed that you needed to rotate it more than once and the words appeared where you would have thought the last ones were before.
The little bubble dragon grew scales that pearled like the surface of a bubble and thanked uncle Parker and took off. This was very lucky as moments later the little bubble dragon grew massively and all of the trees around here were knocked flat and the sun beamed in at which point Parker saw the Dragon had two tails. The mythical beast took off and landed moments later on the summit of the nipple digging its talons in deep before opening its fully formed wings and letting out a massive explosion of flames across the sky and said,
“Thank you Parker, your every wish will now be granted and the ring will oblige you.”
And it winked at him before flying away.
Uncle Barker has indeed got a ring on his finger that matches the description he gave in his tale, he is also very successful in what he does.
__END__
