A unique collection of moral inspirational stories

HOW CAN YOU BREAK SUNLIGHT INTO PIECES?

A. Lopatina

The next morning Redback Mouse came dashing out of the burrow only to see that the sky was covered with dark clouds, and a light drizzling rain was pattering all about. Swiftpaw, who was curious to see his brother talk with a sunbeam, poked out his nose hard on his brother's tail - and then pulled it right back inside.

"Hey, Redback, get back in here, can't you see it's raining? You're magic sunbeam isn't going to come today."

"No, thanks, I'm going to wait for him anyway," Redback answered. "There might be a little hole up in the clouds somewhere, and he'll get through."

"You don't know a thing about the weather," Swiftpaw called out, and then, seeing his brother turn away, added encouragingly, "Come on now, Red, rain like this isn't going to stop any time soon. Let's go back to bed, OK?"

But Redback had no intention of going back inside. Instead, he made his way carefully up the wet tree trunk to his favorite branch. He spent a long time looking for a dry spot to get comfortable, and had just settled down in the shelter of a leafy green twig when a droplet of rain landed squarely on his nose.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" the little mouse asked grumpily, "Sunbeam is nowhere around and it's all because of you."

He was more than a bit surprised when the droplet answered straight away:

"Sunbeam hasn't gone away. He's still there, way up in the sky, but this morning he sent me down in his place. His job is to bring light and warmth to the earth, and I bring it water to drink."

Redback's eyes went wide.

"Do you know him?"

"Oh, sure," the little droplet answered with a tinkle of laughter. "We're friends."

Redback looked hard at the droplet.

"Then, maybe, you can tell where it all came from? I mean, like our forest, and the mountain, and everything? I'll bet you saw it yourself, from up there. Or maybe Sunbeam told you all about it?" he asked hopefully.

"Gee, little mouse," the droplet answered with a cheerful twinkle, "you mean you really don't know? It all started with the very first sunbeam, and the very first drop of rain. I used to live in a great big lake full of beautiful clear water. It was so clean and fresh! Whenever the sunbeams came to see us we played sparkle and jump. One day one of the sunbeams caught me from behind - yow, was he hot! - and when we stopped laughing, he invited me to come with him up into the sky. He was just a little sunbeam, but he was so warm and kind that I just couldn't stop myself, and - poof! - up we went. In the sky I lived in a cloud with lots of other drops. I got bigger and bigger and now I've come down to bring water for the earth."

Redback wiggled his nose.

"You're still pretty small. Even a mouse needs at lot more to drink than that. How can you take care of the whole earth?"

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