Magic Stones

Lisa had a collection of amazing, eye popping, wonderful stones on a table in her bedroom. She was a weird child, she loved little objects she could hold in her hand so much. Her mom had told her that she shouldn't be so materialistic, that she should value people an love a lot more than possessions. But she couldn't stop loving all of her little collections and secretly told herself that when she grew up she'd have loads of treasure and be like a pirate. She knew it was bad but when her eyes caught sight of something shiny or colourful they'd start going crazy in their sockets. She was a magpie, anything beautiful she had to have. Because then when it was so grey and miserable outside and she couldn't play out at least she'd be able to look at her lovely things. She remembered exactly where she had discovered the magical stones. She forgot nothing when it came to her collections. She'd been walking down the canal with her brother and the stones had been poking out the path as they walked. Her eyes saw them straight away and she was so intrigued about what the rest of them looked like that she could think of nothing else. So when Darren walked on ahead she lagged behind and dug the interesting stones out of the ground with her fingers. Her hands got all dirty but she didn't care she just wiped them all over her cream trousers. She loved to be dirty and covered in grass outside. It was so fun and so boring being clean and bored in the house. Playing outside was the greatest thing you could do as a kid she believed. Once she extracted them from the tight earth that seemed to want to keep them for itself, so selfish, she realised that they were all interesting shapes that she had never seen before. Her next thought was how did they get there?. What kind of area were they in to have such fabulous stones? She didn't have to wonder for long because suddenly Darren shouted from up ahead. 'Look at this house Lisa!' she ran to meet him and saw that at the side of the canal path was a small house made out of magical, fantastically shaped stones. But the strange thing about it was that it was not fully built. From around the side of the house a man came holding a trowel. He was building the house at that very moment. 'Hello' he said 'I'm building this house to live in, there are wonderful stones in this area'. His eyes lingered on the stones Lisa had in her hands but she didn't want him to have them so she quickly thought about hiding them behind her back but it was too late so she held her hand out. 'No don't worry, you keep them and come back when my house is finished, my name is Fred and I'm a builder, I might even have built your house' He was such a clever man Lisa thought. They said they'd loved to come back another time and said their goodbyes then walked all the way home for tea. The stones still remind Lisa every time she looks at them that humans can build houses that last forever. That blue her mind and she wanted to build her own house one day and use the magical stones right above the doorway.