Little Shuddie

One day Little Shuddie found herself approaching a vacant lot when she noticed a group of children kneeling in the dirt. This was very odd looking to her as they were huddled together on the ground but appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely! As she approached, her eyes beheld a beautiful sight; there on the ground in front of them were round pieces of glass and inside the glass were swirls & twirls of different colors of crystal! As the sun caressed these beautiful orbs with the rays dancing through them, Little Shuddie became entranced. She had to have one; some!!!! She must touch them, feel them, hold them up to the sun and drink in their beauty!!! As she reached for one she heard, "Uh uh uh!". Shuddie turned around to see a big girl with huge eyes and braids to her waist. "I just wanted to see what those balls were, I want one!" explained Shuddie. "You may want one but you must get your own!" said Huge Eyes. That seemed reasonable & fair to Shuddie so after finding out that these pieces of glass were called "marbles" she set out to find some of her own. Hmmm, where does she start? Little Shuddie is no ordinary girl, she's smart, and very resourceful albeit naive.

Little Shuddie knew from past experience that she must research marbles and accumulate all the information she could and soon discovered she could collect her own marbles in several ways; she could buy them, trade them, or find them on the ground. So off she went to do just that.

One day Shuddie headed back to the empty lot with a small bag of marbles; she had worked extremely hard for them. She had called all her Aunts & Uncles from her iPhone who promised to look for them and mail to her any prizes they found. She emptied her piggy bank and used all her money to buy them, and she spent many hours a week digging in the dirt searching for her prize and she couldn't wait to share them with the Marble Kids in the empty lot!! The Marble Kids took one look at her collection and became unhappy as they recognized Little Shuddie had a wonderful bag full, some they had never seen before. Many of the kids befriended her and began to trade marbles with her; this benefited all. Huge Eyes took her aside and warned her, "Little Shuddie, you seem like a nice girl but I must warn you, look back at the Marble Kids, although they appear to be nice to you, they are sharks.". SHARKS?!?!? "WTF", thought Shuddie, I know what sharks look like and I can look after myself!!!".

One by one she became friends with these sharks, er, I mean kids and discovered they all had big mouths full of huge sharp teeth ready to chew her up and one by one Shuddie ran away from the newly named "Mean Kids". They became jealous of her marbles, it wasn't fair that Shuddie had all those wonderful and rare marbles!! They didn't stop to look at their own collection and appreciate THEIR OWN marbles; marbles that Shuddie didn't even have! They didn't think about how hard she worked for her collection, or of how long she had to dig in the dirt, nope, they were selfish and jealous and could only see green!! So Little Shuddie picked up her marbles and went home.

THE END

by Shey Blanchet