Leilani

• Lucy Hoare, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2017

I found it on the coast one morning, just outside the village. It was an egg, or so so it seemed to be, a cold hard object. Though not fragile like the eggs from the village market. But there it was half in, half out of the sand, a tiny crack slowly beginning to form on the surface.
I don't know what they were expecting, maybe a dragon or some sort of creature that resembled a Kraken, but you couldn't have imagined the the look of shock on their faces when, out of the egg, came not a seven headed serpent but a tiny baby girl.
When Leilani turned ten she started to realise that she was so much more different than she had first thought and that all the villagers would purposefully stray away from her and her family.
"Why don't people like our family?" she had said to her mother when they went shopping in the village market.
"Umm" thought her mum I…I don't e…exactly know," she said, stuttering as she spoke. She may have tried to hide her stuttering but the fact that her calm efficient manner had been ruffled so deeply wasn't exactly so easy to cover up.
They hurried home as the skies over Mystery Island had suddenly become dark and menacing. Water pouring down on their heads, lightning threatening to strike at any given moment. As Leilani hurried upstairs her parents started to talk with solemnity. Worry and fear badly concealed within their faces. “Leilani!” came the call from downstairs “it’s time you knew the truth."
"What?" screamed Leilani.
"Y…yes" said her mother, stuttering again as she spoke.
"That rock I found at the beach was, in fact, an egg. The very day it opened and when you smiled at me, I knew you were something special, but the other villagers scowled at you saw you as a burden, a demon, a curse."
And thus it was made so that after this newfound knowledge arose Leilani set out on a mission. She set out to prove that she was a gift, not a curse. She used her pocket money to buy food for those who couldn't afford it, she helped the elderly re-thatch their rooves and taught the village kids to swim, but to no avail. No matter how hard she tried no-one seemed to like her. Despite her best efforts it was a baby in a wicker basket that eventually saved her from the humiliation, that finally inspired her to invent the fishing boat so that no villager need ever be hungry again and thus she was finally free from the savageness of the villagers glare and in amongst the warm smiles of her newfound friends she thought to herself "that just goes to show, that no matter what the world thinks of you, you can still do the amazing things you were born to do.”