The Mystery Bird Call

• Layla Milne, Grade 4, Glenview State School -
• Short Story
• 2018

Excellence Award in the 'Horizon of Dreams 2018' competition

"Mum, when is lunch ready?" Sally called. “It will be awhile. It is only 10am. How about you go play in the forest at your hideout you made with Riley?" WHAM!!! She was already gone.
As Sally skipped to her hideout, she heard a strange and weird bird call she had never heard before. It got creepier and creepier so she ran and ran. Not knowing where she was going. Sally stopped running. The noise had gone and she realised she was lost. She cried and cried until she didn't have any tears left to cry.
The noise came again. Sally was thinking that things couldn't get any worse so she ran and ran again until she realised that she was standing in her backyard at the edge of the forest staring at her house.
She just stood there for a while until her eyes lit up with happiness. She brushed the dirt off her purple skirt. She wiped the dust off her blue shirt.
The bird call came again and it grew louder and louder and it was just a little lost budgie that had chased her all the way home.
The budgie only wanted to be her friend. Sally saw that the budgie was very dirty because it had lived in the forest for a while. So she washed her new friend until she was shining clean.
Sally climbed into her bedroom through the window, to get some string. She went into the edge of the forest and collected some sticks. She went to her backyard and started to make a bird cage by tying the sticks together with the string.
When she was done, she put some newspaper at the bottom and got two little containers from her chicken pen. She filled one up with water from the hose and one with seed from the chicken pen.
Sally walked inside and showed her Mum. Her Mum had made lunch by then. Her Mum said she could keep the budgie if she looked after it.
Sally put the cage in her room, washed her hands in the bathroom and went to go eat some lunch. The lunch was delicious and it was Sally's favourite. It was spinach and feta pastries. She saved some pastry crumbs and gave them to her budgie. Sally named her budgie ‘Sunshine’ because Sunshine was always happy and they will always be best friends.