New By Nature

• Harriet Charteris-Wall, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2021

Pippa was a curious, shy young girl with an excited, imaginative mind who lived a hundred years from now in a city called Canalodia. She was 8 and a half and very lonely. Pippa had no friends because she had just moved to Canalodia from Spring town, because her parents had sadly passed away in a car accident. So she moved in with her Grandma Sue, who was a great story-teller.

Transfixed, Pippa would sit on her grandma's lap for hours on end listening to stories of the color green. Pippa didn’t believe her, she would always say, “that is definitely not a color, I would have seen it” but her grandma would simply shake her head and sigh.

This greatly annoyed Pippa, she never believed her grandma until one day she found a little green plant tucked in between the pavement and the fence. She knelt down as people passed behind her, not noticing the little, kneeling girl. Pippa carefully scooped the little plant into her hands and then quickly ran to her grandma’s house.

While she was running pippa realised her grandma was right, there was another colour!

She burst into her grandma's living room,“it's real, it's real you were right!” Pippa cried, ”look!” She showed her grandma the plant in her hands. Her grandma wisely replied, “we need to care for the plant. It might be the last in the world.”

In the months that followed pippa and her grandma became plant-sitters, they looked after the plant and watered it every day, looking after it and making sure it was healthy.

Until one fateful day. . .

Grandma Sue was taking a nap and Pippa was out shopping, so no one noticed when an unwelcome visitor crept in, a journalist by the name of Mia. As Mia crept along the corridor she noticed a door to a sun-filled room. Mia was interested, she snuck in.
The sun-filled room was (unknown to Mia) the room where Pippa and her grandma kept the plant.

Mia crept into the room, as soon as she entered the room she saw it, she saw the plant. Mia almost screamed, plants were meant to be extinct! And yet here it was. The proof that green had returned to the world.

As she raced home Mia had one thought, she had to tell the mayor.

Mayor Atlas was a sneaky kind of guy, it was him who ordered the destruction of plants in his city.

So when he heard the story Mia told him he was calm. He dismissed her and called in Sergeant James.
“Destroy the plant,” he told him.
“Now?” asked Sergeant James.
“Yes!” barked the Mayor.
Sergeant James arrived at Pippa's house, he took a deep breath and walked in. Then he said ”you are the city's only hope”. He pressed a green card into Pippa’s hand. “The Royal Society of Gardeners” read Pippa, then Pippa realised that there was another thing in her hand, It was a small, brown seed.