Zawandi's Dream

• Georgia Sexton, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2008

Zawandi had been walking for days and she was hot, hungry and tired. She had just sat down for a rest beneath a tree and was about to take a drink from her water bottle when she remembered that it had run out hours ago. There wasn’t a drop left. She felt so faint and dizzy with hunger and thirst that suddenly she fell asleep, leaning against the tree.

When Zawandi awoke, it was still hot. Very hot. However, she was in a beautiful rainforest. There were tall, green Palm trees surrounding her and birds swooping and crying out in the distance. The sound of rushing water reached her and she followed the sound until she found a sparkling blue river in an enormous clearing. Birds of all kinds of shapes and sizes were appearing from beneath the water with mouthfuls of fish.

Zawandi rushed towards the water at full speed and began drinking, and once she had started she couldn’t stop because the water tasted so good. It was sweet, cool and fresh and it her soothed her dry, parched throat magnificently. Then, Zawandi’s stomach rumbled and she realised that she was starving. She looked up, hoping to find something to eat and there before her was an amazing mango tree, covered in enormous mangoes. Carefully plucking one off, she found a sharp rock nearby and roughly cut it open.
Then, grabbing one half, Zawandi began scooping out handfuls of delicious mango and stuffing them into her mouth.

But she was still incredibly hot. She thought she would faint if she didn’t cool down soon. Remembering the river, she turned around and dashed towards it, pulling off her ragged clothes as she ran. She jumped in and it was wonderful to feel the cool water on her skin.
She waded around for a while in the shallows and then decided that she would like to go a bit deeper. As she moved further downstream the riverbed fell away steeply and all of a sudden, it disappeared completely and Zawandi was left struggling for something to grab on to.
Down she went, sinking towards the riverbed. She swallowed some water and began to cough, and as she was coughing the river was disappearing, all the birds, the fish and trees becoming fainter and fainter…

Suddenly she was back in the real world. Something was being poured down her throat. It was cold and tasted good in her dry mouth. Water, that’s what it was. Fresh, clean water. Zawandi felt herself being lifted up by a pair of strong arms and closed her eyes, feeling safe. As she was carried away, a strange thought occurred to her. “Why am I still wet?” she wondered. “How strange.”

By Georgia Sexton