Amelia and Cecilia are sisters. The first is eight years old and loves to draw. When it is a saint’s day or the birthday of a family member or friend, she always draws them. What she likes the most are animals. She paints a turtle, a dog, a horse, some swallows, a pig, a school of sardines or a cat. She is very good at it. She makes some very colorful drawings. At home she says that when she grows up she will be an illustrator. The little one, Cecilia, is six years old and spends the day with her head in the clouds.
Every night after dinner they read a bedtime story. Sometimes, one of their parents chooses a book and acts as a reader for both of them. Other times, each one takes her own. Amelia is fearful by nature and from a very young age, when the time comes to close her eyes to sleep, she asks for an idea to dream. First, her mother was in charge of looking for an idea: a beach, a farm, a river… she was not very successful. Cecilia immediately replaced her in that task. She offered him more stimulating images: a big-eared rabbit whose teeth have fallen out, a girl who went for a walk in the forest and met a deer… At home they say that, with this imagination, Cecilia will be a writer. Every night Amelia pulls on the thread of the idea that the little girl proposes to her and thus she forgets about her fear of the dark.
A few days ago, at school, in the eldest’s class, they were given homework for an essay for the Sant Jordi contest. Amelia immediately thought of recovering one of the images that Cecilia invented. If her ideas are useful for dreaming, they must also be useful for writing a story, she thought. And she took the idea that she had given him for her last dream: a whale has reached the shore tiredly and a family of ducks is approaching. She has relived the dream, written the story and signed it with both of their names.
When it’s time to go to sleep, Amelia says with great joy to her sister: Today I don’t need any ideas, tonight I will dream that tomorrow we win the prize for the best story.
Happy Saint George!
