Being Mommy

Following Leonard down the path, Cecilia walked with Grandpa and Patty while Ty flew just in front of them. Ty was flying in loops and circles, trying to make Cecilia laugh. It was working. She giggled at him as they made their way around the small purple forest.

Since she had already eaten all of her pinks, she looked out past the forest and saw a skyline full of small mountains, all of them purple. Purple seemed like the color of most things here in Brintonia. The grass, the trees, even the sky was a light shade of lavender purple. It made the whole land seem very kind and safe to Cecilia.

Grandpa and Patty were busy talking about old times when they rounded a corner and Cecilia saw the village. It was truly unique!

The village was in the shape of a circle, which reminded her of the courtyard in Ancilon a little bit. There were no houses that she could see anywhere. In fact, there were no buildings, only a large open theater, the kind where she might see a play or an opera. It seemed that the entire village was made of only this theater and the grass surrounding it.

The grass and the theater stage formed a big circle. Half of the circle was the theater stage, and the other half was the grass where people (or animals) could sit and watch the show. The very best part of the whole thing was the grass. It was all the colors of the rainbow, and was even shaped like a rainbow! The outer band of grass was red, then orange, then yellow, green, blue, and finally purple at the center of the whole circle. It looked amazing!

The next thing Cecilia noticed was that unlike Ancilon – which had been basically empty – Brintonia was full of activity. All of the creatures resembled Patty and Leonard because they were all unicorns and tigers, but they were all different colors. Some of the unicorns were blue, some were pink, some green, and every other color she could imagine. Some of the tigers had orange stripes, some had red stripes, and again every other color she could imagine.

Each of the creatures also glowed in certain places just like Patty and Leonard too. Most of them were glowing yellow, but she spotted a few glowing different colors. Everywhere she looked the animals were talking, playing, or just relaxing on the grass with each other. She didn’t see a single animal all by itself. This seemed like the friendliest village ever!

“What do you think honey?” Grandpa said, startling her out of her amazement at the village. She shook her head a little, realizing that she had stopped walking and was just staring with a big smile on her face.

“It’s so cool! All the animals look like they are having a great time with their friends!” Cecilia exclaimed.

Leonard piped up, “Yes, that’s one thing about Brintonia – we love to have fun and be happy. It’s our job.”

“Your job?” she asked, wondering how being happy and having fun could possibly be a job.

“Well,” said Leonard, “living in Brintonia means taking care of the feelings of all the creatures in Rettel.  We make sure everyone here is as happy and as positive as they can be, and that positivity spreads throughout the entire land of Rettel. We are the reason why all of the lands are good and safe, and never bad or scary. Do you remember how good you felt in Ancilon?”

Cecilia thought back to her adventure in Ancilon. Even though everything was different from her home, and all the creatures and trees and even the colors and foods were different, she never felt scared.

“Why yes!” she replied. “I did feel good there the whole time. That was because of you?”

Leonard nodded and smiled at her.

“Thank you so much!” she cried and gave Leonard a big hug, which caused him to start purring again.

Patty joined in the conversation, continuing where Leonard left off since he was busy purring.

“That’s the reason why we have this theater,” she said. “We put on plays that remind us how to keep everyone here as happy as we can. It’s lots of fun. Another play is starting in just a few minutes, do you want to sit and watch?”

“Oh yes, I’d love to!” Cecilia said. “What do you think Ty?” she looked over at Ty who had landed on her shoulder a few minutes before and was watching all the activity.

“Splendid! Can we eat during the show?” Ty asked, making Cecilia giggle again. He was always hungry!

“Of course,” Patty said. “In fact, we have a table full of foods that we gathered just for the show.”

“Even more splendid!” Ty said with a big smile on his face. “And where might that table be?”

“Right behind the theater stage. Follow me!” Patty led them through the crowds of animal around the rainbow lawn and behind the stage.

The back wall of the stage formed the outside edge of the circle and behind it a big curved table stood up against it. All sorts of interesting food sat on the table. They mostly looked like little fruits in bright and flavorful looking color. They were set up on the table like a rainbow too! The red foods were at one end of the long table, then pink, then orange, and so on, until the other end of the table where the purple foods were.

Cecilia remembered how she’d been told that each color had it’s own taste, and couldn’t wait to try some! Ty had already flown off her shoulder and was checking out all the goodies on the table, so she began looking around too. Grandpa went immediately to the orange foods and picked up a small piece of fruit that looked like a tiny orange cucumber.

He popped it in his mouth, and seemed to enjoy it so much that Cecilia had to try one. She picked one up, put it in her mouth, and bit down. Ooooh! It was really tangy! Orange must mean tangy.

“Do you like it?” Grandpa asked.

“It’s very good,” she answered. “but not my favorite flavor.”

“Well that’s the whole point!” Grandpa said, giving out a big laugh. “Once you know what the colors taste like, you only have to eat the ones you like!”

Cecilia thought this was a wonderful idea. She wished the food back at home was that easy to pick.

She decided to take Grandpa’s advice, and picked one food of each color to test the flavors. She already knew that pink was sweet and fruity, and orange was tangy.

Next she tried green. The green food looked like a small cucumber, just like the orange food had, but when she tasted it, it was definitely different. The green tasted more like a vegetable, but not a bad vegetable. It tasted… healthy. It tasted like freshness and made her body feel good right after she ate it. She felt energized and ready to try some more flavors.

She had two more foods in her hand: yellow and red. She tried the yellow one. Wow! It was sour! She liked sour foods, but couldn’t eat a whole bunch of it at once.

Finally, she ate the red food. It was small like all the rest of the foods and shaped kind of like a heart. She decided as soon as she tasted it that red was definitely her favorite of all the colors. It was sweet like the pinks, but not fruity. It was creamy and soft, and reminded her of vanilla and chocolate and caramel all mixed together.

After tasting all the foods, she picked up a handful of the reds, one yellow, and a few green. She had already eaten a bunch of the pinks, so she didn’t grab any more of them. Grandpa, Ty and her new friends took what they wanted and they all headed back to the rainbow grass area to sit and wait for the show to start.

Leonard led them through the crowds of animals to a patch of grass that was in the blue part of the rainbow. As they passed the other unicorns and tigers, everyone smiled at her. Some animals said hello to Patty and Leonard too. Everyone was very friendly.

They all sat down on the soft blue grass. Ty found his favorite spot on Cecilia’s shoulder and began munching on a piece of yellow food he had brought with him.

“Okay,” Cecilia said, “I understand how the colors work with the flavors. But why do your colors change when you feel different?” she asked Patty and Leonard.

Patty answered. “Well, for us to keep everyone feeling good and to spread that feeling to all of Rettel, we need to know how everyone is feeling. You see, sometimes we may feel bad but we don’t want to admit it. Have you ever felt that way?”

Cecilia thought about Patty’s question. She was right.  Cecilia could remember times when she’s felt embarrassed or angry or sad but didn’t want to talk about it with her Mom or Dad, and so she had just pretended that she didn’t feel that way.

“Yes, I have,” she answered Patty. “I do remember feeling bad and not telling my Mom or Dad.”

“Exactly! The problem is that when we won’t admit that we are feeling bad, our friends and family don’t get the chance to make us feel better.  You should never be afraid to tell someone when you need some cheering up. We all feel better when we are happy, so there is no good reason to keep others from helping us feel that way. Plus, think about this Cecilia: does it make YOU feel good when you make someone else smile?” Patty waited patiently for Cecilia to think over her question.

“Yes, I suppose it does make me happy to make someone else smile,” she answered.

Patty smiled. “So if we are able to see how our friends feel, we can always try to help them be happy, and that will also help us be happy, and then EVERYONE is happy!” Her horn was glowing such a bright yellow now that Cecilia had to cover her eyes with her hand a little bit.

Cecilia smiled. It made a lot of sense. Since she had first come to Rettel, she’d been happy almost all the time. It felt good to be happy, and she loved this place that reminded her to help keep her friends happy too.

“Now when someone here is not feeling good, if they are confused, angry, sad or unhappy in any way,  their glow will turn brown. ” Patty continued. “Whenever we see someone’s glow turn brown we go to them and find out why they are feeling bad and try to fix the problem and make them feel good again. That is why you don’t see anyone here alone. We all stick together so we can make sure to keep the yucky feelings away. That’s also why we don’t have houses here in Brintonia.”

Cecilia didn’t understand what houses had to do with being happy. She lived in a house and she didn’t think the house had ever made her unhappy. “I don’t get it,” she said. “What’s wrong with houses?”

This time it was Leonard that answered her. “If we had houses then one of us might go alone into our house if we are feeling bad and nobody would know to help us. It’s important for all of Rettel that we keep each other happy and work as a team, so we do everything outside in the open where everyone else can see us and make sure we stay positive. Like I said earlier, it’s our job.”

Now it made sense to Cecilia. Feeling good was the most important thing here in Brintonia, and what better way than to be with friends.

“Besides,” Leonard continued, “you may have noticed it doesn’t get really cold here, so we don’t need the shelter. Even when it rains, the rain is a little bit warm.”

“I think I understand,” Cecilia said. “You have a wonderful job and I’m glad you are here to do it!”

Leonard and Patty smiled big wide smiles and their yellow colors glowed.

“Okay guys,” Grandpa interrupted. “The show is starting.”

Everyone around slowly quieted down as the bright purple curtain on the stage slowly went up to reveal the stage behind it. Cecilia looked around for a moment and noticed that none of the animals had brown glows on their horns or stripes. Many had yellow glows, and a few had blue glows. She looked down at her necklace and saw that it was glowing a light blue.

She looked up at Grandpa with a questioning look on her face, but she didn’t want to ask him about it when everyone was ready to watch the show. Grandpa noticed the look and bent down and whispered in her ear, “Blue means calm and relaxed – that’s a good thing!”

She did feel relaxed and calm right now.

She went over the colors in her head that she knew about now. Yellow was happy. Pink was excited. There were some pink glows out in the crowd of animals too. Brown was feeling bad in some way, and blue was calm and relaxed. She wondered how many other colors there were to learn about.

Her attention was suddenly taken by the sounds on the stage. The play had begun!

The play was wonderful. It was the story of a young unicorn living in Brintonia that couldn’t do many of the things her friends could do. She was a little bit shorter than her friends, and so she couldn’t quite reach as high into the trees to get the highest fruits and couldn’t run as fast when they were all out in the meadows playing around. Sometimes these things would make her sad or angry, and each time they did, her color would change to brown. When her friends noticed the change in color, they would go to her and talk about it and find a way to make her feel better. They reminded her that even though she was shorter than them, they still loved her very much and she didn’t need to be sad. They also reminded her that while she might not be able to reach the highest fruit, she could crouch down and get underneath some of the lower tree branches where her friends couldn’t go. After talking for awhile she would remember why she loved her friends so much and would be happier and her glow would change back to yellow and then sometimes pink as they all began to play again.

The funniest thing about the play was that the animals had to wear cloths of different color on their backs to show the color they were supposed to be glowing. Because it was just a play and not real, even when the young unicorn was supposed to be sad for the story, she wasn’t really sad. So she wore a brown cloth over her back to show the color of sadness so that the story would make sense.

Cecilia thought the play was amazing. What better way to make sure that everyone in Brintonia was as happy as they could be than by reminding everyone that each of us can get to feeling bad from time to time, and helping each other is the best way to fix the problem.

As the curtain came back down, Cecilia looked at her friends and her Grandpa. Everyone was feeling good. She looked down at her necklace. It was glowing a deep blue now. She yawned. Yep, she was really relaxed. So relaxed that she wanted to take a nap.

“I feel the same way,” Grandpa said after she yawned. “Since there are no houses and the play is over, let’s just lay down and take a nap. Have you had a fun time here Cecilia?”

“A lot of fun!” Cecilia said. “I am so glad to meet you two and thank you so much for showing me around,” she said to Leonard and Patty, who smiled back at her.

“Come back whenever you like,” Patty said and rubbed her cheek on Cecilia’s cheek like she had when they first met.

Cecilia rubbed Leonard’s back again and watched as he started purring and his stripes also turned a deep blue.

As they all laid down, Cecilia remembered something. “Hey, I almost forgot to ask! Are there any other colors that mean other feelings?”

Patty answered her. “Well, you have that necklace now, so I bet you will find out for yourself.”

Cecilia really wanted to know right now, but then she thought about it a little more. It would be an adventure to find out some of the colors on her own.

She smiled. “Okay, I can wait. Sleep well everyone!”

Everyone said their goodbyes and then laid their heads down into the soft blue grass and fell asleep.