It was an autumn morning and the weather was just perfect, not too windy and not too cold- it was just right. Far away from Calin, Abu, Gory and Tato, an enormous mountain could be seen, with snow slightly covering its top and a tempting feeling for any true explorer …or four…to climb it.
“Lets climb to the top!” Gory encouraged the others. They all agreed the view would be grand and decided they could even camp at the top to gaze at the stars by night. Climbing the mountain at first was easy as eating pie, but as they kept going the climb got steeper and harder to get by.
Up and up they went, when suddenly Tato felt something was odd, as if something or someone was keeping an eye on them. “What is wrong?” Abu asked him. To what Tato replied he felt they should pay extra attention, in case a surprise (not a meatball one) could arise. “Among friends, you’ll always be safe, if we stay together there’s no way to feel scared” Abu spoke from the heart.
At some point on the mountain, they had to go across a path filled with really weird trees. Excited, our Bornbrite® friends went through them and invented a game: the one to collect more flowers as they crossed, would get to wear a special crown and be named the explorer of the night.
While everyone was picking flowers, Calin wandered off to have a look around. He didn’t get too far, but the others could not see him at all anymore. Out of nowhere, a fast dropping flower bouquet landed on his head, but even though he looked up fast to see what happened, he saw nothing but the blue and immense sky.
When Calin got back to the others, they all were surprised of how many flowers he had! “They landed on my head from the sky!”, he told them. Everyone thought he said so just to be polite, because he really had a lot of flowers, perhaps more than twenty five! So maybe he said so to not make them feel bad.
After crossing the trees they wanted to rest, and fast as lightning Tato prepared PB & J sandwiches for everyone as they took a break. After eating, everyone helped clean up, and soon enough started climbing again.
At that point, they were extremely tired, but the top of the mountain was already visible and not far away. To cheer themselves up, they all started saying what would they do first at the camp. From eating marshmallows in front of a fire, to counting as many stars as they could, the activities and option they thought of were so many that when they reached the top, they didn’t even notice.
Suddenly Calin blurted out: “My bindle is gone!!!”. No one understood what was he talking about, “What is a bindle?” Gory asked, “My red little bag where I carry everything I need! It’s not here” he said very sad, “I think I left it where we had our snack”. To everyone’s surprise a moving shadow appeared above the fire, and while everyone thought something scary was about to pop out, Calin had a familiar feeling.
The shadow got real close to them and Tato couldn’t help but scream, it was so close to the fire that it was actually getting smaller. Swiftly, a cute and petite blue bird appeared in the light and had Calin’s bindle under one wing. “You were the one who gave me the flowers!” Calin said.
The little coy bird smiled at him, gave him his bindle and covered her big eyes with her wings right after. “What’s the matter?” Calin politely asked, “Can’t you speak?”, to what the bird said: “Yes, yes I can, but most times I’m just too shy…I’m Nena, but I’ll be on my way now”. She looked like she didn’t wanted to go at all! But the words wouldn’t leave her beak.
“Please don’t go! Thank you so much for carrying my bindle all the way here! Maybe you didn’t know, but tonight you are the explorer of the night! Because you were the one who dropped all those flowers on me and it wouldn’t be fair if I was the one to win”
Nena’s eyes were bigger than ever, she was so happy she just nodded super fast. Our Bornbrite® friends smiled and crowned her the explorer of the night.
Calin now knows the meaning of the five shooting stars he saw when he made his wish, it was one star to represent each of them, and Nena was the last but never less important one. They all learned many lessons that day, but the most important one was how friends should always be there.