The Starfish That Stayed
Flash Fiction
Number three
Once upon a time there was a Hippie called Phil. His neck was long as well as his arms. He had red hair and a black skin. His feet were huge and his pants below wide.
He lived in a colorful cloud and was happy!
But one day millions of microorganisms invaded his beloved cloud. The hippie Phil was so outraged about it!
So far he had namely just lived all alone in his multicolored cloud and that’s why he was not used to the company of the microorganisms.
And so he hit wildly all around himself with his long arms.
The microorganisms flew criss-cross through the cloud and so she also got into movement. Suddenly she rose up in the air!
As a result of fear the microorganisms were screaming really shocked and loudly. One little Starfish animal screamed: “I can fly!”
There the Hippie Phil glared angrily at it with his spooky eyes and yelled out: “Get out of my cloud!”
But the starfish animal stayed.
Day for day, week for week, month for month.
Phil ignored the microorganisms, but abruptly he couldn’t take it anymore and asked the starfish animal: “Why are you staying here?”
The starfish animal, which was the only one of the microorganisms, that understood the words of people, responded: “Because we like you!”
It became warm all around the heart of the hippie Phil, because something so dear never said nobody to him.
He felt, how his colored cloud dissolved slowly. He and all the microorganisms rushed criss-cross through the whole universe down to the dark deepness.
They landed in the middle of the blue ocean water of one Planet called “Earth”.
Hippie Phil could breathe underwater and there he met the story. “Nice, that you finally found towards here”, she welcomed him kindly; “ultimately you don’t hover so lonely across the universe and lost your heart of stone! Probably I haven’t sent the microorganisms to you in vain!”
“That was you?”, Hippie Phil asked very surprised and amazed.
“Yes”, the story opined with her mischievous grin, “I wanted that you finally find out what friendship is! Now you are allowed to stay forever in the ocean and play happily with the microorganisms.”
There a big tear rolled over the cheek of hippie Phil, but nobody noticed, because he was underwater…
He swam swift to the starfish animal, hugged it very firmly and whispered to it:
“THANKS THAT YOU ALL STAYED!”
more by Virginia O. Xhaley
photograph by Åse Bjøntegård Oftedal
