Beside the path there was a little fir tree with a problem. Every year in December, the villagers came to dress him in shiny baubles. And every year, within two hours, every bauble was on the ground.
The fir tree made them fall. Not unkindly. He simply shook his needlesThe small pointed green leaves of a fir tree, thin as little spines. a little, the way you do with a scratchy scarf, and plop, the baubles slid into the snow.
“What a fussy tree,” the villagers said as they walked away. The fir tree could not answer, of course. But if he could have, he would have said: “It tickles.”
One evening a tiny fairy called Brume landed on his topmost branch. She was very small, she was cold, and she was looking for somewhere to sleep. “Why aren't you decorated?” she asked.
The fir tree gently shook his needlesThe small pointed green leaves of a fir tree, thin as little spines.. One last forgotten bauble dropped into the snow, plop. Brume understood at once. “Ah,” she said. “You don't like things that hang on you.”
So Brume did something nobody had tried. She put nothing on the tree at all. She breathed, very softly, and frostThe thin white ice that settles on plants on very cold mornings. drew stars on every single needle. Then she called her friends, and the firefliesLittle insects that glow in the dark, like tiny flying lamps. came to settle wherever they pleased, tied to nothing.
In the morning the whole village stopped in front of the little fir tree. He shone brighter than all the others, with his stars of frostThe thin white ice that settles on plants on very cold mornings. and his living lights that shifted a little whenever the wind went by.
“How did he do that?” asked a child. Nobody could answer. But the fir tree knew: they had not decorated him like the others, they had decorated him like himself.
The end, sweet dreams.
