The Mice who Turned into Fairies

I think I’m finally old enough to read stories I wrote when I was seven years old without cringing in embarrassment. Some still make me cringe; this isn’t one of them, perhaps merely because it won the first prize in a story-writing contest when I was seven years old. Written in a four-lined notebook with painstaking neatness, it was ‘edited’ by my mother because seven-year-old Varsha did not understand the purpose of commas and paragraphs. Other than those original changes, The Mice who Turned into Fairies has been reproduced here as it was written.

Once upon a time there lived five mice in a hole. One day another mouse came and said:
“Please give me some food.”

So the five mice gave her a lot of food and to their astonishment, she turned into a fairy! After that, leaving a note saying where she lived, she went away.

The mice thought that if they ate a lot of food they would also turn into fairies. But one of the mice thought he would not eat a lot, so when the other mice were eating he did not eat.

The mice who ate a lot just became fat and the one who hadn’t eaten a lot went for the fairy’s help. The fairy waved her wand and then said to the mouse:
“Your brothers and sisters are all as they were and now you drink a little water and you will all turn into fairies.”

The mouse went back to his house and sure enough, they were their usual size. The mouse told them what the fairy had said.

The mice drank a little water and turned into fairies. They flew to the fairy’s house and lived there happily ever after.