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 The bubbles fly far away, nobody knows where, in every direction. Small, big, free and weightless bubbles.
"Fly, fly far away", little Luca whispers, his brown eyes fixed on the delicate soap spheres, that changed to blued, then orange.
While whirling upwards, little Joniel smiles back at the child and looks at him from an increasing distance, while the gentle breeze of the wind takes him towards the sky and the other bubbles dance around him.
"Hey, excuse me!" he tries to shout to the child, but his voice loses in the wind.
"Come on, come and play with us!", the other happy bubbles urge him.
"Did you understand what he said when he blew you into the air?", he asks hopefully. The bubbles laugh: "Said? Why, did he said anything? Maybe what you heard was the voice of the wind!"
But Joniel knows it's not like that: that child said something to him before letting him fly free into the sky. And he wants to know what it was.
"Please, wind, my friend, let me reach that child", Joniel, the small bubble, begs.
"Forget him and fly with the other bubbles. The words of the humans are not your concern", grumbles the wind.
But Joniel is a stubborn bubble: the wind pushes him upwards and he whirls downwards; the wind directs him to the left and he pulls to the right.
"Excuse me!" Joniel cries again to the child.
Nothing. The child seems not to hear him. Joniel sees him sitting on the stairs before the door of the house, waiting for something.
"Child, please, repeat what you said! I need to know…". But Luca doesn't pay any attention to the small bubble that is still twirling above him, while the others are now all far away.
Joniel struggles not to be taken away too.
"Hi Sara!", Luca says suddenly, at once happy: his sister is finally back home from school. He stands up and goes towards her, smiling.
Sara stares at the gravel before her and pretends not to notice her little brother. She looks askance at him, gives him a nod and passes him without stopping.
Just above them, the small bubble Joniel continues his struggle against the persistence of the wind.
"Give up, it's no use knowing the child's words", the wind scolds him, annoyed by his hostility. But Joniel insists, he refuses to give up.
Below them, Luce blushes and asks fearfully: "Are you happy again, now?"
Sara turns, an inquiring look on her face: "Happy for what?", she asks, irritated.
"But I thought…", Luca looks down, disappointed. Sara ignores him and is about to go up the stairs.
At that precise moment, the wind, tired of that insolent bubble by now, decides to blow harder; but Joniel whirls again and finds himself resting a few inches from the girl whose name is Sara.
The wind blows but Joniel thrusts it away with all his strength: he is engaged in a crazy, uncoordinated dance.
Suddenly the girl looks up, perplexed, and little Joniel passes by her, lightly brushing the tip of her nose. Sara observes the bubble dancing in the wind and touches her nose, astonished. Then, almost without being aware of it, she smiles, revealing a metallic twinkle between her teeth. She shakes her head, amused, then goes in.
Joniel, exhausted, decides to give up: unfortunately, he sadly thinks, he'll never know what the child whispered to him.
But, at that precise moment, Luca turns, his face wreathed in smiles, and races with the wind to reach the little bubble, now already far away: "Thank you!", he happily whispers.
"Thanks for what?", little Joniel murmurs, confused.
The wind laughs heartily: "He asked you to make his sister's sadness fly away", he friendly reveals.
"Who? Me? But it's something I'm not able to do!", poor Joniel sadly regrets.
"But you have just done it!", the wise wind contradicts him. "His sister was sad because of the braces she's obliged to wear, so she doesn't smile anymore. Without being aware of it, you've done what you thought you couldn't do."
"Really?!", asks Joniel, amazed. To him, this is incredible: he's just a little bubble! But an extremely resourceful one, it seems!
Story Info
- Story written by Lara and translated from the Italian by Marta, 2004
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