One day, the beach felt scary and too noisy.
So Laila went away from the loud kids & made a sandcastle all ALONE by herself.
Every time she pushed some sand down, it was like she was saying,
“No, I don’t like that,” and she kept building safe walls around her castle.
A wave crept closer. “I’ll knock it down,” it hissed.
Laila hugged her knees. “ It's ok Go ahead. Everyone knocks me down anyway.”
The wave paused, then slid a shell to her toes pearl-swirled, open like an ear. “Listen.”
Laila did. Inside the shell, the ocean sounded like breathing - slooooow in, slow out.
“Your heart is doing that,”
the wave said. “It keeps you alive even when you’re scared.”
“But I’m still shy & afraid too” Laila whispered.
“Shy/ fear is a weather,” the ocean answered. “It passes. You are the sky.”
A gust lifted her hair. She imagined fear as grey clouds, loneliness as drizzle, courage as sun that RAISES AGAIN & AGAIN every day - different moods, same wide sky holding them all.
The big kids’ ball rolled toward her castle and stopped. A boy called,
“Hey hello… can you toss it back?”
Her stomach fluttered clouds. She picked up the ball - as she the sky.
“Sure!” she called, and threw it.
“Nice throw!” they cheered.
Laila smiled, surprised at how warm one sentence could be. She placed the shell in her pocket, like a secret jewel she found there.
When her castle finally melted into the sea, she didn’t feel ruined or hurt. She felt real because the ocean didn’t erase her work. It carried it, grain by grain, into something else new.
Moral:
Feelings are weather; you are the sky. Kindness is the bridge that lets others meet your true, wide self, & helps you meet theirs.
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