Bedtime story

My kids always say I'm a good story-teller (ahem!). Most of the time, I just make one up to get them to sleep as I can't remember much of children's tales that I have read. In fact, my Princess says I should compile them into a book and make lots of money. Wah, if only.

Anyway, here's one that just came out of nowhere, inspired by my nonsensical conversation with my 10-year-old before bedtime.

"You know where your teachers will bring you now that you can't go to Bukit Merah (bird flu-mah)?"

"Where?"

"They will launch you guys into space. So that they will have some peace and quiet. Ha Ha!"

"Kaboom! Now tell me a story, dad."

"Okay, I have an idea for one. Do you know how our solar system came about? Once, there was a rich family with 10 children. They would have been a perfectly happy family if not for the fact that one of the children was a jealous, unhappy brat, always harbouring bad and envious thoughts about his siblings.

"One day, their father asked them to go out into the world to seek their fortune as he did not want them to be weak and depend on him all the time.

"So they all went to pack and say goodbye to the parents. Their mother was, however, sad that she had to part with her dear offspring and so she slipped each of them a magic stone.

"'Use the stone only if necessary as it can be used only once,' she warned her children.

"The evil child, however, had only one bad thought in his mind. He thought: 'If my nine brothers are no more, I will be the only one left and what little effort I put into my endeavours will be praised by my parents.'

"With that, he summoned the magic in his stone and turned all his brothers into stone.

"What he did not realise is that his mother had forgotten to warn him that the stones cannot be used against the family as they were forged from her soul.

"His dastardly act engulfed her in fire which grew in magnitude and size until it too engulfed everything and everyone in sight. The heavens opened up and she became the sun around which all her sons revolved around her, for are they not part of the same soul?

"As for the evil son, he too became stone because of his folly, condemned to revolve around the fertile Earth as the moon, always alone, cold and desolate. Occasionally, when he could, he would peer in the distance at her mother, the sun, but from the glare, he knew in his heart that she would never forgive him..."

How's that? Do you think I make a good children's book author? Hee hee...