A Dreamer of Beautiful Things
by
Matt Zurbo
Warning. This is not a loud story. This is not a story about a big adventure. It’s a story.
About Miette.
Miette was a dreamer.
(Miette, long fringe, dress a bit Gothish, holding a scruffy English teddy bear.)
A dreamer of beautiful things.
(Miette floating in teacup through beautiful skies. Other floating teacups in background.)
Of attaching wings to things that shouldn’t fly.
(Her in bath, with bubbles on her head, bath has wings.)
Of creating fruit tree islands where they shouldn’t go.
(Sitting in an apple tree, on small island of fruit trees in middle of gridlocked intersection.)
But when Miette told other people about her dreams…
(Miette picking the thread between rainbow colours, as they spill out the bottom, merging, covering everything.)
“Imagine if we could undo rainbows, so they spill everywhere?”
She was laughed at. Hounded.
(Miette, walking off dejected dragging pieces of colourful cloth, representing rainbow, as other kids point and laugh and make crazy person gestures.)
“Miette the Dreamer!” they mocked her, as if being a beautiful dreamer was a bad thing.
“Doctor…” her parents said.
“Teacher…”
“Fellow parents…” they said. “What can we do?”
Everybody’s answer was to talk.
All Miette wanted to do was dream.
(All text here is on the one page. Mum and Dad animated, arguing with doctor, also animated, while Miette sits to the side, doodling/day dreaming.)
Other kids dreamed of being famous. Or doing well.
(Miette sitting staring ahead, in middle of other kids, who are play acting, playing sport, pretending they are singers, or action heroes.)
Miette wondered what it would be like to be famous for her dreams.
“It would have to be somewhere else,” she thought.
“Somewhere that likes dreams.”
(Miette in working class suburb in the sky, each brick building is a tower. There are rainbows instead of footpaths. Person greeting her has hand coming out of top of his hat, waving to her.)
“Everything would be laid out, so all I’d have to do… is imagine.”
(Miette sitting in her teacup on a platform in the sky, but now it is full of pillows, and surrounded by old, stuffed toys, with a curtain behind it. Someone is bringing her food.)
“Let my thoughts roam.”
(Mist spiralling out from Miette, forming amazing stories. A man with top half of his skull missing and butterflies coming out, stick figure devil throwing a snowball, a unicorn running wild, birds talking to a bunyip, a monster doing a ballerina move while the ballerina stands there watching it, etc…)
“And tell people about my dreams,”
(Miette talking happily to kids and clown and magic pudding and dog, etc…)
“so they might take them,”
(These characters happily telling other people stories.)
“and tell other people,”
“and have dreams of their own.”
(Miette walking along brick-paved road, in sky, other people/characters lounging on benches, pillows, in trees, etc… smiling dreamily as mist curls up from them, making stories above them.)
At school, the other kids continued to huddle and tease. They sniggered and bragged and, underneath, looked scared to Miette.
One day they would build houses, and get jobs, and kick goals.
She dreamed they were happy.
(Miette watching kids in playground. Some playing sport, others bullying, some talking. The dream of who they will be as spiralling in mist above them. A carpenter, but doing something happy, etc… believable goals.)
Everybody, always, told Miette the dreamer of beautiful things, how she should do this and do that.
(Group of kids leering at her back, one shouting, as she walks on.)
“I can tell you how to save the world…” she whispered to herself.
“Dream of beautiful things…”
(Miette walking, behind her, tigers and antelopes are jumping gracefully, in patterns, out of clouds.)
“And don’t mind,
sometimes,”
(Miette in the palm of a beautiful lady giant, who is smiling at her, as she holds out a flower.)
“being on your own.”
(Miette, sitting on bench, on simple, flat ground, nothing but sky behind her, filled with white/yellow sunset images of her imagination.)
The End
365 kids books in 365 days 