They sit in my office, waiting for their dad to finish some handyman work he is doing for me. Sensing their boredom, I show them a ‘magic stone’ that sits on my desk. “Do you know what this is?”, I ask.
My young great-niece and great-nephew shake their heads, obviously disinterested. “Hum”, I say, and continue, “This is a never-ending, authentic-history-telling stone.” I grin, knowing I have their full attention, as they both peer intently at the stone.
My great-nephew, the younger of the two, asks, “How does it tell history, does it talk?” I smile and say, “It tells it’s story by pictograph.” My great-niece says, “I don’t see a picture.”
I trace my pencil tip around the shapes, explaining how the top figure is a pictograph of a dragon swooping down to attack the bottom figure, which is a dinosaur. I say, “This magic stone tells the story of how the last fire-breathing dragon killed the last dinosaur. That is how the dinosaurs became extinct.”
The children look up at me, their faces betraying their amazement of my story. I continue my dictation of the pictograph story, “The magic stone also tells the story of how the last fire-breathing dragon died after there were no more dinosaurs to hunt for food.”
Just as I finish my tale, their dad walks in to announce he has completed the job for me. He looks over at his children and says, “You guys look like your having fun.” His children run over to him, exclaiming in unison, “Auntie just told us what happened to all the fire-breathing dragons and dinosaurs!” He smiles and says to me, “I’m gonna have to hear that story someday.”
© Zora Zebic 2018
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