Emoji stories

I thought instead of being yet another writer writing a blog about a writing journey, I might instead post some of the emoji stories I’ve been putting together for my family. I started writing them in lockdown when I’d been quarantined to the basement (and frankly, there’s only so much tidying a person can do!). I started writing them for my children and my niblings (recently discovered this is a collective noun for nephews and nieces and currently one of my favourite words!).

The person in question sends me 6 emojis and then I build a story around that, but also a bit around the person it’s for. So, over the next few posts, in any old order, are some emoji stories – hope you like them!

Here then, are the emojis my youngest niece sent me. In terms of background, all you need to know is that she's a wonderful dancer and at the time this was written, was appearing in the Nutcracker.

🌞 🍓 🩰 🐚 🦫 🕺

This is a story about impossible dreams, unlikely doors into other worlds, a disco icon from the 1970’s, soft fruit and an intrepid protagonist called Nina.

You know how it is when you have something fixed in your mind and you just can’t make it go away? It could be any number of things: a nice hot bath when you are waiting in the rain for a bus that just won’t turn up; or a large slice of pecan pie when you forgot to eat breakfast, and you find yourself walking past the open door of a bakery and enticing sugary, spicy smells waft out to meet you; or a dive into a sparkly blue sea when you are so utterly boiling hot you feel you are about to melt.

Well, in Nina’s case, the thing that was fixed in her mind, the thought that wouldn’t go away, was the desire, the need, to dance. And not anything, but to dance the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy with the celebrated Bolshoi Ballet.

Nina dreamed of the moment – the lights would dim, a hush would fall, the conductor’s baton would rise, the orchestra would strike up, the curtain would go whooshing silently up into the rafters, and there on the stage, beautifully lit up, dressed in sparkles and loveliness, the corps de ballet, who would rise onto their pointes and… oh the joy of it!

In her mind she would watch as Clara battled the Rat King (Nina was quite happy to let Clara get on with that – she disapproved of rats and especially that one) and then as she travelled to the Land of Sweets, the realm of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Nina loved Tchaikovsky, and the Sugar Plum Fairy was her favourite character in the Nutcracker – because the Sugar Plum Fairy makes you feel as though anything, literally anything, is possible. And that, my friends, is a great and wonderful thing.

You see, Nina had to believe that anything was possible, because it is all well and good to dream of becoming a prima ballerina (lots of people do, and some even manage it) however the challenge is made much harder, if you happen to be a beaver. To be fair, Nina was an extremely pretty and graceful beaver, but nevertheless, there was not much of a precedent of the Bolshoi admitting beavers, and so, Nina thought sadly, the dream might just have to remain a dream and remain fixed in her mind in just the way that bath/ pecan pie/ sparkly blue sea might remain fixed in yours.

And so it was. Nina went about her day to day tasks, building dams, tending her strawberry farm, chatting to the limpets on the nearby beach, zooming about the countryside on her orange motor-powered tricycle with the basket on the back and telling herself that life wasn’t so bad. It was just that little thought, that dream, she couldn’t get out of her head…

Now it just so happened, Nina had something that most of us wish we had, that something was a fairy godfather, and that fairy godfather was one John Travolta Esquire. Mr Travolta had spent some time in the 1970’s being a disco supremo in a film called Saturday Night Fever (which I’m afraid your aunt fell asleep in) and some time in 2007 being a Baltimore housewife in a film called Hairspray (which your aunt enjoyed enormously and did not fall asleep in).

[Sorry, we have to have a little digression here: did you know that “Travolta” translates from the Italian as ‘Overwhelmed’? I looked it up on Google Translate, so I think it must be true as I believe everything I read on Google Translate. If you separate it into Tra Volta”, it means “Between Times”. These facts may or may not be relevant later, I’m not sure yet.]

Anyway, back to Mr John Travolta, who is a busy man, a great film star and (I am sad to have to tell you) an utterly useless fairy godfather. The regrettable fact is, he and Nina had not seen each other for years. All this, however, was about to change.

Why? Well, as you may know, it is Very Hard Work being a Hollywood A lister. To be honest, you’re only as good as your last film. Mr Travolta was tra volta and tra films and thus was feeling a touch travolta. (That’s probably enough Italian for today – what I mean to say is, the poor man was knackered and needed a holiday.)

He had just read an article about the restorative qualities of strawberries (antioxidants etc)  and it occurred to him his goddaughter ran a strawberry farm by the sea. ‘Aha!’ he said, packed a bag, and set off.

§

It was evening time when Mr Travolta arrived on his fluttery-winged fairy motorbike. Nina was busy putting the strawberries to bed, which was something she did every evening. Every evening, she sat in the topmost corner of the topmost field with her ukelele and sang them a tuneful lullaby. JT, drawn towards the music and (no, did not break into song) regarded this bucolic (such a great word!) scene in amazement.

‘You sing to your strawberries?’ he exclaimed in stupefaction.

‘Of course!’ said Nina crossly. ‘It makes them sweet and delicious. Do you know nothing?’

JT admitted that where strawberry farming was concerned, he did indeed, know nothing.

‘So please go away until I’ve finished,’ snapped Nina.

JT humbly did as he was bid, and soon the strawberries were snoozing soundly. Nina put away her ukelele. She was not, truth be told, all that delighted to see her fairy godparent, but she was a polite sort of a beaver, so she took a deep breath and smiled and offered him a drink.

JT thanked her, and when she asked him politely how he was, he told her (at great length). (Clearly no one had ever explained to him that when you ask someone how they are, you are supposed to say ‘fine’ even if you are actually dying of the plague.)

Nina listened to all this and said that she was sorry about it, and would he like to stay for a while, learn about strawberry farming and take bracing early morning dips in the sea. JT said he thought that would be a splendid idea, and he’d been hoping she might suggest it, and then, remembering he did in fact have some manners tucked away in there somewhere, asked his goddaughter how she was too.

‘Fine,’ said Nina.

And so, over the next few days, Nina and JT looked after the strawberries together and swam in the sea and went sightseeing in the orange motor-powered tricycle and sidecar.  JT started to feel better and Nina decided her fairy godfather was perhaps not so bad after all.

What also happened over that time was JT noticed his little goddaughter was unhappy.

‘Come along,’ he said to her eventually over breakfast one morning. ‘Out with it. Remember, I am your fairy godfather and if there is anything I can do to make this better, I promise you, I will do it.’

Nina explained. JT listened with sympathy (being a singer and pretty great dancer himself, he understood the yearning). At the end of the tale, he got to his feet and said, ‘this is something I think I can fix. It is all a matter of sea-shells. Or at least, the right seashell.’

Nina was understandably a bit confused by this, but she took his hand and together they went down to the beach.

‘Now then,’ said JT. ‘You remember the pumpkin thing?’

‘Cinderella, you mean?’

‘Yes. Well, I don’t work with vegetables.’

‘Oh,’ said Nina, wondering if he was referring to his co-stars.

‘No, that’s a fairy godmother thing. Personally, I find molluscs work better, preferably without their inhabitants.’

‘I see,’ said Nina (although she didn’t really).

‘And what we need to find is a whelk. The bigger the better. Because a whelk provides the best doorway.’

This seemed unlikely, but Nina decided not to ask, not wanting to appear stupid, and instead went off in search of a whelk. She found one without too much bother as it was one of those nice shelly beaches you get when they face the right way.

‘Here you are,’ she said, presenting it to her fairy godparent.

‘Splendid!’ said JT. And then, standing tall, he cast a well-aimed shaft of Greased Lightning in the direction of the whelk. With an almighty WHOOSH the shell grew to the size of a house. (Kind of a two up two down, nice sash windows, a garden path and a chimney or two, you know the sort of thing). Most importantly though, it had a Front Door. And not just any old front door. Oh no. You could see at once this was a magical front door – not just because it was stuck onto the most enormous house-sized whelk – but because it was made out of ancient disintegrating planks of wood and had a load of ivy growing all over it and the handle was in the shape of a teapot. You know the sort of thing – the kind of door you expect an old crone to open and a black cat to emerge from etc etc.

‘Gosh,’ said Nina.

‘Yes,’ said JT. ‘Well Nina, this is it. Want to knock and see?’

At this point my friends, I think it would be ok to admit that Nina was just ever so slightly nervous, but you know what? Sometimes there are moments when you are confronted by The Unknown, and however scary that is, you just have to give it a go, because if you don’t, you will always ask yourself what might have happened if you had done so (and, top tip, there is literally nothing worse in life than might haves).

So, she in turn, stood tall, shook JT by the hand, thanked him and told him that depending on how things went and should she decide to stay wherever it was she was going, he was to look after the strawberry farm and keep the orange motor-powered tricycle in good order until she got back.

‘Sure,’ said JT.

Nina knocked at the door, turned the teapot, opened it (no old crone appeared, nor a black cat) and went through.

Imagine a dark, dark passageway. As the door closes behind our heroine, the sound of the sea disappears. The passageway is quiet at this end. There is a light ahead and Nina makes her way towards it. As she gets closer, she can hear the chatter of an audience, and that magical sound full of promise as the orchestra tunes up. There is a flurry of activity, the sound of ‘five minutes’ being called, the scurry of feet, the smell of greasepaint. Someone says, ‘there you are! We were getting worried! Come along, you need to get changed!’

‘But where am I?’ thinks Nina. ‘And changed for what?’

 No time for wondering though, and she is helped into a beautiful glimmering tutu, and a sparkly tiara and then, with a crowd of giggling sweets, she makes her way to the wings and watches while Drosselmeyer gives the children their gifts. She is engrossed in the story, part of it, and it seems the most natural thing in the world to hear the melody she knows so well and to find herself rising onto her pointes and then… Oh the exhilaration, the sheer joy of it, leaping and turning and pirouetting about the stage and before she knows where she is, the final chords ring out and the audience are clapping. Curtain calls, roses, champagne, congratulations…

And then suddenly, as fabulous as it all is, strangely, Nina thinks how much she misses her strawberries, her motor-powered tricycle, her ukelele and her beach, and while kissing everyone and thanking them for their congratulations, roses and champagne, feels where she’d most like to be, is home.  And there’s a whole lot of conflict going on there – decisions about glitter/ glamour/ dancing versus all the other things she loves best in the world. Such a jumble of emotions and thoughts, and how is she going to tell all that to JT who has been so kind, and oh my goodness and stuff.

Back down the dark, dark tunnel, the sounds of the theatre fading into the distance. There is the door. (Now, you are busy thinking I have forgotten about the sun – not so… watch.)

Nina turns the teapot, and walks back out onto the beach, where The Sun is Shining Splendiferous Sparkles down onto the sea, and friends, it was a revelation. Nina realised that dancing doesn’t just have to be on a stage. Dancing and sparkles and happiness can be EVERYWHERE, and at ANY MOMENT, and it doesn’t matter if you are a Beaver or Anna Pavlova or whoever, JUST DANCE, whenever the feeling takes you, whether it’s a stage or a beach or a strawberry field.

JT was waiting for her by the door. ‘So how was it?’ he asked.

‘It was wonderful!’ sighed Nina.

‘And you didn’t want to stay? You could you know.’

‘Yes, but I wanted to bring the dancing back with me, to here.’

‘Nice!’ said JT, and as I have mentioned, he was quite a natty dancer himself, he held out a hand and he and Nina danced up and down the beach in the sunshine, and the sea sparkled, and the waves applauded, and Nina felt absolutely happy.

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