A Guest In My Garden

I was watering my garden when I thought I saw something moving near the bushes. I was about to check what it was when I thought it would be a butterfly or an insect.

The next day also when I was watering my garden, there was a little movement in the bushes. There was nothing when I checked. When I looked back my watering can was gone! I thought I had kept it somewhere and started searching for it. After searching for a few minutes, I thought to eat lunch first and search later. When I came back later to search for the watering can, it was back at the same place I had left it! I was very confused. The next day I could hear some voices from the bush. When I checked, this time I could see an ant. Was the ant making this noise? I continued watering the plants.

Soon after a rabbit captured the ant and the ant was not able to get away. I accidentally poured water on the rabbit & ant. As soon as the water fell on the ant, it transformed into a tiny person about the size of my thumb! The rabbit got afraid when the ant transformed and ran away. The elf* told me that it would help me if I protected it from other animals for a few days. I agreed and took the elf into my house. When I tried to show everyone the elf, nobody could see it! The elf later told me that humans can’t see elves and I was able to see it only because I had promised that I would protect it from other animals and help it. It was very boring during the lockdown so I asked the elf to be my friend. We both played many games and had lot of fun.

I later got to know that there are many other elves also, and they live on a different planet. A few elves are sent to Earth every week to help humans. They get to go back only after they help somebody. One day the elf told me that a big cyclone was coming this way on Earth and it would cause a lot of destruction. I did not believe the elf at first but the elf kept on telling me that it could predict the future. I didn’t believe this and asked the elf what will happen in the next one minute. The elf said that a cat will be running near the window trying to catch a mouse. Just after a few seconds, this happened! Now I knew that the elf was not lying and was in fact trying to help us. I called a newspaper company and told them to include the cyclone in the news. They did not believe us and didn’t do anything about this. We called them continuously telling them it was true.

One news reporter thought to check if it was real. The news reporter called the weather forecast people and asked them to check this. They did not find a cyclone coming this way. The news reporter called us & said that there was no cyclone or anything coming. I was very confused and thought that the elf was lying. Yet whatever the elf told will happen in the next 1 minute, happened. I thought maybe it would be a very very tiny cyclone that couldn’t do anything, in that case, what the elf told was also true & so was the weather forecast. The next day, all the news channels were flashing with the news that there would be a cyclone in 60 days and if we did not do anything it would cause a lot of destruction. Immediately the news channel told me that the weather forecast thought to check again since someone had asked, and found out that their machine was not working!

They immediately fixed this and checked again, and they also found that there actually was a cyclone coming this way! Soon after everyone got to know about this and measures were taken to stop the cyclone. The news channel thanked us for repeatedly calling them. I was happy that we could do something to stop the cyclone. But on the 61st day after this, I found that the elf had disappeared. It had gone back to its planet after it finished doing something to help us.

I still checked every day if there was any movement in the bushes or any ant near it. But nothing was there. The elf had gone back to its planet. Maybe after a month, other elves would be coming to other places around the world to help us.

*An elf is a type of supernatural being in German Mythology and folklore. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves generally seem to have been thought of as beings with magical powers, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of helping or harming them.

The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages and seems originally to have meant 'white being'. Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends largely on texts, written in Old and Middle English, medieval German, and Old Norse (A language that was spoken from about the 7th to 15th centuries.) These associate elves with the gods of Norse mythology.