Grow Slow, Little Moon

Grandpa Barnaby gave Ori one job.

The job was to wait.

Waiting, it turns out, is the hardest job in all of Kittelfdora.

"This is a moonmelon," said Barnaby.

"You cannot hurry a moonmelon. It grows in its own good time. No pulling. No poking. Just wait for it."

Then, very softly, he whispered: "Good night, little moon. Grow slow."

(Now, between us: Ori has never waited for anything. I have watched him. He wants everything now. And twice.)

"I'll do it!" said Ori.

Then he thought about it.

"I'll make it grow FASTER!"

That is the opposite of waiting.

But nobody could tell Ori that yet.

First, Ori sang the melon a loud hurry-up song.

"GROW, little melon, GROW!"

He sang it high.

He sang it low.

He sang it into the melon's left ear, which melons do not have.

The melon did what melons do.

Nothing.

"Not yet?" said Ori.

A snail watched.

It said nothing too.

So Ori tried it sneaky.

He leaned in and whispered, very fast, "Psst. Grow now. I won't tell."

He gave the vine one tiny tug.

The melon did not budge.

You cannot hurry a moonmelon. Not even in a whisper.

So Ori tried it BIG.

Six lanterns for a pretend sun.

Then he made it rain.

He held the watering can way up high.

Sploosh.

Mostly on Ori.

He stood there dripping in his own little rainstorm.

The melon just sat in a puddle.

"STILL not yet?"

"This," Ori told the whole village, "is the SLOWEST melon in the history of melons."

So he called everyone.

Rabbits, beetles, three sleepy birds.

"On three, we shout GROW!"

"GROW! GROW! GROW!"

The rabbits hopped.

A lantern tipped.

Ori sat down hard in the puddle.

The melon sat there, cool and round, and did not grow one bit.

Now comes the quiet part.

You can breathe out.

Ori was all out of tricks.

He flopped down beside the melon, and this time he just waited.

He did not pull. He did not poke.

He watched the sky instead.

"Good night, little moon," he whispered, the way Barnaby does. "Grow slow."

The moon climbed slow, taking its own good time.

So did the melon.

And in the quiet, with nobody rushing it, the moonmelon began to glow.

Gold, and slow, and soft.

It hummed a low round hum.

Mmmm.

Ripe, at last.

"Oh," whispered Ori.

"It wasn't the waiting that was hard. It was the hurrying."

All night he had tried to make it fast.

In the end, he just waited beside it.

And that was the whole job.

Grandpa Barnaby cut it into glowing slices.

One for Ori.

One for the snail.

One for every sleepy bird.

Then they planted the new seeds in a soft dark row.

Ori knelt down low, the way Barnaby does.

"Good night, little moons," he whispered.

"I'll wait for you."