Harry Boro - MillyLilly. Chocolate Battle

© Harry Boro, 2020

ISBN 978-5-0051-6699-9

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

My little friend…

I hope you are not offended by my calling you little. I’m so old now that no matter how old you are, you are still little compared to me. But notice, I also call you friend, which means I think about you as a friend, no matter how little you are.

And because I think about you as a friend, I feel compelled to share this story with you. I’ve heard this story from someone I can trust completely. His name is…

Well, I cannot tell you his real name yet because he asked me not to. Maybe, one day he will change his mind. Until then, let’s call him Chuck. I can trust Chuck because he was part of the story. And because I can trust him, I know it’s true. And because I know it’s true, now you know that the story, I’m about to tell you, is true….

Somewhere on the Earth, far away from any known towns and countries, surrounded by the Great Ocean, there are five mountains that stand in a circle as if protecting something inside. These mountains are the highest mountains in the world. They are so high that if you walk up to the base of any of these mountains and look up, trying to see the top, you will have to lie on your back and even then you still won’t see the tops of the mountains.

If we could measure the height of these mountains in elephants, we would have to place thousand or ten thousand elephants on top of each other, and only from the back of the highest elephant could we barely see the tops of the mountains.

Imagine how many turtles or cats we would use instead of elephants to climb up and see the mountains’ tops? A million? Ten million? Well, if you use dragons for measuring heights, most likely it would be less than ten thousand because dragons are bigger than elephants, but still, it will take a lot of dragons! How many elephants in one dragon? Two, three, five? I don’t know, but what I do know is that even in dragons, these mountains are super high.

Why are these mountains so high? What are they hiding? They are hiding, or better to say—protecting – a very beautiful and very special country, Sweetland.

In this country, there is always a summer, and, because of that, Sweetland is always covered with the bright green fields and meadows of flowers. In between fields, there are cool woods with a lot of brooks in the shades of the lush trees. The water in these brooks is crystal clean and so tasty that anybody who ever tries it forgets about any soda forever. He or she wants to drink only this amazing water.

Under the trees, one can find all kind of berries: strawberries, huckleberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries. You name it. There are so many berries that the squirrels and chipmunks who live in the woods don’t even bother to hide some berries in their hollows. What for? When they are hungry, they just go down, eat as many berries as they can, roll over on their backs, and take naps, filling the woods with their whistling snores.

You might be wondering why the squirrels and the chipmunks are so carelessly napping? Why they don’t worry about people who may pass by and try to catch them while they are sleeping? Well, people in this country are very small, maybe six inches tall at most. Six inches is about the size of the mom or dad’s ring finger. Look at their fingers! Can you picture for yourself a person that small? It’s kind of close to the height of the regular squirrel. By “regular” I mean a squirrel which stands on its four legs, not on the two rear ones.

If some of these people were living among us, we wouldn’t see them because we rarely look underfoot. They would have to be very careful and to hide from us all the time. Nobody wants to be stepped on, right?

So, Sweetland, protected by mountains, is the only place where they can live safely. In all other places, their lives could be very difficult. Not only because someone big, like you, could step on them, but because even our regular wind, the one that playfully gusted in your face the other day, would not let them walk around, meet each other, and talk to each other.

But how do you make friends, if you cannot visit anybody? How do you make friends if nobody can visit you? How do you make friends if you cannot share your secrets with someone special and that someone cannot share secrets with you? I don’t know.

You can say what about the phone? Everybody can always call or send a message. True. But in Sweetland, they don’t have phones. They have never even heard about the phones. I tried to explain to Chuck how convenient a phone is, but he asked me, “Does the phone give you the same happy feeling as your mom’s kiss before you go to sleep? Or can your phone substitute for a good friend?”

I said what I thought, “No.”

And Chuck said, “Why would we need your phones then?”

Luckily, for the people in Sweetland, protected by mountains, they never had very strong winds. The strongest one would blow off someone’s hat, but nothing more serious than that. Rain, of course, sometimes can cause a problem for them; with their sizes, even a single raindrop looks like a bucket of water for us. Imagine how you play with your friends outside or have a birthday party in the backyard of your house, and, all of sudden, someone starts pouring buckets of water on your heads? That’s how people in Sweetland would feel caught in the rain.

Maybe because of their sizes or maybe because they’ve never heard about us, boys and girls in Sweetland are called differently from our world. Boys are called millies ([‘mili: s]), and girls are called lillies ([‘lili: s]), and as people all together, they are called MillyLilly. It may sound strange to us, but to them, boys and girls would sound strange too.

“Why boy or why girl?” they would say. “It’s milly and lilly; you’re silly!”

There are ten or fifteen cities in Sweetland. Nobody has ever really counted them.

A milly or lilly who lives in one city, may have friends or relatives in some cities not far from his or her city. So, they visit them from time to time, but don’t go on the trip any farther. Their relatives may go to visit friends and relatives in some cities which are on the other side of their cities, but also don’t go any farther than one city away.

That’s why nobody knows about the total number of cities in the country. MillyLilly just never go farther than one city away. Why? They don’t have cars and planes like us. Without cars and planes, long trips can take months or even years. But they cannot leave their homes for months. They have some important things to do, and they have to make sure that their cities are always full of life and up to their reputation and fame.

You may ask, what reputation and what fame? Each city in Sweetland is famous for a particular kind of sweets their residents are making better than anybody else; Chocoville is known for the best chocolate in the world, Cookiestown’s fame comes from their secret of making unbelievably tasty cookies. There are also cities Muffinado, Cakeburg, Candy York, and others. The name of the city where our story begins is Ambia. Never heard about the ambia? Never – never? Are you serious?! Let me immediately explain!

The ambia, the word that gave the name to the city, is a sort of the syrup made from the first nectar of the flowers mixed with an aerial like ice cream that is churned, using only the sweet waters of the Sacred Springs. The ambia comes in hundreds of different flavors, but it’s very important for making fantastic ambia to use exactly the first nectar of the flowers. With the second nectar, the ambia still tastes good but not as great as with the first nectar. So, if someone ever offers for you to try the ambia, ask them, what nectar of flowers they were using – the first one or the second. You can always tell the difference.