Amelia is out exploring! She wanders a little, and almost stumbles on this warm, earthy brown roll, like a thick cozy blanket, She rolls it out and shakes it, My goodness, look at the dust fly! She shakes it again – dirt, dirt, dirt, flying everywhere!
But, what is that? Clear of some of the dirt now, she can see teeny tiny dots, like candy, all across the blanket. ‘Who dropped candy on the blanket?’ she wonders. But as she gets closer, to peel one off, oh my! The dots aren’t candy at all! Each is the tippy-top top of a sleepy, cuddled up…flower! Why, the blanket is a bed, cradling a whole village of flowers, long asleep, but now beginning to stir as Amelia’s shaking shakes them out of their deep dreams.
One more shake from Amelia, and the plants all spring open, stretching their leaves and opening their cheery bright flower faces to the warmth of the sun. “Well, aren’t you remarkable?: Amelia hears herself say out loud, although there’s no one around to answer her.
Except…what’s that? There’s a very light bright sound, like a twitter of giggles, she’s hearing. Is this her imagination, or is that the sound of a not very well-organized chorus of tee-hees? It can’t possibly be the flowers, she says, this time inside her head. (Not being sure whether they were rude or friendly flowers, being cautious about what she said out loud sounded like a good plan.)
No sooner had the words formed in her head, than the faint tee-hee’s turn into louder squeals of laughter, and it’s coming from? The flowers! Amelia can hardly believe her eyes, but there they are — shaking with belly laughs, doubled-over slapping their stems with their leaves, then rearing back and almost toppling over twisting back and forth in a fit of hilarity.
Amelia is a little surprised (well, actually, she’s quite a bit surprised because no one mentioned flowers are so quick to laugh). She asks, out loud this time, because it’s apparent there’s no hiding her thoughts here, “Why are you laughing at me?”
By now the flowers are in that ‘whew, I am exhausted’ phase of laughing, bent over their stems, trying to catch their breath, wiping off the last drops of milky-white fluid that leaked out of their little flower faces, (you’ve had milk shoot out of your nose when you laugh with milk in your mouth, haven’t you? Well, like that!) Collectively, they heave a few last happy sighs. “We’re not laughing at you,” she heard in chorus of voices, “we just loved the surprise in your face! “
And they beamed and glowed, individually but all together, too, like a beautiful painting springing to life. We love you, they said, over and over in multiples, in song, in smiles, in a radiance that washed over her and through her – we love you, we love you, we love you as Amelia drifted off to happy sleep.