Pourquoi Tale: Student Work

The Sky Gnome and his Snow Globes

Long ago, there were millions of sky gnomes who lived in the clouds. They were
average gnomes who lived average lives. Gnomesky, however, was very well known
among the others. An old, gruff, selfish gnome he was.
It was always sunny where he lived among the sky gnomes, but occasionally it
snowed. When Gnomesky saw snow for the first time when he was a mere 4 years old,
he decided it was his calling to collect snowglobes. Gnomesky’s walls were now lined
with millions of snow globes.
Now, Gnomesky had a son, but he never paid any attention to him. He named
him Snowy, after his love of snow. Snowy asked for help, Gnomesky brushed him off.
Snowy shared a story that happened to him, Gnomesky grunted and went back to
tending his snow globes. Snowy told his father he was sad, Gnomesky waved him
away.
After years of this, Snowy decided he was sick of this treatment, so, he walked
into his father’s snowglobe room and saw his father carefully dusting a snow globe.
“Father, we need to talk,” Snowy said, determined.
“Not now, Snowy,” Gnomesky grunted in a bored voice.
At this response, Snowy decided he was done being in the shadows of his
father’s snow globes, and he decided to curse his father.
“Father, father, at parenting you never try, if you do not improve in a week, kiss
your snowglobes goodbye!”
At that, Snowy walked out of the room and, as usual, Gnomesky brushed it off
and went back to tending his snow globes.
Gnomesky went out for a walk on the day after the curse was set, and as he
walked through the town, he could see people whispering and pointing at him, but this
wasn’t an unusual thing, so, he ignored it.
The second day Gnomesky went out for a walk after the curse was set on him,
the townspeople ran away from him whenever he drew close.
On the third day Gnomesky went out for a walk, a few townspeople came up to
him and said,
“Excuse me, sir, we know how much you value your snow globes, so please,
listen when we say you must start spending more time with your son if you want to keep
your collection,” one pleaded.
“We don’t want a mass disaster for our people,” another one added.
Before Gnomesky could reply, they had already run off.
Gnomesky wasn’t completely sure of what they meant, but he tried to carefully
consider this for four days, while still adding and tending to his snow globes.
“Those kids don’t know what they’re talking about,” he decided after those long
four days, and by nature, he went back to his house and added another snow globe to a
long shelf. What he didn’t realize was that it had been a week since his son had cursed
him.
Focused on setting his new snow globe at the right spot, he hadn’t realized the
ground had started shaking. It shook, harder and harder, getting more and more vicious
by the second. With the ground shaking, Gnomesky noticed the millions of snow globes
inching closer to the floor. One by one, the snow globes fell to the ground, each one
landing with a large CRASH!
Snow globes were falling faster than Gnomesky could count. With water
overflowing past the edge of his cloud, Gnomesky’s face and ears turned bright red. His
fingernails dug into his sweaty palms as his hands formed into fists, and he yelled as
loud as he could.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” he boomed. This yelp was so loud that all of the clouds
surrounding him started to shake, creating a loud and frightening sound and vibration
for not only the townspeople, but for even the animals living on what we now know as
earth! Large bolts of light sparked every time a piece of glass shattered from a
snowglobe falling off of a shelf. The water flowed and flowed like a never-ending rushing
river, quickly falling in the form of droplets onto earth. There were so many snow globes
lining his shelves that the water within them fell for precisely 92 days, which would soon
become the exact number of days in Spring.
Neither Snowy, nor Gnomesky was ever seen again, and no one has ever dared
to step foot into Gnomesky’s cloud house since. It is rumoured that everyone who
stepsdoes step foot onto Gnomesky’s cloud will be stored and turned into rain, waiting
for Spring to fall.
Gnomesky, who had never collected another snow globe again, mourns the loss
of the thing that he cared about most. Every year on the same fateful day that
Gnomesky’s snow globes first fell, people hear cries coming from his room, with
screeches of anger that make the floor heave. He cries 24/7 for 92 days, always starting
on the same day. This is how it manages to rain all spring, every year.