COUNTING SHEEP

     Amarachi couldn’t fall asleep.

      She sighed and threw the covers off her legs, “Oh, this is hopeless! I’ll never get any sleep at this rate. Unless…”

     Grinning, she sat up in bed and whistled sharply. Her room door creaked open slowly and a white, fluffy lamb ambled in and hopped onto her bed.

“Hi, Ama!”, it giggled, tiny nose wriggling in excitement, “Can’t sleep, right?”

“No, Baabaara,” she replied, making room for her woolly friend beside her, “I guess we have to count.”

Baabaara clapped her tiny fore hooves happily, “Oh, how I love to count!”

Then she turned around in three excited circles and pointed her nose up wards….and a few shining fruits appeared, tumbling slowly in mid-air.

Ama wrinkled her nose thoughtfully, staring at the floating fruits, “Um…can we count boxes today? Its almost christmas and I need to practice counting my gifts.”

  Baabaara giggled and winked. The fruits disappeared and a few wrapped boxes appeared in their place, and the little girl clapped in glee and leaned forward eagerly.

“Alright, how many red boxes are there?”, the lamb asked, grinning.

“Three.”, Ama replied quickly.

   Immediately, a few more red boxes appeared and they both giggled as the girl did some quick addition, “Six, now!”

And so she kept counting, as boxes appeared and disappeared, until she began to yawn, and finally lay back on her pillow and drifted off to sleep.

Baabaara smiled, and clicking her tiny hooves together, made the shiny floating boxes disappear.

She gambolled off the bed and quietly made her way towards Ama’s room door, stopping to blow a kiss at the sleeping girl, before she slipped quietly slipped out of the room.