Once
upon a time there was a river. This river was rather unfriendly and lonesome.
The river could not remember how long ago he had decided that he no longer
wanted to put up with anything or anyone. He lived alone, refusing to share his
water with any fish, plant or animal.
And
so his life went on, sadly and filled with loneliness, for many centuries.
One
day, a little girl with a goldfish bowl came to the bank of this river. In the
bowl lived Scamp, her favourite little fish. The girl was about to move to
another country, and she wouldn't be able to take Scamp with her. So she had
decided to give Scamp his freedom.
When
Scamp fell into the river, he immediately felt the river's loneliness. Scamp
tried talking to the river, but the river told Scamp to go away. Now, Scamp was
a very happy little fish, and he wasn't going to give up so easily. He asked
and asked, swam and swam, and finally he started jumping in and out of the
water.
The
river, feeling all the jumping and splashing, started to laugh. It tickled!
After
a while, this put the river in such a good mood that he started talking to
Scamp. Almost without knowing it, by the end of that day, Scamp and the river
had become very good friends.
The
river spent that night thinking about how much fun it was to have friends, and
how much he had missed by not having them. He asked himself why he had never
had them, but he couldn't remember.
The
next morning, Scamp woke the river with a few playful splashes... and that was
when the river remembered why he had decided to be such an unfriendly river:
He
remembered that he was very ticklish, and that he wouldn't have been able to
stand it! Now he remembered perfectly how he had told everyone to scoot, that
he wasn't going to put up with all that tickling.
