The universe is a big place. In this wide wide universe was a single star. Now there was something special about this star. It was unlike any other star. This star was different. It was different because this star could grant wishes!
Now far away from this star lived a girl called Mia. Mia loved to look at the stars overhead. She loved looking at the stars. She knew almost all the names of the constellations. She loved looking up at them at night and trying to identify one constellation from the other. She knew most of their names Aries, Aquarius, Leo and Orion.
Her father used to love stars too. He was the one that taught Mia all the names of the constellations. Mia loved learning about stars. She read all the books about stars she could get her hands on. For a long time, she had wanted a telescope but her father said, “I will get you one when you’re older.”
Mia knew he meant it. She also knew that her father didn’t have much money. He was a fisherman. One day his father had gone fishing and had never come back. Mia had no one else, her mother had passed away a few years back.
Mia waited and waited for her father to come back, but he didn’t. Mia didn’t stop hoping that he would come back. But everyone else said, “he must have drowned at sea.” But Mia refused to believe this. She knew, she didn’t know how, that her father was alive.
One summer night when she was gazing at the stars she saw a star. It was a bright star. Brighter than all the stars she had seen before. She had never seen a star like the one that was shining big and bright. She didn’t know why she did it, but she said, “I wish I could find my father.”
Now Mia lived close to the sea and the star that was shining bigger and brighter than any other star fell from the sky and came floating down towards her. As the star came closer and closer until it was blindingly bright. Mia shut her eyes. When she opened them there was a glowing piece of paper at her footsteps. It glowed silver as if it had been made of starlight.
Mia picked it up and looked at it. Golden letters appeared on it.
Take me to the sea and make a paper boat out of me. Then get on to the boat and sail away, you will find the one that you lost that way!\
Mia climbed out of the window and ran down the street. The wind whistled in her ears and ruffled her hair as she ran and ran until she came to the seashore.
She went to the very edge of the sea and took the shining silver paper and folded it into a boat. Just as she had made it it slipped out of her hands and fell onto the waves. There was a flash as soon as the shiny boat touched the water. When Mia looked there was a boat bobbing close to her out in the sea. She waded to it and got on to it.
The boat sailed on and on. Soon the land disappeared behind her. The morning sun began to shine and the stars began to fade one by one. Mia felt sleepy. The lull of the boat made her fall asleep. The boat sailed by itself. It sailed and sailed as Maya slept on.
Later that day Mia woke to the sound of some gulls. The boat had landed on a golden sandy shore. She wondered where she might be. She looked around and saw that there were gulls flying overhead. She got off the boat and pulled it up onto the shore so that it wouldn’t be washed away.
There were palm trees everywhere. She walked deeper and deeper inland. The trees got thicker and thicker as she went further and further into a woodland. She felt hungry. Then she saw a tree full of strange fruit. She had never seen fruit like that. But there were birds sitting everywhere among the branches of the tree eating the fruit.
Mia soon fell asleep. She dreamed that she had found her father and that she was sailing back home with him. When she opened her eyes it was dusk. The sun was setting and the sky was glowing in shades of pink, orange and yellow. One by one stars began to appear.
She looked up and saw all the stars she knew the names of and then she saw the same star she had wished upon. It was shining brighter than it had before. A drop of light fell from the star onto the footpath. The path began glowing.
She followed the glowing path and came to a cave deep in the woodland. There was a fire going and someone was frying something on a spit. He was humming a tune. It was a familiar one. She listened hard and joined in. The man who was humming stopped humming and looked as she stepped into the light.
“Mia? Is that you?” asked Mia’s dad as she walked to him. She ran and hugged him tight. “How did you find me? How did you get here?”
Mia told her about the star and the boat.
“I’m so glad to see you, let’s get on the boat and go back,” said her dad and they walked together to the shore towards the boat.
Once they had got into the boat it sailed on its own. It sailed and it sailed and Mia and her dad talked and talked about everything that had happened that they hardly noticed when the boat came to a stop by the seashore close to their home.
“We are home, finally,” said Mia’s dad, almost leaping off the boat.
Mia looked at the night sky and saw the star she wished upon. “Thank you so much,” she whispered as she joined her father and they walked back home hand in hand.
