I was watching the toad swallowing flies in the pond. I was drenched in water playfully scaring away the flies before the toad had a chance to compete. He gave me a look, and leaped away. I kept walking and sprung the moment I pricked my skin with a rock down below. With the utmost curiousity, I plunged myself deep into the incave of the muddy pond. I emerged like a creature from the blue lagoon as my face and torso was all covered in what looked like brown mac and cheese.  It was a beautiful rock, it had a crimson tone and silky texture. It almost seemed like something more because of the vivid light it reflected onto the otherwise ugly swamp. I decided to take it home.

          I approached my mother dearest that night and offered to show her my beautiful stone. She took me in that night and gave me a warm, friendly, hug. I reached for my pocket and felt nothing. I searched the other and suddenly a frog leaped outside of it onto the breast of my moms.  She was frantic, scared silly... I didn’t know what became of that rock but I went to sleep nonetheless.

            I woke up the next morning searching up and down for that magnificant rock. Were was it? I looked endessly for it. In my Cheerios, through my Froot loops, and out like Corn Pops. I asked Rover if it had seen my rock, it shook it’s tail and scurried indoors. I watched some T.V. but the news said nothing of the whereabouts of my little stone. I searched for it in the residence of my little neighbors, mouse and cockaroach. Nope, they didn’t have it either. Were could it be?  I dunno... Mom?

            “Have you seen a precious little stone?"

            “Why, yes... my son, I have it here.”

            “Where did you find my pretty stone?”

            “It fell from your pocket when you came home. I need to keep it. What you have here is a ruby, a precious gem. We need some money, I need to sell it.”

            “No! No!!! Please.. Don’t!!! It’s mine!! I found it!!”

            ...and so I fled my way upstairs and locked myself inside my room. I hear knocking, but no one’s listening. I close my eyes and my ears and throw the rock outside my window. Glass shatters causing even more trouble than before. I felt bad.

She stopped knocking. I looked outside and couldn’t see where I had thrown it. I would have to wait until later to see. Definitely not while my mother is awake.  I rose unto the broken glass of my window, a minor scratch later, I was out; in the dark, outside my room, outside my door.  I grabbed a dragonfly hovering outside the porchlite and attached a string as I ventured foward into the swampland once more.

            I found myself once again drenched in mud searching for the gem that I’d let go. I felt the softness of the muddy earth falling inbetween my fingertoes. I didn’t feel the stone. I couldn’t feel the rock that I had once disowned. Then it occured to me... The devious look in the frog’s eye had ridiculed me the entire time. It watched me, waiting for my next move opening its mouth ever so slowly revealing that crimson light that I had almost forgot. 

            Uno.. Dos.. Tres y Arriba!!!! Aribba!!! The race was on... I followed that little maggot straight back into my room. Another scratch, more broken glass, and a muddy floor later I slipped straight into him and squeezed his throat until his eyes bulged wide open revealing what was rightfully mine, the gem. I turned around, my mom awake, and the mice and roaches all watching as I put the rock on her desk.