Monica Chavarria

Ft. Stockton, Texas, USA

Her huge brown eyes stood out from her little white face as she looked up at the tall old woman. "Wow... Abuela really is a GIANT!" thought Luz as she continued to peer up at her grandma.

"Ay, Lucita! Mi preciosa!" exclaimed Abuela as she bent down to pick up her precious little granddaughter. She thought Luz looked so much like a little angel or La Virgen, the Virgin Lady, snuggled in her tiny blanket with a comer of it wrapped around the back of her head. Lucita had just finished her afternoon nap, and her dark brown hair was messily sticking out from where she had slept on it.

"Come, let's fix your hair and then you can go play," said the old woman as she carried Luz to her pink bathroom. There, Abuela made two curly pigtails on the four-year-old's head and gave her a little besito before she hopped off the counter to go play.

"Lorenzo!" Lucita shouted as she ran down the hall to the living room where she had just taken her nap. She had left him on the floor next to her purple blanket.

"Get up, you sleepy head!" she giggled as she picked up the fuzzy brown bear. She hugged him, remembering that Abuelo had given him to her for her birthday last year, tied in a big red bow.

"C'mon! Let's go PLAY!" Luz scampered down the long hallway again, this time heading for the big closet next to the front door. She opened the door standing on her tippytoes and walked in with Lorenzo, holding his furry paw. She left the door open a little bit to get some light and started talking to her teddy bear.

"What're we gonna do today, Lorenzo?"

"I know! Let's pretend we are explorers in the jungle!" suggested the big teddy bear as he pulled two tan safari hats out ofthe air, like magic.

"Ok," replied Luz as she got one of the big hats and put it on her head.

"We can start exploring over here, under Abuelo's old coats," Lorenzo told Lucita, walking toward the jackets that looked more and more like tropical trees the closerhe got to them.

The little girl followed, and pretty soon, the two friends were deep in the green jungle of the hallway closet. They found a little path leading to a group of brightly colored hatboxes, nodded at each other, and kept on going.

Luz looked at the little boxes and thought, "They look like little houses, or huts that the African tribes live in."

Lorenzo kept in front of Lucita, looking around at the pretty colors of the forest and the far-off hatbox huts.

All of a sudden, a big gray fur-ball jumped in front of the bear and the tiny girl.

Lorenzo and Luz stopped, afraid of the giant bunny-looking thing in front of them. Its rabbit face was decorated with blue, yellow, and red paint and a headband of hand-made beads held up its ears.

The rabbit-thing moved closer to the stuffed bear, sniffed him, and made a frightening sound in its throat like, "URRRRRRRRRR!"

Lucita screamed and grabbed at her bear's fur, running away with him from the scary monster.

When they were a safe, far distance hiding under an umbrella-bush, Luz asked Lorenzo, "What was that thing?"

"I don't know. It looked like your cousin Allegra's pet bunny, though," he replied as he peered out from one of the bush's leaves, just to make sure the gray thing hadn't followed them.

"Maybe we should go back home, Lorenzo."

"Maybe so, Amigita" the kind bear said as he took his best friend's hand to help her out of the umbrella-bush.

When they were both out of the huge bush, they started walking back from where they started. After a few minutes, Lucita found that they were both lost.

"Oh no!" she cried, looking at Lorenzo with her big eyes full of tears.

"Don't be afraid, my Luz," he comforted her as they bugged each other. "We will find our way out of here, I promise."

As soon as he said that, a whole group of rabbit-monsters jumped out of the coat-tree in front of them, growling the same way the first rabbit-monster did.

The four-year-old screamed and her teddy said, "Luz, I'm afraid we're done for."

Just as the two buddies grabbed on to each other for the last time, before they were sure they were going to be eaten by the ugly, scary rabbit-monsters; one of the monsters reached out his paw and said, "Please, don't be afraid."

Both friends looked up in surprise and asked, "You aren't going to eat us?"

It took a while for the rabbit-monsters to answer, because they were all bent over and rolling on the ground, laughing at the ridiculous question.

"No," one of them finally answered with tears of laughter in her eyes. "We will not eat you. We are peacefill and wish to invite you to our village for a visit."

"Oh," said Lucita, right before she and Lorenzo burst into giggles. After everyone was through laughing and giggling, they all went to the village, where they had a fiesta in honor of the new visitors. Luz and her bear found out that the rabbit-monsters weren't really monsters at all, but a tribe of gentle dust-bunnies who growl to say "hello." They also talked and laughed about how frightened the two pals were when they met up with the first dust-bunny and the group that had come to welcome them.

When all was done, the queen of the tribe climbed up on her throne, which looked a lot like Abuela's new vacuum cleaner, and placed a beautiful beaded-necklace around both of the visitors' necks. She told them that it was a great honor to receive the necklaces and that the two friends were welcome back anytime.

Lucita and Lorenzo thanked her and the rest of the dust-bunnies. Then they were escorted back to the path that had first brought them to the village. They said their good-byes and waved to the tribe as they walked toward the ever-closer hallway light.

When the teddy-bear and the small girl reached the door, they pushed it open to find Abuela standing there.

"Where have you two been, Nieta?" she asked her granddaughter as she scooped up Luz and the stuffed toy.

"We have been exploring in an African jungle," the girl replied as she bugged her grandma. "But Lorenzo and I are happy to be home now."

Abuela looked down at her imaginative little nieta and said, "That's nice. Would you and Lorenzo like some empanadas fresh from the horno?"

Luz nodded "si" excited to tell her grandma about the adventure they had shared with the dust-bunnies, as Abuela took her and the bear to the warm kitchen.