The Desert Star Garden

Noor is a ten-year-old botanist with a wide hat and a faded teal explorer shirt, and she loves the desert more than anything. Her mornings are spent with a magnifying glass and notebook, studying cacti, lizards and shimmering stones. One evening, as the sky turns pink and purple and the air cools, she notices a strange sparkle on the ground and follows it over a low dune. Behind a wall of rocks she finds a hidden garden of Starbloom flowers, their silver-white petals edged with glowing blue and golden centres that shimmer like tiny stars.

All night Noor watches and sketches, measuring stems and counting blooms, and when the sun rises the flowers fold away into ordinary green buds. She realises they bloom only in darkness, and she returns night after night to record their sleeping and waking. She learns how wide, shallow roots catch morning dew and how tightly tucked leaves shield the blooms from the burning sun. When a dry wind threatens the garden, she carries small cups of water from a rock pool and keeps the flowers company until the wind grows quiet. This tale by Yavuz DEMİRKIRAN can be read on Online Masal.