The little penguin and the sun

On the ice, at the very bottom of the world, lived a little penguin called Pip. He was born in the middle of winter, during the long polar night, when the sun doesn't rise at all for weeks and weeks. Pip knew the moon, the stars, and the wind whistling over the ice. But he had never seen the sun.

"What's the sun like?" he asked his grandmother. "Round and golden, and so warm you close your eyes when it touches your beak," she said. Pip tried to imagine it. He looked at the horizon every day, and every day the horizon stayed black. He was tired of waiting. He was so impatient he stamped his feet.

One evening, while the colony slept squeezed together in one big pile of feathers, Pip slipped away. He waddled to the ice hill, the one where you could see the farthest. "If I climb right to the top," he thought, "maybe I'll see it hiding behind." He climbed, slid back down, climbed again, and reached the top all out of breath.

No sun. But above him, the sky began to move. Long ribbons of green and pink rippled between the stars, like scarves dancing in the wind. Pip stood there with his beak wide open. He hadn't known the sky could do that. A soft voice behind him said, "That's called an aurora." It was his grandmother, who had followed him, waddling all the way.

She sat down next to him. "The sun isn't far, you know. It's the sun that lights up those colours, from the other side of the world. It comes back a tiny bit more every day. Soon you'll see an orange line, right there." She pointed at the horizon with the tip of her flipper. Pip snuggled against her warm tummy. Now that he knew the sun was on its way, waiting didn't feel so long.

They went back down together, sliding on their bellies, and rejoined the big pile of feathers. Pip wriggled into the middle, where it's warmest. The other penguins barely moved to make room. He closed his eyes, thinking about the green and pink ribbons and the orange line that would come soon. Above the colony, the aurora danced a little longer, then faded away, and Pip was already asleep.