Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

A Midnight Mermaid One eye opens. Lines of light drop between each beam’s shadow. That repetitive shoosh becomes sand dragging under waves. This is the beach house. Beyond the conservatory roof is the moon, it has pulled the tide high. Your feet want to be on the sand, it’s all you think of - that beach, that light, how it catches the tilt of the sea. The salt tang. The feel of sand under bare feet. So your feet go to the floor, your arms pull into a gown, your palm presses the door handle. Outside is exactly right. Silvered, doused in magic. Shoosh, shoosh. A warm press from the air. The press of your feet in cooling sand. There- There in the white break something rolls, fluid as the water, shining. Shoosh… A hand spills from the wave, a shining hand. The shock is a thrill. This is night magic, you are sure of it. You crouch; creep closer. Strands of hair flow in, flow out. A figure slender, dense with muscle. ...

Designed to be read aloud, to be mildly amusing and promote independent learning because sometimes it's a relief to do something obvious instead of leaving little inky clues. School For Dolphins Miami Phil was solidly fat and he always wore a gaudy shirt with shorts and sandals. He wasn’t necessarily American, but because of his girth, because he was rich and flashy, everyone called him Miami Phil. He introduced himself as Miami Phil, so he must have been happy with the name. He liked his name, his food, his shirts and his money.  He also had a particular liking for islands, the tropical hot sort with white sand and palm trees, not the craggy cold sort with puffins and moss on them. So it wasn’t really too remarkable that when he bought a tropical island, he also decided to build a luxury house there, for himself, and some villas, where people could pay him lovely money to be on holiday and look at his big house and admire it, and wish they had an island with su...