It was an ordinary night, my friends, Soha, Daniya, Ayza, Rumaysa and I were camping in the woods next to my house. We had set up a tent, made a fire, toasted our S’mores, put out the fire and then we decided to tell spooky stories.

It was a calm night. While Soha was telling a spooky story, we heard a light growling-like sound and then a noise of someone running fast. We ignored it and Soha continued her story. Suddenly we heard the sounds again, this time louder.

The sound made a chill run down our spine, we got more scared by the minute. I whispered to them, “Should we go out and see what it is?”

My friends shrugged. We finally decided that we should go out and check the source of the noise. I zipped open our tent and we crawled out. We got up on our feet and tip-toed. The forest was as dark as coal.

We stared amazingly at the King Kong-sized trees and the sky that looked like it had a million fireflies scattered all over it. We heard trees swaying from side to side, the owls hooting and the bats’ wings flapping. We sniffed the damp moss and the nature’s sweet smell. We felt amazed and terrified at the same time, as never before.

We were so engrossed in the beauty of nature that we almost forgot what made us come out of the tent. Suddenly, my friend Soha shook me and I focused on figuring out about the strange noise. We walked further into the forest, which now was so thick that it covered the moon and stars. So I dug out my torch from my backpack and switched it on. We were standing in front of a huge cave.

We didn’t want to get into it, but curiosity pushed us forward and we stepped into the cave. We heard that same noise again. We could not work out where it was coming from so I reached for a gadget that my dad had given me for my birthday. The gadget told the exact direction the sound came from. So I turned it on and we started moving from left to right as the needle pointed. It started beeping as soon as I moved it to my right side. The needle was pointing towards a narrow tunnel so we had to crawl. We kept crawling for a few minutes and then we reached the end of the tunnel and what we saw surprised us ... it was a purple puppy!

It had adorable big blue eyes and beautiful purple fur. We looked around the tunnel and saw it had no family, so we decided to take it with us to our tent.

This adventure taught me that not everything ends on a scary note, and some things are so cute and loving that you cherish having them in your life.

Published in Dawn, Young World, April 20th, 2019