Even our fiction is the sum of our experiences

Julia's class ran into some unexpected free time toward the end of the school day yesterday, and her teacher suggested that the children fill the time by writing their own stories. They weren't given too much guidance; the teacher just told them to use their imagination and to write something that they would like to read, but had never read before. Here's what Julia came up with (spelling kept intact, much to my spell checker's annoyance, but a bit of punctuation added to make it readable):

Ons apon a time ther was a flaiyg horse. He was macical. He had a byotafl gardin and he was byotafl in his gardin. He had suniy skys as log as he was in his gardin. The End.

The flying horse didn't surprise me in the least; Julia is all about girly things like fairies and flying equestrian creatures these days. Ditto the magical aspect to her tale; magic crops up in pretty much everything Julia talks about lately. But the horse's ability to keep the skies sunny as long as he was in his garden? That made me laugh out loud. I can't imagine such a plot twist would ever have occurred to Julia before we'd spent some time living in London, but now that we've been here a while, it's obvious to all of us that sunny skies are the stuff of true magic. What each and every Londoner wouldn't give to get their hands on that horse...