Chapter One -- How a Little Girl Found a New World

The Golden Kelpie was found under the dock on the rocky shore. It was a grey wet day like most days and the rocks were wetter and greyer than the day. The tiny Golden Kelpie was bedraggled and not the least bit golden. The little girl who found it knew that she had found what everyone else had been looking for for weeks. She picked it up, slipped it into her pocket and didn’t speak a word of it to anyone. Not that anyone would have listened. She was just a grey little orphan girl who blended into her grey and dreary surroundings.
She wandered into the factory. She is so small, so grey, so quiet that no one notices her. She walked quickly between the big machines instinctively knowing where to go. On the far side of the building behind one of the big machines there is a door; a door that almost disappears into the wall for all the dirt and grime that has collected on it over the years.
She knows that things will change when she goes through that door with the Golden Kelpie. She doesn’t know how they will change though and she is a bit afraid; scared that someone will see her before she opens the door; afraid of what may lie ahead. Time is of the essence because if she is seen, her opportunity will be lost.
The factory noises rattle on. The workers work and talk. They yell to one another to be heard over the din. Everyone in town knows that there is a Golden Kelpie to be found and whoever finds it will have great luck and fortune. That is all anyone talks about these days unless it is to ask for food to be passed or help in repairing a machine and even then the conversations quickly return to the Golden Kelpie.
The girl takes hold of the door handle. She expects to have to work to open it, but the door slides away from her as if it was used every day.
She looks through and it all looks the same; the other side of the factory on a grey miserable day. Her heart slows, her head droops; she is saddened that the stories that have been told are not true.
“Go through the door quickly and close it behind you,” a whisper from her pocket.
Startled, she practically jumps through the doorway and almost slams the door closed.
The factory and the grey world disappear, the sun comes out and the world in front of her changes before her eyes.