Let’s begin.
GiGi the giraffe was making a game for her little brother.
“Three long pods,” she said, laying them beside a tree. “Two round cones. One very curly leaf.”
Starlight the unicorn examined the leaf.
“That one looks like it has a secret.”
“The secret is that Pip has to find another one like it.”
The friends were in Willow Woods, where autumn had scattered interesting shapes over the ground. GiGi's brother Pip and a few young friends were coming to play a matching game. GiGi wanted a pile of each kind of treasure, with one example at the start of every trail.
Starlight had brought a wide basket. GiGi had collected more pods than anybody else could reach.
Soon they had four neat groups.
“Ready,” GiGi said.
“Nearly,” said Starlight. “We need a very important test.”
She lifted a curly leaf with her horn and placed it beside a straight one.
GiGi looked at them. “Those don't match.”
“Good. The giraffe works.”
Then Pip arrived, trotting beneath the trees with his own small basket. Mara, his mother, followed along the wide path.
“Snacks!” he announced.
He put the basket beside Starlight's. A folded leaf covered the top.
“I helped Mama pack them.”
Before GiGi could answer, a strong breeze rushed through the willows.
Leaves flew everywhere. The folded cover tumbled away. Starlight's basket tipped against Pip's.
Pods, cones, leaves and a few little snack bundles rolled over the ground together.
Pip stared at the heap.
“Our game!”
“Our snacks,” GiGi added.
Starlight caught the empty baskets with two loops of light before they could roll down the path. The treasures were already mixed.
GiGi lowered her head. “I can pick them up.”
She started making piles as quickly as she could. Long things here. Round things there. Brown things beside the tree.
Starlight looked at a small brown shape.
“This one might be a snack.”
“Or a game piece,” GiGi said.
They both stopped.
Pip opened his mouth. “I know which ones—”
“Just a minute,” GiGi said. “Let me put everything back first.”
She pushed another cone into the brown pile. The pile rolled apart.
Pip sat down.
Across the woods, the other players called hello. They were nearly there.
GiGi worked faster. There had been four neat groups. She was going to make four neat groups again, even if she had to do it all herself.
Starlight stood beside the heaps.
“GiGi,” she said, “they're getting neater. But are they getting right?”
GiGi looked at her brown pile. It contained a cone, three pods and something wrapped in a little leaf.
“No.”
Pip nudged the earth with his hoof.
“I was trying to tell you.”
GiGi lowered her long neck until her face was close to his.
“I didn't listen. I'm sorry. What did you notice?”
“Our snacks are all wrapped. Mama tied the leaves.”
Mara came over. She checked the little bundles and gathered them back into Pip's basket.
“Anything loose can stay out of the snack basket,” she said. “I'll check the food before we eat.”
That solved one problem.
The game pieces were another.
Starlight held up an oval pod with a small curl of light.
“I thought this belonged in the long pile,” she said. “But now I'm not sure.”
GiGi looked toward the arriving players. She wanted to say that everything was ready.
Instead she stepped into the path.
“Our baskets tipped,” she told them. “We've got the snacks sorted. The game isn't ready yet.”
A young deer looked at the scattered treasures.
“Can we help?”
GiGi glanced at Starlight. Starlight grinned.
“I think we've accidentally invented the first game.”
They began with the examples that had stayed beside the trail starts. GiGi could see three of them from above the ferns. Starlight found the fourth beneath a fallen leaf.
One long pod. One open cone. One round cone. One curly leaf.
Pip walked between them, checking each one carefully.
“We have two different kinds of round,” he announced.
GiGi lowered her nose. He was right. The cones had different shapes when you looked at their edges.
“I put them together because they were brown,” she said.
“And I put the pods together because they were long,” Starlight said. “We need to look at more than one thing.”
Each player chose an example and searched the heap for a match.
GiGi lifted the wide basket so everybody could see inside. Her strong neck held it steady while Starlight guided small pieces out, one at a time.
Some were easy. Some made them stop and compare.
When they weren't sure, they placed a piece beside both examples. Pip walked around it to inspect the other side.
Once, Starlight held a curly leaf next to a cone.
GiGi tilted her head.
“Testing the giraffe again?”
“Testing the whole team.”
By the time the baskets were empty, everyone knew what the four examples looked like.
GiGi looked down the trails she had planned.
Her game was supposed to be a surprise. Now everybody already knew the answer.
Pip looked at her. “Can we make it harder?”
“How?”
“We find the shapes where they really grow. Then we show somebody else.”
The deer brightened. “I saw an open cone beside the crooked tree.”
Starlight pointed toward the path. “And I saw a leaf trying to curl itself up.”
GiGi smiled. “Pairs, then. Everyone gets a turn to find and a turn to check.”
They stayed on the wide woodland paths, showing each other their discoveries. Nobody needed to carry every treasure home. Sometimes a matching shape could stay exactly where it was.
Later, Mara opened the snack bundles. Pip proudly carried the basket between the players.
GiGi and Starlight rested beneath a willow.
“We never played the game I planned,” GiGi said.
Starlight watched Pip explain a cone to his new friend.
“I think he's had a good afternoon anyway.”
GiGi nodded. The four example pieces lay safely in a hollow between the roots. She put the empty basket behind them, out of the wind.
“What do you think our next adventure will be?” Starlight asked.
GiGi watched another leaf tumble past her nose.
“I don’t know… but whatever happens, I’m ready!”