The Sock on the Fence

There was a sock on a fence.

It was a blue sock.

It had white stripes around the top, although one of the stripes had faded almost completely.

Nobody knew how it had got there.

The sock did not know either.

It remembered being in a washing machine.

It remembered being wet.

It remembered being warm.

After that, things became rather confused.

Now it was on a fence.

The wind blew.

The sock flapped.

A magpie landed beside it.

The sock flapped again.

The magpie looked at it.

The sock looked, as much as a sock can look, at the magpie.

The magpie flew away.

The wind blew harder.

The sock slipped over the top of the fence.

It hung there for a while.

Then it fell into the grass.

Nobody noticed.

A beetle crawled over it.

A small spider walked across one of the white stripes.

The sock lay quietly in the afternoon sun.

Later, it began to rain.

The sock became wet.

It did not mind.

It had been wet before.

The rain stopped.

The sun came out.

The sock dried.

A little girl came into the garden.

She was carrying a bucket.

She saw the sock.

She picked it up.

“That's funny,” she said.

She put it on the fence.

Then she went to fill her bucket.

The sock stayed where she had put it.

A while later, the magpie returned.

It landed on the fence.

It looked at the sock.

Then it took hold of the faded white stripe with its beak.

The sock came away from the fence.

The magpie carried it across the garden.

It dropped the sock beside a tree.

Then it flew away.

The little girl came back.

She saw the empty fence.

She looked around.

She found the sock beside the tree.

“Why are you over here?”

She picked it up.

This time she carried it inside.

The sock was put into a basket.

There were other socks in the basket.

Some were blue.

Some were black.

One was yellow.

The sock recognised none of them.

But it was glad to be somewhere warm.

That evening, the little girl found its other sock under the bed.

She put the two socks together.

The next morning, they went into the washing machine.

The sock remembered being wet.

It remembered being warm.

It remembered the sound of the water.

When the washing machine stopped, the little girl took the socks outside.

She hung them on the line.

The wind blew.

The two socks moved together.

For a little while, they looked almost like birds.

Then the little girl came back with the basket.

She took them down.

And nobody ever put that sock on the fence again.