Flammi had been playing with the children all day long, and now he was drowsing sleepily in his bed. He couldn’t get to sleep though, as some children were still running noisily up and down the hotel corridors.
When silence fell at last, Flammi closed his eyes. It wasn’t long, though, before he realized that all was not as it should be in the night skies. When he went to the window to see what was going on, a beam of light flashed past his eyes. “Was that a lightning or a shooting star?” Flammi wondered. And while he was wondering, another flash of light lit up the skies. This time, Flammi saw that the light was clearly coming from the wood. “What is it though?” he asked himself. “There!” he shouted “another light coming from the wood!” Soon, Flammi noticed that there were quite a few lights in the wood. He couldn’t count exactly how many there were but he said to himself with certainty, “There are most definitely 88 lights! Could they be glow worms?” Being the curious salamander that he is, Flammi desperately wanted to know what the strange lights were, and so he took his headlamp down from the shelf, put it on, and made his way into the wood. While he was walking along, he was a li‑ le scared. It felt very spooky outside – everything was dark and cold, the branches creaked and the wind whistled through the trees. Flammi sped up a bit, thinking that this expedition to the wood maybe hadn’t been such a good idea.
And then, out of the blue, he heard loud voices. “Bright lights that shout? I do hope it’s not ghosts”. He wanted to run away as fast as he could, but the lights and the noises were getting louder and louder, and seemed to be closing in on him. Just when Flammi was about to yell for help, a group of children stepped out of the bushes and called, “Hello Flammi!” They were on a moonlit walk, and they had been playing and singing. Flammi tried his hardest to look cool and unruffled, but he had to admit that the children had frightened him a little. Even now his knees were still trembling a little. However, Flammi was delighted that nothing had happened to him.
He walked back to the Feuerstein with the children and collapsed, exhausted, into his bed. And then all was quiet in the hotel. But if you listen very carefully, you might hear a quiet, happy little snore. Who do you think it might be?
