Category : Stories

Sub Category : Fantasy

    Once upon a time, there was a small town in a Northern corner of the world called Borington, where skies were always gray, and the grass was always yellow. Each house in Borington was square shaped and pale white, and every person in Borington looked and thought almost exactly the same. Borington was a town just like what it sounded like: boring. Within Borington, there lived five families of different names; there were the Brown’s, the Smith’s, the Johnson’s, the Baker’s, and the Miller’s.  Each family had a Linda, Sarah, Mary, James, John, and Robert (last names used to differentiate from family to family); all dressed in attire to match the boring shade of their houses. The Brown’s were the town bankers, the Smith’s were the town grocers, the Johnson’s were the town educators, the Baker’s were the town farmers, and the Miller’s were the town politicians. Together, the five families ran an almost perfectly, well oiled machine that always ran smoothly. But they had one problem. The Winkley’s.
    The Winkley’s were the sixth family in Borington, the only family still found in history books.  Unlike the five other families, the Winkley’s lived in a triangular shaped house on the edge of town, the outside decorated in almost every shade on the color spectrum. It would have been impossible to miss had it not been hidden away (to save the other families from irrevocable embarrassment.) The Winkley’s were a small family, made up of 4 equally unique members. First, there was Flora Winkley, a dainty woman in her mid-30s who was never seen without an item of clothing depicting a flower. Her husband was Hiro Winkley, an older man with broad shoulders and a warm smile. Both were free thinking and extremely creative. Of course, to the other families, this was horrid. Now, even more peculiarly creative than the couple were their two children, Junie: a bumbling and bright faced 10-year-old with a knack for poetry, and Cloris: a messy boy who was a magician when holding a paintbrush, despite being less than 3 years old. Together they were the Winkley’s, a beautifully unique family that wouldn’t change who they were for the world, much less for 5 grumpy conforming families. 
    As the years flew by, Spring turned to Summer and the Winkley’s kept to themselves, respecting the other families wishes. But for whatever reason, it was not enough. The other five families had grown from disliking the Winkley’s to full on despising them over time, feeling that the Winkley’s brought shame to everything they prided themselves on in Borington. When 20 years passed, and the senior Winkley’s had grown elderly while their children had entered adulthood, the five families decided they had enough. The Browns and the Smiths and the Johnsons and the Bakers and the Millers all came together in their drab clothing and devised an equally drab plan: they planned to confront the Winkley’s and drive them out of Borington for good. 
  The first flaw to their plan was quickly revealed; the Winkley’s had hidden themselves away as a courtesy so long ago that not a single person in the five families could recall where they’d gone. It took them years to find the triangle shaped house of all colors even though it stuck out in Borington like a unicorn among a stable of horses. When the families finally did arrive, they found the entire Winkley clan waiting for them, almost as if the families had sent a message beforehand rather than barging in unannounced. Flora, Hiro, Junie, and Cloris stood smiling on a crooked porch in a variety of colors in a variety of clothing, and suddenly the families felt quite silly. For how could they drive a family out of Borington when they were so graciously inviting them into their home?
    Flabbergasted, the 5 families accepted the Winkley’s invitation, cramming into the living room, where they were each handed a cup of tea or coffee. The Winkley’s expressed their excitement at the families finally coming to visit them, in turn the families felt extremely guilty, as that was obviously not their intention. Finally, the 6 families were all together in a single space, and as the 5 families conversed with the Winkley’s, every single member of the 5 families had a revelation. 
The revelation changed the entire ideology of the 5 families. A group of families that had been stubbornly opposed to the Winkley’s for decades had a change of heart in a matter of hours. There were several parts to this revelation. First, the5 families had been so opposed to the Winkley’s they hadn’t realized how miserable they were themselves. Second, despite the oddities the Winkley’s possessed, they were the happiest and kindest family in Borington by far, and quite possibly the world. With this realized, the revelation came about, and Borington was transformed. Not even a year later, every house in Borington had been made over, there were triangle shaped and square shaped and circular shaped houses, each with a unique design decorating its walls. The gray skies become blue and the grasses became green, and every person whistled as they walked along the streets of the newly made over Borington. For you see, this revelation changed everything, because the citizens of Borington finally understood one very important thing they had always been missing: being truly happy meant being truly unique.