This story was told by Georgian students for the eTwinning project ,,My Culture My Heritage''.

The book is created by:

Batumi N23 Public School and

Khashuri municipality village Osiauri public school

What I am telling you now is not a fairy tale, although you may consider it one.

There were two owls, very old and pitiful owls. They had no more children, and they sat in a huge oak hollow, either sleeping or muttering about their misfortune: Shu-bu! Shu-bu! Boo! Boo! What is our life? What do we exist for on this earth?

When it got dark, they would puff, sway here and there, reach the edge of the hollow, look down, take a few deep breaths of fresh air, flap their wings, stretch them out and out, and then, one after the other, they would fly out.

Shu-bu! Shu-bu! - they would flap heavily through the fields and groves surrounded by the forest, looking for mice with their bright yellow eyes. Sometimes they sat on the ground, sometimes they flew up again. If they managed to catch even one mouse, they were very satisfied with that—after all, there is very little food for the old ones, both owls and humans! At dawn, they returned to their den and sat and sat—either sleeping, with their backs to each other, or else, exhausted by sleep, they began to grumble about their misfortune again.

But one evening, something new happened in their lives.

The old owls were about to fly out of their nest when they heard an unusual sound. They looked out, tilted their big, very mobile heads, looked down, and what did they see? A very small child, a very beautiful little child, so beautiful that you couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, was standing at the foot of an oak tree, among the dry leaves and grass, with her chubby hands to her eyes, crying. She  cried and cried.

The old owls looked at each other, wondering what this child wanted here, but since neither of them knew, they began to look down again.

The little child cried. Tired of crying, she started rocking, sat down in the grass, cried there too, put her hands on her knees, hung her head, lay down in the grass, curled up, and became so small she seemed to disappear, finally falling asleep amidst her crying and sobbing.

The old owls looked at each other with their yellow eyes, wondering what to do, how to behave.