“And a-ONE, a-TWO, a-ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!” Sumatra tapped out a dancing beat, kicking her front legs and shouting at the top of her lungs.
Kona, Sirocco, and Brisa, who were flying alongside their fellow filly, stopped to hover in the air and stare.
Not only was Sumatra marking her moves, she was dancing. In mid-air! As she spun around and around, the shimmery ribbons in her halo spun, too.
“Um, Sumatra?” Kona asked gently. “What are you doing?”
“Huh?” Sumatra asked absent-mindedly. Then she kicked her hind legs up, did another spin, and murmured, “And two, two, three, four.”
“Hello!” Sirocco said. He flew over to Sumatra and grabbed the end of her pretty pale-green tail with his teeth, stopping her in mid-spin. “We’re supposed to be looking for a new adventure this morning. Not spinning around like a dizzy bird!”
Sumatra blinked at her friends.
“Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry, guys. I guess I just got caught up in it.”
“In what?” Brisa asked, looking confused.
Sumatra’s eyes gleamed as she pointed toward the ground with her nose.
“In that!”
She was gazing down at the sprawling lawn outside the school in the little town not far from the dandelion meadow where the Wind Dancers lived. Children were playing kickball, swinging from a jungle gym, and jumping around a hopscotch court. But it was a group at the edge of the lawn that had caught Sumatra’s eye.
Six girls were swishing their hips from side to side. Their ponytails swung from side to side, too!
“They look like horses with those tails!” Brisa said admiringly.
“They really do,” Sumatra replied with a giggle. Then she noticed one ponytail in particular—a pretty, wavy blond one. With a start, she realized that it belonged to—
“Leanna!” Sumatra cried. “Look, you guys! That’s our girl! And she’s the best dancer.”
Kona, Brisa, and Sirocco gasped as they recognized their friend.
“Smile,” Leanna was saying to the other girls. “And don’t forget your jazz hands!”
The girls grinned widely, bumped each other’s hips, and threw out their hands, fanning their fingers.
“See!” Sumatra said to her friends. “That’s what got me going.”
She did another light spin and then added dramatically, “Their dancing spoke to me. I was powerless to stop myself.”
Sirocco rolled his eyes.
“Well, you may be powerless, but I’m not,” he said to Sumatra. “Next time you feel the need to go flailing around in the sky like a wet butterfly, just let me know. I’ll help you stop yourself.”
Sumatra pouted.
“Hey,” she complained. “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all!”
“All right, then,” Sirocco replied with a mischievous grin. “It would sure be nice to get going soon and go find our next adventure!”
“But, Sirocco,” Brisa said, looking down at the dancing girls, “Leanna and her friends are pretty entertaining.”
When the girls finished, red cheeked and breathless, the flying horses (well, all of them except Sirocco) whinnied their approval.
“That was amazing!” Sumatra breathed.
Leanna seemed to think so, too.
“Well,” she said to her group with a firm nod, “it looks like we all know our parts for the school talent show. Should we practice again tomorrow?”
The girls responded with a chorus of mock groans.
“Hey,” Leanna scolded them (with a smile). “You want to be fabulous in the show, don’t you?”
“Of course we do, Leanna!” said one of the girls. “We’ll be there.”
“With blisters on,” joked another girl.
“Blisters?” Brisa chirped from up above the girls. “Maybe they should go to the blacksmith and get some new shoes. That’s what the big horses in the paddock do when their feet hurt.”
“Um, I think that’s just a horse thing,” Kona corrected her. And then—
Brrrrriiiiingggg!
The bell rang.
The Wind Dancers watched wistfully as Leanna and her friends made their way into school.
“Oh,” Brisa said with a sigh, “I wish they could have seen us cheering for them!”
“Uh-huh,” Sumatra said, her brown eyes shining. “I’m most impressed with Leanna. She was the director of the whole number.”
“You’re right,” Kona agreed proudly. “She’s a born leader.”
Thoughtfully, the Wind Dancers rose higher in the air and began to fly toward their tree house.
“So!” Sirocco said. “What should we do next? A picnic? Some swimming in the creek?”
“How about a nap?” Brisa suggested with a big yawn.
“What?” Sumatra said. She was gazing at Brisa, her mouth hanging open. “How can you think about napping? How can you think about anything but that amazing dance number? The hip waggling. The jazz hands! It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”
Sirocco looked blankly at Sumatra for a moment—before turning to Brisa.
“You know, I am kind of sleepy, too,” he said. “Maybe we should take naps.”
Sumatra stomped her hoof (or would have, if she’d been standing on the ground).
“I’m not tired at all,” she protested.
Now, it was Kona who yawned.
“We did get up super-early this morning,” she said, nodding understandingly at Brisa and Sirocco.
Sumatra felt desperate.
“I’ve got an idea,” she blurted. “An idea for an adventure like no other!”
This got her friends’ attention.
“What is it?” Brisa asked breathlessly.
“Yes,” Kona asked with wide eyes. “Where do you want to go?”
“The question,” Sumatra said slyly, “is not where. It’s what! And what I think we should do is put on our own talent show, for all our animal friends around the dandelion meadow, just like Leanna’s doing!”
“What do you mean?!” Sirocco balked. He stopped in mid-air and gaped at Sumatra.
“You don’t want us to dance, do you?” Kona added, looking uncomfortable.
Brisa looked down at her legs. “Is it even possible to do jazz hooves?”
“Listen,” Sumatra said. She hoped she sounded as confident as Leanna had been with her friends. “All we need to put on a show is a director like Leanna. And I can do that job.”
“That’s great, Sumatra,” Kona said gently. “But doesn’t a talent show require, you know, talent?”
“Yeah,” Brisa said uneasily. She patted her glossy blond mane. “If this was a beauty pageant, I’d have no worries. But I don’t know what my talents are.”
“Neither do I,” Sumatra said. “But I know how to find out! Don’t worry, guys. You go take your naps and leave everything to me!”