Fire & Lightning

“Look at me! I’m free!”, said the big red motorcar whose name was Fire,“Free to speed down the open road. Free to drive as fast as I can. Freedom is such fun!”.

“Let us be free too”, said the birds, “Free to breathe the air!”.

“Let us be free too”, said the trees, “Free from your smelly exhaust fumes!”.

But the big red motorcar wouldn’t listen. It just revved its engines loudly to block out the sound of the birds and it drove so fast that all the trees were just a green blur.

However, one day, as the big red motorcar was tearing along the highway, it was suddenly passed by another car, a car that was bright emerald green and was travelling very fast but which didn’t belch out black fumes from its exhaust pipe into the air.

And the car was loved by all the birds and a hero to all the trees, “Look!”, they’d say, “That’s that new electric car. They call it Lightning. It’s free as a bird but it lets the birds and the trees be free too. Free to breathe. Free from exhaust fumes”.

Hearing this, the red car was very jealous, “I’ll teach that green car who’s faster!”, it said.

And Fire revved up its engines so that it sounded like a big lion roaring and pumped out a big, billowing cloud of black exhaust fumes into the air before zooming off down the highway to try and overtake the green car.

But, no matter how it tried, it just couldn’t manage to overtake the electric car, the electric car was much too fast and, eventually, coughing and spluttering, the red car just gave up.

“Poor Fire”, said Lightning, turning back and pulling up alongside the other car, “Why d’you have to beat me? Why can’t you just join me?”.

And so, Fire had himself converted into an electric car and now all the birds and the trees cheer when they see Fire and Lightning zoom by and, whenever the two cars get tired of racing around together, they park near the edge of a lake and enjoy the view of unspoiled nature.