Tiny Tale: in which a candy cane forest melts

once upon a time there was a forest of candy canes.
the children walked between the shiny red and white trees and stopped to lick the stalks, theyre cheeks and mittens got sticky with sugar.

when summer came the forest melted and became a sugar swamp.
in june the children swam in the syrup but by july they learned that walking around drenched in sugar attracted the bees.
so during july and august the children went only as far as the the edge of the swamp where they lay down on their stomachs and stuck straws in and drank.

in the fall the swamp turned hard because, it was not water, it was sugar and so it didnt need to wait for the winter to freeze.

the children set up a stall where they rented out sugar skates and scissors.
the people came and rented skates. they skated out onto the sugar swamp and when they fell they stuck to the sugar so they used their scissors to cut themselves free and then hurried home in their ripped clothes kicking yellow leaves away from their sticky feet.

and by this time no one remembered that it all started with candy canes.