The Morning After (What Ever Happened to Little Red Riding Hood?).

The morning after, in an abreast village, she wakes up very early in the morning. Just a little after the mighty sun rose for glory. It's not always that she wakes up this early though, but today she wants to pay a visit to her gram who lives in the town across the menacing forest.

It's been a while since she last drop by at her gram's. Her mother wouldn't let her because of her neighbour's daughter, Alice, went missing after she was said to follow a white rabbit a fortnight ago. But today was different. After she went missing, just this morning, the mother heard that the little girl was found sleeping under a big tree known as the Survival Tree by the villagers (known as Big Ben among the forest dwellers though). She said she was tired after a long walk in the forest and fell asleep listening to lovely lullaby that night.

What is more, her gram has been sending her postcards saying that she was ill. In her postcards which have black and white pictures of a band - Barry Brocolli and the Uptown Sally - at the back, she wrote that she fell ill after her favorite singing tomato at the town market was gone. She said that the tomato's singing would always make her day, sets her on a chirpy mood to shop at the busy and uptight market. It's been hard for her since then to shop.

Just when the first morning glory blooms, she was ready - dressed in her red hoodie cloak made by her gram. Her mother hands her a basket filled with a loaf of bread, a bottle of honey, a goose egg, a flask of hot coffee and of course a vial of magic beans as a get-well-soon gift.

And she takes off before the morning sun grows too fiery for her O fair skin. Skipping her way through the forest, she sings a poem her mother told her about the telltale of the first-born of her like.

Go, my child, through the forest

To your grandmother's house, in a glade

Where poppies with red mouths grow.

And child, you must be wise

In the forest.

When the wolf finds you, remember:

Be courteous, but evasive. No answer

Is better than a foolish one.

But do not stop to gather

The hawthorn flowers, nor yet

The red berries which so resemble

Coral beads. They are poisonous.

And do not stop to listen

To the reeds.

And know that I am pleased,

With you, my child.

But remember, when returning through the forest,

Kept warm against the night by a cloak

Of the wolf's pelt:

The hunter is also a wolf.

Goodbye my Belle.

Little Red Riding Hood Age 8.

Poem: Parts of What Her Mother Said by Theodora Goss.