Around 1842, in a forest near the island of Singapura, there lived a ferocious lion who was nice and kind. Once he was giving a candle to an old lioness to help her light up her cave. Her hand was trembling and she accidently dropped the candle. The candle’s flame turned into a big fire soon. The fire spread to the trees and soon it started spreading into a forest fire.
The lion started thinking of ideas to save his beautiful home. He came up with an idea to go to the ocean and get as much water as he could to put out the fire. But, how would he transfer the water from the ocean to the jungle to stop this blazing fire!
He thought of a plan:
1. Find a helpful ocean friend
2. Get a hollow log and put it inside the water
3. The lion would roar into one end of the log to make the water shoot out, like an elephant’s trunk
4. The ocean friend would rotate the other end of log in all directions to extinguish the fire
The young lion started searching and found a friend he knew would be ready to help him - the pretty mermaid swimming around a coral by the coast.
The lion asked the mermaid for help and she agreed immediately. The lion threw the hollow log in the ocean and started roaring. The mermaid started rotating the log so that it would shoot out water in all directions.
The fire still continued to spread though!
They realised there was acid in the water, all because of the pollutants that humans threw. The acid water was igniting the fire even further. The lion then jumped into the ocean bed to fetch some sand. The mermaid helped him swim and together they collected sand. The mermaid started filling the log and the lion roared into it. The sand that shot out made the fire settle.
All animals cheered and thanked the brave lion and helpful mermaid – that’s how the legend of ‘Mer-lion’ was formed.
~Kavish Narang, 7 years, 3B - DCIS