The 900-Million-Year-Old Friend in the Mushroom House

The author is a fifth-grade classmate of the Experimental Primary School of Jinling Middle School in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province. She has her own quiet "little world" - she prefers to be alone on weekdays, and can always find her own fun in a quiet corner: or holding a book and immersing herself in it, letting her thoughts follow the words to travel through different stories; or when staring out the window in a daze, she suddenly turns on the "self-talk mode" and writes out what comes out of her mind. She whispers whims and whims, as if she is talking to her own imagination; more often than not, she will fall into unbridled reveries, such as wondering whether "there are elves hidden in the mushrooms in the woods" and "whether there is another world in the cat's eyes." These small and smart thoughts have become the "seeds of inspiration" for creation. In addition to her complicated studies in the fifth grade, she was accustomed to carrying a small notebook with her. Whenever her reverie when she was alone, the associations that burst out while reading, or the short story snippets she teased out while talking to herself came up, she would immediately stop writing and carefully record every word. Those fantasy settings about "elf companions", such as the mushroom house that can grow in size and the whistle that can turn into a lotus flower, are actually derived from her romantic imagination of "little everyday things" when she is alone; and the contrast in the personalities of Linglin and Jingjing also hides her delicate thoughts accumulated from reading and observation. It is this preference for solitude, accumulation of love for reading, and love for daydreams and the habit of "telling stories" with herself that allowed her to slowly polish "The 900 Million Years Old Friend in the Mushroom House", a story full of childlike interest and warmth during her busy studies, turning her own small world into a fantasy adventure that can be shared with everyone.