Lory Dory

A little girl lies in bed. Her grandpa sits next to her.

One night Grandpa was tucking me in.

His hands were soft and his hair was thin.

Grandpa talks to the girl.

‘I’m going to tell you a special story, about a girl named Lory Dory.’

There is an empty armchair. Two eyes peek out. This is Lory Dory.

You couldn’t see Lory Dory at all because she was born invisible.

The falling rain makes an outline of Lory Dory. There is an outline of Lory Dory underneath the blankets on a bed.

You’d only see Lory when rain hit her head, or when she was curled under blankets in bed.

Children are playing in the snow and pointing at the outline of Lory Dory made by the snow.

Lory was left out of all the kids’ games. They teased her and they called her names.

‘Look, it’s Lory. The Imaginary Friend! She’s not like us, she’s just pretend!’

A boy sits at his school desk. Lory Dory sits next to him and draws.

One day at school, a boy wanted to know:

‘How do you look? I only see you in snow.’

The boy hands Lory Dory a paint brush.

‘Can you paint yourself?’ Lory knew that she could.

But not in the same way the boy thought she would.

The picture is filled with paintings of cats and fruit and stars.

Lory painted her body with all that she loved from the world all around and the sky up above.

The paint makes footprints on the page.

She painted herself every day with such pride, to bring out the person who she was inside.

There is a painting of Lory Dory standing by the trees wearing a beautiful dress and smiling happily.

I know I’m invisible and hard to see.

So I painted these pictures to show the real me.’

Grandpa stands by the little girl's bed.

‘Are you making this up, Gramps? Is this story true?’

‘Lory is real – real as me, real as you.’

The little girl lies in bed alone. Coloured light twinkles through the open door.

When Grandpa had left me, I can’t quite be sure, but I think I saw Lory just outside my door.

Lory Dory

Created by Sonia Dearling, Brendan O'Neill, Arthur Attwell

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means you are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt it (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit, with a link to your source, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.