Aw, this is sad, but it's very good. I enjoyed it. You definately capture that feeling of innocence that we all have as young children, and that wild, crazy imagination that nearly all of us lose as we grow older. But this story shows why we lose it. We believe in fairy-tale endings, "happily ever after" endings. Good always defeats evil. As we grow older we come to realize that such happiness doesn't exist, life isn't what we once dreamed it was. I miss being a small kid. I think those are the happiest years of everybody's life, that blissful, ignorant happiness of not knowing what's truly in store for us in the future. In the beginning of the story everything is happy, everything is dream-like, then it all ends, reality comes to surface, and reality isn't quite so happy. I wish you had handled the revelation a little differently, I felt like the weakest part of the story was when the girl and her mother realize what was happening, and how they respond to it. But those last few sentences set the story back on the right track, giving it that style and feeling that the majority of the story had. You ended this really well. I try to read a lot of stories on this site and I can't even finish them, and the ones I do manage to make it through, I feel as I've totally wasted my time. I don't feel like that with this. You're a good writer with talent. Keep it up!