Vera was known as ‘the madwoman’s grand-daughter’. The grandmother had spent half of her life insisting that she could see into the future and issuing prophecies which nobody understood.

Vera had never actually known her, but no one would ever have suspected that the smiling, sweet old lady in the family photos was crazy. That is why Vera was so excited when she discovered a note from her grandmother hidden in an old jewellery box.

The note said, ‘There is a place where chocolate rains from the sky and there is a great treasure: whoever finds it will be rich’.

Vera went out in search of the treasure immediately and secretly began walking around every corner of the mountains, searching for a place where it rained chocolate. But wherever she went, it was water that fell as rain. In the valleys, caves, rivers, deserts, forests and meadows.
Always water.

One day, she was crying by the roadside, downhearted, when a child came up. “Why are you crying?”

“Because all the clouds are full of water!” Waah!

“Of course they are!” responded the child, “what do you want them to rain: chocolate?”

“Yesssss!

“That would be incredible. I would love it if it rained chocolate. It would be just like a story I read when I was a child/younger”

Vera stopped crying. A story? What if her grandmother was talking about a book? Anything could happen in a book… it could rain chocolate! Without saying another word, she gave the child a huge hug and ran to the library in search of a story where it was raining chocolate. Surely this was the clue to finding the treasure.
Vera spent that whole day, and many after it, in the library, looking for the book with chocolate clouds. She found rainbow dreams, singing seas, forests of smiles, but no trace of the chocolate rain.

Not even after a week. Nor a month. Not even a year. But because she knew it existed, she was determined to keep looking for it.

Eventually the day came when the books ran out and she didn’t know what to do.
“If you can’t find the book you are looking for, why don’t you write it?” said the librarian, trying to console her.

“Well, because that isn’t good enough. I’m looking for something in particular” she responded.

But on the way home, she couldn’t get the librarian’s idea out of her head and thought up a wonderful story of chocolate clouds that she couldn’t resist writing down when she got to her room. While writing and playing around with that sweet rain in her imagination, thousands of new stories and ideas popped into her head, each one more fun and original. She created new worlds and creatures effortlessly, bringing them to life on paper and in others’ imaginations. It was then that Vera discovered that her grandmother was right. She had read so much that her mind was in itself a treasure that gave her endless ideas for writing, talking, learning and even inventing. As result of all this, Vera gained everyone’s respect and admiration.

And she felt very rich, because she wouldn’t swap her little head, where it rained chocolate, for anything - not even for all the gold in the world

Translated by Toni Wainwright, Ellie Bradbury, Josie Maguire and Lewis Hughes, Manchester Metropolitan University