The morning bell rang in Room 5 at Szkoła Podstawowa number seven. Sunlight flooded the Polish classroom — wooden desks, colorful lockers, and a bulletin board heavy with children's drawings.
The classroom door flew open. The young girl stood there in a bright green elf costume, pointy ears wiggling. 'Class 3C! Report for adventure!' The bell above the door jingled and jangled.
A blue pencil rolled across the wooden floor — past twenty pairs of shoes — and stopped at the toe of a pointy green elf boot. Twenty heads snapped toward the doorway at once.
'Can I try?' A boy reached for the elf boot. His foot barely fit inside the pointy toe. It wiggled up and down, and he stumbled forward with arms windmilling.
A girl with dark braids whipped out two red paper plates and gold tissue paper. She pressed them together and wrapped the gold around them, humming loudly.
'Elves get crowns,' she announced, and slid the crinkly gold creation onto the young girl's head. It sat perfectly crooked. The young girl laughed so hard she nearly toppled over.
The young girl dumped her backpack onto the desk. It clattered and spilled. Dozens of leaf-shaped stickers tumbled out, glittering in the autumn sunlight.
'For everyone!' she cried. The class erupted. Stickers appeared on sleeves, on noses, on the edge of the bulletin board. A leaf sticker peeks out from behind the class hamster's water bottle.
The clock chimed four. And suddenly, the whole classroom transformed.
Every child shuffled in tiny pointed steps around the wooden desks, tapping their elbows like wings.
The young girl stood in the center of the circle, laughing. Leaf stickers gleamed on every sleeve, every desk, every smiling face.
Around her, the children whooped and fluttered their elbow-wings, marching in tiny pointed steps. The classroom had never felt so much like an adventure.