Once upon a foot there were five toes.

As toes tend to go they were all in a row -

a big one, a thinner slightly longer one, and three gradually-becoming-smaller ones.

The toes grew up together, as toes do, and had all sorts of fun.

They 

wriggled in swimming pools,

splashed in the sea,

made toe-prints in the sand,

felt the delicious squish of mud,

and played in the glorious sunshine that turned them from winter white to summer brown.

But one day,

when the toes had grown as big as they would,

all of the wriggling, squishing and splashing suddenly stopped.

From that day on the toes spent all day every day inside a sock.

Not always the same sock of course.

Sometimes a blue one.

Sometimes a black one.

Sometimes a chequered one.

Sometimes a stripy one.

Sometimes a white one.

From where the toes were though – inside a sock inside a shoe – every sock looked black.

One of the socks had a hole in it once but only big toe could see out of it.

And all he could see was the inside of boot, which looked black too.

The five toes in a row didn’t have much but at least they had each other.

In the darkness they would tell stories of how life had been.

‘Remember the song about piggies and markets?’ the second smallest toe said.

‘Remember how we used to take long baths?’ said the second biggest toe. ‘And we’d be in there so long we’d go all wrinkly.’

‘I’d almost toe-tally forgotten that’, said middle toe.

‘Remember tip-toeing down the stairs on Christmas morning before anyone else was awake?’ said little toe.

‘Big toe’, said the second smallest, ‘remember when you stubbed yourself on a door and lost half a nail?’

‘The same happened to me once’, said little toe.

And they would tell each other the same jokes over and over again.

‘What do toes like to drive?’ said middle toe.

The others pretended not to know, even though they’d heard the joke dozens of times before.

‘Toe trucks of course!’ said middle toe.

They laughed as best they could, but they had forgotten what it was like to really laugh.

Sadness surrounded them like a too-tight sock.

The smallest toe missed being a little piggy.

Second biggest toe missed the warm sand.

Big toe even missed being stubbed on doors and chairs and walls.

All of the toes missed the sunshine.

Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years, toes became sadder.

They ran out of stories to tell and memories to remember.

In the darkness that never ended the toes had almost forgotten what sunshine felt like.

Then, one day, something amazing happened.

Like every other day, it started in a sock; blue on the outside, black on the inside.

But not long afterwards, the sock came off.

The toes were outside.

A sky bluer than any they could remember was above them.

They felt the sunshine, and it warmed them more than even the thickest sock could.

The toes wriggled as they hit cool water. They hadn’t wriggled like that in years.

They were in a pool. A small pool but a pool nonetheless.

Then they saw them.

More toes. Ten of them in fact.

Ten tiny toes that must have been less than a year old.

Big fingers held on to one of the tiny toes and a voice started to sing.

‘This little piggy went to market....’

The five felt alive again. It was the best day they’d had had in a long, long time.

By the end of it they were all wrinkled underneath, sunburnt on top, but warm and full of joy inside.

After that day, the toes still spent quite a bit of time in socks.

But in between they would often feel the warmth of soft sand,

play in puddles,

bask in the sun,

and squish in the mud.

Big toe even stubbed himself on the small bed in which the owner of the tiny toes slept,

but he didn’t complain.

And that’s the way it stayed, until the little toes had become big toes too.

The End