The Bubbling Toad of Vogrie,
How the Magic Began.

Deliciously damp beneath the branches of The Mother tree (the biggest, oldest and wisest tree in the wood), you might just see a tiny bubble. Hear the quietest of croaks. Feel the minutest movement. But you’ll only see her if you have a magical silver thread running through your bones.

There’s been a Bubbling Toad in Vogrie since the beginning of time. Ribbiting up potions, communing with fairies and caring for the woodland.

At least, that’s how it was in the beginning. But toads fell out of favour. They don’t have fur, nor perform tricks and they aren’t known for cuddling and snuggling. So, the Bubbling Toad slowly stopped bubbling and fell dormant in the dark, dank undergrowth, sighing herself to sleep.

On and on she slept and waited. Waited and slept. You see, Bubbling Toads need to be needed, and needed she was not. In a land of screens and shiny things, she simply disappeared in a grunge of leaves.

Until….

She heard a hum in the roots of the Mother tree. Felt a vibration from the earth below. Could it be…?

She listened very, very carefully. They spoke of a sad, broken world. Shops and schools closed; parties forbidden. But they also told magical tales of a Fairy Tree and a Beautiful Human who dressed it with love. Of children who came from far and wide, their eyes as big as dishes! As they gazed upon it’s twinkling lights and wrapped its boughs in crafts and wishes, the kindness spread.

The heart of the Bubbling Toad began to swell…

The smiles and laughter of hundreds of children buzzed along branches to roots, ferried by fungi across the wood wide web to the Mother Tree and the ears of the Bubbling Toad.

The spark was lit. Little round baubles filled with shiny ideas began to form in her once silent belly. They floated and billowed and bubbled inside her until she swelled with excitement. She was needed!

Back down through the earth, along the roots, ferried by fungi, a message was passed to the Fairy Tree. Send your Beautiful Human to me, to Vogrie!

And so it was, that a few years later, one fiendishly foggy day, the Beautiful Human walked past the Toad with her dancing dog Coco. Just close enough for a bubble to rise up from the Toad’s belly and slip from her silken skin into the ears of the Beautiful Human. It sat there for months jingling and simmering. The Human’s brain began to buzz….

But nothing happened until the bubble bounced from ears to brain, and on to heart and belly. Only when all those dots were joined, did the Toad know it was really going to happen. Only then could she see the silver thread shimmering softly through those magical human bones.

As the dancing dog Coco wagged her way past the Mother tree, her Beautiful Human paused, passing a bubble of her own to the waiting Toad. Four wonderful words rolled around that bubble, bouncing into her tiny Toad-shaped heart ‘til she leaped for joy, so high she almost flew!

“The magic has begun!”

© Sara Starling 2025

This really is just the beginning, there are many more stories to come. In fact, this little bird is working on them right now! Perhaps you can feel the tiniest breeze? That’ll be her feathers, flying across the page…

To find out more about the bird behind the stories, hop over to www.sarastarling.co.uk and make sure you’re signed up to the Bubbling Toad newsletter to stay in the know.

And now the boring bit. Copyright Sara Starling 2025. All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author. Any use of this publication to train generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text or create an artificial voice or artificial voice models of any kind, now or in the future, on any platforms or devices, known or not yet known, is expressly prohibited.