Andrea Ullrich (Germany)

Minerva is looking at the clothes in her wardrobe. What could she wear to school the next day? Everything she sees is unicoloured.

‘I need a new dress,’ she thinks. ‘It’s night; my students ought to be asleep by now. It’s time to go and empty some bins. Let’s see what can be reused or recycled.’ And out she flies, she waves at the moon, who smiles back at her, and sails the sky in circles that turn into all kind of shapes.

Minerva feels the air caressing her skin. She loves such flights and could go on forever, but the bins are waiting. So she starts her descent. One by one she lands in the brains of her students. So many different places to visit during that night: Some look like a cosy living-room, others like a playground with sandbox and swing. There are sportsgrounds and well-kept gardens, wild parks with all kinds of flowers, bright-lit streets and dark caves. And the sounds! It was the sounds that surprised her most when she first set out for the bin tours.

Ahh, the bins. The sound of a smoothly recovering brain, the first one she visits this night, had almost sent her to sleep. Her brain likes to synchronise with that sound of a purring cat, but the bins are waiting.

So Minerva makes her way through each of her students’ brains. She looks for the mental waste bin. Sometimes during her lessons she can see that what she is talking about goes straight to the bin. The blank faces of her students reveal that. Brains also discard what they no longer need or can’t relate to.

Minerva empties the bins. When she finds something her students had just ignored, she gently puts it onto the brain desk to give it a second chance. The rest goes into her bag.

Back home Minerva starts knitting a new dress, using what she has found in the bins. The magic pattern of letters, numbers and symbols attracts everyone’s attention and thus wakes brains. Her students are amazed and participate in the lesson eagerly.

And when a curious kid tries to read the dress and suddenly connects the letters an idea starts sparkling, leaves the dress and moves to the kid’s brain.

Minerva smiles. She knows that soon her dress will be unicoloured again.