Puddles of Many Skies

Tilda Thimblecap stood on the soft edge of Mosslight Fen and counted puddles with her front feet braced in the moss.

After the rainstorm, there were dozens of them. Little round puddles sat between the reeds like buttons on a green coat. But each one held a different sky. One shone with pink dawn. One rolled with thunderclouds. One gleamed like moonlight. One burned warm with sunset. The fen looked as if it had borrowed more than one day and forgotten which one to give back.

Tilda leaned close and stared until her gold-speckled wings nearly brushed the water. She was trying very hard to find the safest puddle path across to the far cattails, where the others needed to go next. If she could point out the right steps, then maybe Mara would stop saying, “We can just pick one,” and Brindle would not have to keep waiting for someone else to decide.

But the puddles all looked identical at the edges. Same size. Same smooth ring of mud. Same tiny tremble when the wind nudged them.

“Easy,” Mara said from behind her, already stepping nearer the first bright puddle. “Pick one and let’s go.”

Brindle stood by the cattails with his woven rush satchel, his gray feathers very still. He looked at the water, then at Tilda, and opened his beak as if he might speak. But he did not.

Tilda’s antennae tipped forward. Something was wrong with the picture in the puddles. The sky in one puddle did not match the sky in the next, and the wet black channels between them waited like little hidden ditches. One wrong step could sink a foot into the soft water and send someone splashing off the safe way.

Tilda drew in a careful breath. If she spoke now, they might all listen. If she waited, Mara might choose first.

The puddles gleamed up at her, and Tilda had to decide whether to trust what she had noticed and say it out loud.