Meet Lottie 🦉

In a quiet grove at the edge of a golden meadow, a small owl named Lottie lived inside the hollow of an old oak tree. Unlike the other owls in the grove, who mostly slept through the bright hours and only stirred at dusk, Lottie could rarely sit still. Her eyes were always a little too wide, her head always tilting toward some new sound or shape in the distance, as if the world were a puzzle she simply had to finish.

Lottie's family had grown used to her questions. At breakfast she wanted to know why the dew disappeared by midday. On walks through the meadow she wanted to know why some flowers closed at night and others stayed open. Her grandmother, a wise old owl named Nana Hazel, never once told her to stop asking.

"A question," Nana Hazel would say, smoothing down Lottie's feathers, "is just curiosity wearing its walking shoes."

One golden afternoon, Lottie perched on her favorite branch and noticed something strange. A trail of ants was marching in a perfectly straight line across the meadow floor, all of them carrying tiny pieces of leaf, all of them heading in the exact same direction.

"Where are they going?" Lottie asked herself. "And how do they all know to go the same way?"

She could have simply decided the answer didn't matter. She could have flown off to chase dragonflies instead, the way her younger cousin Pip always did. But Lottie had a feeling — a small, warm, insistent feeling — that the answer to a good question was almost always worth the trouble of finding it.

So she followed the ants.

The trail wound past the berry bushes, under a fallen log, and all the way to a small mound of earth at the base of a sycamore tree. Lottie landed nearby and watched, careful not to get too close and frighten anyone.

"Excuse me," she said to an ant hurrying past with a leaf twice her size. "Why are you all walking the exact same path?"

The ant paused, looking up at the enormous owl towering above her. "My name is Ellie," she said. "We leave a scent behind us as we walk. The others can smell it and follow the same trail. It helps us find our way home without getting lost — and without wasting time deciding which way to go."

Lottie tilted her head, turning this new idea over in her mind. "So you're not just walking. You're telling each other something, without saying a single word."

"Exactly," said Ellie, before scurrying off to catch up with the others.

Lottie sat with that thought for a long moment. She thought about how many things in the meadow had reasons behind them — reasons she couldn't see just by glancing at the surface. The ants weren't wandering aimlessly. They had a system. A method. And she never would have discovered it if she'd flown off after the dragonflies instead.

That evening, when Lottie returned to the old oak tree, Nana Hazel noticed the thoughtful look on her granddaughter's face.

"You found something today," Nana Hazel said. It wasn't a question.

"I did," said Lottie. "I found out that ants leave invisible trails for each other. But I think I found something else, too."

"Oh?"

"I found out that the answer is never the interesting part," Lottie said slowly, still working the idea out as she spoke it. "It's the looking. If I'd already known why the ants marched in a line, today wouldn't have felt like anything at all."

Nana Hazel smiled and folded her wing gently around Lottie's shoulder. "That," she said, "is the beginning of wisdom. Not knowing everything — but wanting to know, and being willing to follow the trail wherever it leads."

From that day on, Lottie the Curiosity Owl became known throughout the meadow as the one who asked the questions no one else thought to ask — and who never once minded when the answers took her somewhere she didn't expect.

A few days after Lottie met Ellie the ant, she found herself back at the sycamore tree, hoping to learn something new. But when she arrived, the ant mound looked different — flattened on one side, with scattered bits of leaf and dirt strewn across the grass.

"Ellie!" Lottie called, hopping down closer. "What happened here?"

Ellie climbed out from a side tunnel, dusting dirt from her legs. "A rabbit ran through last night. Didn't even notice us. It happens sometimes."

Lottie's first instinct was to be upset on Ellie's behalf — to assume the rabbit had been careless, even unkind. But something in her paused before she said so out loud. She remembered what Nana Hazel always told her: the first thing you see is rarely the whole thing.

"Was it on purpose?" Lottie asked instead. "Or could there be a reason you're not seeing yet?"

Ellie thought about it. "Well... rabbits mostly look up and around for hawks. They watch the sky, not the ground. I don't think she even knew we were here."

Lottie looked down at the mound again, and this time she noticed something she'd missed — a set of tracks leading not toward the mound, but past it, in a straight line toward the tree line, exactly the path a frightened animal might take while glancing upward instead of down.

"You're right," Lottie said. "If she'd meant to knock down your home, she wouldn't have run in a straight line like that. She'd have circled, or stopped."

"How do you know that?" Ellie asked.

"I don't, not for certain," Lottie admitted. "But it's a better guess than the first one I had. The first thing I thought wasn't wrong because I was being mean — it was wrong because I only looked at the top of things. The tracks were still there. I just hadn't looked underneath yet."

Ellie nodded slowly. "So looking deeper isn't about doubting everyone. It's about giving the ground a second glance before deciding what it means."

"Exactly," said Lottie, borrowing Ellie's own word from days before, and grinning.

That evening, Lottie helped the ants rebuild the flattened side of their mound, carrying twigs far too big for her, one at a time. And the whole time, she kept thinking about how close she'd come to being upset at the rabbit for something the rabbit never meant to do — all because she'd stopped looking after the very first glance.

Not long after, Lottie was perched near the meadow's edge when she overheard two sparrows chattering in a bush below.

"Did you hear?" one sparrow said. "The creek dried up completely. Every drop. Someone said the fish are all gone!"

"That's terrible," said the other. "I heard it from Squeaky the vole, who heard it from someone at the reeds."

Lottie's wings prickled with concern. The creek was where she often watched dragonflies skim the water at dusk. She almost took off right then to see for herself how bad it was — but a small thought stopped her first: Who actually saw this happen?

"Excuse me," Lottie said, swooping down to the branch beside the sparrows. "Did either of you see the dry creek yourselves?"

The sparrows looked at each other. "Well — no," admitted the first. "I heard it from her."

"And I heard it from Squeaky," said the second, "who heard it from someone else."

Lottie thought of something Nana Hazel liked to say about stories passed from animal to animal — that each retelling was like water poured from cup to cup, a little spilling out and a little added in, until the story at the end barely resembled the story at the start.

"I think," Lottie said carefully, "before we tell anyone else the creek is dry, we should go and look."

So the three of them flew together to the creek — and found it exactly as it always was: full, cool, and rushing quietly over smooth stones. A few fish darted beneath the surface, unbothered.

"It's fine!" the first sparrow said, astonished. "But Squeaky sounded so sure."

"Squeaky probably believed it too," Lottie said. "That doesn't mean it was true. Believing something and checking something are two very different things."

From then on, whenever Lottie heard a surprising bit of meadow news, she asked herself one simple question before repeating it to anyone else: Did someone see this happen, or did someone just hear about it from someone else?

At the far end of the meadow lived two squirrel siblings, Thistle and Bramble, who spent every autumn afternoon gathering acorns for winter. One day, Lottie found them arguing beside two very different piles.

"Mine is bigger!" said Bramble, pointing to a tall, narrow pile of acorns.

"No, mine is!" said Thistle, pointing to a wide, low pile spread out beside it.

Lottie looked at both piles. Bramble's really did look taller. But something about Thistle's confidence made her curious enough to ask, "Have either of you actually counted them?"

Both squirrels paused. "Well — no," said Bramble. "But look how high mine is stacked!"

"And mine is spread out so far," said Thistle.

Lottie hopped closer. "What if being tall doesn't always mean there are more? And being spread out doesn't always mean there are more, either? What if the only way to really know is to count?"

The squirrels looked at each other, unconvinced but curious enough to try. Together, the three of them counted Bramble's pile first — twenty-six acorns, stacked in a narrow, careful tower. Then they counted Thistle's — thirty-one acorns, spread wide and flat across the grass.

"I told you mine was bigger!" said Thistle, delighted.

Bramble frowned at his tall, impressive-looking pile. "But it looked so much bigger. How could fewer acorns look like more?"

"Because tall things trick our eyes," Lottie said, remembering something Nana Hazel had once told her about how shapes can fool us if we only glance instead of measure. "A pile can look big because it's stacked high, even when a flatter pile actually has more inside it. Numbers don't care how something looks. They just tell you what's true."

From then on, whenever the squirrels argued about whose acorn pile, whose stick collection, or whose stack of pinecones was bigger, someone would always say the same thing: "Let's not guess. Let's count."

One evening, as the sun dipped low and painted the meadow orange, Lottie spotted a shape moving slowly through the tall grass — pointed ears, a long red-brown tail, and sharp, narrow eyes. A fox.

Every story Lottie had ever heard about foxes involved sharp teeth and quick, sly tricks. Her feathers stood on end, and she nearly flew straight back to the old oak tree without a second thought.

But then she noticed something odd. The fox wasn't stalking. He wasn't crouched low or creeping toward anything. He was simply sitting very still, staring up at the darkening sky, watching the first stars appear.

Lottie hesitated at the edge of the grass, caught between her fear and her curiosity. Curiosity won.

"What are you doing?" she called out, staying a cautious distance away.

The fox startled, then relaxed when he saw only a small owl. "Watching the stars come out," he said. "It's the best part of my day. I'm Oscar."

"Aren't you supposed to be... hunting? Or sneaking up on someone?"

Oscar let out a short laugh. "Is that what owls say about foxes?"

Lottie felt her feathers flush warm with embarrassment. "I suppose I never actually asked a fox what a fox does. I just believed the stories."

"Everyone believes the stories," Oscar said, not unkindly. "It's easier than finding out for yourself. But I like the quiet. I like counting stars. Sometimes I like a good vole for dinner, sure — but so does nearly everyone in this meadow, including you, if we're being honest about crickets."

Lottie laughed despite herself, some of her fear melting into something closer to curiosity again. "I'm sorry. I assumed you'd be scary before I even gave you the chance to be anything else."

"An assumption," Oscar said, settling back to watch the sky, "is just a guess wearing a very confident coat. It feels true. That doesn't mean it is."

Lottie sat beside him — not too close, but close enough — and watched the stars appear one by one. From that night on, Oscar became one of her most unexpected friends in the meadow, and Lottie made a habit of asking herself a new question whenever she felt a snap judgment forming: Is this something I know, or something I only assumed?

After her evening with Oscar, Lottie realized something troubling: she couldn't quite remember what she'd thought about foxes before that night. Had she always been afraid? Had something specific caused it? The memory had already blurred, replaced by how she felt now.

She mentioned this to Nana Hazel, who reached behind a loose piece of bark in their tree and pulled out a small, worn book with a leaf pressed inside its cover.

"This was mine, once," Nana Hazel said. "I wrote down what I noticed, what I wondered about, and what I changed my mind on. Thoughts slip away quickly if you don't catch them somewhere."

Lottie turned the pages carefully. Some were filled with tiny sketches — a spiral shell, a cracked stone, a strange cloud shape. Others held only a few scratched lines: Why do the frogs go quiet before rain? Found out today — they can feel the air change.

"Can I have one too?" Lottie asked.

That night, Lottie found a smooth piece of birch bark and began her own little book. Her first entry was simple: Today I met a fox named Oscar. I was scared before I met him. I'm not scared now. I wonder what else I'm wrong about that I haven't checked yet.

Over the following weeks, Lottie's little book filled with questions, half-answers, and updated thoughts. Some days she wrote a question and didn't find the answer for weeks. Other days, she wrote something she was sure of — only to cross it out later and write something new beside it, once she'd learned more.

"Why do you cross things out instead of erasing them?" Pip asked one afternoon, peering over her shoulder.

"Because it's not wrong to change your mind," Lottie said. "It's only wrong to pretend you never thought differently at all. I like seeing how my thinking changed. It reminds me I'm still learning."

Late one afternoon, dark clouds rolled in over the meadow, and Lottie's cousin Pip came racing up to the old oak tree, breathless and worried.

"Lottie! Lottie! I left my whole pinecone collection out by the creek, and it looks like it's going to storm! What do I do?"

Lottie glanced at the sky. The clouds were heavy and low, but they hadn't started moving fast yet — there might be a little time.

"Let's think it through," Lottie said, trying to stay calm for Pip's sake. "If the rain starts before we reach the creek, then what happens to your pinecones?"

"They'd get soaked. Some might even wash away in the current."

"And if we fly there right now instead of waiting, then what happens?"

"We might reach them in time," Pip said, "before the storm really starts."

"And if we try to carry all of them at once, then what happens?"

Pip thought about this one longer. "We might drop some. Or fly too slow because we're carrying too much."

"So what's the better plan?" Lottie asked. "Waiting, grabbing everything at once, or something else?"

"We should go now," Pip decided, "and each carry as many as we safely can, and leave the rest if we have to. Better to save some than risk dropping all of them trying to save every single one."

They flew together to the creek just as the first fat raindrops began to fall. Working quickly, they gathered as many pinecones as they could carry, tucking them safely into a hollow log a good distance from the rising water, and left the rest with a quiet, accepted shrug.

By the time the storm truly broke, they were both back in the shelter of the old oak, damp but pleased with themselves, watching rain streak silver lines across the meadow.

"That was smart," Pip said. "Asking if this, then that before we just started flapping around in a panic."

"It's easier to think clearly before you're standing in the middle of a storm," Lottie said, "than while you're already soaked."

High on the tallest tree in the meadow lived an old crow named Corvus, who was known for saying very little — and being right almost every time he did speak.

One afternoon, a group of young animals gathered beneath a hollow log, arguing loudly about whether it was safe to cross the meadow's far field, where a hawk had been spotted the week before.

"It's been days," said one rabbit. "It's probably gone by now."

"But what if it's not?" said another.

The group turned to Corvus, who sat quietly above them, watching the sky rather than the argument below.

"Well?" Pip asked. "Should we cross or not?"

Corvus didn't answer right away. He tilted his head, studying the clouds, the stillness of the grass, the birds that weren't singing as loudly as usual.

"Not yet," he finally said.

"Why not? You haven't even seen the hawk today!"

"No," Corvus agreed. "But the smaller birds have gone quiet earlier than usual, and they only do that for one reason. I don't need to see the hawk myself to know something is watching."

Lottie, who had been listening from a nearby branch, found herself fascinated. Unlike Oscar's confident stories or Ellie's clear facts, Corvus seemed to be weighing dozens of small, quiet clues all at once — clues most of the others hadn't even noticed.

"How do you know when you have enough clues to decide?" Lottie asked him later, once the others had scattered.

"I don't always," Corvus admitted. "Sometimes I wait too long, and nothing happens, and I feel foolish. Sometimes I don't wait long enough, and I regret it. Good judgment isn't a rule you follow exactly. It's built slowly, mistake by mistake, clue by clue, until you trust your own sense of things a little more each time."

That evening, the smaller birds' warning proved true — the hawk swept low over the far field just before dusk, and every animal who'd waited stayed safely out of sight.

One quiet evening, Lottie sat with Nana Hazel at the mouth of their tree hollow, her little birch-bark book resting open on her lap.

"I've learned so many things this year," Lottie said. "But I keep wondering if there's a way to remember it all — not just the stories, but what I actually did each time."

Nana Hazel smiled, as though she'd been waiting for this exact question. "Then let's build you a toolbox. Not one you carry with wings and talons — one you carry in your mind."

Together, they went back through Lottie's little book, page by page, and pulled out the pattern behind each adventure.

"When you followed Ellie's trail," Nana Hazel said, "you were observing — looking closely instead of walking past."

"When I checked the creek myself instead of trusting the sparrows," Lottie added, "I was verifying — going to the source instead of just repeating what I'd heard."

"When you and the squirrels counted the acorns," said Nana Hazel, "that was measuring — trusting numbers over how something merely looked."

"With Oscar," Lottie said quietly, "I learned to question my assumptions — noticing when a feeling was really just an old story I'd never checked."

"And with Pip in the storm?"

"If-then thinking," Lottie said. "Working out what would happen before it happened, instead of after."

"And Corvus?"

"Discernment," Lottie said. "Weighing lots of small clues together, even without being completely sure."

Nana Hazel nodded, pleased. "Five tools. Observing, verifying, measuring, questioning assumptions, and thinking ahead — with discernment tying them all together, telling you when you've gathered enough to trust your own judgment. Keep them close. You'll need every one of them again and again, for the rest of your life, in ways you can't yet imagine."

Lottie wrote the five tools carefully into the front page of her little book, so she'd never have to search for them again.

As the seasons turned, Lottie noticed something she hadn't expected: every friend she'd made saw the meadow in a completely different way.

Ellie the ant noticed trails and scents too faint for Lottie to ever detect on her own. Oscar the fox noticed sounds carried on the wind from far across the field. Thistle and Bramble noticed patterns in weight and shape that Lottie's eyes always seemed to miss. Corvus noticed the smallest shifts in silence — the things that weren't happening, which was somehow just as important as the things that were.

One afternoon, a strange illness struck part of the meadow's berry bushes, and none of the animals could figure out why.

"It only happened to the bushes near the creek," Ellie observed, having crossed the area many times. "Not the ones farther up the hill."

"I heard a beetle in the reeds mention something about roots underwater," Oscar offered, having caught the sound from a distance.

"The affected bushes are smaller, but there are more berries packed onto each one," Bramble noted, having compared the two patches carefully.

"The birds near the creek have been unusually quiet for three days," Corvus added. "Longer than a simple storm warning."

Lottie listened to every piece, turning each one over in her mind the way she'd learned to turn over a good question. Alone, none of the clues made a complete picture. But together —

"The ground near the creek must be too wet," Lottie said slowly. "The roots can't breathe properly underwater, so the bushes are stressed — which is probably why the birds have gone quiet near there, and why the bushes are cramming out more berries at once, almost like they're rushing to finish before something worse happens."

The animals looked at each other, and then at Lottie, impressed.

"I couldn't have figured that out alone," Lottie admitted. "None of us could have, not with just our own piece of the puzzle."

"That's rather the point," Corvus said, with what might have been the beginning of a smile. "None of us sees the whole meadow. But together, we see quite a lot more of it."

Not every day in the meadow was golden and clear. One morning, Lottie woke up feeling heavy and strange, though nothing bad had actually happened. She snapped at Pip over nothing. She didn't want to fly anywhere. She didn't even want to write in her little book.

Nana Hazel found her curled in the far corner of the tree hollow. "You look like a cloudy day wearing feathers," she said gently, settling beside her.

"I don't know what's wrong," Lottie admitted. "I'm not sick. Nothing bad happened. I just feel... heavy. And it's making me want to snap at everyone."

"Have you asked the question yet?" Nana Hazel said.

"What question?"

"The same one you ask about everything else. What's actually going on here? You don't just accept the first answer when you're curious about the meadow. Why accept the first answer about yourself?"

Lottie sat with that. She thought back over the last few days — the same careful looking she'd use on an ant trail or a fox's true nature, turned inward instead.

"I think... I'm not mad at Pip," she said slowly. "I think I'm nervous. Tomorrow's the flying trial, and if I don't pass it, I can't join the older owls on the night watch. I've been so worried about it that it's been coming out sideways, as crankiness, instead of just... worry."

"There it is," said Nana Hazel. "Feelings are a lot like the first thing you see on the ground. Snapping at Pip looked like anger. But underneath, when you looked closer, it was something else entirely."

"So what do I do with it now that I know?"

"Now you get to choose what to do with worry, instead of letting it choose for you by leaking out as crankiness. You could talk to me about the trial. You could practice your flying. You could tell Pip you're sorry and explain what's really going on. All of those are better choices than the one you didn't even know you were making."

Lottie found Pip later that afternoon and apologized, explaining about the trial. Pip, it turned out, had been nervous about something of his own, and the two of them ended up practicing flying dives together until the heavy, cloudy feeling had mostly cleared — not because it vanished, but because Lottie finally understood what it actually was.

One afternoon, a new sound drifted through the meadow — Corvus's low, familiar caw, except it was coming from the wrong direction, and something about it sounded slightly off, like a song played one note out of tune.

Lottie flew toward the sound, expecting to find Corvus. Instead, she found a sleek gray bird perched on a low branch, tilting its head with obvious delight.

"That was you?" Lottie asked, astonished. "You sound exactly like Corvus."

"I can sound like anyone," the bird said proudly. "Watch." And in an instant, it let out a perfect imitation of Oscar's low laugh, then Ellie's tiny voice, then even a fair approximation of Lottie's own curious little "hm?"

"I'm Mimsy," the bird said. "I copy things. It's rather my whole personality, if you must know."

At first, Lottie found this delightful — she spent the better part of an hour asking Mimsy to imitate every animal she could think of. But then something uncomfortable occurred to her.

"Wait," Lottie said slowly. "If you can sound exactly like Corvus... how would anyone know if it was really him? What if you said something Corvus never actually said, and everyone believed it was true, just because it sounded right?"

Mimsy's proud expression faltered slightly. "I suppose... I hadn't thought about that. I only ever copy for fun."

"I believe you," Lottie said. "But not everyone who copies things does it just for fun. And even copying done for fun can cause real trouble if someone hears it and doesn't realize it isn't the real thing."

Lottie thought about her little book, and the tool she'd written on its very first page: verifying — going to the source instead of just repeating what you heard. She realized this was the same tool, wearing a new coat. A sound could be real. A picture could be real. And a very, very good copy could look or sound exactly the same as the real thing — without being the real thing at all.

"So how do I know the difference?" Lottie asked, half to Mimsy, half to herself.

"You could ask me if I'm being honest," Mimsy offered, "but that's not much use if the one copying doesn't tell you."

"Then I suppose the answer is the same as it's always been," Lottie said. "Don't just trust how something sounds or looks. Go check with the real Corvus, if it truly matters. And remember that a very convincing copy is still just a copy — no matter how perfect it seems."

From then on, whenever something in the meadow seemed surprising, dramatic, or too perfectly convincing, Lottie asked herself one more question, right alongside her old ones: Could this be a copy of the real thing, dressed up to look true?

For nearly a week, Pip wasn't himself. He didn't race ahead on their walks through the meadow. He didn't chase dragonflies or interrupt Lottie's questions with ideas of his own. He just... went quiet, in a way that didn't fit him at all.

Lottie's first instinct was to fix it. "Maybe you need a new game," she suggested. "Or we could visit Oscar. Or count acorns with Thistle and Bramble — that always cheers people up."

Pip just shrugged and looked at the ground.

Frustrated that none of her ideas were working, Lottie finally went to Nana Hazel. "I don't understand," she said. "I've offered him everything I can think of, and nothing's helping."

"Have you asked him what he needs?" Nana Hazel said. "Or have you only offered him what you think he needs?"

Lottie paused. She realized, a little uncomfortably, that she'd been so focused on solving Pip's sadness like it was a puzzle to figure out that she hadn't actually asked him a single question about it.

She found Pip later, curled beneath the same log where they'd once counted acorns together, and this time she didn't offer a single idea. She just sat beside him.

"You don't have to fix it," Pip said eventually, surprising her. "I just... my best friend from the eastern hollow moved away last week. I don't think I'm ready to play games yet. I think I just needed someone to know that, instead of trying to make it better."

Lottie stayed quiet a moment longer, letting that sit.

"I'm sorry," she finally said. "I think I was trying so hard to help that I forgot to just listen first."

"You're listening now," Pip said, leaning against her wing.

They sat together as the sun went down, not talking much, and Lottie realized this was its own kind of tool — one that didn't involve questions or trails or counting at all. Sometimes the most curious, caring thing she could do wasn't figuring something out. It was simply noticing how someone else felt, and staying beside them in it, without needing to solve it first.

By the time autumn turned the meadow gold again, a full year had passed since Lottie first followed a trail of ants beneath the leaves. The little owl who once flew off after every idea without a second thought had become someone the whole meadow trusted — not only with its harder questions, but with its harder feelings, too.

Word of everything Lottie had learned spread from the creek to the far field. One by one, the animals who'd helped her along the way gathered at the old oak tree: Ellie the ant, riding carefully on a leaf Bramble had carried for her; Oscar the fox, curled at a respectful distance from Thistle's nervous tail; Corvus, perched above them all, watching quietly the way he always did; Mimsy, uncharacteristically imitating no one but herself; and Pip, steadier now, missing his old friend but no longer carrying it alone, right in the middle of everything as usual.

"I don't think I did anything so special," Lottie said, feeling suddenly shy with everyone looking at her. "I just kept asking questions. I looked twice instead of once. I checked instead of assumed. And I learned to ask what was really going on underneath — not just in the meadow, but in myself, and in the people I care about."

"That," said Nana Hazel, settling beside her granddaughter, "is the special thing. Thinking clearly and feeling honestly aren't two different skills, little one. They're the same habit, pointed in two directions — outward at the world, and inward at yourself."

Lottie opened her little birch-bark book, now nearly full, and turned to a blank page near the back. She thought for a long moment about everything the past year had taught her — about ants and sparrows, foxes and squirrels, storms and crows and copycat birds and quiet, sad afternoons with Pip — and finally wrote:

The world is full of things that aren't quite what they first seem — and so am I, sometimes, even to myself. That used to scare me. Now I think it's the best part of being alive: there's always something new to find out, outside and in, if you're willing to look, and willing to feel it honestly once you do.

She closed the book gently and looked out over the meadow, golden and rustling in the evening light, full of trails she hadn't followed yet, questions she hadn't asked yet, and feelings she hadn't yet learned the shape of.

Somewhere out there, she was sure, was the next thing worth wondering about — and whatever it turned out to be, she knew now she wouldn't have to figure it out, or feel it, alone.

✨ THE END ✨