Fenn Gives the Warmest Stripe — Under the first blue light of morning, Fenn tucked Auntie Rell’s striped scarf twice around his long neck and stepped out for cedar buds. Read the full story →
Under the first blue light of morning, Fenn tucked Auntie Rell’s striped scarf twice around his long neck and stepped out for cedar buds. The scarf smelled faintly of sun-dried grass and clove tea, and its tassels tickled his chest with every careful hoof-crunch over the frost ridge. He wanted three tender buds from the old leaning cedar before the wind turned sharp enough to snap them.
Halfway there, a thin peeping came from a leafless thorn tree. Fenn lifted his head. In a fork of the branches, a tiny nest rocked in the cold, and three speckled nestlings shivered where their mother had tucked them out of sight. No one called to Fenn. No one would know if he kept walking. He pressed his warm scarf against his cheek, then unwound one cranberry stripe from the loose end and gently looped it around the nest. “Hold this until she comes back,” he whispered.
The wind nipped his neck all the way to the cedar, but the buds tasted bright and green. When Fenn returned, a mother bird was settling over her quiet chicks, the scarf-end snug beneath them. She never saw him pass. Next time you find the long scarf tassels, see if one stripe still carries that first blue light of morning.
