Pippa’s Dare-to-Dabble Game — Above the puff court, where the clouds smelled like vanilla chalk, Pippa tapped her heart wand once and whispered, “Dabble!” A tiny heart popped into the air. Read the full story →
Above the puff court, where the clouds smelled like vanilla chalk, Pippa tapped her heart wand once and whispered, “Dabble!” A tiny heart popped into the air. She had invented Dare-to-Dabble: one tap for a heart, two for a star, three for a flower. The brave part was the fourth tap, which no one had tried yet, not even Pippa with her shiny shoes tucked together.
She tapped once, twice, three times. Hearts bobbed. Stars winked. Flowers spun with a soft fiff-fiff. Pippa puffed her cheeks, raised the wand higher than her crown, and gave the fourth tap. Instead of a new shape, the nearest cloud sneezed glitter and held up a curly puff that looked exactly like the number four.
Every cloud had been keeping score the whole time. The little ones bounced zeros. The big ones wore proud twos and threes in their fluffy middles. Pippa laughed so hard her wings curled. “Again,” she said, and her wand felt warm instead of wobbly. If you count the hearts around her next time, you may find the cloud’s secret score hiding in the vanilla chalk.
