The Button That Bloomed — Under the breakfast table, Rafferty batted a plain white coat button until it clicked like a beetle on the floorboards. Read the full story →
Under the breakfast table, Rafferty batted a plain white coat button until it clicked like a beetle on the floorboards. He tucked it beneath his flower collar, whiskers twitching with mischief, and pranced into the garden before anyone could ask why one button mattered so much.
The morning smelled of wet leaves and daisies. Rafferty nudged berries into neat little circles, flicked fern tips into curls, and balanced the button in the soft dirt where the sun made it shine. “Not a toy,” he whispered, then grinned because it absolutely looked like one.
A butterfly drifted down, tapping the button with powdery feet. Rafferty blinked. The “plain” button was not for his secret game at all—it was the missing moon of a tiny flower clock the ants had been building, and without it their petal hands pointed nowhere.
So Rafferty sat very straight while the ants finished their clock around his gift, pretending he had meant to help all along. Look near the flower collar and the circling garden—Rafferty still wears the face of a kitten who knows where the moon went, under the breakfast table.
