Between Carrots and Naps

The day had started with a hole in the watering can.

Yens found it just as he was about to begin his morning rounds in the garden - a slow and peaceful process involving more humming than watering, and more pausing to admire carrot tops than doing anything useful. But the hole was real and unacceptable. He fetched the repair tin, sat on the grass with the can between his knees, and set to work with quiet determination.

Spinny was somewhere nearby. Yens could hear the occasional squeaky note of a misfiring acorn catapult. He didn’t look up. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t terribly safe - but it also wasn’t terribly breakable. Spinny had a gift for causing precisely as much trouble as the day could handle. Yens trusted him not to exceed it by too much.

The sun climbed. The patch on the watering can set. Spinny’s contraption went quiet. A breeze wandered in through the gooseberry hedge, slow and smelling faintly of mint and bees.

Yens lay back in the grass, just for a moment.

That was when Spinny flopped beside him, limbs in all directions, puffing slightly like he’d just outrun a crow (he probably had). Neither of them spoke. The daisies nodded above their heads.

And in that small, drifting pause - between the carrots and the nap, between mischief and mending - the world felt just right.