OWLS Barn Studio

Wren and the Cloudy Star Button

One rainy afternoon, when the sky was the color of a sleepy pigeon, Wren listened to the patter of raindrops on her window. Tap-tap-tap, they went, like tiny fingers asking to play. Her dreamy bedroom glowed soft and golden, and her blankets were piled high like little hills of fluff.
“Today is a fort day,” Wren decided.

She draped her blankets over two chairs and the end of her bed. She clipped them with glittery hairpins and clothespins shaped like cats. Pillows became walls. Her favorite quilt, the one sprinkled with stars, became the roof. Inside, she placed a small lantern, her softest bear, and a squishy cushion throne.

When she wriggled inside, the rain sounded far away, like it was dreaming too. Wren clicked on the lantern. The light shimmered across the quilted roof, and the little stars on the fabric seemed to twinkle back at her.
Then, quite suddenly, one of the stitched stars winked. It grew brighter and brighter, until it was a tiny door of light.

Before Wren could say, “Oh!” the floor of her fort turned soft and floaty. The blankets fluffed into clouds, the cushions puffed into floating islands, and the lantern light stretched into long, gentle beams like moonlight curtains.

Wren peeked out. She was no longer in her bedroom. She was in a sky kingdom made of clouds and cushions and twinkling stars. Cloud steps rose and dipped around her, and starry buttons glittered in the air like fireflies who had lost their way.

“Hello?” Wren called softly. Her voice bounced off the clouds, making a gentle rumble-rumble-rumble.
“Oh! Is that me?” said a deep, cozy voice.

Out from behind a puffy cloud drifted a bear made of cloudstuff, with a round, kind face and big, misty paws. He wore a coat sewn from bedtime fog, with tiny glowing stars for buttons down the front.

“I’m Rumble,” he said, bowing so low a little drizzle of sparkles shook from his ears. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Fort Builder.”
Wren giggled. “I’m Wren. Is this your kingdom?”
“Oh, no,” said Rumble. “The sky belongs to everyone who looks up. But I do look after the stars on my coat. Or at least, I’m supposed to.” He peered sadly at his buttons. “One of them has gone missing.”

Wren saw a tiny empty circle near the middle of his coat, like a hug waiting for someone. “We’ll find it,” she said. “I’m good at looking in small places.”
Together they padded along the cloud paths. They peered under squishy cloud cushions. They checked inside a passing puff of cloud shaped like a teacup. They even asked a sleepy star, who yawned and shook a little stardust from its pointy toes. “Have you seen a missing button?” Wren whispered. “Try where the quiet is thickest,” the sleepy star murmured, drifting back into its dream.

Wren listened. There were soft whooshes and tiny tinkles and faraway rumbles, but over to one side, near a nest of pillows made from evening clouds, the air felt extra still, like it was holding its breath. She knelt by the pillows. There, caught in a fold of gray-silver fluff, was a teensy glowing star button, blinking shyly up at her.
“Found you,” Wren said gently, scooping it up.
Rumble’s smile grew as wide as the horizon. “Oh, thank you, Wren! I was afraid it would be lonely forever.”

They sat together on a low, snuggly cloud. Rumble pulled a needle made of moonlight from his pocket and a thread spun from the Milky Way itself. With Wren holding the star button carefully, they stitched it back onto his coat with slow, careful loops. When the last stitch was done, the button glowed even brighter, as if it were humming a happy song. The other buttons twinkled along, like friends joining in.
“There,” said Wren. “All home again.”

Rumble patted his coat. “If ever you need a soft place to land, just build a fort, Wren. The sky remembers its friends.” The clouds around them began to glow, then blur, then swirl like bedtime watercolors. The lantern light from Wren’s fort grew brighter and brighter, folding the sky kingdom up like a secret letter.
Wren blinked.

She was back in her blanket fort, tucked safely in her dreamy bedroom. The rain still tap-tap-tapped on the window, like it had never stopped at all. Her lantern glowed softly beside her. In her hand, resting in her warm little palm, lay a tiny button that shone like a star. It winked once, as if it knew a secret. Wren smiled, cozy and curious. “Maybe it was a dream,” she whispered. Then she snuggled deeper into her fort, still holding the glowing button, and listened to the sky’s soft rumble far, far above.

The End.

~ OWLS Barn