The Confluence
Launch Your World
Cover art for The Meadow at the End of the Lane
LoreCraft story

The Meadow at the End of the Lane

Three Bunny Buddies and the small kind things they did

In a meadow where every bunny is two colours, Pip, Juniper and Bramble learn that the best days are the ones you make for somebody else. Three gentle stories for reading aloud.

3 scenes · 3 characters

Pip and the Very Loud Morning
A small round fluffy bunny in bright grass-green and warm yellow wearing a navy and white striped sailor cap, bouncing joyfully through tall sunlit meadow grass and wildflowers at sunrise, arms up, mouth open shouting happily. Warm golden morning light, dewy grass, a tiny snail on a stem nearby. Render exactly like the reference: dense fuzzy fur with visible strands, big round head on a small body, one ear up and one flopped, vertical two-tone split colouring, one glossy plastic X-shaped eye, on
The meadow, just after sunrise

Pip and the Very Loud Morning

In the meadow at the end of the lane, the sun came up slowly.

The grass came up slowly. The flowers came up slowly. The snails, who are always doing their best, came up slowest of all.

And then there was Pip.

"GOOD MORNING!" said Pip.

Pip said it to the grass. Pip said it to the flowers. Pip said it to a snail, who had not been ready.

"Good morning, fence post! Good morning, puddle! Good morning, extremely large stone that I say good morning to every day!"

The meadow rolled over and put a leaf on its head.

"Pip," said Juniper, from inside the hollow log, in the soft voice of someone who would like eight more minutes. "It is very early."

"It is!" said Pip. "That's the best bit!"

And Pip bounced off through the tall grass — *bounce, bounce, bounce* — to say good morning to the stream, who never minded.

But here is the thing about Pip.

On the way, Pip passed the little blue flowers that Juniper likes best, and Pip picked one. Just one. Pip was very careful about that.

And Pip passed the flat warm stone where Bramble likes to sit, and Pip brushed the dew off it with one paw, so it would be dry later.

And Pip passed the snail, who was still getting over it, and said, more quietly this time, "Sorry. Good morning."

The snail said nothing, because snails don't. But it did carry on, which is a snail's way of saying *that's all right*.

When Juniper came out of the log, blinking, there was one blue flower on the step.

When Bramble came down the lane at last, there was one dry warm stone waiting.

And far off across the meadow, very loudly, somebody was saying good morning to a cloud.

"He's a lot," said Bramble, sitting down on the dry stone.

"He is," said Juniper, holding the blue flower.

And they both smiled, because the other thing about Pip — the thing under all that noise — is that Pip is *paying attention*.

Even at six o'clock in the morning.

Especially then.

Juniper Keeps a Secret Safe
A round fluffy bunny in soft pink and deep charcoal with pale blue ski goggles pushed up on the forehead, sitting quietly in the grass beside one small blue speckled egg surrounded by a tiny circular wall of moss, near a gentle stream. Warm afternoon light, dappled shade, a tall tree behind with a nest high in the branches. Render exactly like the reference: dense fuzzy fur with visible strands, big round head on a small body, one ear up and one flopped, vertical two-tone split colouring, one gl
The hollow log by the stream

Juniper Keeps a Secret Safe

Juniper found the egg on a Tuesday.

It was small and blue and speckled, and it was sitting in the grass where no egg should ever be, right beside the stream, all by itself.

Juniper did not pick it up.

Juniper sat down next to it instead, and had a good long think, which is what Juniper does.

"You've fallen," said Juniper.

The egg said nothing.

"That's all right," said Juniper. "Lots of things fall."

Juniper looked up. Far above, in the crook of the big tree, there was a nest, and in the nest there was a bird going round and round in a very small circle, the way you do when you have lost something and looking in the same place four times feels like the answer.

So Juniper made a plan.

First, Juniper built a little wall of moss around the egg, so nothing could roll into it.

Then Juniper sat down beside the wall.

And then Juniper waited.

Pip came past. "What are you DOING?"

"Keeping something safe."

"For how long?"

"Until it isn't lost."

Pip thought about this, and then Pip — and this is the remarkable part — sat down too, and was quiet. For eleven whole minutes. Which for Pip is roughly a year.

Bramble came past at dusk, on the long way home, as always, and did not ask a single question. Bramble just looked at the egg, and looked at Juniper, and went away, and came back with a leaf, and put the leaf over the egg because the evening was getting cold.

The three of them sat there while the sky went pink and then grey.

And at last, very late, the bird came down.

It did not say thank you, because birds don't. It looked at the moss wall for a long moment. Then it took the egg, very gently, and went back up.

Juniper watched until the nest was quiet.

"You didn't even touch it," said Pip, on the walk home.

"No," said Juniper.

"Why not?"

And Juniper said the thing that Pip would remember for a long time afterwards, which was:

"Because it wasn't mine to carry. It was only mine to look after."

Bramble and the Longest Way Home
Three round fluffy bunnies sitting together on a grassy hilltop, seen from behind and slightly to the side, looking out over a wide meadow at sunset. One grass-green and yellow with a striped sailor cap, one soft pink and charcoal with ski goggles, one sky-blue and grey with a yellow knitted cap. Golden pink evening light, a winding stream below, the first star in the sky. Render exactly like the reference: dense fuzzy fur with visible strands, big round head on a small body, one ear up and one
The lane, at dusk

Bramble and the Longest Way Home

Bramble was late.

Bramble was always late, and it was never once because Bramble had been dawdling. It was because the world kept putting things in the way.

On this particular evening, between the far gate and home, the world put in the way:

One excellent puddle.

A beetle going somewhere important.

A smell that turned out to be somebody's supper two fields over.

A stick shaped almost exactly like a smaller stick.

And a hill that Bramble had walked past four hundred times and had never once gone *up*.

Bramble went up it.

It took a while. Bramble's legs are short and the hill was not. But at the top Bramble sat down, quite out of breath, and looked, and said:

"*Oh.*"

Because from up there you could see the whole meadow at once. The stream doing its long silver curl. The hollow log with a light in it. The flat warm stone. The lane going off into the dark with the little blue flowers along the edge, all of them closed up for the night.

And it was so nice that Bramble did a thing that Bramble had never done before.

Bramble hurried.

All the way down, all the way along the lane, past the puddle and the beetle and the two sticks — *hurry, hurry, hurry* — until Bramble came bursting into the hollow log completely out of breath and said:

"Come and see. Come and see NOW, before it goes."

And Pip said "SEE WHAT?" and Juniper said nothing at all but was already putting on the goggles, and the three of them went back up that hill in the dark, which took ages, because Pip stopped to say good evening to a moth.

They got there just in time.

The last of the light was lying all along the meadow, gold and pink and going.

Nobody said anything.

Then Pip said, in a whisper, which Pip almost never does: "That's *ours*."

"It's everybody's," said Juniper.

"Yes," said Bramble happily, "but we're the ones who came."

And they sat on the top of the hill, three round fluffy shapes against the sky, until the first star came out.

Then they took the long way home.

All of them.

On purpose.