Wee!

I thought as my girl twirled me around, I was her Teddy, and she was my kid, we did everything together. Right now we were on a picnic with her family, and afterward, we would likely just be laying on her bed, staring at the ceiling and remembering the day. Just as I was remembering it, my girl decided to sit down and eat an apple, putting me beside her. We sat there for a while, until her mom called her. She quickly ran over, leaving me behind

She’ll be back

the words drifted through my mind, while smiling to myself, or at least so I thought, but a couple minutes later I heard something.

It was the car, and my kid was in it, driving away with the windows down.

The rain came was an endless drumming, falling upon where I lay, wedged against the garden wall, watching the colour leach out of the world one beat at a time, drip, drip, drip, against my fur until I was soaked through. She'll be back. I believed it for the first hour, and I believed it a little less when it became dark and the stars came out above me. By the time the sun finally broke through, I wasn't sure what I believed anymore, only able to focus on my mud-stiff fur, and my once-bright ribbon fading to a sad gray thread. Panic began to settle in like a deep seated ache in my stuffing, the overwhelming realisation that she had forgotten me.

The woman--Mara--found me. She ran the little cafe on the corner, pulling in chairs to shelter from the rain and incoming rust. She was rolling up the blinds when she stopped mid-motion, staring down at me.

"Oh, you poor thing," she murmured, crouching low. She lifted me carefully, and turned me over in her hands. "Somebody's really going to miss you."

I wanted sorely to say yes, someone does, she's looking for me, I know she is -- but of course I couldn't say anything at all. I was only a bear.

She carried me inside, past the tables and the humming espresso machine, into a back room that smelled of soap and warm, running water. She filled a basin, added a few drops of something that smelled like lavender, and set to work with careful hands, returning my fur to the soft brown it was last night. She combed out the tangles, humming softly under her breath, and hung me by my ears near a sunny window to dry.

"There," she said, satisfied, once I was fluffed and warm again. "Now let's hope someone comes looking."

She propped me up on a little shelf behind the counter, right where anyone walking in could see me, and I sat there through the evening rush, and the quiet after, watching the door every time the bell above it jingled. She didn't come that night.

But the next morning, just as the cafe was filling with the smell of fresh coffee and the shuffle of the breakfast crowd, the bell jingled again.

I hear her before I saw her, all childlike excitement and frenzy. "Mama, wait — MAMA, LOOK—"

And there she was,eyes wide and shining, already halfway across the room before I was scooped off the shelf and pulled me into a hug so tight I nearly lost a button.

"I told you we'd find him," she said, muffled into my fur. "I told you."

Behind the counter, Mara smiled and wiped her hands on her apron, pretending very hard not to look pleased with herself.