Pippin bounded through the sunlit meadow, white fur flashing like dandelion down with every leap. A blue butterfly danced ahead, wings fluttering between swaying purple and yellow wildflowers. She spun and barked — a happy, tinkling sound — as clover scent rose warm from the grass beneath her paws.
The butterfly dipped low, wings fluttering faster, then vanished into the tall hedge at the meadow's edge. Pippin trotted after it, nose to the ground, until she caught the dry creak of wood. Something old and hollow was calling to her from behind a curtain of green leaves.
Behind a curtain of ferns she found it — a log split clean down the middle, its dark hollow mouth half-open like a sleeping cave. Pippin pressed her nose to the rough bark. Damp wood. Moss. And something else — a smell she had never met before, faint and curious, pulling at her with every inhale.
She circled the log twice, tail giving a tentative little wag — then froze. A tiny beetle scuttled out from the darkness and disappeared into the grass. Pippin leaned closer, whiskers brushing the splintered wood, and then she saw it: a glint of bright red deep inside the hollow.
Pippin let out a soft wondering whine and nudged the log with her nose. Something small and round tumbled out, wobbling across the grass with a soft ping-ping-ping sound. It came to rest in a patch of green — a shiny red ball with one tiny white star on it.
Pippin pounced! Her paws hit the grass and the ball bounced — bounce, bounce, bounce — rolling through a tunnel of purple wildflowers. She chased it with a bark of pure triumph, ears flying back, tail a happy blur behind her.
Bounce, bounce, bounce went the ball through the tall grass. Pippin ran after it, leaping over clover patches and skidding through wildflowers, her white fur glowing in the turning gold. She did not know where the ball had come from — but she knew, right then, that it was hers to keep.
At last the ball slowed and settled into a soft nest of clover. Pippin trotted over and dropped her chin beside it, one paw resting lightly on the warm red surface. The meadow hummed around her — bees, grass, the fading sun — and she wiggled her whole body in pure, wordless joy.