Xander had never been much of a flier. His wings were the soft, quilted kind — better for looking lovely in the afternoon light than for actually getting anywhere — so instead of the meadow, he’d made his home on the windowsill of the old cottage, where the lace curtains let the sun in slow and golden.
It suited him fine. Someone had to mind the notebook.
It sat propped beside him always, its leather cover soft with age, its pages filled with someone else’s careful handwriting — pressed lavender sketched in the margins, half a recipe for something that smelled like summer, a list that trailed off mid-sentence as though the writer had simply wandered outside instead of finishing it. Xander had read it so many times he knew which pages stuck together in the damp, and which corners had been dog-eared by a thumb far bigger than his own.
He liked to imagine she’d be back for it. Whoever she was. In the meantime, he kept watch — one paw braced on his hip in his best guarding stance, the other raised in a cheerful little wave to anyone who passed close enough to see him through the glass.
The twine spools kept him company, unwound just enough over the years to look like they, too, had stories to tell. The daisies at his feet opened each morning like they were greeting him properly. And the lavender leaned in close, the way old friends do, filling the little patch of moss with a smell like the inside of a very good afternoon nap.
Some evenings, when the light through the curtains turned the color of honey, Xander liked to think the notebook’s owner was out there somewhere, still gathering things worth writing down — and that when she finally came back to add one more page, she’d find her seat already warm, her bee still smiling, still waving, exactly where she’d left him.