Lafufu had always loved the rain.

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Not because she could feel it—her cloth skin did not prickle with cold the way human skin did—but because rain made the world softer. Quieter. It blurred sharp edges and gave everything a chance to begin again.

She lived now in a narrow bookstore at the corner of Alder Street, where the doorbell jingled like a shy laugh and the floors creaked with every careful step. The shop was called “Turning Pages,” and its front window displayed towers of novels, handwritten staff picks, and a chipped ceramic cat that had guarded the glass for nearly twenty years.

Lafufu sat on a small stool beside the reading nook.

Her dress had changed since her last adventure. It was now stitched from pieces of old book jackets—deep emerald, faded burgundy, midnight blue. Tiny gold letters curved across her skirt in half-words: “once,” “ever,” “beyond.” Around her neck hung a threadbare ribbon the color of rainclouds.

Mrs. Alder, the owner of the shop, kept Lafufuthere on purpose.

“She’s good for the quiet ones,” Mrs. Alder would say.

The quiet ones came often.

They slipped through the door while rain tapped against the window. They ran fingers along spines without pulling books free. They hovered near the reading nook but hesitated to sit.

Lafufu watched them all.

She could always tell when someone carried an Almost.

Almost ready. Almost daring. Almost believing.

One gray afternoon, when rain painted silver streaks down the glass, a girl named Nora stepped into the shop.

Nora wore a bright yellow raincoat that seemed determined to challenge the sky. But her eyes did not match the coat. They flickered uncertainly, scanning shelves as if they might rearrange themselves at any moment.

Mrs. Alder looked up from behind the counter. “Looking for anything special?”

Nora shook her head quickly. “Just… looking.”

Her voice had the soft edge of someone who did not want to take up too much space.

She drifted toward the reading nook. Toward Lafufu.

Nora noticed the doll immediately.

“She’s cute,” she murmured, crouching down. “What’s her name?”

“Lafufu,” Mrs. Alder replied.

Nora smiled faintly. “That’s a brave name.”

Lafufu listened closely to that word.

Brave.

It had followed her through many homes.

Nora picked up a thick sketchbook from her backpack and sat cross-legged on the rug. She opened it halfway, then stopped. Her pencil hovered over a blank page.

Rain filled the silence.

Nora pressed her lips together. “It won’t be good,” she whispered—not to Mrs. Alder, not to anyone visible, but to the white page itself.

Lafufu felt the Almost like a ripple in still water.

Almost drawing.

Almost starting.

Almost letting the first line exist.

That night, when the bookstore lights dimmed and Mrs. Alder locked the door, Lafufu stepped down from her stool.

The rain had not stopped.

It tapped insistently against the windows, like fingers eager to be let in.

Lafufu walked across the reading nook rug and climbed onto the low table where Nora had left her sketchbook by accident.

The book was still there.

Left behind.

Its blank page lay open beneath the soft glow of the streetlamp filtering through the glass.

Lafufu placed her small hand on the paper.

Blank pages were not empty. They were crowded with expectation. With comparisons. With invisible critics whispering what if it’s not good enough?

She understood that kind of noise.

Carefully, Lafufu untied the raincloud ribbon from around her neck. From its frayed edge, she pulled a single silver thread—a thread she had saved from a storm long ago.

With slow, deliberate movements, she stitched something into the blank page.

Not a picture.

Not instructions.

Permission.

Permission to begin badly.

Permission to draw crooked lines and uneven circles.

Permission to let the first mark be messy.

The silver thread shimmered briefly, then disappeared into the paper as if it had always belonged there.

Lafufu climbed back to her stool just before dawn.

When Mrs. Alder unlocked the shop the next morning, she noticed the forgotten sketchbook.

“Well,” she murmured, placing it carefully in the reading nook. “I imagine someone will be back for this.”

She was right.

The bell jingled just after noon, and Nora rushed in, hair slightly damp, yellow raincoat unzipped and flapping.

“I left—” she began, breathless.

Mrs. Alder gestured toward the nook. “Safe and sound.”

Nora hurried over and picked up the sketchbook as if it were fragile glass. She flipped it open to the blank page.

She froze.

The page was still blank.

And yet—

Something felt different.

The tightness in her shoulders eased. The page did not glare at her the way it had yesterday. It did not seem to demand perfection.

It simply waited.

Nora sat down slowly.

She glanced at Lafufu. “Okay,” she whispered. “But it’s allowed to be bad.”

Lafufu’s button eyes gleamed.

The pencil touched paper.

The first line wobbled. Nora winced—but did not tear the page out.

She added another line. And another.

A crooked roof appeared. Then a window too large for the house. A chimney leaning slightly to one side.

Nora paused.

Rain slid down the window in wavering paths.

She added smoke curling from the chimney. A small cat in the oversized window. A garden with flowers that were more oval than round.

By the time she leaned back, the page was no longer blank.

It was alive.

Nora stared at it.

“It’s not terrible,” she said, sounding surprised.

Mrs. Alder smiled from behind the counter. “Most things aren’t, once they exist.”

Nora returned the next day. And the day after that.

Sometimes she drew in silence. Sometimes she asked Mrs. Alder for books about artists. Sometimes she simply sat and let the rain keep her company.

Each time, she began more quickly.

The Almost grew smaller.

One afternoon, the bookstore announced a small community art display. Nothing grand—just a few walls cleared for local sketches and paintings.

Mrs. Alder pinned a handwritten sign near the door:

Share what you’re working on.

Nora read it three times.

Her heart fluttered the way it did before speaking in class. The way it did before trying something that mattered.

She looked at Lafufu.

“I’m not ready,” she whispered.

But this time, the words felt less certain.

That night, Lafufu climbed down once more.

She walked to the display wall, still empty except for pushpins and hope. She pressed her palm against the corkboard.

Almost sharing.

It was a tender thing.

She did not stitch permission this time. Nora already had that.

Instead, Lafufu stitched steadiness.

A reminder that sharing did not require flawlessness. Only willingness.

The next afternoon, Nora arrived with her sketchbook clutched tightly.

She flipped through pages filled with crooked houses, oversized windows, lopsided cats. Gardens that leaned. Trees that twisted.

She hesitated.

Then she carefully removed one page—the very first crooked house—and pinned it to the corkboard.

Her fingers trembled.

She stepped back.

It was not the best drawing in the world. The lines were unsure. The proportions odd.

But it was hers.

A few minutes later, a small boy tugged at his father’s sleeve and pointed. “I like that one,” he said. “It looks cozy.”

Nora blinked.

“Thanks,” she managed.

The boy grinned. “The window’s my favorite part.”

Nora looked at the oversized window she had almost erased.

She felt something shift inside her—not loud, not explosive.

Just enough.

That evening, as rain finally cleared and sunlight poured through the bookstore window for the first time in days, Nora knelt beside Lafufu.

“I think,” she said softly, “I can keep going.”

Lafufu said nothing.

She did not need to.

Her emerald-and-burgundy dress caught the light, gold letters glinting softly: once, ever, beyond.

There would always be blank pages.

Always first lines that trembled.

Always Almosts waiting at the edge of beginning.

And wherever she was placed—on a stool beside a reading nook, on a desk, in the crook of an uncertain arm—Lafufu would be there.

Not to draw the lines.

Not to make them perfect.

But to remind the hands holding the pencil that starting was already something brave.