[Comfort] The Noise and the Bear

Sometimes the world didn’t wait for you to be ready. It just kicked the door open, threw the sunlight in your face, and expected you to run with it.

That was how the morning felt to Finn.

From the moment he’d stepped outside, Patalum was alive. Lelokos with tails in bloom drifted into the village square, shaking pollen from flowers like soft confetti. Bowroo shepherds steered their wooly charges through gaps between market stalls. The air smelled like a thousand things at once. Pumpkin soup, fried dough, the sharp green bite of fresh-cut herbs.

It was the day before the Castle Lothain supply wagons arrived, which meant everyone was scrambling to fill orders. And, apparently, every single one of those people was standing between Finn and the path to his band’s practice barn.

He ducked under a rack of drying corn and got snagged in someone’s laundry line. “Hey, watch the hair!” he snapped, tugging his hair free. It was still blue from last week’s dye session, and he was not about to have it streaked by someone’s wet sock.

By the time he reached the barn, his head was buzzing. Practice didn’t help. Three songs in, every beat he pounded out on the snare just bounced back off the tin roof, doubling the noise inside his head.

“I’m out. I can’t do this today,” he muttered, standing so fast his stool clattered.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mallow asked.

“Everything,” Finn shot back, and left.

Fleur’s flower shop was the opposite of the barn. Quiet. Cool. Rows of blooms in soft colors, hanging herbs swaying gently when the door shut. Fleur stood behind the counter, arranging a spray of ranunculus in a way that made it look effortless.

“You’re early,” they said without looking up.

“Band was too loud.”

“That’s the point of a band.”

“Not that loud.” He shoved his paws into his vest pockets. “I’m… I don’t know. I just need…” He stopped, realizing what he was about to say and hating how small it sounded.

Fleur looked up. “Go on.”

“Space,” he finished.

They nodded toward the back room. “Stay as long as you need.”

The back room was where Fleur pressed flowers into cloth, the colors and shapes leaving ghost-prints in the weave. Finn sat on a stool, staring at the half-finished garland on the worktable. The air smelled faintly of lavender and something like dust warmed by sunlight.

He thought about staying here until the Faire was over. But decided against it.

So he went home.

Upstairs, his room was the opposite of Fleur’s shop. Posters plastered the walls, ‘zine scraps littered the desk and a cracked bass amp sat in the corner.

He shut the door, snapped the latch.

Drawer. Bear.

It was soft in the way only long-loved things could be. Fur worn to a thin fuzz, one leg stitched on at a slightly wrong angle, belly crisscrossed with mismatched thread. Fleur had given it to him when he was still small enough to curl up entirely under their arm.

“For when everything is too much,” they’d said back then. “It won’t fix it. But it’ll help you.”

He held it now, the stitched smile crooked against his chest. His head eventually stopped feeling like frenetically buzzing bees.

Later, after the soup stalls had shut down and the square had quieted, Finn went back downstairs to the shop. Fleur was at the counter, jotting something down in their order book.

“I drew something,” he said, sliding the paper across to their older sibling.

It was a baby mantibab. Orange like him, mane sticking out in all directions, hugging a teddy bear twice its size. Around it, the flower shop was drawn in miniature: tiny flowers, tiny herbs, a miniature version of Fleur themselves.

Fleur studied it, then looked at him. “You were having a bad day.”

“Still kinda am.”

They tapped the bear in the drawing. “But you remembered what helps.”

“Yeah,” Finn said, tucking the paper back into his vest. “Sometimes that’s enough.”

The next morning, the Faire would start, and Patalum would be loud again. But for now, in the soft light of the shop, it didn't feel overwhelming.