Paddle after it at once

In the sunny hollows of the Hobbit country, a cat with a polka-dot scarf, a bird who recited numbers, and a tiny fiary with mismatched wings met by a stream that giggled when stones skipped. The Hobbits waved from their round doors, and the trio bowed because manners are the best sort of magic in a land of small folk. The bird had learned to count to twenty in exchange for breadcrumbs, the cat could find lost socks by smell, and the fiary practiced spelling new words so dust bunnies turned into letters. Today they faced a puzzle: the stream's song had gone flat, and without its tune, the garden clocks would forget how to tell time. The cat twitched an ear, the bird fluffed its feathers, and the fiary tapped a wing against her forehead until an idea popped like a bubble. Instead of following a map or insisting on rules, they decided to invent ways to fix the melody by mixing counting, rhyme, and color into a recipe for sound. They scattered pebbles painted with numbers, sang silly rhymes about moonbeam muffins, and sprinkled rainbow dust that smelled faintly of lemon and library books. As each strange ingredient joined the stream, tiny notes bubbled up—first a squeaky C, then a warm G, and finally a laugh that sounded like a bell and a kitten at once. The Hobbits sat on their porches, astonished, and the clocks hiccupped back into proper ticking as the stream learned a new song made of playful rules. The trio grinned, knowing they'd taught everyone that sometimes making a problem into an experiment is its own sort of wisdom.

The trio set off after the stream's new melody, letting its playful cadence tug at their paws, feathers, and the fiary's tiny wing as it curled through hedges and over moss. As they followed, the painted pebbles hummed underpaw and underclaw, rhymes they'd whispered turned into stepping-stones, and the numbers the bird counted glowed like lanterns guiding their way. The Hobbits padded behind with saucers and spoons, catching polite chimes that drifted up as little time-bubbles which popped into punctual memories, making grandfather clocks straighten and cough politely. At the willow's bend the water sighed a satisfied note and the bank unpeeled to reveal a warm hollow full of curled, forgotten songs blinking awake and leaning forward for new verses from the cat, the bird, and the fiary.

The trio settled into a ring and began teaching the sleepy tunes new lines: the bird hummed counting cadences, the cat threaded sock-smells into hooks of rhyme, and the fiary traced letters in the air until each note had a bright, sensible shape. As each forgotten song practiced a new chorus, they learned to fold in the stream's giggle, borrow the Hobbits' polite spoon-clinks, and remember a hint of lemon-and-library so they would not wander off again. A few timid melodies hid behind moss and pebbles, but most burst into chorus, stitching the hollow's light into a warm, ticking blanket that made the willow straighten and hum along. When the final verse sat snug as a scarf around the water, the Hobbits cheered softly, the clocks found their hands pointing toward proper adventures, and the trio savored the pleasant, knowing thrill of a problem turned into a good story.

They coaxed the shy lullabies into clear jars, persuading each note to curl itself small and snug like a nap folded into glass. The fiary hummed soft openings to calm the restive verses, the bird counted tucked breaths to ensure no melody scrambled free, and the cat pressed tiny socks-smelling corks in place so the tunes would travel politely. Later, Hobbits carried the glowing bottles to porches at dusk, and clocks sipped the conserved tunes like warm tea while dream-moths drifted out to stitch gentle pictures into sleepers' heads; one bottle hiccupped a polite giggle and spilled a scattering of nap-stars across a child's pillow. With the hollow humming softly and the jars lined like little night-lamps along the bank, the willow leaned down and asked for a song of its own, which made the trio smile and consider their next clever choice.

They agreed to place a glowing bottle at every round door, balancing them in saucers so each household could borrow a sip of song before bed. As the Hobbits woke and shuffled their slippers, each porch lamp found a friend in a bottled lullaby, and clocks leaned to sip, restoring sleepy memories and knitting ordinary evenings into small, shared stories. Mischief arrived gently—one curious puppy nosed a bottle off a stoop and the freed tune spiraled up, turning lamplight into twirling dances of dust that had the children giggling and the willow humming a new, brave cadence. Satisfied, the trio watched the village fold its new melodies into nightly routines, and the fiary tucked an extra cork into her pocket because she suspected more songs might need safekeeping tomorrow.

The fiary produced the extra cork she'd tucked away and the trio busied themselves filling a tiny satchel with spare bottled lullabies meant for anyone who might need a song on the road. They fastened the satchel to the village signpost and stitched a little flag so wanderers would know the hollow left music for weary feet. That afternoon a rain-speckled peddler paused, found the satchel, uncorked a lullaby and immediately remembered his grandmother's sea-shanty, smiling as the melody mended a blistered heel and steadied his compass. He tucked a bottle into his bundle, hummed the hollow's new cadence down the lane, and by night the willow's tune had already begun to borrow a hint of salt and far-off skylines.

They decided the satchel shouldn't only help Hobbits, so when the dusty caravan crested the lane the trio hurried out to greet it, balancing a row of bottled lullabies on the cat's back and the fiary's palm. The caravan's camels blinked at the bottled light, the peddlers sniffed and smiled as a single sip settled a weary camel's foot and a trader tucked a lullaby into a satchel in exchange for a string of sticky saffron and a sun-worn tale. Word of the hollow's gentle trade spread along the caravan's path: lullabies that smelled faintly of lemon and library books mended grudges between brothers, stopped quarrelling oxen mid-bridge, and taught a distant market to whistle the willow's tune when dusk came. When the caravan left, trailing a new cadence tied to spice and sea-breeze, the trio watched their little songs sail like bright balloons across the hills and felt the thrilling certainty that the hollow's music would wander far before it came home again.

They cleared a patch of corkboard beneath the signpost and began tracing the songs' journeys with colored threads and pins, each hue borrowed from the bottle's scent—lemon for the hollow, saffron for the caravan, salt-blue for the sea. As the threads sprawled and looped, the trio noticed a thick knot where several routes crossed near a fold of moorland, and when the fiary tapped it the air hummed with a curious hybrid tune that sounded like a lullaby arguing with a sea-shanty. Hobbits and traders hurried over to add their own pins and stories, pressing tiny scraps of song-snippets to the board until the map buzzed softly under hand and paw. Seeing where melodies met and changed gave them a plan: they would visit that braided spot to learn whether the new, blended music needed bottling, coaxing, or simply a friendly ear.

They packed the satchel with an extra cork and a spare lullaby, slipped the map beneath the cat's chin, and walked the patchwork lanes toward the moorland hummock where the colored threads tangled into a buzzing crown. As soon as they climbed the rise the braided music swelled, tasting of lemon and salt and saffron, and the air seemed to weave tiny, stepping-stone notes beneath their feet. When the fiary reached out, the crossing tugged together and shaped itself into a small knot-creature—part songbird, part rolling tide, with metronome eyes—that blinked politely and asked, without moving its lips, for a trade. The trio offered a counted rhyme, a bottled lullaby, and a compliment folded like a sock, and the knot-creature gently loosened the braid, unspooling two clear new routes on the map and slipping a fresh salt-sweet tune into their satchel for the hollow to learn.

They followed the salt-scented thread that led downhill toward brackish air and the crooning cry of gulls, the bird skittering ahead with numbers glittering like fish scales. At the edge of the moor the path unspooled into pebble and seaweed, where a weathered pier reached like an old finger and tide-singers—small, shell-clad people whose songs tuned the surf—leaned forward to listen. The knot-creature’s gift chimed against the satchel and the fiary uncorked the new salt-sweet tune, letting it mingle with the tide-singers' bass until the water replied with a pattern of stepping notes that made barnacles blink and the pier sigh. Encouraged, the trio traded a bottled lullaby for a hand-drawn map of hidden currents and a promise that any bottled song set afloat here would find a path of blue back home.

They uncorked the salt-sweet tune and, after a polite curtsy to the tide-singers, set a bottle adrift so the melody could learn the sea's secret highways. It rocked from the pier on a froth-ribbon, barnacles clicking like eager teeth while the tide-singers hummed a channel of notes that wrapped the glass in blue thread and murmured directions to the current. Gulls trailed its wake and a scraping, friendly crab tapped its shell to the rhythm until the bottle slipped between two laughing waves and vanished toward horizons the satchel's map had never known. The trio stayed on the boards with the hollow's lullabies humming through their bones, tucking the map beneath the cat's chin and pinning a new thread for wherever the sea would teach the bottle to sing.

They tumbled into a wobbling skiff without a pause, the bird steady as a compass, the cat bracing the oars with solemn, sock-finding grace, and the fiary hovering to keep the satchel from tipping as waves hurried them along. Tide-singers leaned out with guiding hums and gulls sketched white arrows across the sky until the bottle threaded into a sheltered inlet beneath the old lighthouse's watchful beam. There a kindly keeper—who smiled like someone who had once mended a peddler's path with a song—lifted the glass, listened, and taught the hollow's lullaby the lighthouse's slow, steady pitch so it could tend sailors' wakeful nights as well as Hobbits' beds. With a cork snugly reset and a new blue thread pinned to their map, the trio rowed back beneath a sea-sown moon, certain the bottle would travel bright and return with more stories stitched into its glass.