The Needle
Two creatures shaped by different instincts, drawn together by warmth, by memory, and by the skill of making something from nothing.
There was, and there was not, a time when the Raven was flying low over the quiet outskirts of the Kingdom. Here, the air was softer. The land less sharp. Time didn’t march, it meandered.
That’s where she spotted the Rabbit.
Her old friend sat just outside her burrow, basking in a patch of golden sun, legs tucked beneath her and ears loose in the breeze. A soft cloth, frayed at the edges, stained with stories, was stretched across her lap. And in her paw: a needle, glinting like a silver thread of light.
The Raven spiraled down and landed nearby with a quiet flutter. The Rabbit looked up and smiled, eyes crinkling.
“Well now,” she said, “if it isn’t the one who never stays still long enough for tea.”
Raven chuckled. “I was due for a visit.”
They spoke for a while, of weather and moss growth, of who had left the Kingdom and who had returned, of the latest antics of foxes and fawns. The kind of soft conversation that grows best under sun-warmed stone.
But the Raven’s eyes kept drifting to the needle.
It caught the light just right, and something stirred behind her eyes, a flicker of memory, sharp and precise.
She was back on the tightrope again.
The Grey Squirrel, tail twitching with performance, had looked at her with narrowed eyes and declared:
“No more fruit for you. Birds eat worms and insects. Go find your own.”
She remembered the silence after that. How her hunger did not go away just because he turned his back. How she tried to obey, digging beneath bark, pecking at leaves, clawing through soil.
But her beak wasn’t made for that kind of foraging. Not the way others were. Not deep in the trees or under rocks where the richest protein hid.
So she had adapted.
She found a needle, discarded near a woodcutter’s path, thin, sharp. She taught herself how to thread twine through it, how to use it like an extension of her beak. She learned to lift bark without splintering it, to tease out grubs from dark places, to coax life from where it hid.
She became good at it. Quiet. Precise. But she had to keep it hidden.
She wrapped the needle in cloth and kept it under her wing. She only used it when no one was looking. It was a secret tool for survival. A quiet rebellion of ingenuity.
A beak may not be made for the ground, she had told herself then, but wings know how to find what others miss.
A voice tugged her back to the moment.
“Where did you go?” the Rabbit asked, her stitching paused mid-loop.
Raven blinked, then smiled. “I was thinking about a meal from long ago.”
The Rabbit nodded knowingly, folding the cloth into her lap.
“Well,” she said, “would you like to find lunch with me?”
The Raven stretched her wings, sun catching the edges.
“That is exactly what I want to do,” she said. “And I’ll tell you more about my travels along the way.”
And together they set off, two creatures shaped by very different instincts, but drawn together by warmth, by memory, and by the understanding that survival is never just instinct.
It’s also invention.
© 2025 Sarah Dooley. Story and images by the author. All rights reserved.
