The Squirrel with the Umbrella Full of Secrets

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On rainy days, you sometimes see it – quietly among the trees, little more than a reddish shadow. It's the little squirrel with the old-fashioned umbrella. But this umbrella is no ordinary one. It's not directed against the rain, but open to what no one sees: fleeting words, forgotten melodies, quiet thoughts that threaten to be lost in the wind.
As the rain drums on the canopy, the squirrel stands where the air shimmers slightly. It holds the umbrella at an angle against the wind – to where a thought has strayed, where an argument echoes in the tree bark, or where an unfinished story hovers between two branches. The umbrella catches them like cobwebs of sound – gentle, silent, careful.
Sometimes it's just a verse a badger has muttered. Sometimes a promise carried by the rain. And sometimes—very rarely—it's a secret, as old as the moss on the stones. The umbrella remembers everything without asking.
When evening comes and the forest smells of earth and foreboding, the squirrel seeks a dry spot under a tree with old roots. There, it carefully closes the umbrella, as if it had caught a butterfly inside. With both paws, it lifts it and carries it home, over branches, through leaves, to its hiding place in a gnarled beech tree.
There lies a book—old, heavy, and almost breathing. The cover smells of rain and time, and the pages are empty as fog. The squirrel places the umbrella inside, very gently, and as soon as the fabric touches the paper, a soft humming begins. The drops, which are not drops but memories, trickle from the umbrella and seep into the pages.
They don't appear as writing. If you want to find them, you have to listen. A song is hidden between two paragraphs. An argument murmurs quietly from page forty-two. And a childhood dream, as delicate as the beat of a wing, flies open when you close the book.
They say the book never forgets – but it only tells its story to those who are quiet enough to listen. And the squirrel? It hears a little more every night. So it carries its umbrella on through the rain, through the years, through the whispers of the world.
And page by page, the book fills up – with everything that was almost lost.