Once upon a time, there lived a fox.

A fox? you might ask. What does a fox have to do with our home?

Listen quietly, and I’ll tell you.

Bee.

Once upon a time, there lived a fox. This fox was made for our world, in a way quite unlike you or me — she was created, painted into being complete with all she was ever intended to be. And she was given the name Leopold.

Now, as she grew, this fox found a voice. And she travelled the city, and she talked and she talked, and she found that all was not as it seemed. The world she knew was only paper-thin, thinner than a single one of these leaves we’re sitting on now! Nothing existed; no, nothing at all, not beyond the city she knew and the friends she already had made. And so, after she helped put a stop to the end of the world — yes, yes, settle down, settle down! — she set out to make this right.

She started with just one man, her father. A hunter he was, by the name of Maxwell. And she convinced a God to bring him into being, and she helped him become the real man she’d always believed him to be. It took a little time, and it took a little effort, of course — but tears dry, and pain fades, and grass grows green over the ghosts of pacing feet. Maxwell, in time, opened a bakery, and at the end of each and every day he and his daughter would sit together with a pair of steaming, fresh-baked rolls, one counting stories, the other counting change.

From that just-one-man beginning, Leopold found ambition. And she took to the papers and the pages and the archives, cataloguing the past in order to make it real. Have you ever seen a picture of the record of the very first Grand Festival of Tisagday, years and years and years ago? Yes? Well, that was her work. That and countless other treasures from the past, passed right on down until today — all of that was Leopold. Our fox had saved the future, you see — so now, she had to save the past.

And then, once that task was done, Leopold set about making her world ours. With a friend named for a tree — imagine, it might just be the very same kind I’m leaning on now! — and another, and another, she used her voice and talked. And they all talked to people about their stories, sharing them back and forth, and they mapped out between them the places they all described. And then, with just a little magic, a little divine power, Leopold raised their cities and towns and villages too, from the black nothingness outside. She and her friends raised them brick by brick by brick, until they stood as proud as the capital itself, proud and pretty as can be. Your houses, your schools, even this forest around us now — all of that was Leopold’s work, years and years and years ago. Isn’t that amazing? Wouldn’t you agree?

— a story, told by a proud father about a daughter and passed on, through the generations, down and down and down.

It is late afternoon when it is finished. Deep sunlight tangles in the shadows of drying paint, and flickers gently on water-clear glass. The main display is empty, for now, but she knows that’ll change very quickly. He always was much faster than her at rolling everything out. More fingers, more dexterity.

“Hey, Leo,” he says, and Leopold about jumps out of her skin. Quiet, too - even when he’s still not used to city cobbles beneath his feet, rather than the soft earth and crackling twigs of the forest. Hunters. Honestly.

Regardless, she turns, and she can’t help the smile that comes when she sees her father, as big and bearded and there as if he never left.

“Hiya, Dad,” she replies, and the afternoon light sets his grey streaks ablaze. “Hardly fair of you to be sneakin’ up on me, eh? Not when I’ve just finished with the shopfront! Or mostly finished, anyway. Name still needs to be decided on, an’ while I have a fair few suggestions, if it’s goin’ to be your place, then… you get to name it, right? Anyway! Most of the shop’s done, an’ I’ve been workin’ since the crack of dawn, an-’”

“Woah, easy! Just take a second an’ slow down, would ye?” he chuckles. “Still got plenty o’ time left in the day for chatter. I can see the work you’ve been doin’, Leo. ‘S beautiful. I’m grateful.”

Leopold beams, and turns back to the shop as her dad puts his hand on her shoulder.

It is a respectable size. Not big enough to daunt, but hardly small enough to be unnoticeable. Even if it was on the smaller side, the hearty slap of bright blue paint, covering the door, walls, and (oh dear) a portion of the front window render it impossible to look away from. Above the door hangs a wooden sign, creaking gently in an imperceptible breeze. On it is painted a round, steaming pie. Pride warms Leopold’s chest; painting that had taken her several hours.

Still, she thinks as her father ruffles the fur atop her head, it’s not the best thing I’ve ever painted.

“My own bakery,” Maxwell breathes at last. He runs a hand through his shoulder-length hair, and stares at it for a while, in silence. Leopold’s ear twitches.

“D’you like it?” she asks, kicking the cobbles. “If you don’t, you just have to say an’ I’ll-”

“Leopold,” says her father, turning to her with his eyes shining, bright and sharp and impossibly, overwhelmingly warm, “I couldn’t be happier.”

Leopold agrees.

— Written by Molly