#tinyoji

Muddy boot prints track across the doormat, messing up the clean floor inside. Kiri huffs in annoyance. It makes no sense! The breeze outside is pleasant, neither too hot nor too cold. Where could the prints have come from? Some creatures are so rude! Everyone in Tinyoji knows her little hollow is open to anyone, but someone could have at least cleaned their mess before they left. All over her freshly washed mat and floor! Right there where any critter can see! The prints look familiar enough that Kiri has a good idea of who it was. As soon as she cleans this mess, she’s going to storm next door and give that toad a piece of her mind. She glares at a print as she gets her mop, then takes a closer look and begins to giggle. Of course she knows whose print it is- hers! She was so tired from flying in yesterday’s heavy rain that she went straight to bed. She shakes her head at herself. She’ll have to get a gift for Mrs. Wartzan later.

All my friends say I'm a very cheerful and positive creature (even though I do get angry sometimes 😖). I think I can be a little clumsy. I've bumped into THREE blades of grass this month! Almost lost everything in my favorite messenger bag!

Oh speaking of that I LOVE carrying messages between friends! That's how many of us met!

Upon waking and preparing myself a pot tea with breakfast, I noticed that I had left muddy footprints from the night before on my front door mat and throughout my livingroom. Irritated, I quickly grabbed a mop and cleaned up the mess, hoping to recapture some of the sanctity of my morning.

Only just as had gone back to my breakfast and my warm thistledown tea, I made the mistake of opening my front door to breath in the fresh Spring air of the village. A rush of mud from the thaw splashed across my feet and into my newly mopped livingroom floor!

This was going to take hours to clean up!

And it did, but as I was mopping away the mud, my feathery chest became full with song, and I began to whistle first, then warble, then sing.

Singing is something I do without conscious thought, but by instinct. I never know when I will begin singing or when it comes to an end. I find myself united completely with Nature through my birdsong, praising my glorious Creator. So, I sang and mopped, sang and mopped. It was a hymn to the morning. The opening of the flower buds was in it. The wind that smells of jasmine, roses, and damp earth was in it. The last of the Winter thaw, the crackle of melting ice and the rush of water, was in it.

Soon my livingroom and doorstep was clean again, but long into the day and far into the cool night my song was with me.