The Line at the Slide

At Meadow Park, there was one slide, and every single animal wanted to go down it first. Every single animal, that is, except Fennel the Fox — he didn't want to go first. He wanted to go *every* time.

"My turn!" Fennel called, darting past three friends already lined up on the ladder. He zipped down the slide, landed with a thud, and scrambled straight back up to do it again — and again — while the line behind him grew longer and grumpier.

At the very back of the line stood Tobias the Tortoise, who had been waiting so patiently that moss had almost started growing on his shell. He didn't push. He didn't complain. He simply watched the sky turn from blue to gold and waited his turn.

Eventually, Fennel noticed. "Why aren't you upset?" he asked, out of breath from his tenth trip down the slide. "You've been waiting forever."

Tobias smiled the slow, easy smile of someone who wasn't in any hurry at all. "I know my turn is coming. Waiting doesn't feel so long when you're not worried about missing out."

Fennel sat down on the grass, suddenly a little tired from all that darting about. "Doesn't it feel bad, though? Watching everyone else go first?"

"Sometimes," Tobias admitted. "But then I remember — the slide will still be there when it's my turn. It always is."

Fennel thought about that for a long moment. Then he did something that surprised even himself: he walked all the way to the back of the line, right behind Tobias, and waited.

It felt strange at first, standing still while others whizzed past. But slowly, the waiting turned into something else — Fennel and Tobias got to talking, about clouds shaped like sailboats and the best kind of berries, and before Fennel knew it, it was his turn again.

He went down the slide once — just once — and it felt better than all ten times before, because this time, everyone got a turn, and everyone was smiling, including him.

That night, tucked into bed, Fennel realised something soft and true: good things don't feel smaller when you share them. They just take a little patience to arrive.