This is an original story we wrote for anyone who loves a quiet, whimsical tale before bed — the kind of gentle, slightly magical woodland world that inspired so much of our own art.

The Night the Sky Went Dark

In a forest where the trees leaned in close to gossip and the mushrooms glowed faintly after rain, there lived a young fox named Bramble who could not, for the life of him, fall asleep without seeing the moon through his den’s little round window. One night, he opened his eyes to check on it, as he always did, and found the sky completely dark. No moon. No silver light on the leaves. Just a deep, unfamiliar black, dotted with stars that suddenly looked very alone.

Bramble scrambled out of his den in a panic and ran straight into Hazel, a hedgehog who was wide awake and trembling under a fern. “It’s gone,” she whispered. “I was counting on it to find my way home from the blackberry patch, and now I’m hopelessly lost, and everything smells like night and nothing else.”

Asking the Owl

Together, the two of them went to see Great Aunt Oswin, an owl so old that even the oldest oak in the forest called her “ma’am.” She lived in a hollow near the top of a birch tree and had, as far as anyone knew, never once been surprised by anything.

“The moon isn’t gone,” Oswin said, without even opening both eyes. “It’s been borrowed.”

“Borrowed by who?” Bramble asked.

“By the river, of course,” said Oswin. “Every hundred years or so, on the stillest, clearest night, the river asks to hold the moon for just a little while, so it can see its own reflection properly. The moon always says yes. It’s rather vain about how it looks in water.”

Down at the River

Sure enough, when Bramble and Hazel crept down to the river’s edge, there it was: the moon, glowing softly from beneath the surface of the water, rippling gently as the current moved around it, looking, if a moon can look like anything, extremely pleased with itself.

“It’s beautiful down there,” Hazel admitted, forgetting for a moment that she was lost and cross about it. “But I really would like it back up in the sky, please. I have a very specific route home and it depends entirely on shadows falling in the correct direction.”

Bramble, who had spent his whole life being midway between clever and reckless, cupped his paws together, dipped them into the cold water, and lifted a small handful up toward the sky, moonlight and all. “Borrow it a little less greedily next time,” he told the river, only half joking. To everyone’s surprise, the water gave one long, rippling sigh, and the moon slipped free, rising slowly back up through the trees until it settled, round and steady, exactly where it belonged.

Home by Moonlight

Hazel found her way home easily after that, her shadow falling exactly where she expected it to. Bramble curled back up in his den, checked that the moon was still visible through his little round window, and finally fell asleep. And somewhere down at the river, if you listen closely on very still, very clear nights, you can still hear the faint sound of water, quietly asking to borrow it again.

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Bramble, Hazel, and the rest of our woodland cast also show up as watercolor characters in our Etsy shop, NaturalEMNB.