Luna had promised to bring the rainbow cake. She had baked it herself — seven layers, one for each colour, stacked carefully in her saddlebag. The mossy path was soft under her hooves, and the air smelled of warm sugar and pine.
But halfway through the forest, Luna stopped.
She looked into her saddlebag. The cake was wrong. The morning dew had crept in through the buckle and slid the layers sideways, and now violet sat where red should be, and orange was squashed somewhere near the bottom. The rainbow was completely out of order.
*One thing at a time,* Luna thought. *One thing at a time.*
She could see the clearing ahead through the trees — the big red mushroom table, the teacups already set out, steam rising in thin curls. Dru the blue dragon was polishing a spoon with the tip of his wing. Fenn the fairy was arranging napkins very seriously. They were waiting.
Luna turned around, back into the quiet trees. The light shifted through the leaves above her — green, then gold, then a deep watery blue as a cloud moved across the sun. She walked slowly. She was thinking.
Then she nearly stepped on a snail.
He was very small. He was carrying a single violet flower, which was three times bigger than his shell. He had been walking, it seemed, for quite some time. His name, he told her, was Bo.
*One thing at a time,* Luna thought again.
"Are you going to the party?" she asked. Bo said he was trying. He had been trying since breakfast. He kept getting turned around at the big root. Luna looked at the big root. She could see how that would happen.
But Bo, it turned out, knew this forest better than anyone. He knew where every colour lived. The blue light pooled under the fern canopy near the stream. The deep red came from the mushroom caps on the north side of the oak. The yellow was clover, soft and low, just past the mossy stone.
*One petal from each place,* Luna said. *That's all we need.*
They went together — Luna stepping slowly, Bo riding in her mane where it was warmest. At the ferns, she breathed in the cold, green smell of the stream. At the oak, she pressed one fingertip to a mushroom cap, which was rougher than she expected, almost like bark. At the clover, a bee lifted away with a small buzzing sound, as if giving permission.
One petal from each place, pressed gently between the cake layers. Violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. The right order. The rainbow, restored.
Luna looked at the cake. It didn't look quite like before. It was a little uneven. A petal stuck out at the side. But it smelled like ferns and clover and the cool shadow under the oak, and somehow that was good.
She carried it carefully to the clearing, Bo still riding in her mane, his violet flower held upright like a flag.
Dru looked up. Fenn stopped arranging napkins. Nobody said anything about the petal sticking out.
Dru poured the tea. Fenn passed the cups. Bo set his violet flower in the middle of the table, where it stood up very straight.
The cake glowed quietly in the afternoon light — not bright, just soft, the way a colour looks when you find it in exactly the right place.
They sat very still for a moment. Teacups warm. Steam rising. The tiny lights in the trees humming their low, slow hum.
*One thing at a time,* the forest seemed to say. *And now all the things are done.*
