Little Duck Finds Home

Delia was a small yellow duckling with a very curious beak.

One morning, while her family swam in a line along the quiet river — Mama first, then the older ducklings, then Delia at the back — Delia noticed something through a gap in the tall green reeds. A small mossy island she had never visited. It had shiny wet rocks and bright purple flowers growing right down to the water.

She paddled sideways, just for a moment, just to look—

—and then the reeds closed behind her, and she couldn't see her family any more.

Delia looked left. Reeds. She looked right. More reeds.

She listened. She couldn't hear their splashing.

She made a small sound. "Quack?"

Silence.

She took a breath through her little round nostrils. She could smell the mud, and the water, and the morning air—and something else. Something warm and clean and familiar. Mama's feathers.

She paddled toward the smell.

The reeds swished softly against her sides as she went. She paddled around a mossy stone and past a cluster of yellow flowers and through a narrow gap between two tall rushes standing like gateposts—

—and there was Mama.

Mama was swimming in slow, careful circles with her head turning left and right, the way she always did when she was looking for something. Which was very often Delia.

"There you are," said Mama, very calmly, in the way that meant she had not been calm at all until just now.

Delia swam into the warm space beneath Mama's wing and stayed there.

"I found my way back," said Delia, a little proud and a little relieved.

"I know," said Mama. She tucked her bill gently over Delia's head. "You always will."

They paddled back to the family together, the reeds parting softly around them, the morning sun warm and golden on the water.