Fern Fairy invited Beetle to tea. She put two acorn cups on the table and baked a seed cake.
Beetle arrived carrying a flower.
He put one foot through the doorway. Then another. His shiny shell would not follow.
‘Your door is very small,’ he said.
Fern looked at her house inside the old stump. It had always seemed exactly the right size.
She tried moving the doormat. Beetle tried turning sideways. Neither helped.
Fern could make flowers sparkle, but she could not make a beetle smaller. She did not want to.
‘I’ll bring the tea outside,’ she said.
She laid a cloth on a flat root. Beetle placed his flower in a hollow filled with rainwater. Fern carried out the cups and the cake.
From there they could see the stream. A robin sang in the branches above them.
‘Your dining room has a very high ceiling,’ said Beetle.
‘And lots of doors,’ said Fern.
They divided the cake. Beetle told her about a smooth stone he had found by the water. Fern told him about the first bluebell opening behind her house.
When the cups were empty, Fern wrote Beetle a note for next week: Tea on the root, beside the flower.
Her little house stayed little. Their place for visiting had grown as wide as the forest.
