Lop-eared rabbit with dandelions on upper arm

She lived under the railway arches, a lop-eared thing the colour of wet ash, and she only came out once the last tram had clanked into its shed. She'd cross the empty square by the dry fountain, nibbling clover between the paving slabs, then slip into the bomb-site where the poppies grew taller than the fence. Every seed head she brushed against stuck in her fur, and when she shook herself under the streetlamps, a little cloud of them went up like a sneeze of wishes. Nobody saw the wishes come down. That was the trouble with her.

Old Alfie Dunn was the night watchman at the tannery gate, and he'd spent forty years counting locks and never once seeing a thing move that wasn't a cat. He set a lettuce leaf on his step and waited with his lamp. The rabbit came, ate the leaf, and then did the thing rabbits do when they've decided you're worth knowing. She led him the whole length of the city, stopping at every corner where a seed head had caught on a railing, until he understood the pattern. Every puff had landed where someone was wanting something badly.

He came home at dawn with his boots soaked from the river and found clover pushing up through the gap under his own front step. He left the gate unlocked that morning, and nobody at the tannery ever asked him why. So if you hear a soft thump under the arches tonight, don't go chasing it. Just leave a lettuce leaf on the step and see what comes of it.