Sylveon with drifting petals

You will think I have finally lost my wits in the cold, but I must set this down before the feast of Saint Brendan so that someone other than the swallows knows of it. On the third morning of the thaw I found a creature sitting on the stone lip of the herb beds, neat as a cat, its long pink ribbons looped about its forelegs like the trailing sashes on a feast-day chasuble. It had two great blue eyes and a look of mild reproach, as though we had kept it waiting for Prime.

Brother Cuthbert wanted to fetch the hoe. I told him to leave it be. Each time the wind came off the moor, the creature shook its head and a flurry of petals came loose from it, pale pink and soft at the edges, drifting down the rows past the sage and the rue and out through the gap in the wall where the cart road runs. Where they settled, the frost did not bite. I counted forty-one, then stopped, because it seemed a poor use of a contemplative hour.

It stayed until the bell for Vespers, then rose and went after its petals, tail curling behind it like a length of silk. This morning there was one petal pressed flat at the page of the Canticle of the Creatures in my breviary, and I have left it there. I hope you will forgive my gardening and my idleness, and believe that I am, as ever, your obedient son in Christ,

Brother Anselm