✅ The Baby Makers

40. Nothing But Flowers

This chapter is dedicated to Clinton, with thanks for the support you've given me on Patreon. I hope you enjoy it :)

Stacie turned her head to see if Phil was still watching, and then she saw some flowers in among the grass. They were pretty, little things with all different colours. Then she remembered that Cass might be coming back soon, and she was trying to get a present. She quickly decided that some flowers would be perfect, if she could just pick the prettiest little bunch.

She rolled over onto her front and managed to clamber up a bit, but she didn't try to stand. She knew she was big enough to walk on her own today, but if she was looking for flowers it would be easier to crawl. So she kept on moving on her hands and knees, picking the most interesting flowers she saw and putting them into her pocket. Some of them didn't go in, they just kind of crumpled up and blew away, but that was fine. There were plenty more flowers.

"How are you doing?" Phil asked. "Does somebody need a diaper change?" Stacie considered that for a moment before shaking her head. She probably did, but she could wait a bit. And she didn't want to miss Cassie if she came outside again.

"I'm hunting flowers!" she said, and pulled a handful out of her pocket for him to see. But they were all crumpled up and a lot of the coloured bits came off when she closed her hand around them. So she dropped those ones and went on looking for more.

After a while Stacie looked up, thinking that she probably had enough flowers now. She wasn't in the long grass anymore, but in a big field. The woods were over to one side, and she could see more woods on the other side of a little shed, and the house stretched all around them. It was amazing how big it looked when she was so little. She sat down on the grass, and wondered how she should make the flowers more pretty so they were like a present. Every time she moved she could feel the mess squishing around in her diaper, and it felt a little bit icky. But she could avoid that by not thinking about it, so she pulled out all her flowers to look at them instead.

They didn't look like flowers anymore. She had a handful of little green bits that left green smudges in her hands, and little bits of screwed up white and yellow and pink. That wasn't good. She thought that maybe pockets weren't good for flowers, and that made her think again about giving them as a present. Maybe there was a better idea? But then genius struck. She reached out for some of the flowers on the ground around her. If she could make them into something, then it would all be good.

"Still having fun?" Phil asked. Stacie had been so focused on making a good present that she didn't even notice he was still there, walking around with her. She turned and showed him a handful of pretty flowers, but they already didn't look so pretty.

"Ohh, did your flowers all get crushed?" he knelt down beside her. "Do you want some help? There's a special way to pick up flowers without hurting them. I can teach you if you want."

"Yeah!" she cheered. That sounded amazing, like a skill she could be really proud of. It was so good that Phil was there to help her; he knew everything in the world ever, even ancient mysteries like this. She wondered if he knew how to walk on fire like some foreign monkeys and llamas, too. Her smile faded for a second. She thought she could remember hearing about people who could do that, but it didn't quite sound right. She shrugged; monkeys and llamas walking across fire in the middle of the desert sounded super cool. Besides, if it was in Australia anything could happen. Maybe they had a different kind of monkey there.

"Look," Phil told her. He pointed at a little flower in the grass, one of the ones that was like a pink buttercup. She watched as he showed her what to do. "You can't touch the flower hard, because it breaks. But if you touch the stem, the green bit, that's okay. So you reach down like this and hold it below the flower. You can pinch it off like this to get it out of the ground, or you can just hold the stem and pull. As long as you're not squeezing the flower part, it won't fall apart for a while."

Stacie thought again. That still sounded pretty complicated, and she didn't know if she could remember it all. But she tried. The first time she grabbed at the flowers and squashed them again. But Phil was so kind, and his words made her feel better. So she kept on trying, and she managed to pull up some flowers without breaking them. It was like magic, that she didn't even know was possible before. Then she thought about what she could do with them so that they didn't get squashed as soon as she gave them to Cass. She looked around, and she saw that there were some other little babies running around on the grass. And some of them had bracelets and necklaces made out of flowers. That was perfect! She could do that, and she was sure she had never heard of a bracelet getting broken in somebody's pocket.

She stared extra hard at the flowers in her hand, and tried to work out how she could make jewellery out of it. She thought she could work out, and it was going to be really fun to try. So she picked up two yellow flowers, and tried to tie them together. The first time, she broke one of them. The second time she dropped them. But Stacie was making a present for her friend, so she would keep on trying as many times as it took.