Lafufu had a small tear beneath her left arm.

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It wasn’t large—just a loose seam where the stitching had thinned with time. Most people wouldn’t notice it.

But Theo did.

Theo was ten, and he noticed things other people didn’t.

He noticed when his mother smiled with only half her face.
He noticed when the house was too quiet after a phone call.
He noticed when people said “I’m fine” but meant something else.

He also noticed the tear in Lafufu.

“You’re falling apart,” he whispered one afternoon, holding her up to the light that streamed through his bedroom window.

Lafufu, soft and amber-colored with tiny embroidered constellations scattered across her dress, stared back with her mismatched button eyes. Over her heart was stitched a small compass in silver thread—its needle always pointing slightly askew.

Theo pressed his thumb gently to the loose seam.

“I can fix you,” he said. “I just need time.”

Time, lately, had felt slippery in their house.

Boxes stood half-packed in the hallway. Important papers lay stacked on the kitchen counter. Grown-up conversations stopped when Theo entered the room.

Something was changing.

He just didn’t know what.

That night, he fell asleep with Lafufu tucked under his chin, as if holding her together might hold everything else together too.

At midnight, the compass on Lafufu’s chest began to glow.

She blinked awake to the sound of something unfamiliar.

Not wind.

Not floorboards.

Ticking.

But not from a clock.

She gently slipped from Theo’s arms and followed the sound. It pulsed through the air, faint but persistent, like a distant signal.

Tick.
Tick.
Tick.

It led her to Theo’s desk, where an old wooden box sat unopened. She had seen it before—he kept it in the back of his drawer, hidden beneath notebooks and folded papers.

The ticking was coming from inside it.

Lafufu climbed onto the desk and pressed her ear against the lid.

Tick.

She touched the silver compass on her chest.

The needle spun wildly, then snapped into place—pointing directly at the box.

“Ah,” she murmured. “Lost things.”

She lifted the lid.

Inside was a watch.

Old-fashioned. Silver. Slightly scratched. Its glass face reflected moonlight like a tiny frozen pond.

The ticking was louder now.

Beneath the watch was a folded photograph.

Lafufu carefully unfolded it.

Theo, younger, grinning wide. A taller figure beside him—broad shoulders, kind eyes, wind-tousled hair. They were standing by a lake, both holding fishing rods too large for Theo’s small hands.

The man’s arm was slung warmly around his son.

Lafufu understood.

The ticking wasn’t just time.

It was memory.

Earlier that week, Theo had overheard the words:

“Transfer.”
“Another city.”
“Next month.”

His father’s job required moving again.

New school.
New friends.
New streets to memorize.

Theo had nodded when they told him. Said, “Okay.” Like he always did.

But that night, when he thought no one could hear, he had taken the watch from his drawer and wound it tight.

As if tightening time might keep it from moving.

Now, as Lafufu stood beside the watch, the room began to shift.

The ticking grew louder.

The air shimmered.

And suddenly, she was no longer in the bedroom.

She stood in a vast field of tall grass under a sky painted with slow-moving clouds. In the distance, enormous clock towers rose from the earth, their faces tilted at odd angles. Some hands spun too fast. Others barely moved.

Between them wandered children, carrying pieces of clocks—gears, springs, broken hands.

In the center of the field stood Theo.

He was clutching the silver watch in both hands.

“I just want it to stay,” he was saying to no one in particular. “Just this part.”

Above him loomed a giant clock face, its hands creeping forward with steady indifference.

Lafufu approached quietly.

“You can’t hold time still,” she said gently.

Theo looked down at her, unsurprised.

“I know,” he said. “But every time we move, something disappears.”

The grass around him shifted into faint images—bedrooms left behind, playgrounds abandoned, friendships faded into distant texts and forgotten birthdays.

“I get smaller,” he continued. “Like parts of me don’t come with.”

Lafufu placed her soft hand over the silver compass on her chest. It glowed brighter, casting steady light against the rushing clock faces.

“Compasses don’t stop journeys,” she said. “They guide them.”

Theo’s grip tightened around the watch. “But what if I lose everything?”

“You haven’t,” she replied.

She stepped closer and gently tapped the watch.

The ticking softened.

Then changed.

Instead of sharp, urgent ticks, it became something warmer.

Tick—laughing by the lake.
Tick—learning to ride a bike.
Tick—late-night stories before bed.
Tick—inside jokes no move could erase.

“These aren’t left behind,” Lafufu said. “They travel with you.”

The enormous clock above them paused.

Just for a moment.

Theo looked up.

“What if I forget?” he whispered.

“You won’t,” she said. “Not the important parts.”

She reached up and touched the watch face.

The glass rippled like water.

Inside, instead of spinning gears, Theo saw moments—small, bright fragments of his life, each one glowing like a tiny star.

“Time doesn’t take things away,” Lafufu said softly. “It carries them forward.”

The clock towers around them began to settle. Their hands aligned. The frantic spinning slowed to a steady rhythm.

Theo’s shoulders loosened.

“So I’m not getting smaller?” he asked.

Lafufu smiled.

“You’re getting bigger.”

The field of grass brightened. The sky deepened to a rich blue. The giant clock above them dissolved into drifting light.

Theo slipped the watch into his pocket.

This time, not to stop it.

But to keep it.

When Lafufu awoke back in the bedroom, dawn was stretching pale fingers across the ceiling.

Theo stirred.

For a moment, he looked confused.

Then thoughtful.

He sat up and opened the wooden box.

The watch lay inside, quiet.

He picked it up and studied the scratched silver surface.

Instead of winding it tight, he gently turned the crown once—just enough.

Tick.

Steady.

He slipped it into his backpack.

Later that morning, when his parents sat him down again to talk about the move, Theo listened.

“I’ll miss this place,” he said honestly.

His mother squeezed his hand.

His father nodded.

“But I think,” Theo continued slowly, “I think the other places are still with me.”

The adults exchanged surprised glances.

“That’s… a good way to see it,” his father said.

Theo shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I just don’t think time erases stuff.”

That night, he carefully stitched Lafufu’s torn seam closed. His stitches were uneven, but determined.

“There,” he said softly. “Good as new.”

Lafufu knew that wasn’t quite true.

She wasn’t good as new.

She was better.

Mended things were stronger at the seam.

At midnight, when her compass glowed again, its needle no longer pointed wildly.

It settled into a calm, steady direction.

Forward.

Lafufu sat beside the sleeping boy and listened to the gentle ticking of the watch inside his backpack.

Not frantic.

Not desperate.

Just moving.

She understood something important now:

Time was not an enemy to fight.

It was a road to walk.

And no matter how many cities changed, how many bedrooms came and went, how many boxes were packed and unpacked—

Theo would not shrink.

He would gather.

Moments.
Places.
People.

All stitched into him like constellations across a growing sky.

And Lafufu, small and watchful and quietly magical, would be there at every turning—her silver compass shining softly—

Not to stop time.

But to remind him he was never lost within it.