The story
Mr Ratsy lives behind the tooth-arch, in a small warm place where everything is familiar — until one morning, he doesn’t.
With a bundle on a stick and a long pink tail, he steps out. The world is bigger than he expected. There are clouds shaped like cheese, friends who fly, and a moon who keeps secrets. Some are kind. Some are strange. Some are both at once.
It is a story about leaving, about wonder, and about the very small kinds of courage that make up a small life — the kind every child already knows, and every grown-up is trying to remember.
A few pages from inside
The door was old, and the door was new. Mr Ratsy did not know how it could be both, only that it was, and that on the other side, something was waiting.
“Are you a friend?” asked the moon, very gently. Mr Ratsy thought about it. He had never been asked that question before. “I think so,” he said. “I would like to try.”
When he looked back, the tooth-arch was very small — no bigger than a button. He waved at it anyway, in case it was watching.