The Spark & the Sap
A Wondermere Love Story (Sort Of)
Welcome to Wondermere, dear soul.
You’ve just stepped into a tender corner of The Garden… a living story-world where joy is sacred, play is healing, and becoming yourSelf is the most wondrous journey of all.
This is where your Divine Inner Child is never too much.
Where magic is ordinary.
Where slow, soulful creativity is a portal back to wholeness.
Whether you're curled up in the Storykeeper’s Loft, wandering the mossy paths of Hearthglow Hollow, or simply pausing here to breathe… know this:
✨ You are always welcome in Wondermere.
And you belong just as you are.
If what you read here lights a spark in your heart, I warmly invite you to support this magical realm by becoming a paid subscriber.
✨ Paid members receive:
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Printable playbooks + coloring pages
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And access to The Storykeeper’s Loft
But truly? Whether you choose to subscribe or simply wander with us for a while…
Your presence is felt.
Your magic is real.
And this space is for you.
The Glimmer and the Groan
It began — as most sacred silliness in Wondermere does — on a Tuesday, which, as everyone knows, is when the veils are thinnest and the tea biscuits the crumbliest.
Pippa Thistlewick, Sprite of the Spark Beneath, was flitting through the lower edges of the Whispering Grove, searching for two very important things:
Her misplaced boot (fuzzy on the inside, sparkly on the outside, emotionally attached),
And a patch of moonberries for a giggle tonic she’d promised Nyxi.
What she found instead was an echo through the trees that made the birds groan and the fungi wilt.
“Why did the gnome get kicked out of the mushroom party?”
“…Because he was a real spore sport!”
CLONK. CLONK. went a pair of wooden clogs against cobblestone.
Giggle-snort, went the trees.
Pippa hovered midair, one eye twitching.
The nerve of someone disrupting her gathering with jokes that bad.
And yet...
Something inside her fluttered.
Not her wings. Something deeper. That part of her that got tickled by nonsense and healed by surprise.
She peeked over a mossy log… and there he was:
A squat little gnome with a belly like a biscuit tin, suspenders stitched with mugs and mushrooms, and a beard that seemed to house a small village of cookie crumbs.
Dave.
The Dave.
Jester of Joy. Keeper of Terrible Truth-Telling Jokes.
Unapologetically himself and entirely unaware of the glitter bomb that was about to enter his life.
The Collision (and the Crumbs)
“HEY!” she called, hands on hips.
Dave froze mid-riddle, his flower boutonniere letting out a small honk in alarm.
“Y’can’t just throw fungal puns into the woods without warning,” she scolded. “There are impressionable spores out here.”
He squinted at her. “You’re the glitter blur that tied bells to my laundry line last solstice.”
She crossed her arms. “And you’re the one who called laughter ‘optional’ during the Great Giggle Shortage.”
“That was satire,” he said, indignantly. “Context matters.”
“I was the context!” she shrieked, wings fluttering like outrage in iridescent form.
They stared.
A leaf drifted between them.
And then — as often happens in Wondermere — the tension popped like a bubble in a sunbeam.
Dave burst out laughing.
Pippa snorted, tried to hold it back… and then belly-laughed so hard she fell backward into a pile of moss.
“You’re ridiculous,” she wheezed.
“Takes one to sparkle,” he replied, grinning.
The Sap
They didn’t mean to meet again.
But meet they did.
Over plum tarts. At the Companion Match Market. During the midsummer Goose Chase. And once while Pippa accidentally crash-landed through his thatched roof trying to catch a sky-dancing beetle.
She kept pretending he annoyed her.
He kept pretending she wasn’t the best part of his day.
He groaned at her puns. She glittered his boots.
He left her secret scrolls of “comedy critique.”
She stuck googly eyes on everything in his garden.
He made her a mossy throne from an old mushroom barrel.
She cried. Just a little.
He panicked and handed her a cookie.
She laughed so hard she choked on it.
They were ridiculous.
They were rooted.
The Spark
Late one evening, long after the dew had settled and most of Wondermere had curled up for the night, Pippa floated beside Dave on a stump that had grown two perfectly-sized nooks for them.
“I don’t get it,” she whispered. “You’re not sparkly. Or spritey. Or especially profound.”
“Nope,” he said, popping a biscuit in his mouth.
“And you smell like jam and bark, and your jokes are objectively terrible.”
“Correct again.”
She looked at him. He looked at her. His beard was full of thistle crumbs.
And she smiled. Wide. Honest. Unfiltered.
“...But you’re home,” she said softly.
He didn’t respond with a joke this time. Just reached into his vest and handed her a lumpy little box wrapped in bark paper.
Inside was a crown.
Made of moss. Woven with ribbon scraps. Adorned with mismatched buttons and a single, perfect thistle.
“It’s for your sparkle,” he said. “Because I don’t always have words. But I see it.”
Pippa blinked, heart fluttering like the first laugh after a long ache.
“You’re not so bad, Dave.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s the clogs. Chicks dig clogs. They’re coool…”
Not Quite Ever After
They still don’t call it love.
They don’t need to.
She leaves chalk hearts in his coat pocket.
He pretends not to see them.
He tells riddles that only she laughs at.
She throws glitter in his beard and calls it “emotional highlight.”
And somewhere, in a glade that doesn’t quite exist on any map, a sprite and a gnome sit together on a shared stump, giggling into the starlight.
And the moss remembers.
And the sap smiles.
And the spark?
The spark was never lost.
It just needed a place to land.
© 2025 Wondermere™ by Dawna Kreis
All content is lovingly crafted and protected. Please don’t copy, reproduce, or share outside the Garden Playhouse without permission.
Select illustrations co-created with the help of AI, guided by Dawna’s original character designs and imagination.
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Sweet! What marvelous friends!
I love how one story leads to another. Really fun to read!
Thanks for this story!