The Snugglekins Series — Character Spotlight
Ollie Rakali’s workshop smells of wood shavings and river water.
The sound of the river is present in it at all times. Always moving. Ollie chose the location for exactly this reason — quietly, without explaining his reasoning to anyone.
Ollie fixes things. Not just the obvious things — the broken latch, the stuck wheel, the lantern that won’t draw. The less obvious things, too. The thing nobody mentioned, but everyone was working around. The gap in a situation that everyone else stepped over, and Ollie crouched down to look at properly.
He notices what’s missing. He finds a way to fill it. He leaves the result at the door without a note and is already gone before anyone comes to look.
Nobody ever sees him do it.
This is not an accident.
Ollie is a warm brown rakali — a water rat — with wide dark eyes and the patient expression of someone who is always thinking about something practical and important. He wears green overalls with a fish embroidered on the pocket and a striped shirt underneath. He stands very still in a way that makes you feel the river is nearby even when it isn’t.
He would do anything for the people he loves.
He would strongly prefer they didn’t know that.
His story is called Ollie and the Mechanical Flute.
It is about something he built for someone who needed it. And about what surfaced while he was building it — something old and wordless and his, that had been sealed for a very long time. And about what happens when something sealed begins, very slowly, to open.
The Snugglekins Series — coming soon from Lit Wick Press.
Safe. Loved. Heard. Enough.
