Percy was unusual. Born into a family of farmers, his life followed the steady rhythms of rural tradition. In the quiet green folds of Cheshire, England, he could often be found diving headfirst into hay bales, racing with the dogs across open fields, or napping in the shade beside the cattle and sheep.
He laughed more with the animals than with people. Somehow, they understood him—and he them. While his family worked the land with calloused hands and quiet resolve, Percy seemed to belong to the land itself. He didn't just live in nature; he lived with it.
From his earliest days, the routine of the farm shaped his world. He learned to wake with the dawn and sleep with the rhythm of the earth. While other children were being swaddled indoors with cartoons and cereal boxes, Percy's playground was a living patchwork of fields, creeks, and dry-stone walls crumbling with moss. His first toy was a battered plastic spade. His first word—somewhere between "moo" and "mum"—was proudly declared to a Jersey cow named Mabel, who blinked slowly in reply.
By the time he could walk without tumbling over, Percy had already developed a sense for what each morning meant. A cold snap might mean frozen troughs; a late frost, trouble for the crops. On wet days, he'd peer through the smudged kitchen window at the grey horizon, pressing his little palms flat against the glass like he was reading something in the clouds.
"Yer daft lad," his grandmother would mutter affectionately, nudging a mug of warm milk toward him. "Rain's not going to change just because you stare at it."
His grandmother, Nora, had a wiry frame and a blunt voice sharpened by decades of managing both soil and stubborn men. But with Percy, she softened. She had a way of kneading dough while humming folk songs, her hands never idle, always warm. Percy liked to sit by the stove when she baked, swinging his legs, nose twitching at the scent of flour, yeast, and herbs.
"Will the bread be ready by tea?" he'd ask, over and over.
"If you stop asking me every five minutes," she'd grumble, though a smile always tugged at the corner of her mouth.
His father, Matthew, was quieter than most men Percy knew—though Percy didn't know many. He spoke more with his hands than his mouth: lifting hay bales, turning soil, mending fences. But every now and then, when the chores were done and the sun was low, he'd hoist Percy up onto the old Massey Ferguson tractor and they'd sit side by side, saying little, just watching the shadows stretch across the land.
"See that there?" his father once pointed to a line of trees along the western fence. "That's where your granddad planted the first row of hawthorns. Reckoned the birds would keep the bugs off the barley. Don't know if it ever worked. But they've stayed put all these years."
Percy had nodded solemnly, not sure what it meant, but knowing it mattered.
His mother, Elise, had once studied nursing before marriage and motherhood led her home. She had a way of balancing ten things at once—frying eggs, sorting laundry, wrangling Percy into clean socks—all while carrying on full conversations with the hens in the yard.
"Don't go broody on me again, Janet," she warned one particularly stubborn hen, "or I'll pluck your eggs and sell your feathers."
Percy adored her, though he hated being scrubbed behind the ears and made to wear "town clothes" when guests came around. She was a gentle sort, though quick to raise an eyebrow if he misbehaved. And her hugs—those warm, flour-dusted, firm-as-a-patch-quilt hugs—were the safest place in the world.
When Percy was five, he found a barn owl caught in some old wire fencing near the hedgerow. Its wing was bloodied, eyes wide with fear. He'd run back barefoot across the wet grass, yelling for help, hands flailing.
His mother had come first, then his father, and together they freed the bird. For the next two weeks, Percy insisted on visiting it daily where it rested in an old wooden crate in the barn, barely touching his breakfast until he'd checked on it.
"Doesn't even fuss this much over his own socks," Elise remarked, watching Percy gently spoon mashed mouse from a jar into the owl's beak.
When the owl finally took flight one misty morning, Percy stood by the barn door, hands stuffed in his pockets, watching until it disappeared into the woods.
"Think he'll come back?" he asked.
"Maybe," his father said. "But maybe he's where he needs to be."
That answer lingered in Percy's thoughts far longer than he expected.
Holidays in Percy's early years weren't marked by fireworks or decorations but by rhythms in the soil. Spring brought lambing season, which turned the barn into a nursery of soft bleats and straw beds. Percy loved it most when the new-borns stumbled around, their legs too long for their bodies, searching for milk with desperate enthusiasm. He'd sit nearby for hours, tracing circles in the hay, whispering nonsense to them like a secret shepherd.
Summer meant early mornings and sweaty afternoons. His shirt stuck to his back and his boots filled with dust. But Percy didn't mind. The long days were his favourite. He'd pack cheese sandwiches and apples in a tin lunchbox and pretend he was off on expedition—even if he only made it as far as the northern paddock.
Autumn was for harvest and the sharp, crisp scent of turned earth. His father let him ride on the tractor sometimes, legs dangling off the side. Once, they spent an entire afternoon trying to coax a runaway sheep from under the old bridge. They failed. It came out on its own at sundown. Still, they laughed about it over dinner.
Winter was harder. The cold bit deeper each year. The animals needed more attention, and the work grew heavier. But there were small joys, too—steaming mugs of cocoa after frostbitten chores, wool blankets around the fire, and Percy's favourite: his grandmother's stories.
"Back in my day," she'd begin, "we didn't have machines to milk the cows. We had hands, buckets, and no complaints."
"But didn't your hands get cold?"
"They got strong."
"Did yours?" Percy would whisper.
She'd wink. "Still are."
The year Percy turned five, just before he was due to start school, something magical happened on the farm.
One of the collies, a gentle old girl named Lacey, gave birth to a litter of puppies.
It was a quiet morning in early April, the kind where mist still clings low to the ground, blurring the edges of the hedgerows. Percy had woken early—earlier than usual, even for him. There was a strange, expectant stillness in the air. No birdsong, no lowing cattle, just the gentle creak of the barn door in the breeze and the distant hiss of dew slipping off the roof.
He was halfway through pulling on his boots when he heard it: a muffled whimper, then another, and then a low, rhythmic panting. He ran, barely remembering to latch the front door behind him.
The barn was dim, only a few rays of early sunlight slipping through the slats. He found Lacey curled in a pile of straw, her flanks rising and falling with effort, a dark sheen of sweat around her snout. Around her, small slick shapes squirmed and squeaked.
"Mum! Dad!" Percy's voice cracked with excitement.
By the time his parents arrived, rubbing sleep from their eyes and throwing on jackets, Percy was already kneeling in the straw, murmuring softly.
Seven puppies, in all. Black and white mostly, like their mother, their tiny pink noses twitching as they sought warmth and milk. One, however, stood out immediately.
The runt was pale—almost pure white—save for a few silver streaks along its back. Smaller than the others, it had trouble reaching the teat, always being nudged aside by its siblings.
Percy noticed. And he didn't forget.
Over the next few weeks, while the rest of the family rotated turns feeding and cleaning the barn, Percy made it his mission to care for the little white pup.
"She's not going to make it, love," his grandmother had said early on, watching the fragile creature tremble as Percy cradled it in a tea towel. "Runts rarely do."
But Percy didn't listen. Every morning before breakfast, he'd rush to the barn, hands cupped around a dropper of warm milk. He made her a bed out of an old sweater and a cardboard box, tucked away in the warmest corner of the stable. He sat with her for hours, talking softly, describing everything he saw—the way the sun moved across the floor, what the chickens were squawking about that day, what his mum had made for lunch.
One afternoon, his mother came out to find him lying in the straw with the puppy curled against his chest, both fast asleep.
She didn't say anything. Just smiled and laid a blanket over them both.
By the time the pup's eyes had opened, bright and icy blue, Percy had already chosen her name.
"Snow," he said firmly at dinner, holding up a drawing he'd made of her with stubby crayons. "Because she's white like the frost on the barn roof."
His father glanced at the picture and gave a soft grunt of approval. "Fitting."
"She's going to be my best friend," Percy added, poking at his potatoes. "I'll look after her forever."
And he meant it.
As the weeks passed, the other pups grew stronger, louder, rowdier. Some were promised to neighbouring farms, others would stay to be trained. But Snow remained different—quieter, more watchful. She didn't bark as much or scramble for scraps. Instead, she followed Percy wherever he went, padding behind him like a small ghost.
She'd sit beside him in the fields while he watched the clouds, trot after him when he chased crows from the compost pile, curl against him at night when he snuck her inside beneath his blanket despite the strict no dogs in beds rule.
"She's not a dog," Percy said once. "She's my shadow."
Even his grandmother, who'd been sceptical at first, began slipping Snow scraps of bacon under the table when no one was looking.
The bond between boy and pup became unshakeable, so much so that Snow was the only thing that made the looming thought of school bearable.
That summer, Percy began to feel the strange and growing weight of change.
There were whispered conversations between his parents when they thought he wasn't listening, quiet looks passed across dinner. Brochures and school letters began appearing on the kitchen table. A shopping bag with a crisp new jumper and polished shoes sat in the hallway for weeks.
One evening, he overheard his mother sigh, "He's not ready. His head's always in the clouds or stuck in the hedgerow somewhere. He barely talks to other children."
And his father's steady reply: "He doesn't have to be ready. He just has to start."
Percy didn't understand everything. But he understood enough.
That night, he lay on his bed, arms wrapped around Snow, her soft ears twitching beneath his chin.
"Do you think they'll let me bring you?" he whispered.
Snow yawned, wide and pink-mouthed, then licked his nose in response.
The week before his first day of school, Percy helped his father mend the chicken coop fence. It had been sagging for months, the wood worn down by weather and time. It wasn't urgent, but Matthew had a way of tackling small jobs when larger things loomed on the horizon—as if tidying the physical world might somehow settle the mind.
Percy hammered in nails with more force than usual, tongue poking out the side of his mouth.
"Careful," his father said gently. "You're not at war with it."
Percy sighed, looking down at the crooked plank he'd just affixed. "I don't want to go."
Matthew didn't answer straight away. He took the hammer from Percy, straightened the board, and nailed it into place with two neat, practiced swings.
"No one likes change, Percy," he said finally. "But sometimes it's what helps us grow. Like pruning a tree. You don't do it to hurt it. You do it so it can bloom."
Percy didn't respond. But he didn't forget those words either.
The morning of his first day arrived with dew clinging to the grass and fog still nestled in the ditches. His mother buttoned his jumper and licked her thumb to rub a smear off his cheek. Percy endured it in silence, glancing at Snow curled by the door.
"She'll be here when you get back," Elise promised.
"She'll miss me," Percy muttered.
"Then she'll be the first of many."
In the car, Percy sat stiff and quiet, fingers twisting the strap of his lunch bag. Outside, the countryside blurred past in streaks of green and gold. It was beautiful. Familiar. Comforting. And somehow, it already felt like something he was being pulled away from.
When they reached the school gate, children swarmed like bees—shouting, laughing, crying. Percy's heart hammered. He'd never seen so many in one place.
He looked up at his mum, then down at his shoes, then over his shoulder—half-expecting Snow to be there, tail wagging.
She wasn't.
Elise knelt beside him. "You don't have to be like anyone else, love," she said softly. "Just be you. That's always been enough."
He nodded slowly, turned toward the gate—and stepped through.