The Shcow and other Stories

Chapter One: The Little Farm
There was a farm—not a big farm, but a little farm—nestled in the rolling hills of Gloucestershire. Folded into the land like a forgotten letter tucked in a favourite coat.
It sat quietly on the hillside, where the earth stretched wide, dipping and rising beneath the open sky. A few cows wandered, grazing in their favourite spots, moving slowly, just as they always had. Their bells clinked softly—not for summoning, but for company.
Nearby, the sheep gathered in clusters. They moved differently from the cows—quick and alert, shifting together like waves in the grass. Fussier and faster. Whispered gossip in woollen form.
The sky sat generously overhead. It didn’t demand attention—it simply stayed. And the air smelled of straw and soil, of slow days and soft hooves.
Beyond the pastures, tucked where the hedge dipped and rose again, stood the barn. It held its place like a secret whispered once and never forgotten.
The barn had stood for decades—not proudly, but patiently. Its beams bowed a little in the middle, its roof patched more than once with care rather than precision. If you leaned against its frame, it hummed—not loudly, but with the weight of all it had held.
Inside, the straw lay uneven in quiet drifts, like someone had tried tidying and given up halfway for tea. Tools hung from nails that remembered the hands that placed them there.
Cobwebs stitched themselves from beam to beam, catching dust and time but rarely spiders.
Light filtered through gaps in the wood like golden secrets. Mice rustled in corners, not afraid, not bold. And near the open door, a water bowl rested—half full, always—because the pup drank slowly, and no one ever moved it.
The farmer, Old Tom, watched over all this, just as he did the cows and the sheep, knowing each animal by names he had given them, even in the fading light of evening.
Sat by his side was the pup, recently weaned from his mother and ready, as Old Tom saw it, to assist with the farm. He was a very handsome dog—great ears, great colour, and something in the way he sat that reminded Tom of all things in life that were beautiful.
But you can’t call a dog Beautiful. Not really. Dogs need names, especially farm dogs. Old Tom thought about it.
What’s beautiful? he mused.
He remembered a pie the family had shared last Sunday—perfect crust, warm filling, the kind of quiet harmony only a good meal can bring. That was beautiful.
“Maybe Pie?” he tried aloud. But it didn’t sit right.
“Come here, Pie,” he said softly, and it sounded too much like a desperate attempt to get food.
The dog blinked at him. Calm. Patient. As if willing to wait for a better idea.
Old Tom scratched his chin. “We’ll find it. You’re not just any dog.”
He tried Rex. Rusty. Shep. Even Beige Avenger. Nothing fit.
Then, looking out across the pasture—this patch of earth he’d spent a lifetime listening to— he turned to the pup and said, “I can’t call you Beautiful, but you are. So how does Beau sound?”
To Tom, it was a halfway house. To Beau, it was an identity.
And in one corner of the pasture, beneath the soft morning sky, something was about to change.

Chapter Two: The Beginning
Some things don’t fit in at first.
Some things weren’t meant to.
Some things find their place anyway.
In the corner of the barn, near the feed sacks, Beau opened one eye. He was still too small to matter yet—too new for importance, too quiet for fuss—but he was watching. Always watching.
The straw beneath him held last night’s warmth, and dust danced in the morning light. He sniffed, flicked an ear, then lay still again.
Out in the pasture, the day began slowly—like it always did.
Mai, the gentle cow with eyes like puddles just before rain, gave birth to her calf beneath the hawthorn’s patient reach. The other cows stood nearby, not interfering, only present. They watched quietly.
Soon, a small, wobbly calf blinked up at the world, legs bending at uncertain angles, head lolling with the weight of sudden life. Mai nudged it gently, slow and deliberate, as if introducing it to gravity.
Life on the little farm carried on, just as it always had.
But something was different this time.
The little calf tried to stand, its legs wobbly beneath it. Mai waited. Nudged again. The calf trembled once, then collapsed softly into the straw.
Old Tom watched from the fence. He didn’t move. Didn’t call out. Just stood with one hand resting on the post and the other holding a mug that had long since cooled.
He wiped away a small tear and let out a quiet sigh.
Mai stood still. She didn’t cry like the farmer, but something in her eyes looked sad. She sniffed the calf again—gently, slowly—and shifted just enough to press her flank close.
The other cows gathered, folding the scene into silence. They didn’t look at Tom. They didn’t look away either. They understood.
The ewe Julia had also given birth—but in the process, Julia had passed away. There was a lamb without a mother.
The other sheep, as is the sheep way, had already moved on. They had seen it all before. Some live. Some die.
Old Tom stepped into the lambing shed. From the way the sheep avoided his gaze, from the quiet they carried, he knew something was wrong.
He knelt, carefully lifting the lamb into his arms. The little body trembled once, then settled.
He wasn’t sure at first—but he looked up and saw Mai standing alone in the pasture, her eyes searching for something that wasn’t there.
Gently, Tom placed the lamb beside her.
Mai sniffed him once. Twice. Then, without hesitation, she gave him a small nudge, guiding him close.
The other cows watched.
The little lamb wobbled forward, uncertain—but Mai’s warm, steady side felt safe.
For the rest of the afternoon, wherever Mai wandered, Little One followed.
Some things don’t fit in at first.
Some things weren’t meant to.
Some things find their place anyway.
For Mai and Little One, something new had begun.

Chapter Three: Time to Grow
But Little One was still small.
Still too weak.
His legs buckled more than they carried. His bleats were quiet things—thin and wavering, like half-formed thoughts.
The next morning, Old Tom came to take him back.
Mai watched as he lifted the lamb gently into his arms.
She did not call out.
She did not step forward.
But she did not look away.
Little One turned his head, just once.
He could not name the feeling that stirred in him—something between ache and question. The cow’s breath had always been near, warm and slow. Now the air felt colder.
In the farmhouse, Old Tom made up a bed near the stove—a shallow box lined with newspaper and kindness. The paper rustled softly under the lamb’s body, pages from yesterday cradling a life barely begun. He warmed milk in a chipped enamel jug and let it cool to just the right temperature. The lamb drank, and his tail gave the tiniest wag, like a string caught in a breeze.
Tom sat beside him, quiet as always. He rubbed the lamb’s side when it trembled. He whispered things he didn’t expect the lamb to understand.
He felt this lamb deserved his attention. Farming was a thing that lived in his blood, but every time he sent his animals to the abattoir, it tore at him. He just had to get on and farm. But this little one reminded him of his own son, and the loss he felt when Maive died.
He hadn’t seen his son much after his girl had passed, well died. She was like all children, gift, but Bernadette, was a little bit frail from the day she was born He remembered the funeral—his son just a little boy, looking up at him, expectant, his sister gone. Just like this lamb. He had no answers then. He had no answers now. At the time, grief had nearly undone him. He had thought of giving it all up. Grief was driving him insane until he remembered, a long-forgotten rule, passed down by generations, the blackbirds, they could give you comfort.
So he had asked them and as was their way they told him, that they had heard him.
The days passed.
Little One stretched taller.
His steps grew steadier.
He slept longer between feedings.
But still, when he woke in the dark, he felt for something that wasn’t there.
In the pasture, Mai waited.
She grazed without interest. She listened without listening.
She did not call.
But when the wind changed, she always looked toward the house.

Chapter Four: Back to Mai
Then, one morning, Old Tom carried Little One back to the cows.
Mai had been grazing, her head low, drawing long blades of grass with no hunger in her mouth. She had stopped searching days ago—at least with her eyes. But every morning, when the sky turned that particular grey-blue of almost-sun, she lifted her head. Just once. Just in case.
A cow does not waste energy on hope. But Mai was more than a cow.
She did not expect the lamb to return. Not really. But she had felt the space he left behind, like an ache pressed into her ribs. And so she listened, even when there was nothing to hear. And so she waited, even when there was nothing to wait for. That morning, she looked up— and this time, there he was.
Cradled in Old Tom’s arms, legs dangling awkwardly, ears lopsided with sleep. His wool was cleaner now. Fluffier. He looked stronger, but not entirely different—like something inside him had settled, not grown. A little more there. A little more here.
Mai froze. One hoof lifted slightly, then set back down. Her tail flicked. The other cows watched her watching him.
Little One blinked at the light, then saw her.
He didn’t recognise her the way you recognise a face. He remembered her the way you remember warmth before you had words for warmth. He did not run at first. He hesitated.
One step. Then another. The space between them buzzed with question. Was she still his?
Was he still hers?
Then he ran.
Fast. Crooked. Determined. His tiny hooves thumped over the grass like excited punctuation.
Mai stepped forward, slow but certain, and met him halfway. She bent her head, placed her broad nose along his side, and breathed him in. Not to check. Not to confirm. Just to know again.
She nudged him beneath her, guiding him to where milk used to be, and though he no longer needed it, he stayed there a while. Pressed close. Still.
The cows around them stayed quiet, grazing with practised slowness. One swished her tail against a fly. Another shifted weight. But their eyes were soft.
The moment was not dramatic. It did not shout. But something in the world clicked quietly back into place.
In that stillness, something old and tender passed between the animals. Something older than barns and fences. A promise that had never been spoken and so could never be broken.

Chapter Five: Love Knows No Height
Little One followed Mai everywhere.
Through thickets of clover and across the worn cattle path that curled through the field like a lazy stream. He walked when she walked, paused when she paused. He was always just behind her left foreleg, where her scent was strongest, where the world felt most like home.
Among the smooth brown hides and slow rhythm of the herd, he looked like a sentence in the wrong language. His wool stuck out in untidy puffs, collecting burrs and grass seeds. His ears flicked and turned, too alert, too soft. He was a lamb among cows.
But no one said anything. Not the herd. Not Mai. Not even Old Tom.
Still, some days, it weighed on him.
The cows were so tall. Their backs rose like warm hills, casting long shadows across the pasture. Their legs were elegant and slow-moving, like trees that could walk. They grazed with a kind of patience that made the world feel older.
Little One had short legs. His steps were fast, twitchy. He was always catching up, always peering between legs to see what lay ahead. When the herd turned, he had to run in a wide circle just to stay near. And sometimes, when the others lay down to rest, their bodies pressed into the earth like islands, he curled against Mai and felt like driftwood—washed up, but not quite part of the land.
One afternoon, the sky low and brushed with sun, Little One stopped mid-step.
The herd was moving through the south pasture, toward the hedge where the sweet grass grew. Mai was ahead, her tail swishing in the warm air. The others followed, their wide bodies shifting like the tide.
Little One stood still.
He looked up at Mai, and for the first time, he noticed just how high her shoulder reached. She was the tallest thing in his world. From where he stood, she seemed impossible—like a creature out of dream or story.
He looked at his own legs. At his little hooves, dusty and chipped. His wool sagged in places where rain had caught it earlier. He was small. He would always be small.
Would he ever truly fit among the cows?
He wasn’t sure if he was meant to.
Behind him, a breeze stirred the grass. A skylark lifted and sang from nowhere. And in front of him, Mai had stopped walking.
She had not turned around. Not at first. But she felt the pause. She always felt it.
Then slowly, she turned her heavy head and looked back over her shoulder.
Little One stood very still, his ears half-folded, eyes wide and uncertain.
Mai walked back.
Not hurried, not worried—just steady, as always. When she reached him, she bent her great head low and pressed her muzzle gently beneath his chin. It was the softest place on his body, and she knew it well.
She did not speak. But her eyes told him everything.
You walk with me, they said.
You rest beside me. You belong here.
And with that, she turned again, just enough for him to fall in beside her, exactly where he always had.
The other cows glanced over, then went on grazing, their jaws moving in slow circles. There was nothing unusual about a lamb in their herd. He had been there from the beginning.
The sun settled into the grass. A bee hummed by, dusted in pollen. One of the cows let out a low, contented breath. Everything around them was slow and sure.
Little One walked with Mai, just as before. But something in him shifted. Not larger, not stronger—just steadier.
He pressed himself close to her side, feeling the warmth of her through the thick hide and bone. Her breath was slow. Her rhythm, endless.
He didn’t want to be taller anymore. Or different. Or anything else.
He only wanted this.
To walk beside her.
To be seen by her.
To be loved exactly as he was.
And that, he thought, was more than enough.

Chapter Six: The Sheep Take Notice
Summer was lively on the little farm. The grass grew thick and sweet. The skies held their light late into the evening. And no part of the farm buzzed with more movement than the sheep’s pasture.
The cows moved slowly, their great heads lowered to the earth, each step deliberate. But the sheep—
The sheep were always moving.
Always listening. Always noticing.
They noticed the sun rising just a little earlier than the morning before. They noticed the rustle in the hedge that didn’t belong to wind. They noticed when the feed bucket clanked differently, and which lambs were being favoured with gentler hands.
And they noticed him.
It was a bright morning when Little One trotted past their fence, a small figure beside a tall cow. The sheep didn’t speak—but several lifted their heads in quiet synchrony. Eyes blinked.
Ears turned. A few mid-bounce froze for half a heartbeat.
There he was again.
The small woolly one who walked with cows.
One ewe near the front stepped forward. Not to get a better look—just enough to feel the edges of this oddity more clearly. A lamb, clearly. But not lamb-like.
He didn’t dart. He didn’t push.
He walked at the cow’s side, his hooves landing in rhythm with hers, as if he had spent his whole short life learning to follow her lead.
The sheep flicked their ears, shared glances. Nothing was said—but the air was busy with understanding.
Not suspicion. Not judgment.
Just... a curious kind of remembering.
He was like them once, wasn’t he?
He had bounced. He had skidded. He had tumbled in the spring grass and tangled himself in his own legs.
But now? He waited. He paced. He moved with stillness in his bones.
The sheep were many things, but they were not forgetful. They carried memory in their bodies, not minds. And when they saw the little lamb walking like a cow, they felt something settle.
A shared question.
Who was he now?
As the wind turned and the sunlight shifted, the cows moved on—slow and unbothered. And Little One moved with them, not once looking back.
The sheep did not follow. They did not call out.
But the thought of him remained in their flock-mind—like a thistle seed caught in the wool.
And sheep, though they do not speak, remember well the things that don’t quite make sense.

Chapter Seven: The Cow Way
Little One had learned the ways of the cows.
In the early morning, before the sun had fully claimed the sky, the herd would rise and stretch, shaking dew from their backs. They moved without hurry—broad, deliberate steps pressing into the soft ground—and Little One followed, his own hooves a light patter behind them.
He didn’t quite walk like them. His legs were shorter, his bounce more noticeable. But he placed his feet where they did, kept close to Mai’s side, and when they reached the farthest pasture, he would graze in the spaces between their legs, nibbling at tender shoots left behind.
When the sun climbed high and heat settled like a sigh across the field, the cows stood still— heads down, chewing in slow, thoughtful silence. They didn’t speak, but there was a rhythm to them, a quiet togetherness in their stillness.
Little One stood still too.
Sometimes he chewed just to be part of it, though the grass had long been swallowed. Sometimes he closed his eyes and listened to their breath, their gentle snorts, the soft flap of ears. The cows had mastered the art of doing nothing. It wasn’t boredom—it was peace.
When Mai sank into the grass, folding herself into a shape that only cows know, Little One would curl up beside her. His wool pressed against her flank, warm and steady. He didn’t always sleep. Sometimes he just listened to her breathing and matched it with his own. It made him feel... known.
And when the time came for water, the cows would rise in slow succession, like waves lifting one after the other, and begin their steady path toward the trough. No pushing. No rush. Just an understanding that they would all drink.
Little One joined them, waiting his turn.
Sometimes, the water came too high for him to reach without stretching. Sometimes he drank from the edge, splashing his nose. But he drank beside them. Always beside them.
Across the fence, the sheep noticed.
They didn’t wander—they darted.
They didn’t stand still—they kicked and jumped.
They didn’t wait in line—they crowded all at once.
They had their own way, chaotic and quick. It wasn’t unkind—it was simply how sheep were.
But none of their kind stood so still for so long. None curled up beside cows or walked in patient lines toward water.
Little One did. And that made the sheep... curious.
They didn’t talk about it—sheep don’t talk, not the way we think—but they thought together. And when they moved, they moved as one, and that one had noticed something different.
Something cow-like.
Something calm.
Something they didn’t quite understand.
And so they watched him, this small woolly thing who stood so quietly among giants.
They watched and they wondered.

Chapter Eight: A Woolly Invasion
It happened suddenly.
One moment, the cows were grazing—slow and steady, their great bodies moving like thoughts too large to hurry.
And the next—
The sheep were in the field.
They didn’t sneak. They didn’t tiptoe.
They didn’t even pause.
They erupted.
A scrabbling, scrambling, bleating eruption—through a loose panel in the far fence, like water bursting a dam. Dozens of hooves hit the earth in a confused percussion. Ears flapped. Fleece flew. Someone shouted “BAAHHH!” like a trumpet of war.
Cows lifted their heads, jaws frozen mid-chew. A ripple passed through the herd—tails swishing, eyes widening, one older cow emitting a slow, bewildered moo that meant something between Who invited them? and What in the grass-fed world is happening?
Little One froze where he stood.
A sheep brushed past him so fast it lifted his ear with the breeze. Another whizzed by on the other side, trailing a scrap of fencing wire like a medal of mischief. One landed beside him in a neat leap, then bounced off again with not so much as a glance.
The field became a storm. They zipped under bellies and through legs, they ricocheted off troughs and posts, they tried to climb cows, clatter up the salt licks, leap into wheelbarrows, wrestle with rubber buckets. Two of them got tangled in a feed sack and spun themselves into a woolly pinwheel. Another, inexplicably, found an empty flowerpot and wore it like a crown.
Little One didn’t move a muscle. He had learned calm. Learned quiet. This was neither.
The cows stood in a patient circle, eyes wide but unmoving, like ships weathering a sudden gale. Mai remained stillest of all, her deep gaze tracking the sheep like she was watching some strange new species arrive from another planet. Little one, panicked, he tried to cry out to the sheep, but, cow ways were in his thoughts, So the sheep word for stop, came out as "moo-baa".
And then—At the far edge of the field, the gate creaked.
Old Tom appeared.
He stood just there, framed by the hedge and the pale morning sky, a slow breath rising in his chest. One hand rested on his hip. The other held his cap still, though the wind had dropped. His face did not show surprise.
Only a quiet, weathered patience.
He took it all in—the chaos, the madness, the sheep attempting gymnastics off a feed bin, the cows standing like statues, and in the centre, one very still lamb with his nose just touching Mai’s side.
And then Old Tom shook his head.
Once. Slowly. Like someone greeting a very old, very familiar nonsense.
Then he stepped forward, steady boots, calm heart, into the centre of the madness.
It was time to restore order.
Chapter Nine: The Naming of the Shcow
Old Tom stepped forward, calm but certain.
The sheep, still skidding and bouncing around the field, felt it before they saw it—that quiet shift in the air. Something old and rooted, the kind of presence that settled animals without a sound.
Without a word, Old Tom moved.
Not with haste. Not with anger.
A firm hand here, a slow nudge there.
He walked among them like weather, like time itself—unchanged, unquestioned. And the sheep, in their own woolly language, understood.
Bit by bit, like wayward thoughts returning home, they moved.
A young ewe blinked and turned, trotting toward the fence. Two more followed, suddenly remembering the shape of their field. One tried to leap again—but met only the quiet certainty of Old Tom’s hand. No push. No scolding. Just the steady pressure of someone who had always known where things belonged.
The chaos thinned.
The stillness returned.
The cows watched, great brown eyes blinking slowly.
Little One watched too, unmoving beside Mai, his wool speckled with the dust of trampled clover.
When the last sheep scrambled awkwardly back through the loose panel, Old Tom stood still.
He looked at the fence. Then the cows. Then, finally, at Little One.
A lamb, yes. Small. Not sleek like the herd. However, steady now, unstartled, exactly where he had chosen to be.
For a long moment, Old Tom said nothing.
Then he gave a single nod.
“You stay,” he said, and the cows didn’t flinch, Mai didn’t move, Little One?
He didn’t twitch or tremble. He knew. He wasn’t just a sheep anymore. He hadn’t ever been a cow. He was something else entirely. A mix, perhaps?
He was the Shcow. Not “the sheep who thinks he’s a cow.” Just The Shcow. Like a title. A badge. A creature outside the usual rules.