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Mr. Flourish was, by trade, a baker. By nature, he was a slightly terrified, meticulously tidy badger who harbored a secret, crippling fear of… flour. Not the taste, mind you, but the mess. The tiny, insidious white particles that got everywhere, clung to everything, and absolutely refused to be contained.

His bakery, "The Crumbly Corner," was always spotless, but Mr. Flourish himself wore a full hazmat suit every time he had to open a bag of all-purpose.

"It's like a tiny, aggressive snowstorm," he'd whisper, peering out from behind his face shield as a single puff of flour escaped a bag. "It multiplies! It colonizes! It… it gets in my whiskers!"

His apprentice, a cheerful, perpetually dusty rabbit named Thistle, found Mr. Flourish’s phobia rather endearing.

"But Mr. Flourish," Thistle would say, shaking flour from her ears (she didn’t even notice it), "you make the most delicious bread! It's worth a little mess, surely?"

"Never!" Mr. Flourish would declare, vigorously vacuuming a single speck from the floor.

One morning, a huge order came in: one hundred rainbow-sprinkle cupcakes for the annual Forest Jubilee. This meant mountains of flour. Mr. Flourish donned his most heavy-duty hazmat suit, complete with breathing apparatus.

As he was carefully pouring a bag into the mixer, the bag decided to burst. A huge, white cloud of flour erupted, completely enveloping Mr. Flourish.

Thistle gasped, expecting panic. But when the cloud settled, Mr. Flourish stood perfectly still. He slowly took off his helmet. He looked down at himself, covered head-to-toe in fluffy white powder. He looked like a very surprised snowman.

Then, something remarkable happened. He sneezed. A huge, reverberating AH-CHOO! that shook the entire bakery.

And then he giggled.

"Good heavens!" Mr. Flourish exclaimed, wiping flour from his eyes. "That was… rather exhilarating! Like being a… a very fluffy ghost! And it feels quite… soft!"

Thistle stared, dumbfounded. "You're not… scared?"

"No!" Mr. Flourish laughed, shaking a shower of flour from his paws. "It turns out, being completely covered in flour is rather fun! It's like wearing a very warm, very powdery winter coat!"

From that day on, Mr. Flourish still preferred things tidy, but he never wore his hazmat suit again. He even allowed himself a small, daily flour dusting, which he called his "morning fluff."