Think back over Egypt Street. A child pours out love on a rabbit who checks his silk lapels instead of listening. A grandmother who ordered the rabbit’s making watches him the way a judge watches. Then a bedtime story where beauty without love ends in a warthog’s skin — and a whisper, meant for china ears only, that lands like a sentence: you disappoint me.

The material Edward is made of has been treasured — and feared for — for over a thousand years. Porcelain, called ‘china’ after the country that perfected it, begins as the finest white clay, shaped and then fired in a kiln — a potter’s oven — at heat approaching 1,400 degrees. The fire transforms it: the clay turns glass-hard, thin enough to glow against a light, and ringing like a bell when tapped. For centuries, European royalty paid fortunes for it and called it white gold. But porcelain’s beauty keeps a bargain with danger. The same firing that makes it hard makes it brittle: it does not dent like tin or tear like cloth — it shatters, all at once and forever. Owners of fine china live carefully; a shelf too narrow, a floor too hard, one careless moment, and a masterpiece becomes fragments. A toy made of porcelain is therefore a strange and daring thing: a plaything that must never truly be played with — and a hero who can be broken by the very world he must journey through.

No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.