Annie LXXV: Happy

(Chronological index: Denise in College)

Pet was devastated.

She had been excited to help pack the dollhouse. She enjoyed the rituals of saying goodbye to Chuck and Carla and Carolyn and Buttercup and Terry and Jerry (the Teddy Bear Twins) and the neighbors Kevin and Kyle and Billi and Lyle and Meredith and Denise's study buddies Cora and Deanna and Phillipa and Seedy and Celia and her last boyfriend Corwin that was going to the Academy to become a middle of the ship man and would have no time for love but Seedy said he was probably just hoping to have a clear conscience when his boats pulled into foreign ports and Pet asked why there was a moral issue in foreign ports and they looked at each other for a while and Denny finally said that the foods in foreign ports had lots of garlic and he would have garlic breath when he came home and breathed on his girlfriend and everyone laughed so Pet laughed and everyone else laughed some more when Celia said unless he used protection.

But that was the fun part of goodbyes, Pet thought. Everyone told you how much you had meant to them and how long they'd remember you and it was like a little epilogue of your relationship.

She hadn't said too many goodbyes in her short that's not a joke about being a sylph life. The only one she hadn't enjoyed was when she found out that her Daddy her real Daddy not Denny's dad who was a lot like a Dad to her in every way that mattered but the person who put Pet in Buttercup that Daddy he'd died and gone away before she ever met him so that was sad but it was a distant sort of sad. Buttercup said she knew what she meant but she teared up a lot more than Pet did when the subject came up so Pet didn't bring it up too often.

And there had been the goodbye when she was five and left Buttercup but that was just to live in Denny's room in the dollhouse and she was only two rooms down the hall from the room Buttercup's dollhouse was in and she spent most school days with Buttercup for the rest of her life which was another eight years until Denny graduated high school.

Which brings us back to the big, big, big goodbyes Denny and Pet were saying because Denny had moved away to college so she could get a degree and make so much money that she'd be able to buy chocolate for her ittle Pet every day. Pet thought that was a sound career goal so she was supportive and cheered whenever they got a step closer to the college and sang songs on the drive and watched Chuck and Denny carry everything into a big weird house.

Chuck said the place Denny and Pet would be staying was a grand old house and he wanted to take it apart and see what was inside. The original house had had additions nailed onto it for years after the original owner had become a Mormon. A closet Mormon Chuck said because Mormons were Morons in Georgia at the time so he just pretended he was Catholic with lots of kids and several Nannies who were Nannies with Benefits which Pet didn't quite understand and wouldn't ask about because Carolyn had slapped him upside the head when he said it so the subject was closed because Pet didn't want to get Chuck in trouble. More trouble. Chuck didn't need any sylph's help to get into trouble.

But the original CatholicMormon builder hadn't been much of an architect because the nailed on additions looked weird. The new floors didn't line up with old floors and the walls weren't all at right angles and you could go in a complete circle in the house except when it was an oval or you could get lost.

Buttercup and Carla said it looked like it was going to be a fun place for a sylph to explore and Pet said yeah if she had time after classes and Denny had slapped a hand over her mouth and said she was sorry but sylphs couldn't come to Freshman classes at this college and she thought she'd told Pet all about that.

And it was the first time Pet had ever wished she was Carolyn so she could slap her owner upside her head.

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The family stayed long enough to take the new college life people out to dinner and then had to get on the road before the werewolves came out and Pet didn't even smile when Carolyn beat Chuck on the shoulder with her purse. She knew there were no werewolves, not in Georgia. Maybe if there were then Denny would be so scared to leave her ittle Pet alone that she'd sneak her into classes in her purse or pocket or maybe go to a college that wasn't all sylph hating poopy heads.

Denny wandered through the MormonCatholic house that had been a nursing school dorm for a while and was now an expansion dorm for Denny's school. They reached her room and Denny tried to cheer Pet up with chocolate and a jelly bean and played her Monster Mash 45 three times but none of it made Pet any happier.

But she didn’t make Pet sleep in the dollhouse the first night. The little sylph curled up in the hollow of Denny's throat and tried her best not to cry herself to sleep.

In the morning they had breakfast in the big dining hall. The owner of the house was out but they met the other girls staying there and Tituba who was the maid and the cook and the everything else. She said if the house was the Little Shop of Horrors she played all the second tier parts but the singers and that was just because musicians were temperamental and they'd be jealous of her ability to hit the high notes.

Pet gave a little squeak when she heard about the Shop of Horror and Tituba spun around and said we have us a little sylph amongst the student body and introduced herself and promised she wouldn't vacuum anything in the house until she was sure where Pet was a gonna be.

Tituba said she was very welcome to hang out in the house while all the college girls went across the street to their college and she'd be sure from then on to set a place for Pet at the table for Breakfast and Lunch and Dinner and maybe a few other meals through the day because she knew six inch sylphs had fourteen inch tummies and promised that Pet had only to ask and ol' Tituba would find something for her to gnaw on. Then she made Pet raise her hand and promise on to God in all His glory that she would never try to steal cheese from the mousetraps in the house.

Pet solemnly promised but then Denny was worried that there were vermin in the house and Tituba allowed as to how there were some creatures that snuck in from the swamp down the road but she was ever vigilant and never allowed any population of mice to grow in no house she was a livin' in much less responsible for.

Then it was time for orientation and the older girls took the junior girls over to the place they were going to orient at and Pet watched Tituba do the dishes.

She asked about the woman's accent and then about Barbados and then about immigration and then about Mr. Tituba but there wasn't one because the only man in Ms. Tituba's Life had died on the cross for all their souls and no man she'd met since had stood up in comparison. Well, not for more than a night or two at a stretch, anyway. It was obviously a joke and Pet dutifully laughed which was an easy thing since Tituba's accent made even a simple phrase like would you like peanut butter on your cracker sound as funny as Monster Mash to Pet's ears.

Then Tituba had market to do so she gave Pet a tiny little bag of candy to tide her over, warned her twice more about the mousetraps, got a solemn promise from the sylph that she would not set the house on fire or sell it to communists, and Pet was alone.

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Pet stood in the living room trying to remember any time in her thirteen years that she'd been alone. The closest she could remember was days that everyone was away except Carla and she had had more important things to do than play with her so it was like being alone except if she screamed she knew someone would come.

Alone. She said the word out loud and it didn't seem too bad so she started yelling it and heard an echo and ended up running up and down the hall with the big wooden floor shouting and hearing the words come back to her from the distant arched ceiling.

Then at one end of the hall she saw a small crack, a place where the wall from the stairway didn't quite meet the wall from the hall and it looked interesting like a place only a sylph could fit into and she was supposed to be exploring until Denny came back so she did.

There was a space kind of like a really tall really narrow canyon with a floor that sloped up into the dark. She wasn't worried about dark not the way sylph eyes worked so she settled the Ziploc candy bag on her shoulder and marched up into the unknowed.

She made several expeditions over the next few days. Little nooks and crannies appealed to her as she knew that there was no way any human could ever have been in the exact spot she stood, seeing what she saw even though someone had to have made the lumber and nailed it in place and so on, the end product was her little fort or her little picnic spot or her and only her inner inner sanctum.

It kept her busy through the days and she was always back in time to meet Denny and learn about her day and her classes and eat dinner and watch over her when she did homework which was often a lot of reading but the two had long ago figured out how Denny could curl up on her bed with a book and her sylph on her shoulder and each always knew exactly where the other one was and they were happy. Even if it was boring for Pet she was bored WITH DENISE so it was more like a holding pattern until Denny remembered that it was time to tickle the sylph.

After about a week at the house Pet finished her second breakfast and told Tituba she'd be in a wall and not come out until after the vacuum was put away and got her bag of exploring supplies and the Crackerjack Toy flashlight and marched off.

She found a chimney that she could climb down to the basement in and was looking at all the different levels that came off of there.

One led to a room that was full of dust. She walked around and around the dust but didn't find any door that humans could use and thought maybe when they nailed it in place they had forgotten to make one which was silly but not as silly as the rest of the house. Denny's neighbor had a big wide shelf where part of a wall stuck into her room and the neighbor beyond her didn't have a shelf but she did have a little cubby hole where her bed fit under a ceiling that was only a foot over the top of the headboard.

That's when she found the footprints in the dust.

They were round and pattered off through the dust. There was no dust in the holes in the dust so Pet figured they were pretty new and decided to follow them but it was hard to tell because they were round so she couldn't see toes and didn't know which direction the footprinter went. Without toes they were probably not mice unless mice wore great big round shoes or maybe mice had mice moccasins?

She picked a direction at random and ran in that direction and came to another little crack in the wall where the footprints either led or came from. Pet giggled at the idea that she was either following a creature or sneaking up on the place it wasn't even at and ran through the hole.

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That led up to where she thought was behind the kitchen wall on the side where Tituba made bread on the big counter next to the huuuuuuuuuge porcelain sourdough starter jug which smelled pretty bad when the cook poured some out but she let Pet have a piece of the finished bread and she said it was some of the bestest bread she'd ever had and Tituba had smiled and said Pet had good taste and they had sourdough pancakes for lunch one day and Pet said she'd died and gone to Heaven and Tituba said pretty damned nearly and no one slapped her for swearing but Pet wasn't sure if even Carolyn would dare to slap Tituba because the cook maid was bigger than Chuck didn't put up with no nonsense and Pet believed her.

There was a smell of baking in the wall space Pet found herself and she was going to follow that if she had a choice because there wasn't as much dust back here and no footprints but she didn't have any choice so she just kept crawling along. She passed a spider in her web overhead and waved and she thought the spider waved back but she wasn't sure. Spiders were good because they ate things that bit little sylphs and Pet thought that was a good thing so spiders were good though Denny didn't really like them which didn't make a whole lot of sense.

Who could imagine a spider bothering a giant like Denny?

The path through the wall came out at the back of the breadmaking counter. There was something rising in a breadbowl but no sign of Tituba which made sense because Pet could hear the vacuum cleaner in the distance and those evil things only came to life when someone used them. There was a peanutbutter and lettuce sandwich on the counter which made Pet giggle the first time she saw Tituba make one but the woman had said she liked the crunch when she bit the lettuce and it was no different than putting PB in a celery stick except that it had bread but right now she was more worried about the....thing...standing on the plate, eating out of the sandwich.

It was dark brown, shaped like a balloon and looked like a cartoon version of a hairless bear or a pig with a face like nothing she'd ever seen before. The mouth was as wide as the head and maybe a little wider than the body a the shoulder and the four stumpy legs ended in big round feet that had toes or at least toe nails.

It swept the peanut butter layer of the sandwich with a wide, flat tongue, licking it without taking lettuce or bread. Pet walked over, keeping up against the wall. If the creature saw her, it wasn't reacting.

Then the vacuum cleaner stopped. The beast instantly stopped eating and ran for the wall. Pet watched it go.

Tituba came into the kitchen and winked at the sylph and asked if she was hungry for lunch already and Pet nodded her head because she couldn't speak and Tituba asked if she wanted a piece of the sandwich and she shook her head and Tituba made her a marshmallow fluff cracker.

There was an illustrated animal dictionary in the drawing room and Pet got Denny to put it down and open it before she went to school the next day and Pet walked across the pages until she found what she'd seen and then spent the morning looking at pictures of hippos.

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Denise had an empty slot on the afternoon so she came home to make up to Pet. She was a bit guilty about leaving her alone, though she always had stories about how fun her day was when she caught up with her. And they would go to parties together or to any library research and any single time that it was possible for them to be together but she still missed the little sylph so when she came home and Pet asked her to read the article on hippos she only paused long enough to make sure they were in a comfortable position on the sofa and she read the whole article beginning to end and the picture captions and the place names on the map and then Pet asked where on the map Brunswick was and Denise said it was Africa.

There was a bit of confusion there because Pet wanted to know where the hippo she saw was and Denny thought she meant the aquarium they visited on vacation and she described where the hippos were and the great big water-sided tank they were hanging out in and Pet was amazed to realize that those things were the same animal as the one she saw in the kitchen because the ones at the aquarium were bigger than CHUCK!

Denny laughed at that line and agreed and said even pygmy hippos were pretty big and Pet asked about sylphed hippos and Denny laughed and said only humans had ever sylphed and Denny said what if the magic was sneaking up on a zookeeper or aquariumkeeperperson and they ducked at just the right moment and the hippo got sylphed instead and Denny said that never happened and come on we have to get ready for dinner because she'd bumped into an old friend from school who was a sophomore now and wanted to take them both out to dinner because she remembered Denny and wanted to see Pet.

And Pet said yay because she wanted to see Anderson as much as Anderson wanted to see her so she didn't think about the hippo again until the next day and that was Saturday and Denny wanted to see what there was to do in town and they spent two days there and finally she got to think about the hippo on Monday when she was alone again.

Tituba was just finishing making some peanut butter sandwiches and got the last little bit of peanut butter out of the peanut butter jar although it was 'last' only in the sight of a human because a sylph saw handfuls and handfuls of peanut butter on the sides and the lip and the bottom and she asked her if she could borrow the empty and Tituba said she'd clean it out first so Pet could use it as a fort and Pet said no please and she got a big piece of string and dragged it away across the floor.

It was a little difficult getting it into the demi-hallway but it was roomy and private and if the hippo ever came out she didn't want it to think she was luring it out where the humans would see it and catch it and maybe fry it up and eat it.

She wedged it into a corner and wrestled the lid off and went off to the other end of the space and sat down and waited for the hippo and thought about a name for it and couldn't come up with much of anything but Happy so she waited for Happy the Hippo to come out and see the peanut butter in the jar. And she waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and some point in there she dozed off because she woke up when the empty peanut butter jar rolled across the floor and woke her up with a gentle tap on the knee.

She got up, rubbing her eyes the first thing she noticed was how close the jar was the next was how clean it was because there was nothing at all of peanut buttery goodness on the plastic it was spotless, clean as a whistle, inside and out. She stepped to the end of the jar and looked down the little hallway.

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Happy was licking the floor about where the jar had been. She walked around the open end and slowly moved towards the hippo. It saw her and licked faster and faster. Then it took a step back and licked some more. Pet stopped crowding Happy and stood still saying soft and reassuring tones that she approved of Happy's habit because it couldn't leave little peanut butter footprints behind if the humans ever suspected he existed they'd be tearing the house apart so he had to be in the habit of leaving no tracks when he stole food.

She told him that she didn't want to hurt him and tried to get closer to pet him and scratch behind his funny little ears but he finally licked the last bit of peanut butter and turned to run away from her and she didn't want to make him scared but she really wanted to make friends with Happy so she started to walk after him but just as she did she heard the snap of a mousetrap. She shouted Happy's name and ran forward. Just around the corner she ran smack into the back end of the hippo. He was trapped!

She thought about screaming but was too curious to find out exactly what had happened. The tunnel/hallway had emptied out into a small closet. The door was opened a crack and light shone in so she got a good view of Happy's ass. She stepped out to the side and looked at the other end. The wire snap had collapsed on Happy's head, the wooden slat was stuck to his chin. He waggled his head back and forth to shake it off but it wouldn't budge and he didn't seem to be in any pain. His bulging eyes rotated to look at her and his head dipped.

If anything, Happy looked embarrassed. She said it was okay and she wouldn't tell anyone because she'd made mistakes before and Denny always kept her secrets so she was going to pass it forward and keep Happy's secrets and she got close enough to scratch between his ears and he seemed to like it and stood still while she put her foot on the wood and pressed on the wire. She told him how it was just a matter of leverage and how strong sylphs were and got him loose and he pulled his head out and looked at her and she let go and the snap of the closing trap scared her and she let out a little scream and the door opened and Tituba said there you are what are you doing messing with the mousetrap eh you promised me little girl and Pet said the hippo had been caught so she freed it but Happy was nowhere to be seen and dang he moved fast for a hippo and Tituba was mad and she carried the sylph to Denise's room and dropped Pet into her dollhouse and said go to your room and think about how badly you could have gotten hurt and she was really mad.

She spoke to Denny when she got home and she came up and asked if Pet was okay then inspected her for bruises and then stripped her and inspected her for bruises and Pet was crying that she only wanted to help Happy who was caught in the trap and she lectured her on not playing with wild mice and she said it wasn't a mouse it was a sylphed hippo and don’t look at me like that it was and Happy ate a lot of peanut butter so she knows it's real.

And Denny heaved a heavy sigh and said maybe Pet should stay in the dollhouse for a day or two because Tituba's really, really worried about her and also put down some extra traps and she pet Pet's hair and said not to be upset if Happy got caught in a trap because that was for everyone's safety and she said that was okay Happy's too smart and the only reason he got caught was he was scared of Pet and she said if he's scared of you he's not all that smart.

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Pet spent the rest of the week in their room. She crawled around on a piece of paper with some crayons to draw an apology to Tituba for scaring her and promised that if it wasn't a life or death situation for Happy she wouldn't do anything with mousetraps and if the mousetrap was just caught on Happy she'd come get Tituba to take it off of him and Denny got her some glue and some glitter and she made tiny lines on the paper and put some glitter down and drew a big heart and Denny helped her leave it in the kitchen on the bread shelf when she was serving dinner and after she saw it she sought her out and formally accepted one of the best apologies she'd ever gotten from anyone since the mayor had mistaken her for a Playboy centerfold.

The girls around the table laughed and saluted Pet and Denny said she was proud of her and they thanked Tituba and she said it was okay and she was allowed to explore as long as she remembered her promises little girl and damn, if I could see a hippo that could get caught in a mousetrap she could die happy and Pet said Happy was afraid of her and everyone else and the girls promised to be on the look-out for a tiny hiding hippo and asked Pet how to know if it was Happy or some other hippo.

Pet knew she was being teased and loudly replied that Happy was a smart son of a gun and too smart to be seen by a human so if they saw one it was probably Happy's dumber older sister and the girls at the table that were older sisters got all sorts of upset but it was an upset that never reached their eyes so Pet ignored them and let Denny pet her and say she was pretty smart son of a gun all on her own.

Then the next day Pet got three little bags of jelly beans and dragged them one at a time to the edge of one of the crevices that led to the place behind the kitchen. She was going to leave a trail of jelly beans to a spot in the middle of the floor so she could see if she could get Happy into a place where she could use a camera to take a picture of him. She took the first bag and laid jelly beans one after the other in a line along the nooks and crannies and tried to make them close enough that Happy wouldn't have time to think before getting up and walking to the next one and finally she emptied the first bag and went back to where the other bags were and one was torn open with half the beans gone and the other one was missing and she sat down on her rump and thought that maybe Happy was smarter a son of a gun than she was.

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The next night Denny took Pet to see Spaceballs and she laughed and laughed and laughed and she knew that Denny didn't like her to repeat the funny lines like They've gone plaid! over and over so she just lay on her own bed in the dollhouse and giggled and giggled and Denny said okay just one line and she said AND WHAT HAVE WE GOT ON THIS THING, A CUISINART? and Denny laughed and Pet giggled again and then once more and about midnight Denny wondered if Happy was nocturnal and would he like to hear some funny lines.

That got Pet thinking and she stopped giggling at Spaceballs lines and started wondering where Happy would be if everyone was asleep so she waited until Denny was snoring because without Pet giggling she was able to go to sleep then she climbed out of the dollhouse and down on the floor and into the wall where the air vent made a hole that the grate didn't quite cover and she was off.

If she knew her hippo he'd be drawn to water and during the night there was usually a puddle under the dishwasher that Tituba ran every evening which leaked but she mopped it every morning because the alternative was letting a plumber into her kitchen and she swore she'd rather mop than pay someone that kinda money to see their buttcrack so until it got to be a really big leak she'd just live with it.

And sure enough when she got down to the kitchen floor there was Happy lapping at the water. Pet was worried there would be soap in it but she got to the edge of the puddle and sniffed and it was clean so it must have been a leak on the water going into the dishwasher she'd have to mention that to Tituba just in case those pipes were higher up and wouldn’t involve a lot of bending to fix and then she saw that Happy saw her and she stood up and walked slowly across the puddle.

She asked Happy if her remembered her and she was the one that got him out of the mousetrap and he snorted and charged and she turned to run and he knocked her down in the water and made some sort of roaring sound and then she realized he was bouncing in the water, splashing her and not stomping on her or biting her which was a good sign and she stood up and scratched his ears and his back and when she scratched there he started to lean towards her and when a hippo does that you have to be very quick not to end up in the drink again.

So Pet promised him that she'd make a proper rake to scratch his back with and challenged him to a race and they played and scampered and she found him some candy and he waggled his little tale and she laughed and they wandered through the house in the dark and just before the sun came up he turned and ran through a crack in the wall and she followed and found a great big nest full of shredded rags and bits of nylons and a sock and he pushed his way into the pile and fell instantly asleep and she dragged her ass all the way up into her own bedroom and fell onto her bed and slept until breakfast and fell asleep on Denny's eggs.

She became a little bit nocturnal after that, showing up at the dishwasher puddle with a piece of candy or a rake she made out of a sliver of bamboo and seven bristles from Denny's come and a long, long handle so she could scratch him without getting her toes stepped on or what felt like a ton of hippo in her lap.

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They'd play and explore and run around through the night then she'd go to bed when he did and sleep through the morning and greet Tituba at lunch and be ready for Denise to come home and have dinner and go to study at the library and go to a frat party once but they wanted her to do a Passion Twinkie and she said she was only thirteen and one guy asked if she was menstruating yet because old enough to bleed meant something she never figured out because Denny slugged him in the stomach the way Chuck taught his daughters to do in case any assholes made it through the interview process and Pet was in her other hand and saw it all and said that Chuck would love it because the fist came up from about her knees and pushed his intestines up into his rib cage and he fell down and wheezed and started to puke straight up into the air and that's when Denny spun on her heels and marched for the door and everyone at the party stepped aside to make way for her.

And she marched across the campus and they turned at their street and they went past a 7-11 and Pet asked if it was okay that she had a hankering for a Twinkie but it was okay if that was wrong and she could get by without one and Denny laughed and said as long as you eat it alone and went in to buy one and Pet asked her to cut off one end so she could see how Happy liked it.

And Denny laughed again and cut it in the kitchen and asked where she could put it so that the tiny little hippo could get it but they had to whisper because if Tituba found out they were leaving food out for the mice she'd be ticked and then Tituba said she'd be pretty pissed as a matter of fact and Denny apologized but said that it was for Pet's friend and Tituba stared at them for a while then shook her head and said if that thing doesn't eat the Twinkie by morning then you clean it out before the mice move in and set up house and Pet said thank you about a ka-zillion times and Tituba said once just once this one time almost as often and then stomped off to bed.

So Denny knelt down by a crevice where Pet told her to and held the slice of Twinkie and Pet took it and put it down juuuuuuuuuuust out of sight from where humans usually stood and Denise lay on the floor and Pet sat on her elbow and they waited for a bit and Denny yawned and they decided to go to bed and check the Twinkie in the morning so they got up and went to the counter and there was a big old bite taken out of the remaining Twinkie and Denny just would not stop asking No really Pet how did you do that? and Pet would just keep shaking her head and saying you wouldn't believe me if I told you and I did tell you and you don't believe me so that's how I know.

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About two weeks after the Twinkie, Denny stopped taking Pet to breakfast because the sylph would be grumpy or want to crawl into her pocket and go to sleep. She just left her in her little bed to wake up naturally and run downstairs for lunch and some time talking to the maid cook and maybe help decorate a cake by tossing sprinkles on it and then down to the floor to run around and see if Happy was up.

And one morning after a very exhausting game of chase where Pet let Happy smell a jelly bean then ran and kept on running because when Happy caught up to her he was as excited as a puppy but he weighed very nearly three whole pounds and Pet weighed just under two ounces so his happy leap to catch her tended to bounce her off the walls then he'd hang his head and she'd limp over to forgive him and give him the jelly bean and when it was morning she was too tired and her leg hurt too much to climb to her dollhouse so she just curled up on top of Happy's nest and woke up with all the girls in the house running from crevice to crevice calling Pet's name and she walked out and said she was okay and Janice scooped her up and carried her to Denny who laid down the law that no matter what Pet did she would be where she could be found in the what the hell happened to your leg little missy and she missed a few classes as she had to take Pet to a vet who looked her over and said it was just a roughhousing bruise and the other sylph she was playing with should be more careful around little girls who aren't as tough as they thought.

And Denny got outside the vet's office before she asked if that was what was going on that there was a feral sylph in the house and Pet started to cry about no one believed her and Happy was just happy to play with her and she was happy to have Happy to play with and Denise's eyes crossed for a bit and she finally said that whatever was going on more care needed to be taken to not get stomped by a hippo, even if it was in good clean fun and Pet rubbed her hip and said yes Denny and her pout was so sad that Denny skipped one more class to spend half an hour hugging her sylph and making sure she knew she was Denny's favorite Pet in the whole world and finally she simply had to run and Pet said it was okay because the hugs were starting to aggravate her boo boo and Denny gasped and put Pet into bed and tucked her in and kissed her good morning and slid her bed into her room and ran to school.

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She was careful after that though she was a quick healer and wasn't even stiff that night when she went looking for Happy. He met her at the watering tile and bounced a bit on his feet which was an impressive sight. Much the way tiny sylph humans were heavily overmuscled for their mass, the three-pound hippo had a skeleton and muscles that were designed to move up to six thousand pounds across a river bank at up to thirty miles an hour. So when he bounced happily that barrel chested body popped up into the air and came down with a splash that got Pet's hair wet.

She had just started to scratch his back with the rake when the front door opened and Happy disappeared like a bit fat bullet shot from a hippo gun and Pet looked around and saw that one of the upper class girls was coming home late and didn't see Pet on the floor as she crossed through the dark kitchen to grab a soda from the fridge and then she went on upstairs to her room. Pet waited patiently for Happy to come back because he was scared of the humans but he really liked getting scratched with the rake when Pet realized that she'd never heard the front door shut.

Pet ran to the front door and was going to lean on it to get it to close at least enough that bugs wouldn't get in even if she couldn't push the latch shut but she found a kitty cat standing in the open door way looking around curiously. Too curiously. Pet eeped in fear and surprise and the cat saw her and started to step towards her and she turned and ran and the cat chased her and she was almost to a crevice she could hide in when Happy ran out of the same hole and charged the cat and Pet shouted NO and Happy kept going and the cat swiped at him with her claws and scored his back and he never paused but ran towards the leg she was standing on and bit her and Pet heard bones snap and the cat screamed and cried and tried to shake Happy off of her leg and he was too mad to let go and she clawed and clawed and he bled and bled and she screamed and turned to run and there was a weird sound and she looked around and a broom was beating the cat into the carpet and Tituba was swearing.

Probably swearing.

It was the tone of voice that Chuck used when he worked on the car but it was in Barbados language or at least a thick Barbados accent so Pet didn't know the words but wow Tituba was mad and even after kitty cat wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of this god DAMNED house of crazy people and toothy mice and run and hide she was still hitting it and bashed it out of the door and slammed the door shut and dropped to her knees where Pet was kneeling by Happy and asked her if she was okay and she said yes please please please help Happy he saved me and she said I know he did dear and no one's going to die in the house tonight and she scooped them both up and carried them into her room and Pet bit her lip and watched Tituba sew and patch and bandage and make a poultice and save Happy.

Then she got some peanut butter and spread it on a cracker and broke it up and watched Pet feed bits to Happy. He licked them carefully out of her hand and moaned and belched and looked ashamed and Pet giggled and Tituba laughed and she pet him and he looked scared but as she pointed out there wasn't anything he was going to do about it and he relaxed and sighed and his eyes closed and Pet was scared he died and wanted to wake him up and Tituba said to leave her new familiar alone he needed his rest.

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And they talked about what familiars did for witches and Pet was fascinated and she wanted to know if Tituba knew any witches that needed a Happy familiar and Tituba said Pet was a silly little girl and why would I share my familiar with anyone else and the penny finally dropped and Pet said Oh.

And she promised she could come back and visit Happy while he was getting better and he'd probably like to see her but it was getting close to morning and hadn't someone be getting off to bed and Pet agreed and she smiled because she finally had proof that Happy was real and Tituba looked scared and said if anyone found out they'd take her familiar away and find out she was a witch and her family had had a bit of poorly done history with such disclosures don't you know and Pet said she didn't and Tituba said she needed to look up the witch trials some time but for now keep it a secret and Pet Pinky Swore and kissed Happy and went up to bed.

She was just getting into her room in the dollhouse when Denny's alarm went off. Denny sat up and looked over and saw Pet and smiled and she turned on the light and saw all the blood on Pet in her clothes and on her skin and her hair and she looked like the wrath of the LORD I swear what happened and Pet said it was all Happy's blood from the cat and she was stripped again for a close inspection and there were no wounds and the only evidence she could offer was the carpet and Denny was impressed by the amount of the blood but still didn't believe in hippos in houses but then insisted that they go tell Tituba that her carpet was bloodstained.

The maid opened her door the tiniest crack and said she would be out there in a few minutes to make breakfast and not to worry none about the blood in the front room because the Good Lord had seen fit to invent carpet cleaners and she had some of the good stuff and it wouldn't take nothing to clean it up and in fact she also had stuff to take the blood out of Pet's clothes if they'd leave them with her but the hair and her skin was up to them anyways.

And Pet got to take a shower with Denise which was rare because the first time they'd tried a soapy sylph had nearly plunged to her death when Denny's grip failed so they only shared in dire emergency or really really gross amounts of blood and Pet got soaped and scrubbed and washed and rinsed and dried and cared for and pampered just like she was a tiny sort of queen and she got tucked into bed once more and knew that Denny stood beside the dollhouse until she was fast asleep.

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Happy healed as fast as little sylph girls did and he was up and about in a fairly short time and while he was always happy to see Pet he was clearly Tituba's pet now and he followed her on her chores during the day though he still ran and hid when the girls came home and Tituba said he was a big help as she cast spells to protect the women and the house and the little tiny sylphs and everyone in her care or that she cared about. And Happy started keeping Tituba's hours so Pet didn’t have to wander around at night and things got a little normal for Pet and Denny.

But then the college got a big grant to make a basketball court and they bought the land the girl's house was on and the owner took off for the Bahamas with the money and they told everyone they needed to move out by Christmas.

And everyone said goodbyes and Tituba said she was going back to Barbados because she had enough money saved up to live like a surgeon on that economy and she thought Happy would like the environment more and the girls laughed at but Denny looked thoughtful and Pet looked sad and Chuck came up and helped them move everything over to a real dorm that was boring and while they moved furniture Pet got to hug Happy goodbye and it was the first goodbye she'd ever said that made her said because Happy couldn't tell her how much he liked her although he did lick her and try to eat her dress and she laughed/cried and told Happy she loved him and kissed his great big snout and Tituba said that was enough of that and put Happy into a box with air holes on it and a big sign that said "HIPPO WITH TOOTHACHE- KEEP CLEAR!"

And Pet asked if that wasn't supposed to be a secret and Tituba said that with a sign on the box the people at the air port will think there are drugs in the box or he will think there's a sandwich or he'll think of a tiny dog or a gerbil or a guinea pig but sister there just isn't a way that anyone's going to think she has a hippo in a carry-on.

And she hugged Pet and she went out and she hugged Denise and she said Chuck should be proud of both of his girls and he said he was and turned to Pet and said from about the knee, huh? and she nodded and Denny picked her up and wiped her tears and they left.

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Years later, Annie called Pet over to the computer screen. She crawled up on the keyboard and stood by as Annie started the video. A public service announcement described the habits of the North American House Hippo.

Annie was a bit disappointed. She'd expected Pet to accept it as real but... At the end, the blonde sylph merely shook her head. "They don't sleep fourteen hours a day. More like six."

Then she stepped back down to the desk and walked away, whistling. Annie shook her head and lifted the chopstick to enter another search term.



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