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“Good morning, everyone! It’s another beautiful day here at A-Garden— truly a grade-A, blue sky day! I mean, just look at that sun! Shining… so bright! So, so….— ohmygosh it’s nearly noon, isn’t it?! Oh jeez! Oh no! I overslept!”
“Charlie, hun, it’s barely morning…”
“How can you be sure?! It’s too bright out! That sun is fully circular in the horizon! This is horrible, I can’t be late - I’ve got to make my rounds! Good morning, everyone!”
Loose gravel flew as Charlie launched herself from her home’s front porch and onto the farm’s winding path. She heard Vaggie’s exagerrated sigh from her perch on the porch railing, but didn’t let it slow her down. Every night she slept in the house proper meant a morning where she wasn’t sure what chaos she’d find. Moreover, she was pretty sure she’d never missed her morning rounds, and she wasn’t about to start now! She had a reputation of reliability to uphold.
First stop, as always:
“Good morning, row one! I know, I’m so sorry, I’m running a bit late, but it is still morning!”
“Shut up, you stupid bitch!”
”Fuck off, pup!”
”Are you kidding me?! It is far too early for your cheery nonsense. How haven’t they dropped you off at the pound yet?!”
”Haha, yes, yes, good morning to you too, Vees! I see you’re as full of energy as ever!”
With the sun shining and her job at her paws, keeping her tail wagging wasn’t too difficult. The gruff words rolled off her back as she sniffed along the perimeter of each of their pens, dutifully checking for scents that shouldn’t have been there.
Around Vox and Velvette, all appeared to be in good order. Their pens held nothing except the scent of gazelle. By Valentino’s pen, however, something was just slightly… off. It didn’t smell like him at all. It was very faint, as if it flirted with the idea of being a trick of nose. Clearly, it’d strolled by, but hadn’t actually given the showy elk any time of day…
Ugh, the summer breeze wasn’t helping! The dust and its scents were moving everywhere!
Oh, but wait— the answer was on the tip of her nose-
She lingered by his gate, tail stilling while she concentrated.
“Dog,” called Valentino from where he lay on the other side of his pen, “it’s simply dreadful that we must see you on empty stomachs. Where are the humans with our breakfasts?”
The humans hadn’t been by yet? It was already past dawn!
… Aaand, nope, she’d gotten distracted, the scent was totally gone. Damn!
Charlie bit back a grouchy growl. She gave herself a shake, mentally filing the oddity away as not-yet-a-problem, and then focused on Valentino.
”I’m not sure,” she hedged with a nervous laugh, hoping beyond hope that the humans had just started in reverse order for feeding, even though the food barn was closest to the house and so that made absolutely no sense. She could still hope. “I’ll check and get back to you.”
”Do that,” Valentino requested, and raised his head to take his own sniff of the wind. It revealed nothing but dust, Charlie knew. “They missed dinner last night, too. We’ll be skin and bones at this rate. We can’t possibly perform under these conditions.”
”Give the dramatics a rest, Val, it’s only Monday,” Vox called from where he paced on an endless loop to nowhere along his fence. While Charlie originally worried his pacing was a sign of anxiety that she’d need to figure out how to fix, she had since learned that he just liked to be in constant motion. Now, she only worried about the grove it left and how annoyed the humans would be when they eventually got around to filling it in. Luckily, that was another not-yet-a-problem. “We won't have an audience until Thursday.”
”Monday?” Valentino tilted his head and flicked an ear. “That can’t be right. No one came by yesterday. They always come by on Sunday. Instead, it was as empty as the little dog’s head.”
Charlie pretended not to hear that.
”Sunday was a private showing,” Velvette said. She leaned against the wooden posts that kept up the wire separating her and Vox, and seemed to be making a mark in the dirt with her hoof every time Vox passed her. Charlie wasn’t sure Vox noticed. “I overheard the handlers talking about how the big cats were a big hit.”
Valentino glanced away, abruptly bored with the conversation. ”Hmph. I imagine that showboat, Asmodus, was out and about? Their show is a touch overdone, if you ask me.”
“Good thing no one did,” Velvette muttered, “or else we’d have to hear you give the same tired advice again and again,” and stamped out another mark as Vox trudged past her.
Vox snorted. Valentino glared, his ears pinning back.
”Okay, well,” Charlie gave them a friendly whuff, wanting to remove herself before the tension spiked further, “it was great talking with you all. I’m going to finish my rounds and then check on that food situation. I’ll be back before you know it.”
”Just send the humans!” One of them called after her.
Privately, she wished she could. Life would’ve been a lot easier if the humans just listened to her.
She then shook off that thought, and reminded herself that row one wasn’t so bad. Also, it was done! On to row two!
”Good morning, Angel! Congratulations on making it through your second week up front!”
“And what a great morning it is, Charlie,” the white elk drawled. “Really, ecstatic to be here. Just one tinsy question, if you don’t mind?”
”Oh, certainly. Whatever is on your mind, feel free to share it!”
Angel shifted his weight off the wire fence he’d leaned against, and dropped his head to put it as close to her level as he could. While he was indisputably a full-grown elk like Valentino, he was all white and far smaller, with softer-looking antlers. He’d arrived to the farm a month prior, if she remembered right, but had been moved out of the general population pens to the front only recently.
Charlie wasn’t sure if he was sensitive about his physical qualities, so she hadn’t gotten around to asking what exactly the humans called his breed.
One morning when she’d been wondering out loud just that about their newer frontline resident, Vaggie told her that Angel was about as sensitive as the barn rats about that kind of thing, and could take a little light question-and-answering. Much as Charlie loved her, Charlie knew Vaggie wasn’t always the most sensitive herself, and so decided to build a bond with Angel before diving into anything potentially personal.
“Well, darling,” Angel batted his eyelashes and scuffed his hoof lightly through the dust, “with looks as good as these, it’s safe to say that I’ve seen my fair share of animal farms. I’ve been shifted through more than a few less than stellar enclosures, including a memorable stopover in a calving pen with some lovely but exceedingly confused heifers. That said, I’ve never had to share a wall with a giant, grown-ass cat! What the fuck is he doing there?! Where’d the creeptastic deer go?”
”Oh, um,” Charlie sputtered, ears pricking up as she darted a glance to where Alastor was supposed to be, but definitely wasn’t. Instead of a black deer, a black panther blinked back at her. “Uh—“
”Trust me, buddy,” Husk said, tone as unconcerned as ever, “you should be thanking your lucky hooves that I’m here rather than him. I’m far less of a threat.”
”Aw, don’t sell yourself short, kitten. The deer was a certified freak, but you look like a real knockout yourself.”
Husk scrunched his nose, wrinkling his whiskers. He was clearly weighing the pros and cons of bad-mouthing Alastor to a newbie.
Ultimately, he didn’t say anything on that topic.
Wisely, Charlie also kept her mouth shut. If Alastor hadn’t scared someone off yet, she didn’t want to be the one to ruin his chances at making a friend. A friend would have been a huge stride in improving Alastor’s quality of life at the farm.
That didn’t explain why Husk was there instead, though.
“I haven’t got a clue why they knocked me out and put me here,” Husk told Charlie when she trotted over to inspect his unexpectedly new lodgings. “Frankly, if I could be moved back, we’d all be happier for it. At least my other enclosure had a little den. If I had any doubts about why Alastor is the way he is, I’d say these accommodations contributed to it.”
“Alastor’s not so bad,” Charlie defended him, and felt proud for how stern she sounded.
Regardless of her tone of voice, Husk gave her a flat, straight-on look and then, pointedly dismissive, turned his head and yawned.
Angel made a whistling noise at the sight of his massive, yellowed fangs. Angel tossed his head up, stamping in place in a manner that was probably supposed to be playful except for how stiff it was.
”Scratch what I said before. You look like one fresh killer. Specifically the kind that eats folks like me.”
“Don’t get your antlers in a twist. You’re not to my tastes. Too much fluff, not enough substance.” Angel protested that description, but Husk ignored him, refocusing on Charlie. “Seriously, Charlie. This pen’s flat-out depressing, and that sun is going to be killer. If I don’t die from boredom, I’ll die from exposure. You must see that, even if those idiot humans don’t.”
She wouldn’t have called them idiots, though they frequently flirted with that definition. In any case, Husk was right. Their accommodations weren’t the best at the best of times, but the cage was definitely not made for a panther, especially in the middle of summer.
Because Alastor’s pen used to be Asmodus’ before the front pens had been expanded, it was a fully enclosed metal cage. She supposed that might have been why the humans mixed up where Husk was supposed to go, except the cage was a flat stretch of dusty ground without even the tiniest scrap of decorations that the big cats usually got.
But if he was here… Had Alastor been put in his pen?! That would’ve been beyond alarming.
Jeez. This was the type of insanity that happened when she woke up late!
”Don’t worry! I’ll look into it,” she promised them, and added it to her growing maybe-soon-problems list.
She finished sniffing around their perimeters while tuning out their bickering (maybe Angel was just somebody who could strike up a conversation with anybody, even if that meant in an antagonistic way), then moved to the last pen of row two.
The last pen had high wire walls. It was the same size as the other’s, but had a plastic, covered kennel wedged into the corner, as well as a few chewy bone-toys that she recognized from her own stash in the house. At a glance, someone might have thought it abandoned, but Charlie’s nose knew better.
Charlie stood by the gate, wagged her tail faster than before, and called politely toward the kennel, ”Good morning, Luna! How are you doing today?”
Because Luna was both as new as Angel and far more shy, Charlie didn’t mind waiting for her response.
Time passed. In the distance, a crow crowed. A wispy cloud slid slowly across the bright blue sky.
Charlie danced a bit in place, impatience starting to build in her chest.
She added, in case Luna had overslept and not noticed, “It sounds like meals are running an itty bit behind today! But I’ll be checking on it, don’t you worry.”
Further silence.
Ah, hell. She wanted to give Luna a warm welcome - especially because she was the first wolf their farm had ever had, and wasn’t that an opportunity of a lifetime?! To meet her own distant cousin like that? - but she had duties to do. She couldn’t dally forever.
Also, maybe Luna was still sleeping. Wolves liked the night time, right? Her mom had told her that, she thought. Or maybe it had been her dad. There had been something about them liking the moon, anyway. Maybe that was why they called this one Luna.
Anyway. She sniffed around the perimeter - caught a whiff of the rats from the barn, which wasn’t alarming, and then an extra whiff of that same something odd from Valentino’s pen, jogging her memory on what she needed to track down as a today-problem - and trotted off to row three, calling over her back as she went:
”Ah hah, ha, well, um, great talking with you. I’ll be back with an update on the food situation as soon as I can. Hope you have a fantastic day!”
Row three had the start of the big cats. She greeted Asmodus - one of their oldest residents, a large lion that had been at the farm since before Charlie’s time -, Carmilla - a snow leopard who stuck to her specially-cooled den with her two quickly growing cubs -, and Mimzy - a cougar that paced almost as much as Vox, and who was always looking for a chance to escape.
All of them reported not having breakfast, and appreciated her looking into it. Carmilla off handedly mentioned that she understood she couldn’t necessarily do much about the humans’ routines, which was true but which Charlie also had to work hard at not taking personally.
The odd smell wasn’t near any of their pens, which told Charlie that maybe whatever or whoever it was probably didn’t like big predators. Asmodus’ pen had clearly recently been visited by a rodent of some sort - Charlie had spied a rat running around the wider gaps in his fence before - but that wasn’t anything new. The most surprising part was just that the rat smell hadn’t, well, disappeared, for any reason that was natural to a hungry lion that Charlie wouldn’t ask about.
Row four was Husk’s normal pen and the farm’s singular public-facing reptile.
(Adam kept about two dozen more in his basement, as well as his rarest in a display tank in the living room where Charlie slept, which wasn’t even to mention the large insects also kept in the back room of the show barn, but. Only certain humans got to meet those.)
Rosie the tiger and Zestial the crocodile greeted her as normal. Zestial was another of their literally oldest residents, while Rosie wasn’t too far behind in time spent at the farm. Rosie somehow always seemed better fed than the others, even though she didn’t get more meals, while Zestial didn’t require nearly as much as the others, and so they weren’t as sour from the loss of breakfast. Charlie appreciated their steadfast natures for all of a second until she reached the row’s end and found not only Alastor, but also the source of the odd smell.
“Alastor!”
“Hmm?” The black deer had somehow fit himself into Husk’s plastic rock den, looking comfy and cozy and overall perfectly at home, as if he definitely wasn’t in the wrong enclosure. “Yes, Miss Charlie, my ceaselessly chipper canine?”
”What are you doing in— wait! Who is that?!”
A snake laid a tail length away from the cage’s padlocked gate. It was clearly unconscious (or worse, whispered her mind fearfully), as it looked like a hastily abandoned rope. Although it was dark in complexion except for its yellow belly, Charlie thought she spotted a few blossoming scabs along its scales.
“You know,” Alastor mused, giving the snake an absent glance-over from his new favorite spot, “I haven’t the foggiest. Poor chap slithered through here yammering about something or other. Now, it appears he’s fast asleep in the strangest place!”
Charlie crept closer, and nudged him gently with her nose. He barely budged.
His jaw, however, was definitely bruised, and sat oddly against his head. Broken, likely. His tail was also bleeding sluggishly, as it was missing a sizable chunk at the end.
Charlie felt her hackles raise, though more at the situation than at Alastor. This was, unfortunately, exactly on brand for Alastor, much as she kept hoping he would change.
She huffed, ”It appears like someone stomped on him! — And then nibbled on his tail!”
Alastor gazed unblinkingly at her, then craned his neck to look again at the snake.
He said cheerfully, without a touch of surprise or guilt: ”Ah, I see what you mean - so it does!”
”Poor chap was lucky to fall where he did,” Rosie commented idly from where she sat in her shallow, algae encrusted kiddie pool. “There are a lot of dangerous, hungry animals around this farm who would love a free snack.”
”He certainly was very lucky,” Alastor agreed. “Did you know that snakes are far lighter and more aerodynamic than they appear? I certainly didn’t! You learn something new every day, Miss Charlie.”
Zestial, low enough that even Charlie almost missed it, croaked a laugh.
Yeah… So the odd smell belonged to the unconscious snake. It had obviously figured out the cats were to be avoided, but had probably never encountered a Zestial or Alastor.
Well. It was now under her watch, and definitely an immediate-right-now-problem. Charlie sighed, gently scoped the poor thing up with the softest carrying-bite she could manage, and carried it out of any further harm’s way.
«««
As the resident stray turned barn cat, one would think that Vaggie had exclusive say on what was and wasn’t allowed to creep around the premise.
That was her understanding of her job at its most basic description, anyway. But then, in hindsight, Charlie had been the one to inform her about her job duties when she decided to move in full-time, so… Maybe she should’ve thought a bit more critically about Charlie’s perspective on what barn cats did.
She had made more than a few off hand comments that Vaggie was essentially a smaller, faster tiger, or a smaller, quieter lion, or a smaller, nicer leopard. Vaggie hadn’t known what those things were for a while into her knowing Charlie, so she’d gotten hung up on the smaller comments, when really— knowing now exactly what a tiger and lion and leopard were, Vaggie should’ve been more focused on the flattering but horribly inaccurate comparisons to giant, killing machines.
So. In hindsight.
Charlie lived in a totally different plane of existence than the rest of them. Which was part of her charm and something Vaggie would do near anything to protect, yes, sure, but also meant that when the local rats unionized and protested Vaggie’s claw-backed insistence that they needed to vacate the premise, that Charlie got involved on the side of the rats staying as long as they followed certain rules, and— anyway, Vaggie shouldn’t have been as surprised as she had been.
Staring down her nose at one such ornery rat, she once again wondered why she’d agreed not to use any fangs on these obnoxious vermin.
”We’ve been over this, Blitz,” she was currently forced to growl out, claws unhappily sheathed. “You guys can operate your business out of the third stall in the show barn, but you can’t take more from the oat bins than your body weight per week.”
”You’re busting my balls here, Vaggie!” The biggest of the three, a black-and-white splotched rat named Blitz, sat up on his hind legs, spreading his little claws out like he was some kind of wannabe human businessman. Probably, he’d seen the farmer’s absurd friends make the exact same gesture around a fancy hunk of meat. “Business has been slow - that big cat show scared off our usual clientele! We need a little extra this week, but we’ll skip next week, when everything is back to normal.”
“The big cat show was yesterday. How’d that effect your business enough that you’ve had to skim extra throughout the last two weeks?”
”Sir has been spending more time trying to charm that new wolf than he has in advertising our services,” intoned the white-speckled rat that she was pretty sure went by Moxxie.
Blitz twisted his upper torso around to bare his impressively sharp front teeth at the littler rodent. “Never miss an opportunity to throw me under the bus and reveal every trick behind the magic, do ya, Mox? Jeez!”
Vaggie sniffed. Deciding this was all patently ridiculous, she delicately raised and licked at one of her paws, already very through with figuring out the rodents’ thought process.
”That wolf is going to snap you up, little kit.”
”Thanks for the vote of confidence, Vaggerina, but I’ll be just fine. Listen, okay, we’re all reasonable here— I know you’ve got concerns on our consumption of your person’s foodstuff—”
”It’s the farm’s foodstuff.”
”— technicalities. You’re worried we’ve been eating you out of house and home, despite us eating barely a tenth of what all those pampered princesses out there consume on the daily. It’s not rational on your part, but I get it!”
”I think you best get to your point, Sir.”
”He’s right.”
Blitz waved a dismissive claw at him and, by proxy, her. To Moxxie’s side, the other little all-black rat smacked a tiny hand onto the side of her face, apparently exasperated by her leader’s poor sense of self preservation.
”So how about we strike a new deal for when our business gets slow? It doesn’t take detectives as good as us to notice your farmer’s been short on human help lately. Maybe we can fill in!”
Vaggie scrunched her nose. “Excuse me? You, help us? How?”
”That’s for big folks like you to figure out! We’re a species of many talents, you know!”
”We’re not heavy lifters,” the girl, Millie, piped in, apparently willing to throw her hat into this crazy proposal, possibly for lack of alternative options, “but we can be heavy hitters! Why, we took out a blue jay in the last month.”
”And a possum the month before that!” Added Moxxie. “And her mate, and her two kits. It was a little tragic, actually.”
”Killing isn’t what we’re lacking here,” Vaggie replied, bemused.
”It would solve your food problem,” Blitz argued, as if that was actually an argument. “Less mouths to feed would go a far way in easing your constant headaches, I can tell.”
Vaggie stared at them.
When he didn’t back down, she set her paw back down and sighed.
”We don’t have a food problem. Even if we did, there is no way you are going to off an elk or crocodile.“
”You haven’t seen us try!”
”Sir!”
”Blitz, think this one through—“
”— Vaggie! Oh, Vaggie, I’m so glad you’re here— I have an emergency!”
Turning on the dusty counter that she’d claimed to better look down upon the annoying freeloaders, she hurriedly looked to where Charlie came bounding in a panic through the show barn’s small side entrance. She turned so fast, she almost knocked over the boombox that doubled as a radio, stirring up a cloud of dirt that had her sneezing.
Charlie panicked about a lot of things. It came from her instinct to always better and fix the world around her. Again, a charming and admirable trait and one that Vaggie adored about her because there was no way Vaggie ever could have matched her energy and she also loved seeing Charlie’s passion in any form, but… Most of the things were not necessarily world-enders. There were the occasional exceptions, however, which served to keep Vaggie on her toes.
Once she stopped sneezing, she felt her concern spike up into her voice.
”Charlie? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“Alastor— snake, hurt real bad— he got— oh, whoa, sorry, am I interrupting one of your meetings? Hello, Blitz! Moxxie, Milie! How are you all doing today?”
Moxxie and Millie gave Charlie a little head-bow, which Millie then followed up with a friendly wave. Blitz bowed too low to be anything short of mocking, but as usual, Charlie didn’t seem to notice.
“Ah, that egomaniac deer finally got what was coming to him, huh? And now you’ve got rogue snake problems, is that right?” Blitz asked, because whatever else he was, he never missed out on a chance to earn extra food or favors. “We can track that slippery sucker down and put it out of your misery, no problemo.”
Vaggie winced. Snakes were a touchy subject for Charlie, though she probably wouldn’t admit it.
”Er,” Charlie tilted her head at them, her tail drooping, “no, opposite problem, actually. Alastor stomped - accidentally, I’m sure, it sounds like he startled him! - but yeah, he stomped on a snake that was just passing through, and we’ve got to help him. I put him in the shade outside. I’m not good with medicine, I don’t know what to do, but I feel terrible…”
“There might be nothing we can do, babe,” Vaggie said, trying for as gentle as possible.
No matter how often it happened with farm or wild animals, Charlie never seemed to understand the basic tenants behind the circle of life. That was— a quality Vaggie wouldn’t have minded her changing, truthfully, but she didn’t want to be the one to crush Charlie’s optimistic view of the world. Moreover, Charlie had a tendency to close her ears when Vaggie broached the topic. So. Wasn’t much to crush when the person wouldn’t even listen.
”We have to! The snake avoided the predators’ pens, and didn’t hurt anybody… I’m sure he was just passing through, and didn’t realize that, uh.”
”That Alastor is psychotic and bloodthirsty?”
”That Alastor needs a lot of personal space,” Charlie corrected, voice a bit high as she did her best to convince herself, “and, like, a lot of warning before being approached. Like, a lot-a lot.”
“… Healing isn’t in our normal wheelhouse,” Blitz suddenly said, his whole demeanor suspiciously cautious, “but hey, for a nominal fee, we could probably help.”
”No, you can’t,” Vaggie deadpanned. “Charlie, do not wag your tail, he’s clearly-“
”Really?” Charlie’s tail wagged. Damn it all. “Do you mean that?”
”Sure, why not!” Blitz stuck his stupid reddish hands on what counted for his hips. Vaggie would have bet good kibble that he got that from a human, too. “The more I think about it, the more that I know a guy. Well, an owl. Actually, that’s saying too much, but point is, sweetie, if you leave this stupi— uuuh, I mean, this poor snake in our professional paws, we’ll get him set up for a full recovery. So long as you triple our food allowances for the foreseeable, let’s say, three weeks.”
”That’s a terrible deal,” Vaggie protested.
”To be clear of the terms, Sir, are we offering assurance of the snake’s recovery? We really shouldn’t—“
”Hush, Mox!”
”Deal!” Charlie declared, barking over the littler rats. “That would help the snake, and your food problems, right? That’s perfect!”
”Shit, really?” Blitz shook off his flabbergasted tone quickly, instead dropping to all four paws to give Charlie a happy full-body wiggle. “I mean, great! You said deal, so no take-backsies. Show us this wiggly worm and we’ll get right to helping him!”
«««
The day ended with one emergency sorted and the food problems half-way mollified.
The latter was solved when the human handlers finally showed up when the sun was actually at its zenith and began carting out meals. Charlie really needed to figure out a way to help in that area too, but they were uncannily good at locking up the foodstuffs.
The handlers also then noticed that Husk and Alastor weren’t in their correct pens, but because they were so behind in their chores, they didn’t swap the two back. Instead, they pinned a tarp over the roof of Husk’s cage to give him some shadow, and shelved a more permanent solution for another day. That also irritated Charlie to no end, but if the foodstuffs were locked up tight, the animals were basically impossible to free. At least, not with her paws.
All in all, it wasn’t the best day, but it did let her feel somewhat okay to slink back through the flap that served as her door into the home and collapse, with a big exhale, on the old rug in front of the couch. Vaggie slipped in behind her and curled up on the couch itself, keeping a vigilant watch of the door.
In front of the couch was a dusty box television, covered and flanked by a minor mountain of papers. The television did not work, and made an awful buzzing sound if ever turned on.
To the couch’s left was an old wooden dresser, topped with a large, well-lit, and over-cluttered glass tank. It had a whole bunch of real sticks and dead leaves and random rocks strewn within, as well as an automatic water dish with a too-big water tank. The heat lamp was supposed to be on an automatic timer to turn off, except that function had ceased working ages prior and had never been fixed. Now, it stayed on until the bulb burned out, after which — or maybe a week or month later — either Adam or Lute finally noticed and replaced it.
In that tank was an albino snake that spent nearly all of his time hidden away under a fake plastic rockcave. The only time he poked his head out was when Charlie or her mom asked him to.
He fancied himself Charlie’s father (and she fancied him her dad) because he’d watched her grow up in the house, and because he’d known and loved her mom, Lilith, since both Lilith and he had been brought to the farm. They were the first residents, as far as Charlie knew. Maybe because of that, they were both treated specially. That was the only explanation she could think of for why Adam never showed Lucifer off to other humans, anyway, or why - before her mom disappeared - Lilith and Charlie were the only animals allowed to wander around the farm (Vaggie didn’t count because she’d wandered herself onto the farm, of course).
Humans worked in mysterious ways, she supposed, and the rest of them just had to deal with it.
Except, no. That was a defeatist way of thinking! One day, she’d find a way to make them listen, and then they’d all be treated much better…
In any case.
Calling her dad a recluse was a nice way to put it. He only showed up for her or her mom… and, apparently, when strange animals broke into the home.
As Charlie dozed off, trying her best to ignore her own hungry stomach and to fight back the spiraling frustrations of not being able to make not-yet-problems into consistently workable solutions, her dad poked his head from his cave, cleared his throat, and asked:
”Uh, honey?”
”Yes, dad?” Charlie sleepily murmured, eyes shut and happier dreams a breath away.
”You don’t happen to know why Stolas directed three rodents to carry an outdoor rat snake through your doggy door and into the basement, do you?”
Immediately, Vaggie covered her ears with her paws and groaned.
Charlie felt herself wake up lightning-fast.
“They did it?! Wow! That’s fantastic! I mean — I can explain!”