Chapter Text
Her throat hurts.
It's the first thing she thinks of, even as a ragged whimper breaks out from her mouth, as she twitches and shudders in the ball she's curled up in. It's worse than anything she's ever known, worse than eating too much ice cream or choking on water or getting sick with the flu. It's like she can't get enough air.
“Papa,” she sobs through the shivers, voice cracked and gasping, even though she hasn't called dad papa in years, not since the mouse on the beach kicked over her sand castle and told her it was a stupid baby word for babies. Hurts. Why does it hurt?
And it's cold. It's so, so cold. Her eyes are screwed up tight, but she can feel it. Her fur is all heavy and sloshy and wet. Something's on top of her, but it's shaped all wrong and just as wet and and weighing her down.
It's not right. She woke up face down, cold, and there's no blanket and no pillow and no papa. She knows so, because she called for him and he hasn't come yet. Dad's always there whenever she has nightmares, ready to tuck her back into bed.
She reaches out with her paw blindly, each breath rattling awfully in her chest.
“Are you okay?" comes a voice, only a little bit above her head. She startles—
—and the world unfolds into existence around her.
Carefully, she sits up, blinking, fur warm, nightdress dry, breath steady.
She's in a room. The walls are blue and the carpet is red and there's a smiling clock on the wall by the stairs that says it's three o'clock.
“Oh,” she says, and then looks up at the voice. It's a boy with a red hat. His eyes are huge. “I think… I had a nightmare.”
“I have those all the time,” the boy says. His shoes are untied. She can tell because her head is still close-ish to the ground. “I had a nightmare not too long ago. Henry found me and hit my head. But it's okay, because they're not real. I'm Mellow. Who are you? You weren't here before.”
She doesn't know for a second, and that's scarier than anything ever: her heart jumps, and her paws go all clenched. But then something wells up inside of her like soda bubbles, a little piece of a lullaby at night.
“I'm Chloe,” Chloe says, testing it out. It sounds right. “I wasn't here before what?”
“Before I went to the kitchen,” Mellow says, and points towards one of the walls. There's a big, square-shaped hole in it, filled with rocks. “But it's caved in now by a tentacle monster, so we can't go back that way if you wanted to get something from there. There isn't anything in the fridge anyways.”
He peers at her, and then adds skeptically, “You don't sound like you knew you weren't here. Did you forget? That's okay, ‘cause I forget all the time, but if you forgot that maybe you forgot other things too. Like your shoes.”
“I don't like shoes,” Chloe says, wrinkling her snout.
“Eww,” Mellow says, and Chloe scowls as she stands up properly.
“That is not an ew!”
“You just have your feet out like that everywhere, stinking up the place,” Mellow says, clearly because Mellow is stupid and wrong and a boy. “That's nasty. You're going to step on the cockroach guts in the carpet, and then you'll have cockroach gut feet and you'll have to live with it forever and ever.”
“You don't tie your shoes!” Chloe sticks out her tongue. “You're going to trip all over your ugly ratty shoelaces and then fall over and smash your face on the, the, the—” she looks down, and shrieks.
“Told you,” Mellow says, as Chloe scrambles back from the brown goo on the floor in between them. “And I won't trip, because I have a guardian angel, and they won't let me fall over and smash my face, so there!”
“Why do you have that in your room!” she yells. Mellow lifts a sneaker to show the bottom like it's an answer, and it is an answer after a couple seconds. A really gross one. “You're the nasty one!”
“No I'm not, because I have shoes!”
Chloe scowls, staying far, far away from Mellow and his awful bug-gut shoes. “Yes you are. Dad would make you clean it all up.” She frowns suddenly, upset. “I need to find dad.”
“You have a dad?” Mellow asks.
“He's going to be so upset,” Chloe says, gnawing on her lip. It makes her bleed when her canines poke through the skin, but she can't help it. “I don't think he knows where I am. I didn't think I'd be gone, so I didn't tell him. I don't know why I'm here.”
Mellow's eyes look at her. They're so round, like the frisbees her and dad would throw around on the beach. They're blue like the beach, too.
Maybe Mellow eats blue things. Dad said flamingos were pink because they ate shrimp.
“Well, isn't it because of the angel?” he asks, and Chloe blinks.
“The angel?”
“The guardian angel,” Mellow says. “Can't you feel them? Mine's not very big, so people miss them all the time.” He jabs a finger in the air, towards nothing.
Chloe squints. “People can't see angels,” she says suspiciously. “Mom's an angel, but I can't see her.”
“But it's right there,” Mellow insists. “See? It's white with that little pointy shape that's kind of a triangle but not really. And then it floats around on things and stuff. It's a nice angel. It likes to watch me do puzzles.”
The more Chloe stares, the more she sees something in the corner of the ceiling, teeny-tiny small. It's hard to notice. Her eyes keep not wanting to look at it. There's a blur of movement in the air, and then it's gone.
“That's so weird,” she says. “It can't be an angel. It's too small.”
Mellow puts his hands on his hips. “You're being rude,” he says, and then, “I think you have one too. So you're being double rude, really.”
“I'm not,” Chloe says with a huff, still looking at the ceiling, and then her eyes catch on something that doesn't make sense in the smooth surface, a little straight line flashing in and out of sight: not a different color, but sticking out of the blue paint anyway. She blinks, and suddenly lines are everywhere. Words, all creeping across the room in sentences, stacked on top of each other.
“Oh,” she says, unsure, and then it's just her and Mellow again. “Are you sure they're nice?”
“It isn't the one who told me I'm nasty,” Mellow says, and Chloe crosses her arms; she's not wrong! “But I guess you can talk to Tip if you need help. He likes to give out tips. I think that's why his mother named him that.”
Something about that doesn't make sense. Chloe frowns, opening her mouth.
It is at this point that the clock peels itself from the wall and runs toward them with outstretched claws.