It was an average morning; I was getting ready for work, Momo was dozing on the couch after eating her breakfast, and Sonja had gone out, her restlessness trumping the cold.
As I was filling up my travel mug, the door swung open and Sonja rushed in. "MASTER! MASTER!"
"What is it? Did you find another squirrel?"
"No, there's someone in the shed!"….….....
.........…
I knew what I was going to find on the other side of that door, but I still didn't have the guts to open it. Sonja had just come into the kitchen saying that there was someone in the shed, and considering the strange phenomena that had been happening to me lately, the circumstances of this stranger's presence were obvious. But I knew I had to face this new trial. Behind me were Momo and Sonja, Momo's ears twitching from her curiosity and Sonja growling and fighting her instincts to bark and yell.
I opened the door of the shed and my palms met my face. "Goddammit, this isn't funny anymore!"
Crouching in the back of the shed, surrounded by overturned firewood, was a small girl, drop-dead beautiful. With short white hair and waxy skin, she almost looked like a ghost. On the sides of her head were two fuzzy ears like satellite dishes, and wrapped around her ankles was a tail like a length of rope. She was shivering with teary eyes, cowering at the sight of me, a scrawny little thing. From the look of her, she was (or technically had been) a mouse living in the shed. She transformed last night under the woodpile, knocking it over.
"Are you okay... Master?" she whimpered, covering her mouth with her hands as if to chew her nails.
Great, now I have a kid to take care of. Looks like I won't be "playing" with the new girl.
"Yeah, I guess I am," I said with a sigh.
I took a step towards her and she squealed in terror. "Please don't hurt me!"
I stopped, shocked by her cry. This was certainly new. With Momo and Sonja, I had gotten to know both of them as animals before they transformed, meaning that they loved me before they became people. But this new girl, I had never met her before. Perhaps she had seen me come into the shed while she was living in here, but that was it. I was going to have to build up a relationship with her from scratch. Not to mention this added credence to my theory that the girls actually acquired knowledge of human vocabulary rather than remembering it from past exposure.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you. Just let me get a look at you."
"Who are you?!" Sonja yelled. "What are you doing in our shed?!"
"Sonja, Momo, go wait inside!" I couldn't let the two of them crowd the new girl. They refused to leave so I was forced to herd them back to the house and toss them inside.
I returned to the shed, the girl still cowering in the corner.
"Relax," I said, "I just want to check you out."