Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 57th cycle. Now cycle 58!

This is a shift day. There are two updates today.

"Bedtime Stories"
Rachel/Sam & Nell
Sam & Nell/Samchel series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Rachel sat waiting for the phone to ring, and when it did, she let out a breath and answered, smiling. "Hello, who's this?"

"Nell Evans!" the pipsqueak voice announced, and Rachel laughed.

"I thought it might be. You all ready for bed? Got your PJs on?" she asked.

"Yes! I have kitties!" she revealed, and Rachel now knew exactly which of her pyjamas she had put on that day.

"Good choice," Rachel told her. "How was the train?"

"Big," Nell reported. "It made noise," she went on before proceeding to imitate the noise in question.

"Did it scare you?" Rachel smiled. It wasn't the first time she'd taken the train, but then that never kept her from treating it like it was.

"A little, but Daddy had my hand," she explained.

"That's good then, you didn't get scared too much. He holds my hand when I'm scared too, you know?" By the noise she got back she could guess Nell was nodding. "Are you ready for your story?"

"Yes!" she was excited, and it made Rachel smile again. Usually, when she was at Sam's for the night, she would take over story duties, reading from a book or making a story up. Over the summer they had spent here in New York, they would alternate, too… Now here she didn't have books, so she had her imagination to serve her.

The made up stories she presented, as random as they were, always followed a given set of characters. Some had been created by her, some added by Sam, and even some from Nell herself. There was a big waddling sort of man called Tom-Tom, with an insane appetite, his twin troublemaking nephews, John and Johnny, his wise little daughter, Jane, and the nosey neighbor, Mrs. Meanie with her squirrely fat cat Blob. Each had a voice, and if they had been in the same room, she would have mimed them for Nell.

"Well, do you know, Tom-Tom took a train today, too," she started. "And everyone else was there, too. John and Johnny, and Jane, and Mrs. Meanie and Blob, too. All of them got on the train. John and Johnny didn't want to sit next to Mrs. Meanie, after Blob scratched them for playing in her flowers." Nell squealed, recalling that particular story. "So finally Tom-Tom and Jane switched seats with them, which was kind of how Tom-Tom wanted it, because that way John and Johnny wouldn't get to steal his lunch."

"But they do!" Nell volunteered.

"Well, you know them, they're very sneaky that way," she confirmed, and Nell laughed. "Blob was so busy streeeeetching, and purrrrrring in his seat, he didn't see the boys in the row behind," her voice adopted a slow and sneaky tone, as it would when Blob the cat showed himself for the lazy behind he was, which always captivated Nell. Rachel had to remember the fact that they weren't in the same room when she caught herself miming the cat's stretching, curved claws… It took her a moment, but she found the course of her story again.

"Jane! Jane!" Nell called.

"Yes, while her father and Mrs. Meanie were all too busy to notice, she saw her cousins, and she knew as usual they were up to no good. She could have warned her father," she took on the voice Sam would call her 'smartypants Jane' voice, before morphing into the more 'puffy Tom-Tom' voice, "But he was too busy drooooooling all over the train menu, looking at all the sandwiches. Does Tom-Tom like sandwiches?"

"No!" Nell replied.

"Does he love sandwiches?"

"Yes!" she laughed, and so did Rachel.

"She could have warned Mrs. Meanie," she started in 'smartypants Jane' before turning to 'scratchy Mrs. Meanie,' "But she was too busy complaining. 'It's too cold!' she would say. 'This seat pinches!' she would say. So, Jane was on her own to stop John and Johnny messing with Blob the cat." She heard Nell gasp, and she bit her lip to keep it together. "So, she stood, and she climbed over her father, still droooooling over the menu, before she snuck up on John and Johnny, just as they were about to pull Blob's tail. 'Stop!' she said. 'You can't hurt Blob. And if you try again, I'll tell on you.'" Her voice went into the twin voices of John and Johnny, which were not unlike Tom-Tom's, though they were lazier. "The boys looked at their cousin, who was smaller than them. 'We don't care about the cat,' John said. 'All we want is Uncle Tom-Tom's sandwiches.'"

"Not sandwiches!" Nell squealed.

"So Jane awoke lazy Blob the cat, and seeing his favorite victims, the cat chased John and Johnny all up and down the train, while Jane shared a sandwich with her father, who had three more after this, and while Mrs. Meanie chased the boys along with her cat." Nell laughed and cheered, and Rachel smiled. "I think that's enough excitement for you tonight," she told her. "You want a lullaby now?"

"Okay," Nell agreed.

She had finished the lullaby even though she knew full well that Nell would have fallen asleep before the end. She could hear shifts in the sound that told her Sam would have gotten up from being at Nell's side, taking the phone away, tucking her in and kissing her goodnight before walking out of her room.

"What did Tom-Tom do this time?" he asked.

"Oh he ate a lot of sandwiches again…"

"Well he does that," Sam pointed out.

"He does," Rachel agreed, then after a moment, "So she's okay?"

"Yeah, she is," he assured her. "How about you?"

"Can you tell me a story now?" Rachel joked, half-joked. She could have told him that she missed him and Nell already, but she didn't have to, he knew, just like he knew she couldn't wait for their first visit.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!