The Cocoon
The moment that her brown eyes opened to the morning sunshine, she knew that something was missing. She raised her head slowly from the pillow and took a quick glance around, and as she did her senses started to come back to her with a startling realization.
"Cheese?" She looked underneath of her pink comforter and found nothing but the sheets. She climbed to the edge, looking for the chao on the floor below. Except he wasn't there, and all she could see was this strange blue eggshell-like object. She looked at it curiously for a few moments, before deciding that finding Cheese was much more important. She would investigate that later.
She hopped out of bed and put on the slippers discarded by her bedside, running to the window to see if he was outside. Except he wasn't there.
With a slight rush, she ran from her bedroom out to the kitchen area. As her mother was already there, she decided to cut straight to the chase after saying "Good morning."
"What is it, Cream? Why do you look so worried?" Vanilla asked. She could already tell that Cream was in a hurry to speak, and so she let the usual morning routine slide for a moment.
"It's just- just-" she struggled for the words for a second, her mind running faster than her mouth. "Cheese isn't here!"
"What do you mean, 'he isn't here'?"
"I woke up, and he wasn't there! I looked all over for him, but I- I just don't know where he is!" She hopped up in emphasis, tears already threatening to spill from her eyes.
"Calm down. I'm sure he's in the house, dear. We just need to look harder," Vanilla advised, walking into the living room. "Come on, maybe he's just in another room."
Cream obliged, but it didn't help her to stay calm. It had been so long since the last time she and Cheese had separated- in fact she couldn't really remember a time at all.
Vanilla looked behind the sofa, but saw no signs of the small creature. Cream looked behind the armchair, and around the tv area, but saw nothing of the chao there either. She gave her mother a questioning look, worried that the older rabbit would give up on the search already. Vanilla had a knack for reading the looks Cream tended to give, and she smiled reassuringly. "Let's look somewhere else, then."
Vanilla looked in the kitchen- under the table, chairs, and in the cabinets- still nothing showed up. Cream looked in the hall bathroom- thinking maybe Cheese had tried to take a bath by himself like he had that one time- but didn't see him there either. She was slowly beginning to think he had run away, and already she found herself imagining all of the terrible things that could have happened already.
She left to go back to the kitchen, and saw that her mother was putting on a jacket. "Where are you going, mother?" she asked, peering up at her curiously.
"I think we should check the Chao gardens nearby. You never know, he might've decided to go there."
"Oh." Cream hadn't considered the simpler, less dangerous chance that he might have just gone back to the gardens. "That's a good idea!" She quickly put on her jacket as well, and they headed out of the door hopefully.
As they approached the chao garden, they saw several chao playing together in the pool of water there, some of them hero and some of them dark. But there wasn't a neutral in sight.
Vanilla and Cream exchanged a worried glance, Cream's concern already began resuming in her mind. "Momma, what will we do now?" She looked up, and saw that her mother was just as puzzled as she was.
"Well…" She looked around the chao garden one final time, and upon seeing nothing very reassuring she gazed back at Cream in disappointment. "Why don't we go back home and decide what to do?"
The two of them trudged home together.
As soon as they had arrived, however, Cream said that she didn't really feel like discussing what else to do, that she would rather be alone for a moment. Vanilla allowed her, though insisting that she took breakfast with her, because it had been getting cold already. She knew that Cream probably needed to calm herself down before searching any longer, and so though she preferred that the rabbit stay and talk things through, she understood why Cream didn't want to.
As Cream slipped off to her room, she sat down at the table and forked through the scrambled eggs that she'd made that morning. It seemed so long ago that Cream had befriended Cheese at the local chao garden. Yet it seemed like only yesterday, too. Vanilla could still remember the moment Cream had walked through their door that morning, awhile ago, and had held up a baby chao for her to see. She remembered how Cream had gone on and on about how cute it was, and how playful it had been in the garden, and how much she wished that she didn't have to let it go. Vanilla had then explained how one couldn't just keep a chao- they lived in chao gardens and only they could choose whether or not to leave the garden. Yet, Cheese- as he soon came to be named- stayed close by their house for a long time. As soon as he was allowed in the house, that was where he stayed. It was an honor to have a chao choose to leave its garden for their home, and it did require some work to keep it there, but it was all worth it in the end. Cheese ended up following Cream everywhere, and it was such a sweet thing to see the bond that they had. She couldn't think of a reason why Cheese would leave, and she still couldn't believe that he was missing.
Suddenly, she heard Cream squeal something from the next room. It startled her, and she nearly choked on her breakfast, but she quickly recovered herself and called," What's wrong, Cream?"
Just like that, Cream came running into the kitchen, holding an unfamiliar chao in her arms...well, unfamiliar except that it was wearing a red bow tie. The chao itself, however, was a white and blue hero chao. Vanilla looked at it in wonder, before quickly making the connection and laughing.
Cream, for now, paid no mind to this. "I heard this noise and I looked over and all of a sudden there was this chao where there used to be this egg-like thing. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about that thing. And-and-and where did it come from, Momma?"
"I wish you'd told me about the cocoon sooner!" Vanilla exclaimed. "No wonder we couldn't find Cheese."
"Cocoon?" Cream looked down at the chao in her arms, and it squeaked cheerfully. "What cocoon?"
"I forgot that I never told you about the chao cycle, dear." Vanilla patted her lap, and the chao flew over to land on it. "Some chao don't stay as neutral chao. All of them at some point have to go into a cocoon- that was the egg thing- and they sometimes become a different type of chao. That's what's happened here. Cheese cocooned and became a hero chao."
Cheese, still resting on Vanilla's lap, gave a cheerful squeak once more. Cream's face lit up, realizing now that she hadn't lost Cheese after all.
"Oh!" She laughed, mostly at herself for ignoring the cocoon, and then watched as Cheese spun around her in the air. "I should've known all along you wouldn't leave us, Cheese!"
And Cheese agreed with her in chao language, because he never would.
A/N: I've had this plot in my mind for a long while now, and I'm glad that I've finally written it down, even though it's a pretty simple one. I'd like to see how Cream would react to Cheese growing up, but then again...I know that SEGA probably wouldn't let him age much, because you know how chao cycles go.