Evan Pancakes turned up at the front door almost immediately after Dab excitedly told him he could come. He'd gathered his things, stuffed them in a bag, and bounded across the road to Potter's Splay to rap on the door with his tiny fist.
Dab hurried to answer him and swung open the door, almost knocking over the side table as he nearly ran into it, and an aroma of cooking wafted out of the house and into the open air.
Chicken something-or-other.
Evan quickly came inside – without wiping his feet on the doormat, mind – wearing a wide grin, and immediately started chatting to Dab.
Dan looked up from his phone screen to the children and smiled, contently, glad that Dab had somebody to play with now, and cleared his throat, standing up off the sofa.
"Hey, Evan! I'm Dan; nice to meet you!" He said, reached down to shake the kid's hand (Evan looked worried at first. Probably due to Dan's height) and gave a smirk, "You'll have good, strong hands when you get older, I can tell."
He couldn't tell.
Evan sniggered and Dan let go, wondering whether to say 'I'm joking' or not.
He didn't.
"Dab's told me all about you; you seem really cool!… Are you his uncle or something?" Evan asked.
"More like a family friend," Dan mused, pondering over what relation he actually was. Friend was probably the closest to creator he could get without being confusing and existential, "You'd better take your shoes off, though. Phil wouldn't want muddy footprints on the floorboards. He's such a clean freak nowadays," he said, but still maintained his smile. He also decided not to tell Evan that his existence was his and Phil's fault, either.
The use of the word 'fault' made it seem like a mistake. Dan preferred to see it as a beautiful accident sprouted from a long saga of events that started a very long time ago and that eventually concluded with burning their neighbour's bed. What kind of a life is this?
"Dab's told me about Phil, too," Evan continued as he bent over to take his shoes off, and Dan folded his arms.
"Has he?" He hummed, knowing that this couldn't mean anything too great. Even he'd started to pick up on how much Dab seemed to avoid Phil for apparently no reason. Made him wonder what happens whenever he's not there.
"Yeah, he doesn't seem too fun…" Evan answered, putting his shoes in the corner and wiping up a smear of dirt off the floor with his sock.
"He's not that bad," Dan frowned, defensively, casting a glance to Dab as if to ask 'what have you been saying about my friend?'
He would have said it aloud, only he didn't want to get into anything like that right now, especially not wanting to risk giving Evan the wrong first impression of him.
"He's getting better, right? He's a great guy really, he's just had an awkward few days."
"How about that time he gave me a death glare for leaving my jacket on the sofa?"
"Apart from that time."
"And when-"
"Can we not get into this now? You'll have to talk to him about it yourself."
But Dab made an expression like that was a very bad idea and the conversation ended there.
"Well then, Evan," Dan continued, flicking his fingernails, absent-mindedly, "Get yourself settled in – go play – dinner should be ready in about an hour."
And the children hurried off to Dab's room, Evan trailing his rucksack behind him.
Dan shrugged and wandered back over to the sofa, collapsing into the cushions and picking his phone back up to scroll through the internet for a while.
Hopefully he wouldn't get so distracted that he burned the food because that wouldn't be a good first impression, either.
It hadn't occurred to him before, but it was starting to now, that he hadn't actually gotten Dil and Tabitha's permission to let Evan stay.
Oh well: they'd pretty much given him (and Phil) the authority to decide what the family did – being the creator and all – and besides, the Howlters were such an idealistic family that they'd probably have agreed anyway.
Well – Dan thought – idealistic so long as you can cut out him and Phil from the picture.
Maybe interesting was a better adjective.
Phil probably wouldn't be bothered about the whole sleepover thing, either, because he wasn't having such a bad time himself.
In fact, he was quite enjoying himself, even if he wished he had someone to walk with.
The route to where he had walked to was engrained in his mind by now from walking to it so many times. It was a pleasant walk, too, even though Phil wasn't generally the type of person to agree to go on a walk, never mind enjoy it, but in this aesthetically pleasing world of cherry blossom trees and green, fresh grass with the scent of whatever that damp smell was, walking wasn't all that horrible of an experience.
Phil was currently sprawled out on a bench in the middle of Magnolia Promenade, facing Paddywhack's Emporium, with a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates laid on top of his chest.
He looked very slightly like a corpse that someone had dumped on a bench and other people had left a memorial for by leaving nice things… on top of him. Which isn't really what you do with memorials, but then again, the corpse is usually underground somewhere.
Moving on.
It was nice and warm in the sun and it would have been easy to fall right asleep there and then, but he really ought to be heading home soon and he also didn't want anybody to actually mistake him for a cadaver (wouldn't be a stretch, considering his skin tone).
Weakly fluttering one eye open, very nearly blinding himself in the light of the sun, he gave a drawn-out yawn.
The walk had done him good, clearly, as he had only just recovered from being absolutely exhausted after he'd moseyed around the shops for a while and spent a good amount of time people-watching.
It was a good job he'd put some money in his pockets before he came out because otherwise it'd be a bit of a wasted journey, though he did get to admire some fancy garden gnomes in the emporium.
Now would probably be the best time to start heading back to Willow Creek if he wanted to be home in time for dinner like Dan had said.
Phil didn't know exactly what time it was but he assumed that it surely couldn't be too late.
He sat up, feeling well-rested and very warm, and shakily got to his feet, making sure to not forget the chocolate and the flowers which had inconveniently dripped all over his shirt.
Furiously trying to dry himself by getting the fringes of the fabric and waving it to get some air to the damp patches, he started walking out of the plaza-type area he'd been hanging around in.
He looked slightly like the one person every town or village has who just goes around talking to themselves and doing random things and who you didn't really want to make eye contact with, but let's be real, that's already Dil.
The only thing that made him look up from patting the damp parts of his shirt was the sound of his name being called, in a voice that he knew too well.
Thankfully, it was not Summer this time.
"Oh! H- hi, Erica!" Phil smiled, nicely, trying to come across as friendly as he could, "Haven't seen you in a while! How've you been?"
"I've been… good," Erica Pendleton replied, walking over to him, "I think I saw you in Chez Llama last Friday?"
"You certainly did."
"I didn't realise you were back in town."
"Ah, y'know… Dil asked Dan and I to come and help look after Dab whilst he and Tabitha went away for a few days-" Phil explained, and his face fell for a second before he shook his head and righted himself, "-So we complied, of course. It's been going… relatively OK. I'm just glad there's only one of him to look after," he sniggered.
Erica gave a short laugh back and straightened her pastel pink blouse.
"If you're heading home, I wouldn't mind walking with you," she said, "Good to catch up, right?"
Phil tilted his head to the side and straightened his back to stand as tall as possible. Why was Erica being so nice to him all of a sudden?
"Sure," he agreed, though, and started along the path that would lead them back to Willow Creek.
"Who are the flowers for? If you don't mind me asking," Erica asked, not sounding like she really cared if Phil minded or not, "Dan?"
"What would Dan want with flowers?" Phil scoffed, rolling his eyes and deciding not to tell Erica who the flowers were actually for.
"Who else?"
"Dear lady Disdain; are you yet living?" Phil exclaimed, quoting Shakespeare.
What Shakespeare had meant was he couldn't understand how somebody so miserable and incensed could possibly still be living after all this time.
"Is that a quote from somewhere?" Erica asked, very flatly, without any tone to her voice, and Phil smiled and nodded.
He was considering going on but then decided against reciting the whole of Much Ado About Nothing.
He wandered beside Erica for quite some time, awkwardly making conversation and still wondering why she was being so courteous toward him.
Though, the most important thing on Phil's mind, he found, was worrying that the chocolate would melt and that the flowers would run out of water and that he should really find them something to drink as soon as he got home.
Speaking of home, he'd been walking for a while now and was starting to wonder why he hadn't arrived back yet.
It was then that he looked away from his conversation with Erica and gazed about his surroundings and his face fell and he stopped in his tracks.
"What? What's up with you?" Erica asked, who was still slightly expressionless and still thought that Phil was a touch on the odd side.
Phil didn't reply at first, just started sniggering to himself.
"What?" Erica repeated, but had to wait for Phil to calm down before he could manage to tell her that after all this time of walking-
"I went the wrong way!" He called, spinning on his heels and giving a wave, "Gotta' dash! See you around!" And without really saying anything else he hurried off, his long, gangly legs covering a good amount of ground, and he left Erica standing in the middle of the road, very confused and slightly flustered.
And it'd take Phil twice as long to get home.