"Did you find her?"
"No hello?"
"Sorry; hello - did you find her?"
"She found us, I think."
"You spoke to her, then?"
"We certainly did," Dan nodded.
The Howlters had only just stepped through the door and yet Dil had already struck up a conversation and Dab had immediately headed to the kitchen with Tabitha, carrying… something.
Phil took it upon himself to explain to Dil everything that had happened, in as little detail as possible, and Dan – having nothing to add to this conversation – decided to investigate whatever it was that the kid and his mother had brought into the house.
"What've you got there, kiddo?" Howell inquired, peering over Tabitha's shoulder as she found a Tupperware box, took the lid off and lined it with layer upon layer of kitchen roll.
Dan's question didn't really need to be answered, as Dab then opened his cupped hands and put down, especially gently, in the box, a very little chipmunk. In fact, it looked like a baby one, it was so small.
"Wha-" Dan started, confusedly, "You can't just go adopting new pets – isn't Susan 2 enough? Where did you even find this?" He stuttered.
"In the park," Dab replied, seriously, getting some milk out of the fridge, "He's injured. He has a broken leg, mum says."
Dan was silent and Tabitha gave him a knowing look. Dan knew what this look meant; it was an expression of not wanting to say something aloud for the fear of breaking someone's heart, but still needing to express this sadness to someone who shared your thinking. Dab seemed unaware of this silent exchange, though, and went about pouring a tiny bit of milk into an old baby bottle. How this would help the chipmunk pup was unknown, but the kid filled the bottle anyway and offered it to the tiny, fluffy, shaking animal.
Dan left him and his mother to it and turned about to look to his friend in a sort-of worried way, hoping to get some help with what to say when the inevitable happened. He always consulted with his friend over things now, because as he'd told him a couple of nights ago, they were supposed to be a team.
They made eye contact and mutually decided to step to the side, out of the way of everyone else, and have a little chat.
"He's brought an injured baby chipmunk home," Dan whispered into his friend's ear.
"He's what now?"
"He's trying to help it, but…"
Phil swallowed, pulling away and tilting his head to the side. He knew what Dan was implying and it wasn't good. There are few things more disheartening than watching a child trying to save a helpless animal that could never make it.
"I can feel my heart shattering already," Phil said, biting his lip but looking only tired and melancholy. He shot a glance over Dan's shoulder to see Tabitha and Dab in the kitchen behind him, and Dil walking up to them now, too. This was something that happened in TV shows, films and books a lot, and it was hardly ever that things worked out too well. It was true, though; just thinking about it made Phil's heart crumble like a badly-made pie crust.
"What do we do?"
"Well, there's nothing much we can do," Dan mumbled. He was feeling exactly the same way as his housemate. He had a great amount of affection for Dab – after all everyone had been through together – and wouldn't want to see him heartbroken, but it looked like that was how it was going to turn out, and everyone but the kid knew it.
Neither of them spoke for a minute, only communicating in thought and cynical glances, until it was decided that the best thing to do was just let whatever happened happen.
"Good news, though!" Phil started, loud enough for everybody to hear, "Seeing as we've fixed up our friendships, we can leave practically as soon as we like."
"And that's good news?" Tabitha replied, raising an eyebrow. She seemed quite attached to the Creators – at least more than Dil was – and didn't look keen for them to up and leave as soon as possible, especially considering all the help they had been.
Phil didn't quite know how to respond to her question at first, and let the first thing that came to his head leave his mouth.
"Better news than that," he retorted, gesturing to the lidless Tupperware box on the countertop with a mix of annoyance and sadness. He realised this was a bad thing to say when he could feel everyone's eyes drilling into him and he dropped his hand back down to his side, "…That's not what I meant to say."
"It's alright," Tabitha assured him, and Dan laid a hand on his shoulder to second that.
"What I mean to say is that everything can get back to normal once we've gone. Every time we're around, chaos follows us, so it'll be a relief to get us out of the way, right?" Phil coughed, stretching to try and bring everything back together, even though it wasn't really working, "But we don't have to go right now, of course. I just don't really know when. I don't want to make it a huge fuss like last time at the party. Maybe we should just get together with a couple of friends somewhere?" He suggested. Dan agreed with him by nodding and both Dil and Tabitha told them that that was a good idea, but attention soon shifted back to the new animal in the house.
"I'm going to call him Tiny and I'm going to help him get better," Dab proclaimed, proudly, "Then he can go and live back in the forest."
This confident assertion did not help anyone's heart, least of all Phil's. Milk bottles alone certainly weren't going to get anyone out of this.
It was a surprise, really, when Dan tiredly wandered into the kitchen the next morning and cast his eyes down to the box on the counter and saw that 'Tiny' was still breathing, shakily.
"Hello…" Dan breathed, silently because he was the only one awake, as he looked over the chipmunk. Tiny was wrapped in a flannel cloth to make a little bed, and a bottle cap of milk sat right in front of him beside a couple of broken-up walnuts that had been there all through the night since Dab put them there yesterday.
Dan honestly hadn't expected the chipmunk to survive the night. A little bit of hope started to appear – as tiny as Tiny himself – that maybe the kid was right and everything might be OK. But then as Dan watched the animal more and observed the unstable breathing the hope started to subside.
He looked over his shoulder to the sofa where he could only just see a blanket rising and falling with his friend's breaths. Everything was very bizarrely peaceful. Flicking on the tea machine and hoping not to wake Tiny (which of course he did), Dan set about making the morning brew. Every morning they had tea.
Dan cracked his knuckles and quietly padded over to the sofa in his grey woollen socks to sit down on the rug whilst the tea boiled. He looked up, fixed Phil's fringe, heard the sounds of the Howlters waking up, said 'good morning' to his best friend and stood up to fetch the tea.
He had a feeling, for whatever reason, that today was going to be a long day.