Dab seemed pretty proud of himself for keeping Tiny alive throughout the night. To him, this was a sign that maybe his new pet was getting better. Every few minutes he'd look in on his chipmunk and talk to it in a very soft, gentle voice, assuring it that everything would be OK. But Dab's parents and childminders knew better.

Tiny wasn't really living. Existing, maybe, but not living. He was shaking and squeaking occasionally as if calling for help. It was almost as heartbreaking to hear as Dab sounding so convinced that he'd get well.

Phil almost wanted to put the poor animal out of its misery and was contemplating how to do that as he sat on the back of the sofa, staring to the plastic box on the bar. He wouldn't do it – if only for the sake of keeping his and Dab's friendship in tact – but it seemed the most generous thing to do in this circumstance. Tiny certainly seemed to have a bit more than a broken leg. Common colds could kill hamsters, Phil knew, and could probably just as well kill a chipmunk if that was what Tiny had.

Dan took a sip of tea and joined his friend on the sofa.

"He won't last long, you know," he said, calmly and quietly.

Phil turned to him,

"Don't sound so happy about it," he replied, blankly, "I'd rather get it over with. The poor thing's been suffering all through the night."

Dan's eyes widened at what his friend was expressing, and he let a bit of tea from his mouth dribble back into the mug.

"You're not- you're not thinking of killing it, are you?" He hissed, wiping his mouth with his knitted jumper sleeve.

Phil shrugged,

"Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind."
"This isn't like you… besides, even if we were to put it out of its misery, we don't have a gun to shoot it with."

"We have knives."
Dan shook his head,

"No," he decided, very strictly, trying to get the gruesome image out of his head, "You couldn't do it anyway. You're too much of a kind soul for murder, even if it is out of mercy."

Phil had to agree. He admitted that even if he did get around to it, he'd end up just lying on the lawn outside and crying. He could hear Tiny's weak squeak from the Tupperware enclosure and knew it couldn't be long now anyway.

Why did the kid have to go and do something like this?

"He has to learn about death sometime," Dan attempted to console him, although it wasn't the best thing to say, "…Even if it has to be the hard way."

And in the end, there was nothing they could do.

Dab came into the room then to check up on Tiny. He didn't appear to have noted anything wrong, but of course he wouldn't.

"Hello, Tiny! Are you feeling any better?" He asked, peering into his box. The chipmunk clearly wasn't feeling any better, but the kid didn't recognise that cold, harsh fact.

"Do you want me to talk to him?" Dan whispered to his friend, putting a hand on his back, but Phil only shook his head.

"After the fact," he replied. Maybe that would be best, or maybe he was just putting it off. Whatever the case, he didn't want to put up with tears or a tantrum right now.

Dan finished his tea and slid off the sofa to his feet.

"What's up?" He asked Dab as he walked past to the sink, ruffling his hair as he did.

"Why is he squeaking, Dan?" Dab asked, looking a bit concerned for once.

Dan didn't quite know how to water down flat-out saying 'he's dying', so thought for a minute, chewing his lip.

"Because he's not very well," he said at long last, stating the absolutely obvious.

"Do you think he's cold?"

"I don't know."
He cast a look to Phil, searching for some help, but none came.

"There's not much we can really… do…" Lester put in, eventually, "We'll just see how he turns out. Time will tell."

And time did tell, like it always did.

It was around noon, on Dab's umpteenth check-up on Tiny, that it finally happened. Phil – who was laid on the sofa at the time – was alerted by a heart-wrenching, high-pitched scream of 'NO!' and it surprised him so much that he dropped his phone on the floor and turned about so sharply that he got a cramp.

Dan, too, was surprised, and wheeled about on the computer chair.

"What?" He yelped, and then the realisation of what had happened set in. He got up off his chair and skulked over to the kitchen to see if his suspicions were correct. They were.

There, lying lifeless as could be in the middle of a grey flannel, was Tiny. Or rather, what was Tiny.

Dab looked distraught, as if this lifeless chipmunk was a beloved pet who he had cared for for years and years, when in fact it was just a dying animal he had found in the park the day before.

"He was getting better!" He sobbed

This was not true. Dan, Phil, Dil and Tabitha all knew that Tiny was not getting better and was instead getting worse, and Dan was not surprised in the slightest at what had happened, but that didn't make him cold-hearted. He knew he ought to express some sympathy, so he put a soft hand on the kid's shoulder in the most comforting manner he could muster.

"Sometimes these things happen," he said, kindly, "It's as Phil said this morning. There's nothing we can do. Baby chipmunks aren't very strong and, well… Tiny was very ill."

"You did your best," Phil added in, sitting up and resting his elbows on the back of the settee. He was glad that it had happened relatively soon; he wouldn't have wanted an innocent animal to suffer through something it didn't have to.

"You gave him a good last two days," Dan assured Dab.

The comforting words didn't do much to help the unhappiness, however, and the kid was still grief-stricken. It was starting to tug at his childminders' heartstrings, too (Dil and Tabitha were both at work, but if they had been at home, they would have probably felt the same as them).

Phil thought for a while as he watched Dab and Dan talk for a bit, even though the conversation wasn't very interesting and was practically just the grieving child lamenting over his loss. He swallowed once, picked up his phone from the floor, put it on the table, got to his feet and slipped his hands into his pockets.

Dab looked up to him, sadly, tears running down his round, pink cheeks still.

"If you like," Phil started, kindly, "We can bury him in the garden."

And they did.

"I can't stop him! He's too strong!" Dab cried, trying to wriggle free of the tight grip around him, but all in vain. He looked around for his lanky, black-haired guardian with a pleading look on his face as if begging for some help, but Phil was nowhere to be seen.

Dab struggled a bit more, though it didn't get him anywhere, and raised the origami sword he wielded. The blade was folded up printer paper in a knife-like shape, only with the very end snipped off so that he couldn't impale himself in the eyes. The handle was bright red and sturdy and Dab's grip on it didn't bend it at all.

"We have to slay the monster!" He declared, flourishing it in the air in a very dramatic action.

The huge, strong arms around him only tightened and spun him around in a circle, so he gave the loudest whistle he could (which wasn't very loud).

"Faithful pterosaur; where are you?" he called, trying to look about whilst being swirled around at an alarming velocity. He was eventually lifted high up into the air and felt a warm face press into his shoulder. He heard a muffled 'rar-rar-rar' sort of sound and wriggled even more.

That was when Phil finally appeared, skidding to his knees onto the floorboards.

"Hop on, brave knight," he declared in a distinctively non-pterosaur-like voice.

Dab brandished his origami sword and as his feet touched the ground again, he swiped it across one of the arms wrapped about him. He was released as he heard an exclamation of 'raAORR' in the most dragon-y voice he had ever heard.

Dab clambered onto his 'pterosaur' and cast one last look at the 'monster' in its soft grey jumper and cosy tracksuit-bottoms. Didn't look much like a monster, but man he had a grip.

"And we're off!" Phil declared, springing to his feet with uncharacteristic energy and making sure the kid wouldn't fall from his back as he dashed to the open back door.

"He's gaining on us!" Dab exclaimed, staring behind and seeing Dan skulking about behind them before hurrying out into the garden, "He's right on your tail!"

"Ready your sword – we have to stop and fight!" Phil told him, slowing to a halt on the grass and letting the knight get down.

And with one swift fake-stab of the sword, the monster fell to his knees and then laid down on the ground with his hands on his heart and a 'blegh'.

"High five!" Dab cheered, reaching up to give Phil a high five, which worked about as well as a new year's diet, and sitting down on the lawn in exhaustion.

Dan sat up and shook his head to get the hair out of his eyes,

"It seems the Non-specific Creature From an Unknown Darkness has been slain again," he sighed, and heard Phil's strange, wheezy laugh from beside him.

Dab had been pretty sad after his chipmunk-saving quest hadn't really worked out, but his childminders' plan to cheer him up had been more of a success. Who knew that a little bit of paper and imagination could keep someone entertained for so long; and not just Dab, either. This was what everyone had been missing, Dan supposed, and he wished that he had put forward the idea sooner, before the 'incident' happened. But no matter. They were all well now.

Dan stared up to the white, fluffy clouds in the perfectly blue sky and wondered what had been going on at home, and pictured himself and his friend being back in control, looking down into this world like sentinels. Loving sentinels.

They'd do a better job up there than they were doing down here, but there was something down here like a magnet that was holding them down still, preventing them from going home. Dan had thought that it was on-going issues that hadn't quite been resolved yet – and it had seemed like Phil had agreed with him – but now he realised that there was more to this universe than fixing old mistakes.

The only things holding them back were things like this.