Kitten
"Close your eyes," she demands, appearing in front of him all of a sudden, so that he jumps and takes a startled step backwards. She is leaning towards him, her face close enough for her to kiss him- or to bite his nose off, which, given the alarming number of teeth which her grin is displaying, seems more likely.
He hesitates. He still remembers when, a few months ago, he was in a very similar situation. Then, the other person was Ed, the wide grin was a front to hide the scheme the elder brother was hatching, and the plot was to snatch the last slice of cake from off the table and flee the scene before Al even managed to open his eyes.
"Go on," she says, and her grin gets, if anything, still toothier.
He notices then that she is holding both her hands behind her back.
In the end he decides, as ever, to trust her. He closes his eyes.
"Hold out your hands," she says, her voice sounding breathless with excitement.
He does.
Evidently she has become too impatient to continue waiting for him to follow her orders: there is a noise as of a box being placed on a table, and then she seizes his wrists and moves them together so that his hands touch.
"Right," she says. "Wait."
He hears footsteps, a creak of cardboard, a tiny high-pitched wail-
- and then she scampers gleefully from the room with one final instruction: to "open your eyes!"
He is left alone, with her presence lingering in the room, an open cardboard box on the table, and a tiny kitten, a ball of damp fur no larger than his palms, nestled between his hands.
Author's notes: Despite the lack of responses to my questions, I'm going to continue placing important announcements here.
From now on, I will not be able to update as frequently as I do normally. I'm suffering from writer's block right now, and I'm very busy. You can still expect to see chapters- just not as often. Thanks for the support.
Once again, I'm going to plead for reviews. It really does make me feel a whole lot happier about my writing.