School is over for today. She walks home from the bus stop, responsibly not stopping to explore the trees in the park (her dad might notice if she’s late). She cuts through the strip of side yard to get to the back door of their apartment, like usual.

When she’s almost at her doorstep, there’s a flash of blue among the bushes.

Oh? What’s that? It looks like a patch of the sky, but it’s too low down…

The blue patch gives a wiggle. A moment later a critter pokes its head out, blinking big round eyes at her.

Oh! It’s an animal! And it’s blue! She didn’t think there were any animals at all that were blue, except birds she guesses. This doesn’t look like a bird at all.

…Maybe it has feathers anyway?

No way to tell from here! It trots out into the open, revealing itself to be incredibly adorable. It’s the size of a small cat, but its proportions and the shape of its head are a bit different, and it has more fluff – and more localized fluff – than even the fuzziest of felines.

(Also, it’s blue.)

Its tail is even fluffier than a squirrel’s! She didn’t know tails could be that fluffy. She starts to reach out to feel if it has feathers – then stops herself. Last summer, when they visited the forest and saw the deer, her dad had shown her how to move slow and quiet around them. Otherwise, he said, they would get spooked and run away.

…They did run away anyway, eventually, and the rabbits and squirrels she’s been practicing with haven’t let her get very close either. She’s supposed to stay away from coyotes, so she hasn’t tried one of those.

But this animal obviously isn’t a coyote, and it hasn’t run away yet either. Very slowly, very quietly, she edges closer and reaches out a hand.

It still doesn’t run. It leans toward her hand and sniffs it alllllll over, then nudges her with its nose and makes a little chirruping noise.

That was a happy sound, she thinks. It likes her! She chirrups back at it, as best she can, and carefully reaches out to stroke its head.

That’s definitely fur, not feathers. And what soft fur, even with its tangles; her parents never let her have a pet but she got to meet a friendly cat once, and it was soft but not as soft as this….

The critter trills at her, and rolls over onto its side as though asking for more pets.

She leans forward, but that makes her backpack shift funny, which reminds her that she just came from school.

“I better go in,” she tells it, standing up. Her dad will start wondering where she is. “I’ll come right back though. Don’t go away.”

“Sophie? Is that you?” calls out her dad’s voice from inside.

She had just been thinking about that, so she isn’t startled –

Oh, okay.

– she just turns and goes inside. She drops her backpack in her room. Her dad is in his office today, with the door closed.

“I’m home,” she calls to him. “I’m going outside to play.”

“All right, have fun,” he says through the door. He sounds a little distracted. He sounds like that a lot.

She grabs a snack bar – and then, thinking about it, another one. She opens the door again and looks around. Is the animal still there?

Not exactly where it was, it’s been nosing around the bushes, but it’s still in sight. It looks up when she comes out, and bounces toward her.

Oh good! And luckily no one else much uses this side yard, so there isn’t anyone around who might see and tell her dad. She hadn’t been glad, before this, that there weren’t any other kids living here.

She opens her mouth to say hi, but stops herself. Her dad might hear again and wonder who she’s talking to.

...The animal probably doesn’t understand words anyway. She tries to trill at it instead, the way it had done before she left; it comes out as more of a wobbly hum, but that’s okay. She unwraps one of the snack bars, breaks off a small piece and holds it out.

The critter sniffs at it, then lifts it up so delicately she hardly even feels it. Nom nom nom.

Yeah, these are good snack bars.

They’d better get somewhere more hidden. Let’s go over there, she hums, thinking what she means very hard. She starts walking, sort of sideways, holding out the rest of the snack bar to entice the critter to follow.

It does so happily enough, trotting along behind her.

She leads it to her secret little space between the bushes, where there’s just enough room for the two of them, and gives it the rest of the snack bar.

Yum! It bites off one small chunk at a time, nibbling away.

She unwraps the other one and starts in on it herself. And maybe… while it’s busy eating… it will let her pet it some more?