There's a little thump when Alan Richardson leaves for his flight. The suspension on this damn car must be getting even worse somehow. That or a raccoon got into the garage. He hopes it wasn't a raccoon, it'd be hell to clean off and he's in a rush for the airport... maybe not too much of a rush to hit a carwash. That works. The old girl could use a bath anyway.

He drives off, not looking in his rearview at what a mess he has left behind.

If Eric were human, his foot would likely be a mess of red gore and shattered bone. As is, his ankle is badly broken. Instinctively, he manages to crawl behind some boxes before the man in the car spots him, and before he starts sobbing. 

No one interferes with this.

After a few minutes of sobbing, though, a human girl about his size comes into the garage. "Hey? What's making that noise, is something in here..."

Eric flinches, sucking in a breath and holding still as marble behind his wall of boxes.

...but something must be out of place, because the girl squints at a flash of pale skin. "...what is-"

A voice from inside the house. A human woman. Fully grown, though not yet into the sagging stage. "Suzanna Elaine Richardson if you do not get back in here and go to the bus stop this instant we will miss your bus and I will have to walk you to school! If I walk you to school I will not have time to bake cookies and you will not get cookies!"

"God, Mom, I don't even like them! You can't threaten to take away oatmeal raisin!"

But, with only a momentary glance back at the boxes, she trudges back into the house.

Once Eric’s sure the girl is gone, he crawls out from his hiding spot and starts hopping on one foot into the house proper. He needs to find somewhere safe to wait till his ankle’s better, and maybe find some of that impossibly sweet food humans make to make up for how their kind and the universe have wronged him.

Cupboards contain various contents; he eventually finds one for food. Contents include:

- tiny, salty discs or squares of crackly bread
- cans heralding various colors of legume or soup, which yield readily to vampiric strength but in so doing disgorge their lukewarm and disgusting contents all over him and his surroundings
- crunchy, flavorless tubes, bowties, or seashells (in assorted boxes)
- a tin of tiny, atrociously salty fish
- and, on one of the upper shelves reachable only by an adult human standing on a chair or a tiny vampire of the utmost cunning, various prepackaged sweets - squishy white blobs, spiral cakes soaked in sugar syrup, and a mid-size plastic pumpkin full of chocolates, gumdrops, hard candy, et cetera.

After his pyrrhic victory against the cans, Eric manages to sniff out the candy. He proceeds to take the pumpkin under the kitchen table... along with the the bread and the salty fish. Maybe the big human will blame the smaller human for the mess.

The big human opens the front door. She walks into the living room and takes her shoes off with a sigh of relief, then sniffs the air and makes a confused noise. She walks into the kitchen.

"What happened here?" she groans upon seeing the soup disaster. Then she - stops.

(There presumably isn't a trail of soupy footprints under the kitchen table - Eric isn't dumb. But when a can of soup explodes against a person's body, the splatter pattern is distinctive, or at least unusual. And one might drip unintentionally while making their way to their destination, especially with a limp.)

"Hello?" the woman says in a quiet, uneven voice.

(Indeed, there are a few serpentine smears)

Under the table, Eric goes very still, the kind of still that generates anti-sound as all movement ceases. But one of the round chocolates he was devouring rolls out from under the tablecloth. 

The woman slowly crouches down to look under the table.

"I'm not going to hurt you," is the first thing she says when she sees Eric, before she even fully processes what she's seeing. That's a scared kid. She's not going to hurt him.

“You’re—you’re not going to try?”

"No! Anybody who'd try to hurt a little kid for being in the wrong place should be - put in prison," she says, instead of shot in the street, because this kid did not grow up in her household and is not used to her turns of phrase and is also already cowering.

She takes in a little more of his appearance. "...your ankle looks really bad," she observes. "Can I help?"

"It'll be fine in a bit... do you have one of those long, soft chairs?"

"...a couch? Yeah. Do you want me to carry you over to it? And maybe get you some ice, for your ankle..."

This human seems... weirdly nice. "Yes please."

She puts her hands under his arms and slides him across the tile out from under the table, then shifts her arms to carry him more comfortably. She wrinkles her nose at the soup staining her shirt. "I don't suppose I could get you into a bathtub first," she says ruefully.

Gosh, she's warm. "Okay."

"What, really? Zanna would rather eat boiled cabbage than get in the bath without a fight... you're pretty gross, though, it can't be comfortable."

She changes course and heads for the bathroom, bouncing Eric slightly with each step.

"What's wrong with baths? They're nice!"

(The movement is incredibly soothing)

"Aren't they? She just never wants to put down her books, and if you tell her to finish the chapter and then get in the bath she'll just keep reading and say there was a cliffhanger at the end."

Bounce bounce and hipcheck the bathroom door open. Place boy on mat, start filling the tub. "What's your name, anyway? How'd you get here?"

“Eric,” he answers. “I was sleeping in your cave.”

He decides not to mention her mate(?) running over his foot.

"Ah, the dark and mysterious cavern under the kitchen table. Zanna loved exploring it when she was littler - you'd get along, I think."

She tests the water. "Do you want bubbles?"