Cuddling creatures (open)

Laura needed a hug. Nothing big and bad had actually happened but she was feeling wobbly and she couldn’t hug human people because then they’d die. She didn’t want to make anyone die. She would have gone to hug a cow but she felt like today wasn’t the same. She’d go and hug chickens and talk to cows. She didn’t know why she couldn’t hug the cows as well as talk to them, but that was for another day maybe. She sort of hoped Kizzy would be about but sometimes it was hard to say what you felt like when there were people. Cows just looked at you and chewed grass and understood. Chickens on the other hand were a little more excitable.

Nobody else seemed to be with the chickens right then. Which was good, because Laura couldn’t even explain to herself why chicken hugging was important right now. She wandered around for a few minutes just to make sure the chickens didn’t mind her, and she put the eggs she could see in a little pile in the corner for the next egg collecting people, because she didn’t want to squish them by accident. The chickens didn’t seem to mind too much, which was good, but they looked a little confused. That was ok, Laura was confused a lot as well. Perhaps she was part chicken.

Sitting down, Laura reached over to see if the nearest chicken would let her stroke it. She’d go and see the cows soon, but right now chickens were good. And maybe a goat, if they decided not to eat her jumper. She wasn’t so sure of goats, but they seemed ok. She just felt wobbly, that was all. She’d been having bad dreams. She sort of hoped Kizzy hadn’t noticed all the waking up upset, in case it made her sad. No one could make her dreams go away but things helped, like drawing and cows and things.

Unwrinkling the squished paper she’d brought with her, Laura put pencil to paper without thinking what she was drawing. Sometimes things just happened.

It was odd for Dilly to be anywhere near the livestock pens, because it wasn't her assigned chore roster. She was assigned to the farm allotment and spent most of her time gardening and doing other things that made her twitch because of the dirt involved. But since she was the only girl assigned to the farm allotment chores, she often got sent to run errands and take messages--she suspected because she was so tiny she couldn't do much in the way of heavy lifting--and she sometimes ran messages even when she wasn't technically on chore duty. She'd been sitting in a quiet, sunny, and above all clean area in the farm with her nose buried in a book when her chore supervisor had asked her to send up the farmhand, who was in the cow shed. He'd asked so nicely that Dilly never even thought of saying no.

Having delivered the message and seeing the farmhand rush up to the farm, she decided to wander around the livestock pens, without going in them. Animal waste littered the ground around them, and the very thought of it almost made her faint. She saw the chicken's house and decided to go in, just to see what it was like.

She wrinkled her nose at the smell and pulled her scarf up over her nose. But it seemed pretty clean. Obviously whoever was on livestock duty had cleaned it out pretty well, and the chickens hadn't made it messy again. The smell wasn't so bad, just...distinctly organic, which bothered her. She was about to leave again when she saw the girl.

The girl was sitting down, so it was hard to tell exactly how tall she was, but since Dilly was only an inch too tall to be considered for membership in the Restricted Growth Association she surmised that her unexpected companion was taller than she was. But she looked very pretty, with her blonde hair and blue eyes and slightly rounded face, displaying none of the "baby fat" that still lingered on Dilly's own face, and she also looked very nice. Dilly very much wanted to be her friend.

She put on her warmest, friendliest smile and moved closer to the girl. "Hello," she said, a little shyly. "Can I sit with you?" She held up her book, Which Witch, one of her Eva Ibbotson books that she had read so many times the spine was held together with duct tape. "I won't bother you if you don't want me to talk or anything."