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Lilah sat in the highest tower of the castle, waiting for her Prince to come and rescue her...or rather, that's what her mind saw. In reality, she was in a wooden jungle gym, in a small enclosure (blocking off the twisty slide, no less!) that was no more than 8 feet off the ground.

She lay sprawled out, a picture book open in front of her and the book was open to a picture of a blond woman with incredibly long hair, which she had dangling from a window.

The little girl sighed, poked at her hair and then flipped the page. Her three little rat friends, who had decided they wanted some fresh air today, were perched nearby, scurrying around occasionally, but never going much farther than a few feet from the little girl.

"Des-ter!" the tan girl scolded, her mouth still not able to form the rat's name of Dexter. The rat that was letting the other girl pet him didn't look up, mostly because he wasn't the one she was yelling at.

Lilah shut her picture book forcefully (She hated her stories being interupted by her no good rats!) and jumped up.

"Don't think I don' see you!" she said. She smiled brightly at the little girl, waved a greeting and finally pointed.

While she was being occupied by Henry (who was still quite enjoying being petted), a second rat had circled his tail around one of the wooden posts and was now leaning forward, in an attempt to pick the strangers pockets.

The third rat, who had been sitting next to Lilah the entire time now moved over with almost a bemused look. Being the only female rat of the bunch, she was often entertained by the shenanigans of the other two.

Dexter looked up, realizing he was caught and his eyes grew large. He had nooooo idea what either little girl was talking about! Dropping back from Lily's non-exsistant pockets, he scurried over to Lilah, and hopped onto her shoulder, nuzzling against her face.

See? He was a goooood boy!

Lilah wasn't buying it, and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Sowwy," she said, giving Dexter a hard pat on the head. "He's a bad wat. Tryin' to steal stuff." She plopped back down on the wooden planks, picking her book back up. She hadn't met to many other people, so she wasn't sure how it went. Was this meeting someone? Her rat had really just tried to take Lily's belongings. Did that mean she should now introduce herself?

Hm...what to dooooo?

The rat, Dexter, tilted his head sideways. Lilah often wondered if he could understand more than he let on. No stuff to steal? There was ALWAYS stuff to steal! His look said. You just had to know what to look for!

"Oh, hi!" Lilah said, her conflict smoothly coming to an end. "I'm Lilah." She pointed to each. "Dats Dester and Henwy, and Mi-Mi...Mimi," she finished. The female rat's name was actually "Mimosa" which Lilah's mother had told Lilah was 'a kind of....adult...type..drink'. She hadn't elaborated, and Lilah hadn't been in an inquisitive mood that day.

"Meh?" Lilah asked, looking around. She had to blink a few times, somehow still actually seeing a tall tower (by the way, how had this little girl gotten into her sealed off tower?) before realizing where she actually was.

"Oh...shur." she said, tucking her feet under her body, so that she was mostly out of the way of the slide's entrance.

Lilah looked down at her pink frock.

"Momma made it for me," she answered, brushing some wood from the tower off the skirt.

For the first time she realized that Lily had blue hair. "Oooo," she said, looking up. "Your hair is coooool."

Lilah stood up and leaned forward, then sniffed at Lily's hair. She wasn't sure what "blue" smelled like, but it smelled very nice. Very sweet, too.

She was pretty sure that it was inappropriate to smell someone else's hair. But she had an opportunity to smell blue! It wasn't every day you got to smell a color. (If she had known Lily meant blueberries, she probably still would have done it, though).

Lilah nodded. "I wike da smell of bwoo," she summarized.

Lilah had never thought of biting the girls fingers. Maybe someone else had done it before? Or maybe Lily was talking to the rats. They did like to bite things, she supposed. But mostly they were pretty good about not biting things they weren't supposed to.

"Oh, I was weading!" she said, holding up her picture book. She guessed that she wasn't really so much 'reading' as she was looking at the pictures and guessing what was going on in the story. Her stories were more interesting, anyway!