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Bronnie had been peeking into the pomegrenate bowl at every available moment.

It was looking sort of withered.

This was not a good thing, obviously.

Bronnie started to call her mother, then decided not too. Her Mum liked the weird pink fruit, obviously, and would be sad if it withered up. Maybe it would go like a raisin.

After a quick trip to the sink, the stool, and the cupboard, Bronwen had managed to return with a glass of water.

The pom-pomma-poem--WEIRD FRUIT was a plant. Plants need water, so maybe it needed water.

After moving her little "Do not touch" sign out of the way so it wouldn't get wet, Bronnie poured the glass of water over the pomegrenate.

She put the cup on the counter, and went off to play.

"Where'd it go?"

Sunny stared at her feien-fruit-setup dully, and wondered where the main attraction was. There was certainly nothing there now.

Bowl was there, fan was on, no pomegrenate.

She hoped it hadn't been eaten.

She picked up the bowl and peered under it. Nothing. She put it down again.

"Oh, dear."

She turned off the fan and sat down at the kitchen table, thinking. This was obviously not a good thing. She'd lost the thing. She'd lost the blasted pomegrenate, and now... now... they'd... Sunny had to admit she couldn't think of anything they could do, as there wasn't anything to take away.

She'd be berated and lectured thoroughly.

"Hello?" she called. "You didn't... emerge and hide on me, did you?"

Nothing. Sunny raised an eyebrow. "Well, damn." She tried a different tack. "Well, I suppose at least now I won't have to go buy things for a feien, and worry about finding a little tiny bed, or--"

"All right, all right, I'm coming out." With a slightly indignant snort, a dark-skinned and pink-marked feien flipped out from behind the door. "But I don't want your help." She alighted upon the table in front of Sunny, hands on her hips. "Of course I didn't get anyone with the sense to take proper care of me."

"I... did my best."

"It wasn't good enough. I'll obviously have to fend for myself from now on." She sniffed.

"I see." Sunny raised an eyebrow. "I'll try not to fuss over you, then. Um. Do you have a name?"

The feien blinked. "No," she grumbled. "I couldn't even end up with a bond with the sense to name me."

"Now, that isn't fair. I didn't know if you were a girl or a boy."

"Hrmph."

Sunny twitched. "Well. We can come up with a name."

"I want to name myself. You'd probably give me some really awful name."

"Er, that's fine. What did you want to be named, then?"

"Yolandazeldamarymargaretlouise."

Sunny blinked. "That's five names squished together."

"So?"

"So, it's an awful mouthful."

The feien scowled. "I should have known you wouldn't let me do anything."

"You were born, what, an hour ago? I think it's a little early to be making assumptions like that." Sunny was trying to ignore her oncoming headache. "How about... you pick one of them. Where did you find them anyway?"

"Off the book shelves in that room over there."

"Ah."

"Why are you making me pick one name?"

"Because I can hardly go around calling you Yolandazeldawhateveritwas."

"Yolandazeldamarymargaretlouise."

"Yeah, that."

The feien sat down cross-legged. "I guess it is a bit long."

"So," Sunny said, encouragingly, "pick one."

"Zelda?"

"Sounds good to me."

Zelda beamed. "And I did it myself."

"You most certainly did."

A tent.

The answer came rather obviously to Zelda. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of something like that before?

She considered briefly on making some sort of tipi, but then realised that tipis were traditionally made of animal skin, something she had no access to, and a lighter material would probably fall down the poles. Also, she wasn't sure about making poles that long or strong just yet.

A regular tent, however, would do for now.

Zelda would need cloth first. She sat crosslegged on the encyclopedia, thinking.

In the closet from which she had taken the cloth she was using for a blanket, she remembered seeing a variety of thick, fairly coarse cloths which Sunny used in the kitchen for drying dishes. They were large, durable, and sturdy. They would do quite well.

Pleased with herself, Zelda took to the air and made her way down the hall. She went to the linen closet, and blinked at it.

Well, go figure. It would be closed, too. Just her luck.

Zelda tugged gently on the handle, but she wasn't strong enough, not nearly, to budge the door open.

She went over her options. She could call Sunny and ask for help. Certainly not.

She could find something else. No, there wouldn't be anything else quite as good. And she wouldn't even be able to get this. Honestly. Zelda was beginning to think there was a conspiracy. If she had to be born a feien into a world of giants, she could at least have been born strong. Hrmph.

Well. What else could she do?

Zelda inspected the door carefully. The closet door was the type that folded with a hinge in the middle. The top and bottom were fixed in runners along the floor and ceiling, so the handle's purpose was to move the wheeled part along the runners, while the rest folded out. She could see this.

Unfortunately, she could not see anyway to open it. Zelda snorted.

She really would need help, but there was no way she was going to go running to Sunny begging for it. Zelda sat down on the floor, blinking up at the door, and thought.

It was almost two hours later than Sunny came down the hallway. She passed by the feien, blinked, and came back. "Zelda? What are you doing?"

Zelda put on her brightest smile. "Oh, Sunny, I'm afraid I have a little bit of a problem. The door's just a little bit too big for me, and I needed one of your tea towels."

"Oh. Okay." Sunny opened the door with a slightly infuriating ease. "Spill something?"

Zelda thought quickly, and decided that there was no way she was going to let Sunny in on what she was doing. "Yes. I just need it for a second." She gathered up a tea towel in her arm, struggling under the weight. Oh, dear. It was a vaguely plaid pattern, in green, grey, and pink. Not too bad of a colour, considering what there was to pick from.

"Well, just put it in the laundry downstairs when you're done," Sunny said amiably. "You know where that is?"

"I sure do," Zelda chirped, and struggled to fly down the hallway with her load.

Zelda sat back to admire her own work.



She had set it up in the corner of the living room, in a spot of empty space between the bookshelf and the couch. The tent was hidden from view by a large-leafed silk plant, and the tent, being nestled at the base of the pot, seemed quite hard to see, at least to Zelda. In lieu of tent pegs, she'd weighted the edges with some pebbles from outside; moving them inside had taken the better part of a day.

Pleased with herself, Zelda crawled inside, and hugged her knees. Now, if she could only be sure that it wouldn't fall on her, or sag, or otherwise break... but this was merely a temporary situation, correct? Correct.

She pulled the flaps that served as a door closed, and giggled to herself in the dim light. Privacy.

"It's yellow. Why didn't you say so?"

"I didn't know."

Zelda flitted around the bloom, inspecting it. She poked it. Unsurprisingly, it didn't react. "I suppose you're going to make the same mess of it as you did me."

Sunny winced. "I did my best."

"I'm sure you did," Zelda said soothingly.

Sunny mumbled and looked sulky.

"Well, maybe you should let someone who knows about this sort of thing take control," Zelda offered. She clasped her hands.

"Zelda, you're only a month old."

"Maybe, but I still am a feien, and you're not. It's the best for the bloom."

Sunny narrowed her eyes. As far as she could tell, Zelda was being sincere. She sighed. "Fine, fine."

Zelda smiled. "Oh, wonderful. Get me a bowl, please."

"You know, it didn't take you this long to react to things."

The bloom had been sitting in the dish of water for a few hours, now, and looked much the same as when it had been put there.

"We should try something else," Zelda suggested.

"No way. We're just going to leave it right there and not mess with it." Sunny shook her adamantly. "It's not doing spectacularly, but it's doing okay, and I think we should just let it be. Yes?"

"No! Don't you want it to do well?"

"We're leaving it, Zelda. Of course I want it to do well, but I'm not going to condone messing about with it when it's doing okay. You'll just have to leave it."

"But--"

"Leave it!"

Zelda squinted. "Oh, fine. Fine. Maybe you're right." She turned and fluttered out of the kitchen, into the living room, and into her tent.

...well, so much for that idea.

"All right, this is how it's going to be." Zelda narrowed her eyes at the bloom.

"I'm in charge here, for one. Sunny may think she's in charge, but she's dead wrong. I run things. That means, you better listen to me."

The bloom, under a slight breeze, drifted to the other side of the bowl.

"What I say, goes. You'll listen to what I have to say, and you'll do it. Failure to do so will result in... in... dire consquences." Zelda nodded, smartly.

She was thinking ahead. Get the bloom to listen to her now, when it couldn't, uh, leave the room, and maybe it would listen to her when it emerged.

She liked giving orders, after all.

"You can let Sunny think she's in charge," Zelda said graciously. It didn't matter that Sunny technically was in charge; if the bloom thought Zelda was, that was all that mattered. "It makes her feel better. Now, the rules."

She cleared her throat and double-checked her list. "Number one: My tent is my property, and you will stay out of it unless I specifically invite you in. If you're really good, I might just help you make your own, but I need some place to unwind from my important duties. Number two: The pixapets are the enemy. Remember this. They are spies for Sunny. Number three... number..." Zelda squinted and realised that the letters at that point had been badly smeared. She peered at the black paint on her palms. "Well, never mind. That's good enough for now. I'll let you know the rest of the important things when you emerge."

Zelda folded up the note and flew off to the living room, in the best mood she'd been in for days.