Diary of a Sentimental Sister

      Cho and I have a new game we play when Casy isn't around to supervise us. Casy is the greatest owner ever, but a Christmas Zafara like Cho and a mutant Aisha like me just can't get along. But anyway, Casy recently decided that she wanted to start saving up for the pack rat avatar, so the whole third floor of our Neohome is packed with junk, and she's not even halfway there yet. It's sick. But Cho and I have this new game where we take stuff from each other and hide it upstairs with all of the junk. Last week she had to dig her hairbrush out from under a pile of dung. Talk about gross.

      But I've been thinking a lot about the day we brought Cho home from the Pound. Casy created me as soon as she stumbled across Neopia, but after just a few short weeks, she decided that we needed to add another neopet to our home, and off to the Pound we went. I remember that it was really hot that day, and I wanted nothing more than to go look at petpets. But Casy insisted, and by the time we got to the Pound, I was actually excited about getting a new brother or sister. After all, I had just gone from being a boring blue Aisha to an awesome mutant Aisha. I still didn't know many other pets in Neopia, and I was looking forward to making a new friend.

      So Casy and I walked into the Pound, hand in paw, and it broke my heart to see all of the pets sitting there in cages. There I was, the whole of Neopia in front of me, and these pets had nothing. No owners, no friends, no plushies to play with. I wanted to adopt all of them, but Casy informed me that it was against the rules to have more than four neopets, and even so, we could only afford one right now. Casy and I weren't poor, but that Transmogrification Potion wasn't cheap, either. They weren't as expensive back then as they are now, but we were still just getting started.

      The rules were clear. One neopet.

      So the two of us walked around, bumping into countless Neopians desperately hoping someone would abandon a Poogle, looking for the right pet. I seemed to look in every cage twice, but they all looked so sad, it was hard to even get some of them to look at me. I remember the Pound itself being filthy, too, which didn't help. It smelled like bamboo and dung.

      All of the pets had a small card hanging from the cage telling their name, species, color, and stats, as well as any other random notes. Some said things like "Hasn't been eating lately," and others had more serious notes, like alerting potential owners of a sickness the pet had. I passed a red Techo (Techos still scare me to this day; there's just something about them) who was thumping his tail against the walls of the cage, and in the next cage after that I saw her. At the time, she was just another Zafara. There were plenty of them at the pound. This one was special, though. I knew it instantly. I pressed my nose up against the cage and said, "Hi. I'm Ryu. What's your name?"

      "I-I'm Cho," she said.

      Casy came back right then looking slightly put off. She told me that she saw a really cute Chia, but he was painted and someone snatched him up before she could get to him. She actually remembered the Chia's name, though, and she checked up on him a few weeks later. He had found a good home.

      "Who's this?" Casy asked. She looked at the card hanging from the cage. "Chocolate_lava," she read to herself. "What a gorgeous name."

      "She said her name is Cho," I informed her. "I want to bring her home."

      "Oh, Ryu, we can't, sweetie," Casy said. She reached down and scooped me into her arms.

      "Wait, why not?!" I insisted. "I like her. I want to bring her home!"

      "But she's sick. I don't know what kind of medicine she needs or how much it's going to cost, and if it's too expensive I can't make it up to Faerieland to take her to the Healing Springs for at least a couple days," Casy said.

      "So what? They're not going to buy her any medicine here, and at least with us she could have a loving home. Please, Casy?"

      Even though I was technically a mutant by then, Casy tells me that she just couldn't say no to my angelic face. So we ended up adopting Cho, and the medicine she needed wasn't too expensive, so Casy was able to cure her. A few days later Casy saved up enough neopoints to get Cho a Christmas Paint Brush, and we haven't agreed on a single thing since then.

      I think Cho is kind of a strange neopet, really. Now, so long after she was so excited about Casy adopting her, curing her, and painting her Christmas even though it was the Month of Awakening, she wants to be a faerie Acara. So Casy bought her a morphing potion until she can afford a faerie paint brush, and Cho won't touch it. She keeps saying she's waiting for the right time.

      Even though Cho and I disagree about pretty much everything from what our petpets do when we're not home to whether there actually is a Jelly World (she insists that it doesn't exist; I'm not so sure), I do love her. At the end of the day, she is my sister. She's my sister that I had to fight for, but now I'm really glad that I did. The funny thing is, though, that I can't really remember what my life was like before Casy decided to open up our hearts to another neopet. I don't even remember the sickness Cho had, only that I cried grateful tears when Casy was able to cure her. I don't remember how much Casy paid for Cho, only how excited I was to have a big sister.

      Cho herself has even said that she doesn't remember much about her life before Casy adopted her. Even though someone else created Cho and watched her grow up (hopefully with love; Cho is incredible and deserves nothing less), she's still my big sister. She was the one who first took me to Jhudora's Cloud, which is now my obsession. She was the one who was able to talk Casy into building us this beautiful Neohome in Faerieland. She can always make me laugh, even if it's because I get to spend the next hour watching her pick dung out of her hairbrush.

      Now that I'm feeling all cheesy and sentimental, I want to play with Luan, my black Mazzew that Casy got for me the same day she got the morphing potion for Cho that she still has yet to touch. He's so ticklish and fun to play with, and he always has the cutest things to say.

      Oh, wait. He isn't in my room. He was just ten minutes ago, I swear! Unless... I'll be right back. I have something to check on the third floor.

     Love,

     Ryu