|
I hummed to myself as I hurried up the stone steps of the
pound, stopping briefly to congratulate a new owner walking out of the door. I
am one of the few humans who work at the Neopian pound, and my name is Alison
Keros. Anyway, that life-changing day, although I didn't know it was one yet,
had started as usual: a quick breakfast of carrot and pea omelette, a cup of whatever
I could afford that day from the Ye Olde Coffee Shop, and I left my tiny 2-room
Neohome to go to my job at the pound, arriving just in time for my shift. Well,
today was no different, and I stepped into the reception room out of the drenching
rain with 2 minutes to spare.
"Hello, Ms. Uni," I said breathlessly, going
over to the adoption desk. "I'm here."
The kind pink Uni smiled at me and greeted me,
"Good morning, Alison! Well, the pets are waiting for you, so go on in!"
My job at the pound is to feed the pets each
day, and play with them for a bit so that they don't get lonely. There are about
8 of us, and I have the morning shifts, and the second room, as there are so
many pets at the pound that we have to have 3 rooms for them.
"Hi everyone," I said, opening the door to the
overcrowded room with peeling ugly green wallpaper and carefully stepping over
a Kacheek who was sleeping on the floor. "I have breakfast, so if you'd all
line up over here without pushing, please!"
Seven pets immediately bounded over to me, eager
for food. A few others got up and came over as well, while some just sat lazily
and waited for me to bring their breakfast to them. I began handing out pieces
of omelette to the pets at the front of the line.
"What, omelettes again?" grumbled a Skeith,
as he sat back and started gnawing on it. "Eww, it's so hard, how long have
we had this?"
"The pound just doesn't have enough funding
for better food," I told him sadly. "And we can't really go to the soup Faerie
as we technically have over 2000 Neopoints. Sorry."
After dipping everyone's omelette in water because
some Grundo had the crazy idea that it would soften them, I pulled an old, battered
copy of Scaredy Acara out of the curvy book shelf, sat down on a torn green
beanbag and began reading out loud. A small group of pets sat down around me,
and listened curiously to me read, although I knew that they'd each heard this
story told to them at least twice before. When I got to the part about the Acara
running away because of a Mootix crawling on its paw, a rather young blue Gelert
interrupted me.
"If I ever found a Mootix on my paw, I would
keep it," he said. Several of the other pets nodded in agreement.
"Well -- err, Garth," I said, squinting at the
nametag around his neck, "this Acara is scared of Mootix."
"Then that Acara is stupid," decided Garth,
rolling his eyes. I sighed and opened my mouth to explain the meaning of 'silence
during story time,' but I was interrupted again.
"Yeah, and you need a petpet to equip a petpetpet
to," pointed out a green Lenny who was wearing glasses, named Edward_55893.
"We could use Rocky," a shy yellow Kiko said
quietly, looking at a large Pet Rock sitting by a window.
"I heard that room 1 has a Faerie Warf!" exclaimed
the yellow Skeith that had complained about the omelettes earlier, whose nametag
read 'Daarg_et'. A chorus of "that's not fair!" and "Rocky is lame!" broke out
from the pets, and I tried to calm them down, to no avail.
"I think Rocky is special," Garth said loudly,
and the pets quieted down and looked at him. "If you guys want a painted petpet,
then we should paint him!" he continued. "We should… try and make some Neopoints
or something…" he shrugged.
"I think that's an excellent idea," I said,
smiling at him. He looked away. "We should try fundraising," I told the pets.
"Fun-draysing?" repeated a young Kyrii, looking
confused.
"Yes, it's a way of making Neopoints," I said.
"It might be the easier for us to make Neopoints that way than playing games."
"Easier than hanging around the money tree all
day?" asked Daarg.
"Yep," I replied.
"The Bakery is down for renovations right now,"
said Edward, "and Neopians love baked foods. Why don't we have a bake sale?"
"Great idea!" I said, and almost at once the
pets broke into a wave of ideas. I whipped out my green lined notebook and started
jotting it all down. This is the most excited they've been all month,
I thought to myself happily, my pencil flying across the page. We're going
to have a lot of fun. I glanced at Garth, who was giving his softened omelette
to the Kacheek who'd slept through breakfast. When the Gelert saw me looking,
he stuck out his tongue.
I quickly looked back down at my notebook and
continued writing. He's not such a bad fellow, I thought to myself with
a smile.
***
That afternoon, I collapsed on my straw sofa with a sigh. It had been a busy
day at the pound, with the planning of the bake sale added to my usual list
of responsibilities. But it was worth it, I thought to myself, as I remembered
the smiles on the Neopets' faces and their cries of joy when Edward made the
final calculations and announced that if everything they were going to bake
was sold, they would be able to buy a Christmas petpet paint brush for Rocky,
and one big breakfast of soft Tyrannian crackers and cheese.
Tomorrow's going to be even more hectic,
I thought, We're going to have to do all the cooking. I realized that we were
going to need a lot of ingredients, and rushed off at once to the Neopian marketplace.
***
"Two pounds of blueberry jelly beans, please," I said, looking down at my
ingredient list for various types of cookies. The weather in Neopia had changed
abruptly as it was prone to do, and now I was fanning myself with my hand as
it was so hot.
"I'm sorry," replied the Lupe, "I just sold
my last few blueberry jelly beans to the Neopets over there." She pointed to
a group of Neopets with their backs to us: a blue Gelert, a yellow Skeith, and
a green Lenny.
"Hey guys!" I said, going over. "What are you
doing here?"
Daarg looked up at me in surprise. "Oh, we figured
we'd buy the … what's that word, Ed?"
"Ingredients, and my name is Edward," replied
the Lenny, without looking up from a list of ingredients similar to mine.
"Yes, buy the ingredients for the fund… rai….
sing. So, what are you doing here?"
"Same thing," I replied vaguely. "But how did
you guys get the Neopoints?"
"Games," said Garth, "duh."
"Oh," I said. Either Garth was always like this,
or he specifically didn't like me. No, I reasoned, remembering him giving
the Kacheek his omelette, must be the latter. "Well…" I said, breaking
out of my thoughts, "want me to help?"
"Sure!" said Daarg cheerfully, but Garth cut
in, "no, we're doing fine."
"Yes, we're almost finished," said Edward, pushing
his glasses up his beak, "there's not much of a point for you to stay. We just
need a few more sticks of butter, and we're done."
"Yes, and we'll have money left over!" said
Daarg delightedly. "How much did you say we had left, Ed?"
"We owe the Shop Wizard 500 Neopoints," answered
Edward dryly.
"Oh…" Daarg looked thoughtful. "If I eat him,
will we still owe him Neopoints?"
"Here, why don't I pay the Shop Wizard?" I suggested
quickly, as Daarg seemed serious about eating the poor shop wizard.
Ed smiled. "Thank you, that would be helpful.
Well, what should we do with the few Neopoints we have leftover?"
Garth picked up the small bag of Neopoints in
his teeth and muttered, "I'll keep shem." Then he turned around and took off
in the direction of the auction house.
"Hmmph, greedy Gelert," sighed Edward. "Come
Daarg, we'd better get all this food back to the pound."
"I can carry it in my mouth, if you'd like."
"No, that will be okay, Daarg…" he waved his
wing at me and the two left.
I shielded my eyes from the bright sun and peered
at the auction house. Nope, Garth was not there. "Ahhh, just as I suspected,"
I said to myself, noticing Garth under the shade of the money tree, handing
the bag of Neopoints to a thin Usul, crouched over on a walking stick. Remembering
that I still had to pay the shop wizard, I took one last look at the Usul thanking
Garth repeatedly, and headed off.
***
"Hi Ms. Uni," I greeted the Uni the next morning. She looked up at me and
smiled. "Going for a new look, Alison?"
I was confused for a second, then I looked in
the glass wall and realized what she was talking about. I had a pencil tucked
behind my ear, my green lined notebook in my hand, and I was wearing a large
white apron. Instead of my usual purse, I was carrying a white paper bag under
my arm, filled with a few extra ingredients I'd picked up, gloves for the pets
to wear while they were cooking, and 3 cookbooks that I'd picked up from the
bookstore.
I laughed. "Oh, the pets in room 2, we're going
to try a little bake sale, you know, make some Neopoints."
Ms. Uni nodded. "That's a good idea."
I smiled at her and turned to start my arrange-a-bake-sale-with-around-30-pets
experience.
***
"Hey, it's Alison!"
The pets looked up and ran over to greet me,
calling out and trying to make themselves louder than everyone else. I shushed
them and they fell quiet, looking up at me eagerly, waiting to hear what I had
to say.
"Well, good morning everyone!" I said cheerfully,
letting Edward take the paper bag and examine its contents. "It's going to be
a busy day today, so let's get going! Now, how am I going to do this…" I looked
at the 30 pets waiting patiently for instructions. There was no way all 30 of
them would fit in the kitchen at once. "Okay, this is how it's going to go,"
I said. "We'll need 3 taste-testers, 3 people to read the cookbooks, and the
remaining pets will be split into 3 groups to cook. There will be one taste-tester
and one reader for each group."
Another wave of voices and shouts broke out,
as the pets shouted out the positions they wanted to take. I ran my fingers
through my light brown hair. Yes, it was going to be a busy day indeed.
***
When the groups had finally been organized, I took the first group to the
cramped pound kitchen. The elderly blue Elephante cook looked pretty upset at
being kicked out of the kitchen, but we ignored her. After all, I had booked
the kitchen. I think.
Edward sat down beside the counter and propped
up the Chocolate Chia Cookbook on his lap. Edward, our taste-tester, lay down
beside him, and looked hungrily at the pictures in the book.
"Okay, Edward," I said, after making sure that
Garth had put his gloves on. "What do we need for chocolate Chia cupcakes?"
"3 cups of sugar, 2 bars of chocolate, 3 chocolate
Chias…"
After we had assembled all the ingredients on
the counter, Edward began to read out the instructions. And it sure wasn't easy
cooking with 8 pets at once. One Aisha kept on dropping everything, Garth complained
continuously about how boring cooking was and how he'd rather be outside, and
Daarg ate the dough before it had been baked, so we had to go through the whole
thing all over again. When the cupcakes were at last finished, I tossed one
to Daarg. We waited anxiously he chewed, a thoughtful frown plastered on his
face. Then, he grinned. "They're great!" he said happily. "Can I have another
one?"
I sighed in relief, and shook my head. "No,
we have to start on the chocolate chip cookies now!"
I reached for the flour, but I noticed that
it was gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Garth already pouring it messily
into the bowl, and slopping much over the side and onto the floor.
"Hey, need help with that?" I asked, going over
to him. He paused for a second, and then he shrugged and continued pouring the
flour. Taking that as a yes, I wrapped my hands around the bag as well, and
helped him guide the flour into the bowl.
To be continued...
| 
