The young fox girl sat up, her mother was gone again. She grabbed her stuffed fox and squeezed him. At least you don't leave me without saying anything... she thought, padding quietly over to the closet. She grabbed a long t-shirt and pulled it on, it hung to her knees. She walked out of the room and into the hallway. Someone bumped into her and knocked her backward into the door she'd just closed with a bang.

"Oh! Challa! Are you okay?" the person asked. She fought back tears and nodded, standing up with the person's help and rubbing the back of her head. Challa walked down the hall to the end and knocked on the door to Eve's room. "Eve are you there?" she called, knocking on the door a little harder.

She waited patiently for the wolf-girl to answer and rubbed the back of her head. A large bruise was forming and she was beginning to get a headache. Tears starting rolling down her cheeks, falling from her chin and onto her stuffed fox. "E... Eve...?" she asked, holding back her sobs.

The wolf-girl inside wiped her eyes of sleep, climbing from her too-large bed and covering her chest in the morning cold. She shivered and crossed the room to her pile of white shirts, ruffled through them for a clean one, and sighed as she realised they were all needing of a wash. Pulling slightly on the wardrobe, the door popped open to her late mother's collection of clothes. She found a dress that was obviously meant to be short on someone as tall as her mother - but on her it was almost down to her ankles.

A knock on her door, and Eve quickly pulled the dress off the hook, white as snow - and feverishly pulled it on. It was hard to use, being different from other two-piece outfits she'd tried before. It fit awkwardly but conformed to her wolf-gene-accelerated shape.

A harder knock on her door and she crossed the room to the door, blinking as she opened to find Challa almost crying her eyes out. "Challa? Challa - what's wrong?" she asked quickly, sinking down slightly to the girl's height and wiping her tears away with two fingers. "What's wrong...?"

Challa's blue orbs opened wider and a small smile found its way into existence even though she was crying. "Eve..." she said, hugging the wolf girl and crying hard into her chest. "Someone pushed me and I hit my head... I tried to be a big girl like you but... but I can't..." she sobbed, nuzzling into the dress Eve was wearing.

"Mommy was there when I went to bed, but she left me alone..." the fox girl said, hugging Eve more tightly. "You an' Echo are always here for me..." she added, pushing away from the wolf girl and holding up her stuffed fox. "Hiya Eve," Challa said in a squeaky voice, making the stuffed fox move like it was taking. She hugged her again and rested her head on Eve's shoulder.

Challa didn't dare let go of Eve right now, she wanted nothing else than to be with her. Eve was her only friend, and the only person that she knew inside and out.

Eve's face faded into a small smile and a blush as the girl buried herself in her chest, crying especially hard and explaining why she was crying. The wolf-girl's hands gently soothed and rubbed the girl's back. Challa's tears bled through her dress and made her chest slightly wet with every sob. "Your mother doesn't mean to leave you all alone, Challa... I'm sure she thinks she's leaving you with me... right?"

Eve's face lit up and she giggled lightly at the small girl's stuffed fox Echo, whom of which she was making talk. "Hiya Echo..." Eve started, lightly teasing the Fox's aged fur before it was taken away and another hug became imminent. She loved Challa - her hugs, her smile, her childish antics that made her... her.

The wolf-girl hoisted the fox-girl up into her arms, spinning slightly and giggling as they teetered back into her room and the heavy door closed itself. "Heya, you don't even have to be a little bit like me. I'm not grown up... I'm not a big girl... I'm only a little older than you are... I'm just different."

Challa jumped as the wolf-girl picked her up can carried her into the room. It smelled different than it used to when Eve and Task had inhabited it. Now it just smelled like Eve, a smell the young fox girl liked very much. She found herself placed on the rather comfortable bed where she could rest her poor head.

"We should do some laundry, Eve, then you wouldn't have to wear one of your mommy's dresses," she said, suddenly realizing what she'd said. "I... I didn't mean it like that... I just... I don't like wearing mommy's clothes... they don't fit me so good..." she said. Although Challa was around the relative age of a small human girl in 5th grade, she acted very much like she did when she was younger.

The bump on her head forgotten, she waggled her fuzzy tail and smiled as she held Echo in her arms. The stuffed fox's fur was aging, but Challa took very good care of her only real possession because it was a gift from her mother and she always felt better if she had it when Symphia was away.

Even though the girl was small and Eve knew she didn't mean what she had said, she still felt the sting of the words tear into her happiness. Though Challa's apology quickly fixed it and Eve shrugged, smiling to compensate for her lack of speech. "No it's ok Challa... I like my Mommy's clothes but I guess I shouldn't be wearing them... and besides... some washing would be good, huh?" she sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, gathering the shirts in a pile on the floor in the corner and bringing them around to the bathroom where she started running a bath.

Eve turned back to Challa and giggled, running past and gently stroking her bushy tail before the wolf-girl reached her underwear pile. Bringing that back to the bathroom, and dropping several pairs of underwear along the way because the pile was so huge.

"Lots of laundry to do, huh..." she murmured. "Challaaaaa~ Could you bring what I dropped in here for me?" she asked, bending over and tipping her shirts into the water. Her dress was getting uncomfortable and it just plain didn't fit her - so she pulled it off over her head, hair getting messy as sin, not that she cared.

"Eve, mommy always takes her dirty clothes to the..." Challa paused as she thought about the pronunciation, "the lawn-dry-mat." She stood up and grabbed the few spare pairs of panties and a shirt that had escaped from Eve's grasp. She looked at the half-full tub and giggled. "C'mon, Eve," she said, grabbing as many soggy shirts has she could carry.

The fox-girl waited at the bathroom door, dripping water onto the floor as she waited for Eve. As soon as the wolf-girl was following, she led the way to laundromat, which was near the kitchen. She paused at the door, looking at an older cat-woman as she did her own wash.

Challa set the pile of wet laundry on a low table and looked up the cat as she worked, watching as she set the various dials and pressed a few buttons. "I think that's how it works," she said, walking over to an unused washer. "I can't reach it," she said, looking back at Eve.