"Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher found it; not a penny was there in it, only ribbon round it." -Unknown
She could hear the short gasps and groans from the foot of her bed and she buried herself deeper under the mass of covers that surround...
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Hazel eyes, that leaned more towards brown than they did green, peered over the edge of the cardboard box and stared down at the kittens that lay mewling and wriggling. Theyweren't all one solid color, something that Lucy found very interesting, but instead were mixtures of white, brown, black, and a little orange. She had never seen a kitten before; her mother had told her that they were too fragile for her clumsy hands, but here they were... and they were a lot smaller than she thought they'd be.
"There's five of them like there's five of us," Luke said as he stared curiously at the kittens before looking at Nell and Shirley. Lucy couldn't stop the sharp pain that shot through her chest at his words. Even though she knew that these people considered her family, as she did to them, she would never be an actual part of their family no matter how hard she tried.
"That's what I thought," Shirley smiled, reaching over and placing down one of the kittens she had just fed-a brown and black one to be specific, "Until I saw this."
Lucy shifted on her knees and watched, her eyes filled with awe as Shirley lifted up the blanket at the bottom of the box to reveal a sixth sleeping kitten, one that was pure black and extremely small compared to its siblings. Tilting her head, Lucy leaned closer to the box and examined the kitten. Even though it was comparatively smaller, it rested peacefully and seemed to be at ease underneath the blanket, even though it was being crawled over by its siblings.
"That one's me," Nellie giggled, pointing to a black and white kitten who happened to be crawling over a white and brown one.
"That must be Luke then," Lucy added, the two girls looking at one another before bursting into a fit of giggles and ignoring Luke's glare.
"Like this," Shirley interrupted, one handing holding a kitten and another holding a dropper. From her spot in between Nellie and Luke, Lucy shifted to her knees and leaned forward, watching as Shirley placed a small drop on the kitten's nose, "You get... just enough and you drop a little on their nose, because their eyes aren't open yet and they need to know it. See? And then when they open."
With inquisitive eyes and a tilted head, Lucy watched as the kitten flicked out its small—so small that Lucy couldn't believe her eyes—tongue and licked its nose, the milk vanishing.
"Wow," Nellie sighed in amazement and Shirley looked at her with a grin, happy that at least somebody else found it as amazing as she did.
"Do you wanna try it?"
For whatever odd reason, Lucy was nervous to see Shirley again.
It wasn't as if she and Shirley had ended off on the wrong foot or had gotten into a fight recently-- nothing of that matter had happened for a few years now. The last argument they had was a year or two ago over Luke, but it was nothing major, nothing like the fights they used to have.
