The box just sat there. After all the trouble it had been to get it here, she couldn’t even bring herself to open it. Maybe if Kipsy hadn’t gotten herself killed along the way, the other hijinks of the previous three days would already be swimming away out the back of her awareness into the deep waters of memory.
But Kipsy was dead: sweet Kipsy, along with those two guards at the border, and the postal worker they left in that alley in Brainerd, all to get this cube of cardboard here to sit on her table and be stared at.
She sighed again, reached out a hand toward the box, thought better of it again. She didn’t need a fifth cup of coffee, but she got up and poured herself one anyway. Sooner or later she would have to let the little guy out of the box. But she was just too wiped out at the moment, and still needed to figure out a place for him to sleep. This hedgehog ban made her so mad sometimes.
