Out in the woods by Washington state is a cabin. Classic wooden logs piled cozily into walls and a fireplace huffing smoke. Trees shiver in the wind and nearby this cabin, a small creek burbles. And out walks a girl. Lacey.

She lives alone, in the cabin where her mother left and didn’t come back.

Lacey hauls water from that burbly creek to her lodge in a metal pail. The things one does for a bath! A warm bath- not a cold, shallow creek bath. With the pail heating about the fire, she pulls out her whittle knife. Maybe she can whittle a waterwheel. So far all she’d whittled was Momma’s thin figure.

Back when Momma still lived here, the two sometimes traveled to town. Momma had shown her the library, pages beyond what she could count. And she did try. To count, I mean.

Little Lacey flipped open a book on the display shelf and out fell a card. The card had a little blue turtle with a colorful shell. Everything about the turtle was round.

“Squ… squirtle,” she sounded out. She kept that card.

The rest of the book had pictures of inventions, like waterwheels and lightbulbs and amazing things. Lacey wanted to keep the book too but Momma had said to just look. She put the book under her shirt. Maybe that’s why Momma left.

Sometimes she went back to the library and just looked. So many pages and there wasn’t enough time to understand them all.

But in the here and now, maybe Lacey could start making inventions of her own. Bushes parted behind her quietly, and her thoughts were interrupted by a fox. Her fox. Named Squirtle.

Squirtle visited everyday, peeking for changes in the cabin- she did live in a burrow under the lodge. Squirtle was her companion, an ever-listening ear. Lacey told Squirtle every passing thought- except the ones that would hurt the fox’s feelings.

“Sometimes I wonder if Momma is out there and if your momma is out there, and more momma’s leave than we realize.” Lacey began as Squirtle peered up at her.

“I don’t know how much is set in stone, because the sun comes up every day but maybe it won’t tomorrow. My water will boil over the fire, but the fire may go out. Well, I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about, so it’s time for that bath.”

So she set her knife down to bathe.

Lacey found Squirtle had taken her carving into her burrow. “You can’t go chewing any waterwheel I may whittle, you hear?” Assuming Squirtle did in fact hear, Lacey bid goodnight and curled into her sheets. Those trees still shivered in the night wind, the creek still rippled past, and Squirtle lay sleeping someplace. And with squirrelly thoughts dimming, Lacey wished Squirtle sweet waterwheel dreams.