9:8

Rowan couldn’t believe her eyes. It’s a friggin beaver. A beaver; just like the one Gareth had being going on about. She was sure he’d been pulling her leg with all the nonsense about a beaver and lemon tree. She’d been anticipating a giant guinea pig or something and a good laugh. When they’d got back to the apartment and the tree was gone she had thought he was just taking a joke too far.

Be he’d been pretty adamant hadn’t he? Still, a real live friggin beaver? Well, at least she thought it was still alive. The poor thing was bleeding pretty bad. Rowan stepped back into the apartment and grabbed an old set of sheets from the linen cupboard. The pale lilac sheets had come from her mother’s cast offs when she moved out and she hadn’t used them in ages. She dropped the folded top sheet on the hallway carpet and snapped out the fitted bottom sheet.

The sharp crack of the cotton sheet startled her as it broke the silence that seemed to have pervaded throughout her apartment. Should I wake Gareth up? Silently, Rowan decided to let sleeping boys lie and laid the sheet quietly out beside the bleeding beaver. Gingerly she rolled the limp mass over onto the sheet and quickly wrapped the still form up, trying to apply some pressure to where the blood seemed worst.

After she had the beaver tightly swaddled in the now blood-soaked sheet, Caroline grabbed the edges tightly and pulled. Dragging the heavy beaver backwards to the kitchen was more difficult than she’d thought it was be. This sure as shit weren’t no guinea pig, she thought to herself. One last heave dragged the sheets over the lip and onto the linoleum. Rowan looked up and sighed in relief as she saw there was hardly any blood on the dingy carpet. Well I guess mah damage deposit’s still safe, she thought giddily.

Stepping over the lilac-wrapped beaver, she retrieved the top sheet and some shears from a kitchen drawer. Time to make some bandages: beaver-style!