Luckily for Charlie, Aunt Annaruth had continued to be just as absentminded throughout the rest of her day as she had been at 8 o’clock in the morning when she had inadvertently hung her hiccuping nephew on a branch. As she wandered through her ample gardens, humming to herself and dreaming up a particularly gory scene in her goblin novel, chaos erupted in the house behind her. 

​

    Misty the Morphable, who was half loving pet and half insistent nuisance, had not been fed breakfast. Charlie would never have forgotten to feed Misty breakfast, but as we have already discussed, he was not exactly in a position to collect dew drops, which was the only thing Misty could consume without making herself ill, or at least so she told Charlie whenever he tried to give her something else. 

​

    Typically a summery little cloud, Misty spent her days floating about the eaves of the house. She was also kind enough to water the houseplants (so long as she was told she was pretty and promptly given her dewdrops at 9 o’clock every morning). As neither of those things had happened, Misty went on a rampage. She thundered and raged, flooded the kitchen sink, rained hail on the innocent piano in the hall, and broke a third of Annaruth’s favorite dishes. 

​

      When it was clear that no one was coming to feed her, she sizzled out into the garden in search of her offending family. When she found Annaruth, she did everything she could think of to express her displeasure. She poured rain on the poor woman’s head, swathed her in a thick fog, and even turned herself into a tornado and ripped up the cornflowers. But nothing made the slightest difference. The Assistant Deputy Muse (Level IV Probationary Status) was unaware. 

​

    Once she realized that no matter the chaos she wrought, she would be unable to get Annaruth’s attention, Misty stormed off (quite literally) to go find Charlie and give him a piece of her mind.