This is someone's sorcery, Magnolia thought distantly. This has to be someone's sorcery.

  "Hello? Anyone home?" The pig waved its hoof. "You're being really rude right now."

  Against every instinct screaming at her to walk away, Magnolia reached out.

  She pinched the tiny hoof between her thumb and forefinger.

  She shook it.

  The fabric was soft. Slightly worn. It felt precisely as it looked: a stuffed animal that had been loved a little too hard.

  And yet it was moving.

  "See? Was that so hard?" Piggy beamed, which should not have been possible for a creature whose face was made of stitched fabric.

  Magnolia let go and took a step back.

  Piggy didn't seem to notice. The little plush drifted toward the destruction, circling one of the craters, letting out a long dramatic sigh.

  "Ahhhh... I can't believe it. She's gone. She's really gone."

  "...She?"

  "My favorite boulder." Piggy descended toward the rubble, one hoof pressed to its chest. "She was beautiful. Majestic. The perfect height for sitting when I needed to think. And now she's just... pieces."

  Magnolia looked at the scattered chunks of stone. Then at the pig. Then at the stone again.

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  "I just moved here a couple months ago," Piggy continued, circling the destruction like a mourner at a grave. "But this clearing became special to me. The place I'd come whenever my sister was being mean to me."

  "Your sister," Magnolia said carefully.

  "Mm. My rabbit sister bullies me all the time. She's so mean. And you'd think my cat sister would help, but noooo."

  Magnolia had no idea what any of that was supposed to mean.

  "We used to wrestle together, you know," Piggy said, floating back toward her. "All three of us. For the Stuffed Animal World Wrestling Championship belt. We must've swapped that belt at least twenty times by now."

  How did my life become this?

  "Anyway!" Piggy drifted closer, button eyes bright with sudden enthusiasm. "Let's be friends! I'm bored and you seem interesting. Destructive, but interesting. What do you say?"

  Magnolia said nothing.

  She looked at the pig. At Skippy, still staring with deep canine confusion. At the path leading out of the clearing, toward Yi's house, toward something resembling sanity.

  "I have to go," she said.

  "What? No! Don't leave!"

  Magnolia was already walking. She tugged gently on Skippy's leash, and the little dog fell into step beside her, seemingly relieved.

  "Wait wait wait—" Piggy bobbed after her. "You can't just leave! I poured my heart out to you! About my sisters! About the belt! About my feelings!"

  "Sorry about the boulder," Magnolia said, without looking back.

  "That's it?! 'Sorry about the boulder'?! I need emotional support!"

  Magnolia kept walking.

  "Let's be friends!" Piggy wailed, drifting after her like a persistent ghost. "Come on! Please? Pretty please?"

  "Don't follow me."

  "But I want to be frieeeends!"

  "Don't follow me."

  The pig's cries echoed through the trees as Magnolia quickened her pace, Skippy trotting alongside her. The last light of day was fading fast, and somewhere behind her, a tiny plush continued to lament its loneliness to the uncaring sky.

  What a weird day.

  Magnolia shook her head and kept walking.

  She had dinner to make.