Another success, she noted in her potions book. She had been working on this concoction for weeks now, trying to get the exact ingredients just right. There had been some complications along the way, but she was sure that poor Mynci would be just fine after some rest and medication. Kauvara looked up and smiled again as the color of the liquid had settled into that of pure gold. The potion was complete.

Kauvara turned off the burner and let the potion rest. She then ran her hand down her Kadoatie's back. Mookie purred in contentment, snuggling up to the magician.

"Guard my potion, Mookie. This is my greatest creation... I can't wait to show it off now. Soon Neopets everywhere will be clamoring for it!"

Mookie purred in response as Kauvara pet him once more before she left the room. The Kadoatie eyed the flask warily. Sometimes Kauvara's potions caused him great unease, but this... this potion seemed to draw in the Kadoatie's curiosity. Well, Mookie had never heard of any curiosities killing Kadoaties, and his was getting the best of him.

The Kadoatie checked once more to make sure Kauvara was occupied in the other room. With a light nudge of his tail, Mookie tipped the flask over. The sweet smelling golden liquid bubbled forth from the small tip of the tapered flask. The liquid flowed down across Kauvara's work table, dripping softly off the side of her desk onto the floor.

Just as Mookie was bending down to lap at the strange brew, Kauvara popped her head back into the workroom.

"Bah, I forgot my potions notebook... Mookie, no!" the Kau yelled as she lunged for the Kadoatie.

It was a moment too slow, though. As Mookie's tongue touched the golden liquid, it was already too late....

A large cloud of white smoke suddenly formed when Mookie's tongue came in contact with the golden liquid. The cloud obscured Kauvara's vision for a moment as she coughed and waved her arms slightly to try and make the smoke evaporate into the air.

What she saw when the smoke finally cleared, however, came as an unexpected surprise. Mookie the Kadoatie was sitting there with a surprised look on his face, and the surprised look was well deserved, since Mookie was now the size of Kauvara!

"Wait..." Kauvara said. "This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm 100% certain that I accounted for every possible complication..."

"Mew?" Mookie mewed out, the Kadoatie's cry suddenly echoing throughout the workroom and causing a few glass vials to vibrate on the shelves.

"Well," Kauvara said, "I suppose it's a good thing that you tested it out before I went to market, but now we need to figure out how to change you back."

The Kau returned to her desk and opened her potions notebook. She flipped through the pages, trying to see where something could've gone wrong. Mookie, still curious, walked over to where Kauvara was.

That's when something unexpected happened. While Mookie was walking over, the Kadoatie hiccuped and suddenly grew again, nearly hitting the ceiling of Kauvara's workroom and bumping into Kauvara, causing several potions and vials of liquid to fall off their shelves and break.

"Oh no..." Kauvara muttered, pushing her hat up and surveying the broken beakers and vials before looking up at the giant Kadoatie. "I'm going to need to get for some help with this one..."

Mookie had grown too large to fit through the door properly, and in his effort to follow his owner, the petpet had torn the door from clean off the little building. The shattered beams of timber lay scattered on the ground like matchsticks. The magician rubbed her temples and shook her head as a rumbling purr louder than a volcano made the entire street tremble slightly.

“I’d better hurry,” she murmured to herself, hitching up the bundle in her arms and calling again for Mookie to follow. The Kadoatie drew stares as they passed. He was now a full head taller than Kauvara was, and he just seemed to keep growing. With each tiny hiccup, he would expand another few inches.

It wasn’t long before Kauvara reached her destination. The Kau had Mookie sit near a huge tree, the largest branches of which would have been at great pains to support his increasing weight, and hurried to the little shack which stood in the middle of the swamp in the Haunted Woods. She knocked nervously and fidgeted as she waited.

There was no answer. She knocked again, this time with more urgency. After a short pause, the door slid open a crack and an Ixi stared out at her.

“Sophie, I’m so gl-” Kauvara began, but her sentence was cut short as the Swamp Witch slammed the rotted door shut again without a word. Kauvara knocked again, loudly and insistently.

“Go away,” the witch called back.

“Sophie, please, I need your help. There’s something you’ve got to see,” the Kau said.

The door flew open and Sophie stared out at her unwelcome visitor again. “What?” she said moodily.

Kauvara pointed.

“Is that...?” began the Ixi.

“Yes. The Kadoatie making the tree bend like a blade of grass in a storm? That’s Mookie.”

“I... what in Neopia... how did this happen?” Sophie asked, her irritability forgotten in the face of such a mammoth problem – literally.

“He drank one of my potions, a new one I’ve been developing. But Sophie, I thought I did everything right, I don’t know what I did wrong and Mookie just keeps growing!” The desperation in her voice seemed, for a moment, to move the moody witch to compassion, but all at once she was trotting back to her shack and closing the door again.

“Not my problem,” she snapped.

Sophie was about to slam the door shut again, but Mookie chose that moment to hiccup once more. The tree which he was attempting to climb finally succumbed to the immense pressure of the giant petpet. The ancient wood made a loud, rumbling, cracking noise and then the entire thing toppled over... right next to Sophie’s shack.

The witch surveyed the corner of her kitchen which had been crushed by the falling tree, heaved a sigh and turned back to Kauvara.

“Fine,” she said, “but I’m going to need a few things from you...”

“Well, first off, you’re going to have to fork over the recipe for your famous self-named potion,” Sophie said as she leaned up against her ratty wooden doorframe and folded her arms under her chest.

“Argh, Sophie, you’ve got to be out of your mind! It took me years to perfect that potion!” Kauvara yelped in outrage. She should have known that nothing was ever simple when dealing with the witch.

Sophie picked at her nails nonchalantly. “You’re the one who needs my help, Kauvara. Truly, it is no matter to me whether you fix that great hulking Kadoatie of yours or not.”

“What if I give you the recipe for a morphing potion instead? They’re in high demand, as I’m sure you know, and people clamor to my shop in hopes of getting the few I put out,” Kauvara countered with an agitated huff.

Sophie tilted her head in thought for a moment, tendrils of her vibrant green hair falling softly over her shoulder. Finally, she nodded in agreement. The Ixi pushed herself from the doorframe and grabbed her splintered wooden staff, then turned around and started walking toward her wrecked kitchen, her tattered and patched brown robes fluttering behind her.

Kauvara looked over towards Mookie, who seemed to have grown even larger while she was dealing with the cantankerous witch. He was batting at the branches of the fallen tree with his oversized paws. Each swipe caused the tree to crunch and splinter. He purred in contentment, clearly pleased with both himself and his new game. Kauvara could feel the vibrations from his rumbling under her feet.

“Mookie, please behave yourself. I promise we’ll find a cure for you in no time at all,” she told the Kadoatie reassuringly. He simply looked up at her with his big almond-shaped eyes and gave a deafening mew. He grabbed a twig and rolled flat onto his back, kicking at it with his hind legs gleefully. Ears ringing from the assault to her ears, Kauvara made her way into Sophie’s small shack.

The inside was relatively dim, lit only with candles in twisted-looking holders and a few randomly dispersed lanterns. There were wooden desks with a variety of beakers, flasks, and vials containing potions and reagents in a multitude of colors. Loose-leaf parchment papers sat in disorderly stacks on the tables, and a vast array of haphazardly organized tomes were shelved on a dusty bookcase.

A large black cauldron with a viscous, bubbling green brew sat at the far end of the room and cast a ghostly green glow against the wall. Kauvara walked up to the cast iron pot and gave a deep sniff. She started to cough violently and her eyes began to well with tears. It smelled like tangy cheese mixed with dung jelly; it was definitely not the most pleasant thing her olfactory receptors had ever been subject to.

“Quit fooling around in there and come help me,” Sophie snapped from the kitchen. She could hear the clang of pots and the clink of glass jars being shifted and shoved out of the way as the witch searched for whatever it was she was looking to find in there.

Kauvara entered the destroyed kitchen. The small, cramped space was completely cluttered with glass bottles, jars, amphoras and ampoules of all different shapes and sizes and filled with strange-looking things that Sophie no doubt incorporated into her potions. Some of them were completely shattered, but there was a large mouth glass jar near the door jamb whose cork must have simply popped off in the chaos, its contents, a murky green tentacle, squirming and flopping about in a disturbing manner on the floor.

A small gray Meowclops trotted up happily and sniffed at the tentacle. She gave an excited squeak of joy and promptly picked it up in her mouth. Sophie looked over her shoulder at the Meowclops and gave a stern look. “Don’t you dare eat that!” she said authoritatively. “You know it irks me when you snack on my ingredients, so drop it.” The Meowclops looked dejected as she put the slimy tentacle down, but walked over to the witch and butted her head against Sophie’s hand. She scratched the Meowclops under the her chin in a surprising display of affection, then reached over to put the tentacle back in its jar.

“You’re going to throw that out with the rubbish, I hope,” Kauvara said. Sophie gave her a blank, yet telling stare. “Ugh, that can’t possibly be sanitary!” the Kau said in disgust.

“If you don’t like how I do my work, feel free to leave,” Sophie said bluntly. Kauvara shook her head, and Sophie continued speaking. “Well, then. I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that I’ve found a majority of the things I’ll need for our potion. The bad news is that I seem to be out of Mireweed distillate.”

“So? I’m not really familiar with Mireweed, but distillates are easy enough to make,” Kauvara said.

The Ixi threw her head back and chuckled rudely at the Kau’s expense. “Oh, Kauvara, thank you for that. I haven’t had a good laugh in ages,” Sophie said, barely containing her mirth. “You really don’t get out much, do you? Mireweed is extremely rare, and you can only find it deep in the swamps of the Haunted Forest. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that’s gone there in recent memory. All the locals know that’s where Mutant Meepits, the most frightening of Neopian creatures, live.”

“Mutant Meepits? I’ve never even heard of them,” Kauvara said worriedly.

“Believe me, once you encounter one, you’ll never forget it so long as you live. Its wide-eyed, blank yellow stare and deceptively cute face will be burned into your soul for all eternity, causing you endless nightmares and unrest,” Sophie warned. “Mutant Meepits, my dear Kau, are the epitome of evil and malevolence. And we have to stroll right through their territory to get our Mireweed…”

Mookie chose that moment to hiccup once more, shooting up another few inches.

Sophie eyed the growing Kadoatie with great skepticism, but said nothing to protest.

"Come on," Kauvara said. "The sooner we start, the sooner we'll be done!"

"Sure," Sophie said, looking completely and utterly bored. "Before your darling 'Mookie' decides to crush my house or something."

"Let’s go!" Kauvara shouted, excitedly walking off in one direction. "Mookie, come on!"

"Hold on, there." Sophie held out an arm, stopping her mid-step. "It's that way."

She pointed to her right, in the direction of a patch of forest much gloomier and creepier than the one Kauvara had just attempted to wander toward.

The Kau gulped. "A-are you sure it's that way?"

Sophie nodded, smirking.

"Positive?"

"Absolutely positively," Sophie said, looking much happier than before. "Now, let's go!"

They wandered through the forest for a few minutes, Kauvara nervously clinging onto the Swamp Witch's arm. Mookie followed, knocking over trees and and stepping on rocks, bushes, and the occasional wild Slorg.

"Are we there yet?" Kauvara asked.

"Not even close," replied the Ixi, gleeing over her nervousness.

The trees had started to thin when, all of a sudden, Sophie shouted, "Oh, would you look at that! The Meepits are here..."

"Come on, Sophie. There's obviously nothing there. Besides, Mookie's still growing larger by the minute!" Kauvara exclaimed while gesturing toward her Kadoatie, which was now bigger than her. Mookie, oblivious to the conversation, was poking at more stray Slorgs and Sludgies with a giant, shiny claw. Sophie was about to provide the Kau with a response when the bushes rustled.

"I told you," Sophie muttered, placing her staff in front of her protectively. Kauvara nervously cleared her throat.

The Swamp Witch hadn't been lying.

Only one Meepit appeared at first, but even a single one was enough to scare Kauvara pretty badly. It was a dark pink colour with huge, staring eyes. Something about it seemed different, though. Kauvara scrutinized the pink Petpet again and noticed two things. The first was that it had short, sharp claws on its hands. The second was that more claws were found on its feet. She cautiously took a step back.

"Y-You... you didn't tell me they had c-claws!" Kauvara stuttered in horror. Sophie sighed as if trying to teach a young child.

"I told you they were dangerous. We can turn back if you're too scared to go on," she mocked, glaring at the petrified Kau. Kauvara shot her an icy look back.

"And leave Mookie like he is? Not a chance! Even if it means having to face these... things, I'll still do it for him," the Kau replied confidently, regaining some of her composure. Before the two could even take another step forward, though, the bushes surrounding them all parted, revealing dozens of blank-eyed Meepits...

"Oh, right," Sophie mocked in a high-pitched voice. "Honestly, you are so scatterbrained. I tell ya, it's that Neopia Central air. It does somethin' to ya." The Ixi waved her hands in front of her. "Now, if you'd be so kind," she invited.

"What? You want me to go first?" Kauvara cried, hiding behind the Swamp Witch.

"Guests first." Sophie smirked.

Kauvara nervously emerged from behind Sophie's skirt. "Eh, well, erm, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather stay here." She stood up and looked in front of her.

"Oh?" Sophie said, arching an eyebrow. "I didn't say you had a choice."

Kauvara risked another glance at the grass in front of her. The number of Meepits had tripled since the last time she'd looked.

"You know, if it wasn't for the claws, they'd actually be kind of... cute," she ventured.

"Cute?!?" Sophie shrieked. "You're looking at the most bloodthirsty monsters in all Neopia, and you're saying that they're cute?!?"

A loud chattering filled the grass, as several different patches began to rustle.

"Run," Sophie cackled.

"What?!?"

"RUN!" Sophie yelled, then dashed in front of Kauvara and did a back handspring over the top of the Meepits. She continued to jump and bounce across the grass, leaving the Kau behind. "Come on!"

"Mookie, follow!" Kauvara shouted, dashing this way and that in the grass. A couple of Meepits scuttled after her, but she managed to swat them away with a book.

"Just a little farther!" Sophie said gleefully. She continued to dart through the grass, flipping and twisting above the ground in a graceful display of acrobatics.

"Where did you learn that?" Kauvara wondered aloud.

"You learn some things, living in the swamp," Sophie called back. "Especially when your potions call for mireweed. Now, are you going to follow me or not?"

Kauvara finally managed to catch up to the Ixi and stood beside her. "Are we done yet?" she gasped.

Sophie smirked. "Ah-ah-ah." She wagged her finger at the beleaguered Kau. "There is still the King to get through."

"The king?" Kauvara asked warily.

"The King." Sophie pointed in front of her. "Right through those trees is the Mireweed that you seek. Unfortunately..." Sophie ducked and covered her ears as a roar split the air. "Unfortunately, HE was here first."

Kauvara glanced around nervously. "And he is?"

"The guardian of the Mireweed," Sophie said grimly, digging around in her bag.

"But what is he?"

"Well, he's the king, of course," Sophie answered, waving her hand in the direction of the trees. "And here he comes."

A giant Meepit emerged from the darkness.

"You see, a few years ago, I had the same... accident that you had with your... Mookie," Sophie explained, scrambling in her bag for something. "And I haven't been able to get to the mireweed since."

"Oh dear," Kauvara sighed. "This is not going to end well..."

"It's not my fault he decided to drink some!" Kauvara responded. "He knocked it over!" While Kauvara and Sophie argued about the accident, the giant Meepit suddenly leaped forward and tackled Mookie, sending the both of them sprawling head-over-heels.

"Mookie, no!" Kauvara yelled. She wanted to chase after them, but Sophie yanked at her collar, nearly causing her to fall backwards.

"Come on! While they're distracted!" Sophie said, then bounded through the clearing, toward the patches of mireweed. Once there, she quickly grabbed a few big handfuls and stuffed them into her bag while tightly holding something in one of her hands.

Before Kauvara could ask, the Meepit and Mookie crashed through a small copse of trees while duking it out. The giant Meepit seemed to have the upper hand... until Sophie put her clenched hand to her mouth and blew into it.

Suddenly, the ferocious Meepit put its paws to its ears and squealed a loud roar of anguish and pain, then bounded off into a separate copse of damaged trees and disappeared. Kauvara looked toward Sophie as if to ask what she'd just done, but she knew better.

"Well, I got the mireweed." Sophie said. "Let's go before he comes back."

"Come on, now," Kauvara said, calling Mookie over. The Kadoatie, who'd been through quite a tussle, was covered in bruises and scratches. "Mookie... are you okay?" the Kau asked. Despite the damage, Mookie let out a loud "Mew!" in victory, then hiccuped again and grew a few more inches.

"Are you quite done now? Sophie asked angrily. "Wonderful -- that Petpet of yours has attracted more of those Meepits. We have to go... now!" Sure enough, from the bushes behind them, a large group of Meepits came stampeding toward them, their bright yellow eyes fixated on the Ixi, the Kau, and the Kadoatie...

"What do we do?!?" she wailed, turning to the shaken Ixi.

Mookie, on the other hand, didn't bat an eye. If anything, he seemed intrigued. His body went rigid as he focused on the encroaching Meepits, the movement of his eyes as he tracked their forward creeping and the occasional twitch of his tail the only indicator that he was a giant Kadoatie rather than a giant Kadoatie statue.

"If we don't move, maybe they won't see us!" Sophie whispered back, her voice harsh with the strain.

Kauvara froze. "Are... you sure?" she asked, doing her best not to move her mouth as she spoke.

"Pretty sure! They can only see motion, can't they? If we stand still, it's like we become invisible! Like Mookie, see?" The words were a little slurred as Sophie strained not to move her mouth, but Kauvara got the message, and the three of them remained frozen.

Even when her heart began beating faster as the Meepits crept closer, she stood still.

And even when the Meepits got so close she could almost hear their breathing, she kept still.

Yet, just then, one of the twisted mutant Meepits launched itself directly at her! A scream tore itself from her lips, reverberating throughout the woods and echoing back at her as she clenched her eyes shut in dread and horror. As she waited to feel the Meepit's claws rake against her arm or face or side, the moment seemed to stretch infinitely on. It was like, if she hoped hard enough, the moment would never end.

Just when she expected to feel the impact of the Meepit against her flesh, however, she instead heard a dull thud – and felt the ground beneath her rumble. Was she shaking?!?

Cracking her eyes open, Kauvara saw that she had failed to take into account Mookie’s strange behavior. It took her a moment to realize what had happened, and to realize what the rumbling was. Mookie had pounced and batted away the frightening rodent with one swoop of his oversized paw – and was purring in contentment! He was also growing larger with each occasional hiccup that was permeating his frame. They seemed to be coming more often now.

"Can't see us if we don't move, huh? Quick, I have an idea – jump on Mookie’s back! He can get us out of here!" she yelped. He's large enough to carry us both now... and getting larger the longer we wait...

As she leapt onto Mookie's back, the purring Kadoatie seemed rather smug as he batted the occasional Meepit away.

"Well," Sophie yelled back, "Come to think of it, I might have been thinking Evil Fuzzles..."

Kauvara rolled her eyes and urged Mookie forward. He seemed to have no trouble adapting to his passengers, though she was quite sure he'd never had passengers before. A few braver (or possibly dumber) Meepits attempted to follow, but the giant Kadoatie proved well able to multi-task as he batted them quickly aside. Their claws were simply no match for his thick, oversized hide, and though the ride was hardly smooth, Mookie soon had them well away from the territory of the mutant Meepits.

In nearly no time at all, they found themselves back at what was left of Sophie's shack. Disembarking quickly, they hurried into her abode to quickly mix an antidote. Behind them, the ominous sound of Mookie's hiccups seemed to grow ever-louder, and Kauvara knew that he was growing bigger with each hiccup. They had to act, and they had to do it fast!

"We have to hurry!" she told Sophie in desperation.

"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying!" Sophie snapped back, but there was no bite in her tone – she felt the urgency, too. She threw her bag at Kauvara, barking a quick command to make a distillate of the mireweed.

As Kauvara worked, making herself at home in the kitchen, Sophie frantically began throwing ingredients in her cauldron, muttering as she did so in a voice too low for the anxious Kau to make out.

Mookie's hiccups began getting even louder, and closer together – finally, though, Kauvara finished the distillate and Sophie was ready to add the mireweed to her concoction.

"Ready?" she asked the Ixi, slightly breathless.

Sophie nodded, grabbing the distillate in a slightly shaky hoof...

"It certainly doesn't look very appetizing, though," Kauvara said, eyeing the blackish potion uneasily. She bent down to give it a whiff. "Ugh, and it smells like rancid chokato!" she griped in disgust.

"Be glad it's your beast and not you that has to drink it, then," Sophie retorted. "Why don't you do something useful, like going into my completely destroyed kitchen and getting a relatively clean beaker, funnel, and ladle so we can fix your Mookie and get you both out of my swamp as quickly as possible?"

Kauvara was silent as she padded into the kitchen and collected the aforementioned items, then held the beaker and funnel as Sophie carefully ladled the steaming liquid into the beaker. "Look, Sophie," Kauvara began cautiously, "I'm sorry that I came here and imposed on you, but you can't expect me to believe that you didn't enjoy a bit of company. For all that you try to act as miserly and aloof as you possibly can, I really do think that you're a different Neopet deep down inside. You're helping Mookie and me, and that has to count for someth—“

"Shhh, Kauvara!" Sophie said with irritation. "Do you hear that?"

"What are you talking about? The only thing I hear is the potion bubbling and your lazy Meowclops snoring away in the corner," Kauvara replied.

Sophie swiftly crossed the room and yanked her window curtain out of the way. "Ugh... can't anything ever just be simple?" she groaned. "The Meepits have apparently followed us here, and they brought their King with them!"

Kauvara jogged to window in a flash and peered outside. Sure enough, a legion of mutant Meepits were meandering across the large clearing between Sophie's house and the edge of the swamp. A chill ran down Kauvara's spine. A multitude of sightless yellow eyes seemed to be staring directly at her. At the head of the host was the King, his long claws biting into the dirt below him and razor-sharp teeth peeking out from his mouth.

"There are too many of them! What are we supposed to do?" cried Kauvara.

"Meepits want only one thing: complete and utter dominion over Neopia. Luckily for us, they're also notoriously stupid. I think we can appeal to their desire for power and try to convince them that we'd be willing to help them."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Kauvara asked.

"I don't have time to baby you through the intricacies of my plan; just comfort yourself by knowing that I have almost every confidence it'll work,” Sophie said sharply. "Come on, we're running out of time. We need to get out there before Mookie and the King start fighting again."

Sophie walked over to the cauldron filled with black potion and grabbed some pot holders. "Help me carry this out into the field," she said as she tossed one to Kauvara. "And when we get out there, do us both a favor and keep your trap shut. Just let me do the talking."

It took a bit of muscle, but the combined efforts of Sophie and Kauvara finally lifted the heavy pot. They walked carefully out of the house and into the field, each step they took jostling the liquid and almost making it slosh down the sides of the cauldron. Mookie trotted along beside them, back arched and ready to fight if the need arose. His hiccups were increasing in frequency and intensity, and now he was nearly the size of Sophie's small cottage.

When they reached a point a few feet away from the horde of mutant Meepits, they set down the cauldron.

For a few tense beats, everything was silent. Sophie's green hair whipped around wildly in the wind. She cleared her throat, and began speaking. "Hail, oh great and mighty mutant Meepit King," she said as humbly as she could muster. "I am Sophie, the greatest potions-master in all of Neopia."

Kauvara rolled her eyes and let out an undignified snort. "You wish," she said.

"Well, my associate here isn't half bad, either," Sophie amended. "Anyway, you see that Kadoatie over there? You remember him, right? He's the one that totally destroyed you in that fight earlier..." She waved a hand toward the cauldron. "Yeah, well this right here is the potion that gave him his super-strength and gargantuan size. We'd like to make a gift of it to you, and offer our support in an alliance. After all, you'll need a steady supply of quality potions if you're planning to take over Neopia."

The King stepped forward until he was standing before the cauldron. His mouth twisted into a grin, sharp teeth poking out from behind his lips. Kauvara had to suppress a violent shudder as she looked at his disfigured face. The King slowly lowered his head and drank deeply from the cauldron. He stepped back, and then motioned for his underlings to follow suit. They scampered up in groups and lapped up what remained of the potion.

Then, the King's whole body convulsed as he was wracked by a violent hiccup. Instead of growing larger, however, he shrunk into a regular-sized Meepit! He looked shocked, dazed, and confused for a few moments before starting to titter at Sophie and Kauvara angrily. The entire horde of Meepits started spasming, their hiccups reverberating discordantly through the clearing. Once they were done, they were all no bigger than Petpetpets. The miniature mutant Meepits started scurrying toward the edge of the swamp, their tiny, high-pitched squeaks of bewilderment and outrage lessening as they retreated.

Back in the cottage, Kauvara grabbed the flask with the last bit of potion in it and put it in a bowl for Mookie. The giant Kadotie mewed gratefully, then lapped it up with a few swipes of his tongue. Giving one final, immense hiccup, he returned to his original size at last.

"Wow, this whole day has been a nightmare. Thanks for helping me get Mookie back to normal, and sorry for Mookie destroying your kitchen and leading the mutant Meepits to your house," Kauvara said.

Sophie sighed deeply and then sank down into a comfy armchair. "You can leave now, Kauvara. Don't rush back to visit, if you please.” She then looked over toward Kauvara with a rare smile plastered on her face. “I have to admit it, though... those mini-Meepits were kind of cute!"

The End