Happiness is a Warm Bath

Sometimes dignity washes off. Fortunately, so does despair

Welcome to Day #8. Earlier episodes are listed below.

This little series intersects with other tales based in the world of Nevicata devised by Maryellen Brady 💗📚 for her 24-Day ADVENT-ture 2025. She’s invited us all into her world.

PROMPT (#7): How will your character learn about the Light of Play?

Day 1: Welcome to Nevicata
Day 2: A Light Snack
Day 3: Breakfast of Impolite Champions
Day 4: Case of the Nightmare Scarf Lady
Day 5: Ferrel versus the Princess Posse
Day 6: Life Takes Practice
Day 7: Hide-and-shriek

You can read the day #8 companion stories here:

The Story of Solaine: A Happy Tail

How Mairead Got Her Wail Back: 8

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Ferrell fled.

He didn’t run—he evacuated the premises of reality with great urgency, leaving behind only pawprints and the echo of a strangled yelp he would deny to his dying breath.

His fur. His beautiful, Underworld-approved, soot-dark fur—WAS WHITE.

Pure, shimmering, banshee-blasted, ghost-of-a-ghost white.

He skidded around a snowdrift, panting, heart ricocheting inside his ribs.

“I’m ruined,” he wheezed. “I look like a marshmallow with legs.”

He tried brushing his coat again.
Still white.

He tried shaking.
Still white.

He tried panicking quietly.
Still white.

“Why couldn’t it have been tag?” he muttered to the cruel heavens. “No one ever turned into a pastry during tag.”

The ghost-commas whizzed overhead, still shouting cheerful nonsense.

“FOUND YOU!”
“YOU’RE IT!”
“YOU’LL NEVER FIND ME! I’LL BE VERY WELL HIDDEN!”

Ferrell crouched behind a tree, trembling. Even his shadow looked embarrassed for him. He needed to recover. He needed dignity. He needed—

A sudden blast of frigid air hit him from behind.

WHOOMP.

Ferrell shrieked—quietly, because he was trying to improve himself as a hellhound—and spun around.

Nothing.
Just snow.
Snow and—Sound.

A strange musical stomping, clattering in the air like a joyful disaster rolling downhill.

Angelo and the band.

Of course they’d be playing now. Of course the whole world would choose this exact moment to be noisy and watchful and extremely not-hospitable toward a hellhound in the middle of a magical identity crisis.

Ferrell sank into the snow, a small, white, trembling loaf of despair. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this.

Especially not—
“Little wanderer?”

Ferrell’s head jerked up.
Solaine.

Walking toward him. Graceful. Bright-eyed. Shimmering like moonlight on fresh snow. He made a sound that resembled a deflating accordion and tried to burrow himself under a drift.

She was already kneeling beside him. “You poor wee Cu Sith,” she murmured, brushing melting snow from his ears. “What happened to you? Did a snow cloud swallow you whole?”

He whimpered.
Which was humiliating.
But truthful.

Her fingers sifted through his fur—hesitating on the strange mixture of grave dirt and sugar crystals clinging to him.

“You smell like a pastry cursed by the Underworld,” she concluded.

That was… uncomfortably accurate.

A faint “HA!” echoed from the direction of the mausoleum.

The Banshee!

Solaine’s eyebrows lifted. “Ah. That explains part of it.”

She gathered him gently into her arms. He didn’t protest. What was left of his dignity was currently haunting the graveyard behind them.

“You are beautiful, you know,” she said, examining his coat. “In a tragic sort of way. Less ‘terror of the moors’ and more ‘lost meringue.’”

A mortified whine escaped him.

She laughed softly and brushed his head. “Come along, little wanderer. Let’s see if we can sort you out.”

He didn’t know what that meant. But he trusted her. Or at least, he trusted her more than gravity, banshees, flying commas, pastries, cat-girls, snow drifts, or—honestly—most of Nevicata at this point.

As she lifted him, Ferrell’s ears twitched toward the distant cacophony of Angelo’s “band.”

Drums thudded. Trumpets wailed. Someone hit the triangle six beats late but with great emotional commitment.

Solaine smiled. “They haven’t found their rhythm yet.” She looked down at him. “Neither have you, I think.”

Ferrell blinked up at her. He didn’t know he was supposed to have rhythm, but he wasn’t as off-beat as Martha was he?

Solaine carried him toward the café, snow swirling around them like a curtain closing on Act One of a very confusing play. Warm light spilled from the windows. Ferrell, exhausted and embarrassed and still very white, tucked his head under her chin.

Maybe—
possibly—
if he was lucky—
she could fix him.

Or at least make him less meringue.

The café door swung open, the scent of warm bread and fire curling around them like an invitation.

Inside, a copper tub waited.

And something else he hadn’t expected waited too—
the quiet warmth of being cared for.

Gentle.
Steady.
Kind.

He really needed a friend.
Wanted one.
But wanting and knowing how were not the same thing.

Maybe he and Solaine could learn together. She was nice—and most importantly, warm.

He’d had a friend once, but she had left him. To go away to school.

There was the banshee—
but they weren’t really friends.

She shrieked at him, terrified him, pointed at him like he was a malfunctioning appliance… And she was also kind of gross, so… yeah. Friendship had its limits.

He lifted his head—just barely.
Solaine was here, so maybe today wasn’t ruined after all.

Not if his story kept intertwining with hers.
Not if he trusted her hands to bring him back to himself.
Not if—

SPLASH.

He yelped as he hit the bath.

Traitor!

A moment later… he relaxed.

Warmth.
Soap.
Gentle hands.
And the faintest hint of hope.

He thumped his tail once.
Then twice.

Then, with growing certainty,
thump thump thump-thump, thump.

A new beginning.
A new beat.

His rhythm.
At last.