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Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2024-08-10
Words:
350
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
2
Hits:
6

Crumbs

Summary:

The white mouse was consulting with Dab-Dab, the duck perched on a tree convenient to the prison, about what further comforts Doctor Dolittle wanted.

Work Text:

"Since soap crumbles, it'll be easy to carry through the tunnel," the white mouse said. He was consulting with Dab-Dab, the duck perched on a tree convenient to the prison, about what further comforts Doctor Dolittle wanted during his captivity. The basics were looked after, food ferried in crumbs by the white mouse himself. The local mice continued helpfully filling hollowed-out nuts with water, Dab-Dab bringing the nuts from the river to right outside the prison.

"Soap for shaving," Dab-Dab said, "but he hasn't a razor. He wouldn't keep one in his pockets. An inconvenient thing to carry around, and it would rust in the ocean, all the canoeing about we've been doing."

After some thought, and the white mouse taking a question or two to the Doctor, they worked out that it didn't need to be an actual razor. A good thing, too, as not only would one be heavy for a mouse to carry, but it mightn't have fit through the hole under the prison wall. A careful exploration of the houses nearby, focusing on useful articles rather than the food he had been gathering, and soon the white mouse carried the intended makeshift.

"An oyster shell is ironic, in the circumstances," the Doctor said. As the pearl fisheries were behind his having been thrown into prison. He carefully struck it against the stone wall to break for a sharp edge. Ever thoughtful about the health of his animal friends, he had insisted he would do that, rather than chance the white mouse injuring himself.

The white mouse groomed the bits of earth from the tunnel off his whiskers, watching with pride at their well-arranged state of things. Imprisoned and left to starve in the dark, the Doctor was quite cheerfully shaving using soap-crumbs shaken up in a nutshell full of water.

Having squeaked a "see you shortly" to the Doctor, the white mouse went back outside, to tell Dab-Dab of the Doctor's improved spirits. After that the mouse could in good conscience sample a few crumbs of the local fare he had been gathering for the Doctor.