#Virtual Visiting Hour had scarcely begun when, slightly pixelated, she scaled his blanketed knee and squished snugly into his lap.

"Tell me again, Grandpa!"

"Tell you what, Little V?"

"The saucepan story."

"Oh, that's no story, love. It's more real than you or me."

#vss365

"Come on, Grandpa!"

The old man chuckled. "Okay... When I grew up, when the world was full of old things, I found the pan in a shed."

"And a mouse lived in it!"

"Yes, in a leafy nest of lost summer."

A #profound frown settled upon V. "Where have all the mice gone?"

#vss365

The mice had gone with the dropped crumbs. With sneezes, fallen willows and broken bones.

All despatched by The Brooms.

But he couldn't weigh down Little V with that.

In the sterile #glow from a disarmed sun, old Stone smiled.

"I think the mice went on an adventure."

#vss365

V nodded sagely. "Small things can have big adventures."

Stone frowned as an #icicle outside his window was Broomed. The world needed Violet. Maybe she was ready.

"That's true, little one. But don't go getting ideas."

"No, Grandpa." V returned his conspiratorial wink.

#vss365

V's mother drifted, waving, into shot. The chat turned cryptic.

"What are you doing today, love?"

"I'm making Christmas #pudding, Grandpa."

"Is that so? You'll need a good saucepan for that."

"Oh yes!"

"And a bright blue feather."

"Really, Grandpa?"

Another wink.

#vss365

Violet scurried off to find a suitable pan. When she returned, Stone was dozing.

A #jingle signalled the end of Virtual Visiting at the Golden Birch care home. But V wasn't quite ready to leave.

She tiptoed past a dozen wingback chairs, and headed down the corridor.

#vss365

Inside Stone's whitewashed bedroom, everything was right angles.

The corners of the sheets, the folded shirts, the edges of the light.

So far, so normal, mused Violet. She'd never known the #grace of disarray.

Then she saw a stray, soft shadow, tucked beneath the bed.

#vss365

"What did you #find under there, young lady?"

A nurse beaked around the door. Detecting excess static, he'd flapped after the stray visitor.

"Nothing!" V hid a quivering blue feather behind her back, took a deep breath and hit her Virtual Visitor box with the saucepan.

#vss365

A whoosh, and the Golden Beech peeled away in layers.

Today's pristine white walls.

Another decade's flock paper and family photos.

The swirling dust of a building site.

Then V stood in a swaying meadow, bathed in #coral dusk.

An upturned voice piped "Who are you?"

#vss365

"My name is Violet."

"Pretty." The tiny girl smiled. "Do you like puddles?"

"I, umm...Who are you?"

The girl fired out a hand firmly. "I'm..."

A raucous murder of crows burst from a gold-skinned tree. V ducked. she'd only ever known thin, orderly #harmonies of birds.

#vss365

The young girl cheered as the hedgerow erupted. Dunnocks, robins and linnets spun amongst the crows, a roudy #circus of winged acrobats.

Violet clapped her hands to her ears. "What's happening?"

The girl pointed to a puddle, to V's reflection, haloed by birds.

"You!"

#vss365

"Pretty!" The little girl held out her hand again, a #cocoon now glowing blue in her palm.

Belatedly, Violet realised her companion possessed a limited vocabulary. How much help could she be? But you can't leave a toddler alone in a field. Plus, her face was...familiar.

#vss365

As the slumped sun wallowed, the crows squabbled over who would lead the day's #encore.

The girl peered into Violet's empty saucepan, and her reflected eyes silvered with glee. "Puddle!" She dropped the glowing cocoon inside.

To V's amazement, the pan's base rippled.

#vss365

The cocoon rippled too, unraveling through time. Soon, a young glow worm was wiggling a backstroke through the metal circles.

"She's got style, she's got grace, she's...Ouch!" The worm's retro song stalled as he hit the side of the pan. " #Charlatan! You're not a pond!"

#vss365

"No, it's my saucepan!" Violet was slightly perturbed to be talking to a glow worm. But, unlike the little girl, it could string sentences together.

"Get me out of here!"

V fished the worm out of the pan. His cocoon immediately respooled, #obfuscating his next demand.

#vss365

Roughly translating the worm's muffled cry, Violet dropped him back into the pan. He wriggled, naked once more.

"Ouch! Are you trying to kill me?"

"But you wanted out of that cocoon?"

"As the #unicorn said of its forehead, that's beside the point. My glow bits hurt!"

#vss365

Violet attempted a tone of concern. "Oh no. Where are your glow bits?"

"Never you mind!" The worm flushed.

"Bum!" The little girl clapped a hand over her self-shocked mouth.

V's #latent irritation finally erupted. "For goodness sake, this adventure is ridiculous!"

#vss365

"Ooh, is this an adventure?" Intrigued, the worm #disinterred his good humour.

"Yes! Grandpa Stone sent me."

"Stone?" The tiny girl tittered.

V's brow furrowed. "Yes. To find the mice."

"Well that's a short adventure." The worm chuckled. "They're under that hedge."

#vss365

The little girl stuck a hand in her dungaree pocket and fished out a crumbling hobnob of dubious vintage.

Right on cue, a white mouse scuttled from a rasp of dry beech leaves, #yipped with delight and set upon the biscuit.

"See?" The worm looked smug. "Mystery solved."

#vss365

Violet knelt down, enchanted by the mouse. "Wow... We don't have these where I live. Mum says they've been #obviated."

"Big word, small rodent." The worm chuckled. "Which mouse-free place are you from, lass? The moon?" Another smirk.

"No, I think I'm from the future."

#vss365

"The future?"

The worm was brewing another chuckle when dusk glinted off the saucepan, and credulity turned #usurper.

"It's this pan, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?" Violet blinked, bewildered.

"It's a time machine. I've gone back a life stage. You've gone back?..."

#vss365

Violet was distracted by the toddler, who'd surreptitiously re-pocketed half the hobnob, plus the mouse. She was trying not to giggle, her face taut with suppressed #kinetic energy.

V gasped. She knew that look. She turned to the worm.

"I... I've gone back a lifetime."

#vss365

Violet knelt once more, grasping the girl with an #inquisitive gaze.

"Please, tell me again, what is your name?"

The child relaxed - easy question. "I'm Stick!"

This time V clutched the proffered hand tightly, as if trying to squeeze back her sudden tears.

"Grandma."

#vss365

This time Stick couldn't hold back her amusement. Laughter filled the air like a flock of #lively bramblings. Bright, gleeful, wild.

Violet's heart swelled at the memory. Her grandmother's laugh as she flapped in circles around the lawn. "Come on Little V. Let's fly!"

#vss365

"Oi, lass, this is no time to wallow!"

The glow worm nudged his non-chin over the edge of the pan.

"I like #languor as much as the next invertebrate. But aren't you supposed to be on an adventure?"

Violet snapped out of Stick's future. "Yes! But what am I here to do?"

#vss365

"Well, Violet, I suspect, in your future, all the mice are..."

The worm paused, afraid of bruising Stick's innocence.

"...Dee Eee Ay Dee."

The mouse poked his head out of Stick's pocket, eyes #opaline with indignation.

"Hey! Maybe the toddler can't spell, but I can!"

#vss365

"Jeez, a talking mouse. That really takes the biscuit."

"Says a talking worm. And I did take the biscuit, as it goes." The mouse twitched a crumb from his whiskers.

"That's it!" Violet tugged a lone #fibrous thought from her swimming mind. "The hobnob wasn't Broomed!"

#vss365

"Broomed?" The mouse frowned.

"Yes, you know...

Crumbs and spills,
Risks and ills,
For you to #flourish,
We Broom the rubbish."

The worm rolled his eyes. "That's a terrible rhyme."

"More importantly, it's a terrible idea." The mouse's stomach grumbled at the thought.

#vss365

"So, stop the Brooms, save the mice?" If he'd possessed hands, the worm would've scratched his non-head.

"It'll save more than us!" The mouse pointed at the #yearning waddle of a plump pigeon who'd spotted something slightly rotten, but possibly edible, under the hedge.

#vss365

"You're right. We don't have those. Or those..." Violet gestured to a velvety nose, jutting from a fresh molehill. "Trip hazard."

"Puddles?" A #riparian ripple filled Stick's eyes.

"No, no puddles."

The toddler's lip quivered.

"Don't cry, Grandma, we'll fix this."

#vss365

"But where do we start?" The worm wiggled a 360, surveying the field. "No sinister Brooms here."

Violet shrugged. "Grandpa says, walk anywhere rather than stand still."

"Sounds #muddle-headed. What if you walk off a cliff?

"Fly!" Stick grinned and flapped to the gate.

#vss365

The worm gazed admiringly at Stick's receding back. "She's not #articulate, but she knows her own mind."

Violet could only nod, a grit of memory and loss catching in her throat.

She scooped up the pan, tumbling the worm head-over-glow-bits, and ran after the toddler.

#vss365

Violet dashed through a silent argument between #jasmine and wild garlic, stumbled on warty clumps of earth, splashed into unswept rain.

Sore muscles.
Wet legs.
Filthy shoes.

The Brooms would quarantine her in an instant. But, for the first time, she really felt alive.

#vss365

Stick scaled a stile twice her height, into a lane hooped by overhanging branches.

The mouse, #obstinately clinging to her pocket, heard a willow whispering... 'Hello', or maybe 'Hollow'?

"Jeez, a talking tree!"

"Says a talking mouse!" The worm hollered from behind.

#vss365

"Not the talking dispute again!" Slightly out of breath, Violet muddied to a halt beside Stick.

"Every adventure needs a recurring trope." The worm grinned.

"Or two." The holloway rustled.

"Stop this #rigmarole!" V spluttered. "We must find the source of the Brooms."

#vss365

A frosty silence chilled their walk until the trees unfurled onto a main road.

A #cacophony of frustrated commuters and school-runners were tooting and growling behind a black and white road sweeper: 'Z.E.B.R.A. Contract Cleaning' inked on its side.

Violet gasped.

#vss365

"It #happens to be a strange name for a cleaning firm, but gasping is an overreaction." The worm was still disgruntled.

"Not when Z.E.B.R.A. control the Brooms!" Violet's eyes blazed with a new fire, orange and blue. "Let's go!"

She grabbed Stick's eager hand and ran.

#vss365

Along the slow swim of traffic, a dozen resentful Monday mornings gaped goldfish: #amazed as a fiery girl clutching a saucepan and an excited toddler leaped onto the rear bumper of the Z.E.B.R.A. truck.

Only one, bright-eyed lady in a blue Cortina seemed unsurprised.

#vss365

The truck trundled on, oblivious to its hitchhikers and their #range of emotions.

Violet flamed with intention.

Stick giggled with excitement.

The mouse gleefully whiskered the wind.

And the worm peeked out at the snarling cars, contemplating his juicy splatability.

#vss365

The road sweeper passed two boys. Knights on airy steeds, jousting with willow wands.

"Stone! Stone!" Stick's thrill nearly tumbled her from the truck.

One of the boys glanced at the toddler, blushed, and turned away as his #adversary jabbed a tease between his ribs.

#vss365

"Stone?!" Violet squinted into the dusk, catching only a sorry-shouldered silhouette before the sweeper met a bend.

She turned to Stick, crumpled to a sob under the weight of Stone's rejection.

V gazed at the little girl and wondered, #could you be in love from birth?

#vss365

As night settled in the creases of Stick's sorrow, the truck swung into a yard and stopped with a #tremendous jolt.

Violet's saucepan spun from her hand, rattling across the tarmac towards a thin woman in black-and-white overalls who was climbing from the sweeper's cab.

#vss365

The saucepan skidded to a halt beside a pair of booted feet then, as the woman crouched and peered, winced a curious #extra rattle of alarm.

The worm gasped and wriggled into a crescent shadow on the far side of the pan, flattening himself beyond the reach of the moon.

#vss365

Violet and Stick blinked in horror as the skinny, monochrome woman clawed up the pan and strode towards a gloomy warehouse.

Stick drew in a sharp doubleyew of air, ready to cry "WWWORM!"

V caught her just in time, pressing a finger to her #rosy lips.

"Shhhh, Grandma."

#vss365

The warehouse door swung sternly shut. The mouse, peeking anxiously from Stick's pocket, unleashed his squeak.

"What do we do now?!"

"We rescue worm, of course." Violet resolutely squared her shoulders, hoping her heart's confidence would follow her body's #script.

#vss365

The mouse gazed along the building's grey, corrugated walls, doubting his #sanity. They seemed to be gently swelling and shrinking, like the vast ribcage of an ashen dragon.

"Where do we even start?"

Right on cue, a distant window flared: a bright eye, popping open?

#vss365

Reaching the window, Violet glared up at its sill, then down, assessing Stick's height.

"Piggy back, Grandma?"

The toddler wobbled on to V's shoulders and peered through the glass. "Poor little fairies!"

The mouse tutted. "Enough childish #fantasy! Let me see...Oh..."

#vss365

Those iridescent wings, flapping #frantically towards the ceiling, weren't fairies. They were sentences.

A chubby man, hunched over a screaming kettle, was steaming the pages of a rainbow-bound book. Thousands of words winced, took flight, abandoning damp, blank leaves.

#vss365

The mouse watched aghast as, across the room, a narrower man swiped a large cranefly of narrative from the air.

He pulled the sentence limb from limb, examining each word then placing it on one of a range of hilly piles, laid out on a table like a 3D #atlas of language.

#vss365

"Can you see glow worm?" Violet shuffled impatiently.

"Shhh!" The mouse ducked.

The chubby man turned from his book to the window.

"What's up, Middle?" The thin man rumbled.

"I heard summat."

"Your fat imagination! Get on, or you'll earn the Nun's #ritual scolding."

#vss365

"Scolding, Mr End? Am I a fishwife?"

The thin man jumped, scattering orphaned words. "I... I'm sorry, Ma'am."

"You will be." The overalled woman scowled. "Here, Mr Middle, I quarantined this."

Another rainbow book hit the trestle, ruffling its #enchanting feathers.

#vss365

Middle stifled a sigh at the extra work. 'Book of Hope'? Blah blah. Book of Unpaid Overtime, more like.

"Well done, Ma'am!" End simpered. "Where'd you capture it?"

"Never you mind. But you'll have to pay 7 Eliot Terrace a visit tomorrow. Stubborn as a #mule, that one."

#vss365

"Female, Ma'am? We could sell her the cleaning spray?"

"Sexist, End! And we need something more potent."

"But I've added more words!" End stretched with #pride. "At the school, 'timidity' worked wonders. Just one bottle and they closed the library, cancelled playtime."

#vss365

"Ms Tric is tougher than the school, End."

"May I #request your plan, Ma'am?"

"Boil the words down. Make a new spelling of fear." The Nun twirled a saucepan in her gnarled hand. A cruel, culinary majorette.

Outside, two mouse eyes spun with the pan. "Oh, poor worm!"

#vss365

The spinning pan, the Nun, the books, vanished. The mouse smacked the wall.

It was midnight. Stick had yawned, toppled, sleep making #allies of her eyelids.

Violet staggered under her comatose weight. The mouse hung from her hair. She wasn't rescuing any worms tonight.

#vss365

A few short hours later, morning turned one eye on a huddled toddler beneath a scrubby hawthorn. The other peered in at the Nun, zealously stirring a stew of broken words.

"Wake up!" She jabbed the snoring End. " #Judgement and ostracism just melted. I think it's ready."

#vss365

"Wake up!"

In line with the hierarchy of their little #empire, End poked Middle.

"Give us your paw."

The Nun poured a dose of word stew into a Z.E.B.R.A. Hygiene bottle and squirted Middle's palm.

His hand immediately hid in a pocket and refused to come back out.

#vss365

"Perfect! She won't leave the house!" The Nun attempted a #rookie chuckle. It came out as a sneer.

End thrust a crate of dosed aerosols at Middle, who shrugged and tugged fruitlessly at his terrified hand.

"Geez!" End shouldered the bottles and stormed out of the door.

#vss365

Middle waddled after End, chest preceding his head, puffing apologetically like a #parody of both Hardy and Laurel.

Ahead, a cutlery drawer of expletives clattered the air. End had barged into a tall man with a trilby.

The stranger's fine moustache waggled an apology.

#vss365

Eavesdropping outside the warehouse door, Violet had been flattened by End's angry exit.

As she peeled herself off the wall, Stick ambled over, rubbing a #creed of dreams from her eyes.

"I hungry. Beckfast?"

"Shhh!" V pulled the toddler into the grey dragon's belly.

#vss365

"I think we go right." Middle's hand was still cowering, so he substituted a #greedy nod for pointing.

"Up past Pyre's Pies, eh? You walking mastication!"

End turned left and counted up the odds to 7 Eliot Terrace, leaving Middle's stomach grumbling at the crossroads.

#vss365

End wiped a smile onto his face with a dry palm and gave Ms Tric's door three hard raps.

Nothing.

Three more.

Nothing.

Middle panted up the garden path. "Not in? What now?"

"We #infiltrate." End waggled the door handle, smirking as the hinges folded back like wings.

#vss365

End unholstered two spray bottles and strode towards the bright, airy lounge. It smelled of pine, heather and #purpose. A huge, empty bird perch branched in one corner.

Meanwhile, Middle tripped on the mat and ricocheted into a cosy study.

"End! You've gotta see this!"

#vss365

The map spreadeagled the wall, mile after mile in inch after inch of inky detail.

"What's that? Crows?" Middle prodded the black dots that circled the town like #soldiers.

"Never mind them!" End gulped. A dozen pins skewered places that Z.E.B.R.A. spray had subjugated.

#vss365

The pins ringed Z.E.B.R.A.'s headquarters, suspiciously like the #solution to a puzzle. And two long lens photographs were precisely labelled...

'Mr End'

'Mr Middle'

"Ooh, look, it's you!"

"And you, you fool."

Even worse, their warehouse was marked 'Beginning?'.

#vss365

"Hmm, she's missed the apostrophe from Dr Be'Ginning's name."

End spluttered. "Our whole control plan is on that wall and you're upset about punctuation?!"

"Control plan? Aren't we on a #peace mission? The Nun is just keeping people safe."

End spat out a marble laugh.

#vss365

End strode around the house, upturning drawers, tearing up books, hunting clues to Ms Tric's whereabouts.

His eyes never looked higher than his basement heart, so he missed the open rooflight. The single, silver feather, snagged and glittering against a #royal blue sky.

#vss365

"Wool School? Cotton Wool, more like."

Bones pigged his nose against the window, then pulled the nearest pigtail.

"Oi, #Belle, what's that?"

Above the prohibited playground, a huge bird was glistening eights in the air.

"Unidentified Feathered Object?"

Smart arse.

#vss365

The silver eagle turned her angry tail from the broken #spirits of playtime, inking the edges of town with her shadow.

Nervous curtains twitched.

A bright ring of crows cried "corfe" to the clouds.

One last cold, clear breath of hope.

She tucked her wings and dived.

#vss365

The mouse, tumbled from Stick's pocket by restive dreams, had scuttled after her, past a trilbied stranger, into the warehouse.

The unlibrary was empty. Back to the corridor.

"Blasted #vermin!" A baritone boomed. A tan brogue skittled him tail over trembling whiskers.

#vss365

Convinced he was rolling to his final #destination, the mouse spun through a bright sliver of open door.

Two more, smaller, pairs of feet. He braced himself for another kick.

"Mousie!"

"Stick!"

"Worm!" Violet pointed, horrified, at a boiling pan on a blackened stove.

#vss365

Violet dashed across the tiles, threw herself onto tiptoes. But the pan was a feather's breadth out of reach.

She glanced at Stick, #deathly pale, lip trembling. There'd be no toddler piggybacking this time.

Even the mouse was hysterical, squeaking "Oh Glow! Oh Glow!"

#vss365

A rattle. A loud yawn. All eyes swung to a shelf above the stove.

A familiar face peered over the rim of an identical pan. "Oi! Quiet please. I'm trying to sleep!"

"Worm!"

Stick lit up like Christmas.

Violet #purged a lungful of dread.

The mouse feigned nonchalance.

#vss365

"You're alive!" Violet grinned.

"Of course I'm alive. Why wouldn't l... Oh..."

The worm squinted at the bubbling pan.

"What's in there?"

"You can't tell us?"

"I've been, um, snooz..."

At this point, word stew fumes began #bridging the gap between stove and shelf.

#vss365

The yawning worm inhaled a gape of vapour. His eyes grew wide as the #Atlantic. Shaking, he ducked back inside his pan.

"Worm! What's wrong?" Violet frowned.

"Oh, please, don't let it hurt me!"

"Who's it?"

A firm voice strode through the door. "The world, I believe."

#vss365

"Hello Stick, you're a long way from home. Who're your friends?"

The young woman's words danced over the surface of the situation, like #whitecaps on a storm swell.

Holding her breath, she threw a lid over the boiling pan and wiped a splash of fear from her hand.

#vss365

Violet was bounced by a brisk handshake, a trace of word stew sending a #seagull shriek of recognition through her body.

"Name's Tric, Miss Tric."

"I'm Little V."

"Oh, are you indeed?" A lightning smile. "And what are you doing here?"

"In this room?"

"No, in 1977."

#vss365

"I...I must stop the Brooms."

"Brooms?"

The worm began a longing refrain.

"Crumbs and spills,
Risks and ills,
For you to #flourish,
We Broom the rubbish."

Tric rolled her eyes. "That's a terrible rhyme."

The mouse squealed. "This episode is just a bad #tribute act!"

#vss365

"What do the Brooms look like?" Ms Tric's grey eyes eagled Violet.

"Fifteen, sixteen, #seventeen..." The quivering worm counted steps, menacing down the hall.

"They don't look like anything." V pointed at the steam, insinuating round the pan lid. "They're in the air!"

#vss365

"Eighteen, nineteen, twenty..."

The worm gulped. The door creaked. A broad, beige man shadowed the room.

"Well, well, what have we here?"

Greedy, glutenous eyes grasped Violet, then Stick.

Tric feathered with disgust and stepped forward into a #patch of taut air.

#vss365

"I think you should go back where you came from!"

A greasy smile smeared the man's lips. "My, you're pretty when you're angry."

A #spark of rage blotted Tric's vision, a hand grasped her throat, hot words licked her ear.

"There's no going back, dear. I am Be'Ginning."

#vss365

Dr Be'Ginning pushed Tric against the stove, its hard edges cutting a comma into her breath.

She snapped her face away from his half- #spoken intent, towards the fuming pan.

"V! Stick! Let's Broom him!"

"Don't forget me!" The mouse dashed for Be'Ginning's trouser leg.

#vss365

Following the mouse's cue, Stick dived at Be'Ginning's other ankle.

"Vermin!" The #word wobbled from baritone to treble. The Doctor's doughy body twitched.

Seizing a ladle, Violet smacked his outstretched arm.

He lost his grip on Tric. She turned and grabbed the pan.

#vss365

Tric swept the lid off the pan, grabbed Be'Ginning's neck and pushed his face into the fumes.

One sharp, startled inhale. The Doctor's eyes pooled with #unfathomable terror. He shrunk into a corner of the room.

The mouse scuttled from his trouser leg, gagging for air.

#vss365

"Yuck, it's dark as writer's block in there!" The mouse glared back at Be'Ginning.

"Never mind him." Tric spat out the last word like a pellet. "Now," she lowered her voice, "to sort the future."

"But..." Violet frowned.

"No problem is #insurmountable, V."

"But..."

#vss365

Violet pointed at Stick, left prostrate on the floor by Be'Ginning's retreat. She was gazing at a small pebble, a hot tear trickling down her cheek.

"Is that #normal?" Tric huffed.

"It's love. Grandpa, I mean, Stone, rejected her. I might not have a future to change."

#vss365

A gangly man in a trilby suddenly plunged through the door and knelt beside Stick.

Violet blinked, bewildered.

Now they were both crying, and Tric was squawking in a #foreign... no, inhuman, language.

Then the glow worm, peeking from his pan, began to surface a song.

#vss365

The mouse's eyes grew to #stroopwafels as the gangly man tapped his hat, and shrank.

On his shelf, the worm struck up a futuristic ballad.

"Do you know what's going on?" V muttered.

The mouse shook his whiskers. "No. Has someone else taken charge of our adventure?"

#vss365

Violet looked again at the now-undersized #mannequin in his giant suit.

A sepia photo rush of recognition.

"Grandpa!"

She ran across the room.

The mouse sighed, then struggled to squeeze out surprise at a second worm, wearing a monacle, inching towards the shelf.

#vss365

Violet gasped as her Grandpa's young face glitched, bright then pale.

"Stone. #Robot?" Stick quivered.

"My body's in the future, being Broomed!" The boy gestured to the pan on the stove.

V shook his fading shoulders. "Tell me what to do!"

Stone pointed at the worms.

#vss365

A final flicker. Stone vanished.

On the shelf, the bookworm and glow worm were trading #kindergarten memories.

The weight of the room fell in their direction.

"Do we..." V gulped, "have to... sacrifice the worms?"

The mouse tittered. "Didn't you see the boy's logo?"

#vss365

"Was it a ship?" Violet grasped at the glitching memory.

"Yeah." The mouse scoffed. "They often wear trilbies in the #armada."

"Of course!" Tric stretched for the shelf. "He wasn't pointing at the worms!"

She unceremoniously tipped the glow worm out of the second pan.

#vss365

Instantly, the worm spooled back into his glowing cocoon.

"Pretty." Stick scooped him up.

A muffled "Reggie!" vibrated the neatly #organised fibres.

The bookworm's frown pinched his monacle. "What have you done?"

"It's more what I've undone." Tric's eyes gleamed.

#vss365

"Yes! The saucepan turns back time!" Violet beamed. "But...?"

"Don't you see?" Tric huffed. "The essence of every future Broom is in the other pan. And we can...Ouch!"

Be'Ginning's terror had worn off. Grabbing V's ladle, he attacked Tric with a #haiku of sharp smacks.

#vss365

Tric stumbled and dropped the empty pan.

Stick relaunched herself at the Doctor's ankle. But this time a heavy brogue pitched her against the wall.

She slid to the floor in an #acrostic of dazed shock.

Be'Ginning strode to the stove.

"Oh no you don't!" Violet flamed.

#vss365

Be'Ginning's eyes licked up and down Violet's #short frame. Hungry. Contemptuous.

"Oh, don't I, my dear?"

He reached for the simmering word stew.

V grabbed the second saucepan from the floor and swung it above her head.

"Not if I send you back where you came from!"

#vss365

Orange-blue fury propelled Violet into the air. She struck Be'Ginning's head with the upturned pan.

He bellowed. His time rolled back. Not to a #stork-fresh baby, but to a shattering of words.

Shards of story skewered the floor.

'Chapter One' severed the mouse's tail.

#vss365

Tric rubbed her sore head. "Well done, Violet!"

V gazed in disbelief at...

The saucepan;

The cheering bookworm;

Stick, cheerfully pricking her fingers on pieces of Doctor.

"Ooh, #cosy hot..." The flushed mouse drew woozy eights on the floor with his bleeding tail.

#vss365

Violet gingerly picked up the mouse.

"Ooh, #delicious, I'm flying!"

Tric flung open several cupboards. "We need a first aid kit."

The mouse fainted.

"Hurry!" The bookworm waggled. "Tie something round his..."

On cue, Stick held up a stringy bit of Be'Ginning's tale.

#vss365

As Violet bound his tail with a thread of narrative, the delirious mouse lay belly-up on the worktop, #outblowing fancies of brie and almond butter.

"How very middle class," mumbled the glow worm.

"Says the man in the silk onesie!" The bookworm nudged the cocoon.

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"You #toad, Reggie. Wait 'til I get out of here!"

The glow worm's umbrage rolled his cocoon in futile circles.

The bookworm sniggered.

"Stop it, you two." Tric scowled. "Let's unbroom the future."

"Broom broom!" The prostrate mouse merrily steered an invisible car.

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Tric held the hot pot of word stew at arm's length.

The bookworm backed away, #butting the cocoon with his, well, you-know-what.

"Sorry, Manny!"

"You will be."

Tric tutted. "Right, that's it. Stick, put those two in your pocket. Now, Violet, get your saucepan ready."

#vss365

Violet grasped her saucepan with both hands.

Tric began to pour.

The mouse sat bolt upright. "Hello penguin!"

"Oh, for God's sake..." Tric traced the mouse's #finisterre stare, then froze.

"Blasphemy, Ms Tric!"

The monochrome form in the doorway wasn't a penguin.

#vss365