milliways_bar | (no subject)

Wilford comes straight to the bar once he's done with the pet shop, because he doesn't want that thing in his house any longer than it has to be. Not just because it's a creepy eight-legged abomination. Mostly because the second he brought it in from the garage, the dog lost his damn mind and would. not. shut. up.

He's hoping to find the kid here sooner rather than later, but she's not immediately visible when he comes through the door. After a few minutes of looking around, he decides to check outside. Sure enough, there she is. As soon as he spots Brooke, he whistles sharply to get her attention.

Brooke looks around.

"Hi Wilford."

She whacks a puck straight into the goal.

"You still want that bug?" he asks.

She better still want it. He sure as hell doesn't.

"Of course." Brooke says.

She's not the sort of kid that asks for a bunny and gets bored five minutes later.

"Better come and get it before my dog eats it, then."

It's on the other side of a door from the dog, but the fewer chances taken, the better. For all parties involved.

"Yay!"

Brooke brings her hockey stick inside, because precious, but figures nobody will steal her pucks.

Wilford leads her to the front door, where there is considerably more than just a spider. He picks up a long glass tank full of various rocks and chunks of wood and bags of dirt, and points to the box the glass tank came in.

"You got that?"

It's long and awkward, but full of some of the lighter things. A couple of small potted plants, some sponges, and a smaller cardboard box with little round holes along the top.

"I can lift that." Brooke says, picking up the box.

"Are you coming through now?"

"That depends on where you want your bug."

He also has a backpack by the door, just in case.

"In my room." Brooke says. "I can't leave it here in case I don't get here to feed it. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"The man at the store said it's a girl."

He has no idea how you tell, especially since it's apparently a young one. But the man at the store seemed to know what he was talking about.

"Cool!"

Brooke opens the door and leads Wilford into her room.

There's already one tank on her dresser, containing Snek the tiny corn snake. On her walls are posters of people playing ice hockey and doing martial arts, and a photo of her with her ice hockey team. Purple is the colour theme, but there are still some signs of the usual pink crap that five year old girls acquire.

She clears a space on the dresser for the new tank.

"Does it need a heater or light plugging in?"

Wilford picks up his backpack and follows her through the house, careful to step quietly so he doesn't attract any unwanted attention.

"Yeah, it needs all that stuff."

He sets the tank down on the floor and starts pulling everything out - including a multi-socket power converter since none of what he bought at the pet shop will work with the sockets here. Or at least, that's what he assumes. Once the tank is empty, he lifts it up onto the dresser to get it situated.

"Go in there and grab my iPad," he says, pointing to his backpack. It looks like it was probably neon blue at one point. It also looks about 20 years old.

Brooke does so and brings it over.

"You need to talk quiet, Fry is upstairs, he has really good hearing."

Wilford rolls his eyes and unlocks the screen with his thumbprint. There's an illustrated PDF already waiting for him in his ebooks.

"You have to keep the plants watered, so the bug stays healthy," he says, situating the small pots in the corners and along the back wall like the pictures show. Then he puts a layer of dirt down, just deep enough to cover the pots, but still let the terracotta rims show to mark the edges.

Brooke writes this down with her instructions for Snek.

"Got it."

Wilford follows the pictures and instructions on his iPad, putting down the water dish and filling it with rocks and a sponge. Not the most natural-looking thing on the planet, but that's what the instructions say to do.

"Keep that full. Don't take out the sponge."

Apparently.

He situates a couple of half-log hides, and a few rocks and a piece of driftwood in the tank to give the spider plenty of places to pick from when it wants to hide. His setup doesn't look as nice as they do in the pictures, but it's practical. It doesn't need to be a display piece.

It looks good enough, so he picks up the plastic jar full of pillbugs and dumps them into the tank. The little grey bugs scatter, finding any place possible to hide.

"What are those?" Brooke asks, looking at the pillbugs.

"Housekeeping," Wilford says. "They'll eat what the spider doesn't, or something."

He doesn't know. But they were recommended.

He picks up a bottle of water from the rest of the stuff on the floor and uses it to fill up the dish. Once everything looks good, he runs the black strip heater along one of the sides of the tank. With all that done, it looks like it's time for the spider.

"You got a name for it?" he asks as he carefully picks up its box.

"I think I'm going to call her Killer." Brooke says.

"She's not venomous though is she?"

"If it bites you, it'll hurt like hell. Kind of like a bee sting."

He lowers the box into the tank and slowly tips it over onto its side, and then tilts it so the spider comes out. It stays in the middle of the tank, apparently stunned for a few seconds before it finds one of the hides and tries to disappear into it.

It would have a much easier time at actually hiding if it wasn't glowing yellow like that.

"Right now it eats crickets and beetles. When it gets bigger, it'll start eating mice. The guy said this tank should be big enough for it when it grows up, but you might need to get new things for it if it can't fit anymore."

Speaking of crickets and beetles, Wilford puts a couple of large styrofoam cups onto the dresser beside the tank. The only thing left after that is the lid and the light. The lid locks onto the sides of the tank with a latch. The light is an LED strip with a remote control for different colour settings. After consulting his PDF again, he sets the lights onto a soft blue setting.

"You got a printer?" he asks.

"Only downstairs, and Dad's down there." Brooke says. "I think he'll notice if we use the computer. Can you print it at the bar and leave it there for me please?"

"I'll find a library or something," he says. Since he's planning on staying a while anyway.

And with that he checks his watch and locks his iPad again. There's a small care sheet that came with the spider in the box, which Wilford picks up and hands to her.

"Can you read?"

Brooke looks at the care sheet.

"That word says 'spider'."

So that'll be a yes, but at the level of a smart five year old.

"It's all yours. Now what day is it?"

She can clean up the mess on her own. It is her spider after all.

Brooke has to think about this for a moment.

"Wednesday." she decides.

"Want me to distract Dad so you can get out of the house? The front door is at the bottom of the stairs and the spare key is on the hook on the left."

"I'll be back on Sunday. Go do your thing."

He picks up his bag and gets ready to make his escape as soon as the moment arises.

Brooke goes out of her room, jumps both the baby gates on the stairs, and heads to the living room.

"Daddy, where do babies come from?"

While her father is answering the question, the smallest Sandhu sibling is in the hall cupboard, and peeps out the door when he hears more footsteps.

Yep. That sounds like a distraction if Wilford ever heard one. He makes it down the stairs as quietly as he can, holding his bag so it doesn't shuffle around. The key is right where it's meant to be. Wilford snatches it up and disappears out the door.

"Bye bye Mr Clown!" says a little voice behind him, peeping out the letterbox.