Once upon a time

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived
at the base of a mountain and the edge of a forest.
Her name was colleen and she lived there with her
mother, her father, her grandparents, twenty cats,
and a dog. Her favorite thing to do was to sit in
the shade of a bush on the ground next
to her cats and try to see what they saw. But a child
can only spend so much time in the company of
adults and cats. Being an only child, colleen
was lonely. So she found two companions,
Witcherknock and Dogoo, that no one else could see
and she learned to tell herself stories quietly
when no one but the cats was there to listen.

Then came the day that colleen was due to go
to school. And she was happy and excited; now
she could meet other children! So she waved
goodbye to Witcherknock and Dogoo and the cats
and rode to town in her uncle's truck. colleen
did not know her uncle well. He smoked a pipe
and because she was little and it was winter,
he wouldn't let colleen open the window to
get fresh air. Her uncle was friendly. He
spoke to colleen kindly and called her
pumpkin, but he was unfamiliar and strange
so colleen rode in silence.

At school there were all sorts of children. There
was the boy who chased all the girls and screamed
"Bloody nose, bloody nose!" There was the girl
who hated dirt so much that she crossed the
playground on tiptoes. And there was the boy who cried
everyday until they finally sent him home.
colleen knew and understood these children less than she
had her uncle. She found herself missing Witcherknock
and Dogoo and the cats.

But when she came home, her invisible
friends were gone and the cats could not tell her where they
went.