~1.2~

She went to the far corner of the room, hiked up her skirts… all three of them, as she normally wore all of the clothing she owned at once… and squatted to pee on the floor, careful not to get any on her treasured black-and-white striped stockings. That done, she went back to stare at her reflection in the mirror again.

She reached up to absent-mindedly scratch a sudden itch on the left side of her nose. Almost at the same moment she realized what she was doing, a door slammed elsewhere on the floor and one of the nails holding up a gaudily-hilted dagger gave way. The thing clattered to the floor, point first… almost certainly doing more damage to the cheap fantasy blade than to the floor.

“Well, well,” she said, an odd smirk curling her lip. “A gentleman caller.”

She retrieved a small net and a glass jar full of water from inside the toilet tank and used the one to scoop Herman into the other. She didn’t take the food secreted within, but left it in the cool, insulated space… if her visitor proved to be an enemy, she wanted him to think she’d be coming back to this hidey-hole soon. If he wasn’t… well, she didn’t want to move all her stuff for nothing, did she?

She dropped the net on the floor. Anybody who found the aquarium rocks and plastic plants clogging the bottom of the toilet would wonder what had happened to the fish. The net’s presence would suggest an answer to them.

She cast one more look around the room. If she wasn’t able to come back, she wasn’t leaving behind anything that she couldn’t live without… though she’d miss it all terribly. Probably this was nothing… well, nothing malignant, anyway. Nothing that would hurt her. Somebody was definitely coming, though, and it would definitely be a man. Two omens at the same time, saying the same thing… that was more than she could ignore.