10th December

When the girls got to breakfast this morning, only Jake was there with the boys.

"Where is Sophie?" asked Jen and Jake looked a bit worried. "She is not feeling well. It looks like we miscalculated a bit yesterday and she caught a cold."

Jen felt sorry for the kind snow leopard. "Can we visit her?" she asked, and Jake pondered a while. "No, I think it is better if you do not visit her or else you will catch it from her." He said after a while. "But you can bring her tea and breakfast after we have eaten." He added. "Just make sure to not stay there and just bring it to her, okay?" Jen nodded.

The breakfast was not as fun as before, because they all felt sorry for Sophie. Jake told them that he would do his best to keep them entertained and that they did not have to worry about Sophie. She would be up and healthy in no time.

After breakfast, Jen made a strong peppermint tea and put a bit of honey into it as well. Then she grabbed a few sandwiches and made her way to the house of Sophie. The other girls went with her to look for their caretaker.

"How are you feeling?" Jen just had put the tea and sandwiches on the table and looked at Sophie, who lay in bed with her cover up to her head. She had been awake when the girls got in and told them to not come closer to avoid them catching her cold.

"I am feeling hot and tired. I've got a bit of fever." She smiled at the worried looks of the girls. "Nothing to worry about. Jake gave me some medicine this morning and all I have to do now is sleep and cure it. It is a cold after all. It will be gone in a few days. Sorry to worry you girls."

Sophie coughed for a few times and then looked at them again. "We brought you some tea and sandwiches." Jen explained and pointed at the tablet and the Thermos bottle.

"Thank you, that is nice of you." Jen said and smiled. "Now leave quickly. We can't have you get ill as well." She urged them and after a few wishes to get better soon, the girls left the house again.

"It was most likely because she helped us to dry." Said Olga a bit ashamed. "She did not dry up until she helped us all. Most likely she was freezing by then.

Luckily none of the cubs showed any sign of a cold yet. To be on the safe side, they decided to take this day slowly and play board games.

Jen and the girls played "The Settlers" first. Lisa was very good at the game and managed to convince them all the time to trade with her. At the end, she won with the most settlements and cities.

After a second round, that Lisa won as well, they decided to switch the game later they also went around and joined the games that the boys were playing.

Jen noticed, that the boys still threw a few gazes to her, but not as often as in the first days. She learned to ignore them more or less.

Ignoring the gaze of Jake was not as easy for her though. She noticed his eyes on her every time when he scanned the room and checked if all was fine.

He was playing with a few boys, but he also made sure to have an eye on all of them. Jen was not sure if she was just imagining it or if he held his gaze a minute on her every time before he moved on. But every time she looked up; he already was looking into a different direction.

At lunch, Jen again went to Sophie and brought her the warm meal, this time alone. Sophie was sleeping and therefore she did not wake her up. She left he meal under a dinner bell, that would hold it warm a bit longer, and left the room in silence.

In the evening, the girls had the idea of tinkering some "Get well soon" cards for Sophie and Jake adopted the idea directly.

He got them paper of different colors and colored pens, glue, carton and even some glitter.

The boys directly came up with the idea of a huge card, that would be one meter high. With a lot of loud cheering, they started to cut the carton and paint or write on papers that they wanted to clue on the carton.

Olga had the idea of making a small interactive card, like she called it. For this they had to cut and fold the colored paper into figures, that would pop out of the card when it was opened. For this, they had to gut the figures out of the paper many times and then glue the copies of this form on different parts. In the end it looked like an accordion and one side was glued to the one part of the card and the other to the other side, so that it would pop out when the card was opened.

They made multiple cards and decided to even add a small story to it.

The story was like that:

Once upon a time, there was a little cheeky bunny. It hopped around in the snow and was not thinking of anything.

Its mother had always told him that it should not go too far, but there was this one patch where there was the best bark of the forest, so the bunny ignored the warning.

But today it was getting late, because the bunny had been eating so much, that its belly was big, and round and it forgot the time.

It decided to take the route through the forest, that its mother told to never take, because bad foxes were in the forest.

Ignoring the danger, the bunny decided to go through the forest to be home in time and not being scolded.

When it was in the middle of the forest, it was dark and a lot of noises that the bunny did not know were there, so it started to run.

It ran faster and faster in panic and then it came to a clearing in the forest. The moment it jumped onto the clearing it saw the fox, that already had the scent of the bunny in the nose and in panic the bunny tried to cross the clearing before the fox could catch it.

"If I just would have listened to my mother." The little bunny cried while running, but it was too late. The fox was closing in fast.

The bunny felt the fangs in its flesh and blood spilled on the snow. It closed the eyes but all that it felt was the wind in its ears and the yowl of the fox.

When the bunny opened its eyes again, it saw the red dot, which was the fox, in the white snow under it getting smaller and smaller.

"Am I dead? Am I flying to heaven?" the little bunny thought but then it heard the wings of an eagle, that carried it away from the clearing.

At first the bunny thought, that the eagle would now eat it, but it descended in the middle of the field where the bunnies had their burrows and let the bunny fall to the ground.

The bunny saw its mother close in and she hugged it. "Thank you, Eagle, for bringing it home." The mother shouted and the eagle made one more looping and then vanished in the white sky.

"Why did the eagle rescue me?" asked the little bunny. "Because I asked it to look for you, when you took so long." Said the mother.

"But why did it help you?" asked the bunny and the mother said. "Once there was a small eagle, that did not want to listen to its mother. It fell out of the nest and was doomed to freeze to death. But a bunny came by and warmed it until the mother came to carry it back to its nest." She told her bunny.

"And the mother was just paying back the good deed, that this bunny once did." She explained.

The little bunny promised to never again stray from the path or run away and always stay with its mother.

The girls giggled when they finished the last page.

"This is a much better ending for this story." Said Ginny. "Maybe this is really what happened." All giggled.

When Jen brought Sophie the Dinner, she was up again and thanked her for bringing her all the food. Jen also gave her the card of the girls, while Leon, who went with her, gave her the big carton card of the boys. They had glued the papers on the card so that it looked like a real big post card and the pictures and messages looked colorful and funny on the big surface. Sophie laughed at the story and thanked them for the nice presents.

"This will help me to pass the time and feel better real soon." She told them and then she sent them back and told them to give her thanks to all the others as well, which they did a few minutes later.