4.1: A tiny beginning

Season 4: The Modifications

Lottie is a young teenage axolotyl who lives in the Potting Shed. The only teenager, in fact. At first she was a little shy of all the grownups - everyone else - but not really now. She also likes to think that she was responsible for the resolution of, if not exactly the solution to, The Herbert Whodunnit. Surely she must now ‘have the ear’ - that’s the silly phrase the grown-ups use - of the Chair of the Potting Shed Committee? 

Today has been a day for football outside. It is still January and the weather is not reliably kind but today at least has not been rainy. 

Somehow, however, one of the toes on her very large feet has been injured while she was ‘bending it like Beckham (whoever she was!)’ and so she limps home to get help and a bandage. 

“This looks like a bite”, says, Alcock. 

Lottie cannot remember any other creatures outside. “It’s just a cut, surely?” He tells her she will have to stay indoors for two or three days and keep her bandaged foot off the ground. Of course, Alcock knows nothing of medicine, she thinks. He was just a grunt in the army. 

But Alcock, who has bandaged up a soldier or two on the battlefield in his past, is a little worried by the depth and nature of the wound he has just seen.

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Juggins season 4 - The Modifications - will update on Sundays and Wednesdays at 6pm for 10 weeks.