The day I found Furb was an odd day. 

It was summer, I was in Norway with my parents visiting family. You couldn’t call it a rainy day, but it was wet and cloudy out, as it always is in Trøndheim. 

We had driven up to the nearby mountains where a cabin lay nestled in the forests. It was finally in time to go blueberry picking. 

So we gathered our stuff up and headed past the lake into the woods. As I was collecting blueberries, and eating some too, I saw something rustling in the tall grasses. Ignoring it, I moved past, assuming it was just some creature that had wandered into the daylight, it was not. The so-called creature was Furb, a starcoon, one of the last of her kind, and she did not take kindly to being ignored.

My family and I moved down the stretch of land, picking up more than just blueberries, my father had gathered some mushrooms, my bestemor had gathered a small bouquet  of little yellow flowers, and my cousins and I had gotten a rather interesting collection of rocks. Furb, being a clever creature, noticed all of these things and devised a plan, or she just went willy-nilly, she hasn’t told me.

She was going to freeze time and mess with all of us. So she did. One moment we were on our merry way picking up an assortment of items from the woodland floor. Next, we were all the way back at the start holding overflowing piles of every item from our baskets, and our baskets were at the other end of the stretch, a long ways away. Now this was very confusing to us folk, as we had never met or fathomed what a starcoon was or could do. Baffled, we jogged back to the baskets, losing handfuls of stuff at a time. Furb was pretty happy about the result, but she wanted to do a bit more. 

Now keep in mind, Furb had no real reason for doing this, but she also hadn’t seen very many humans about. So she wanted to do one more, but this time she was playing the long run.

This wasn’t the strangest thing to happen in the woods behind our cabin, so we warily picked up our baskets and carried on. Now Furb can’t quite remember which basket it was that she hopped into, but she hopped into someone’s basket and that’s all you need to know.

Moving further along, we gathered plenty more items to fill the gap left from Furb’s little escapade, so we started to head back to the cabin. The sun was still shining as it had been so it was hard to tell how late it really was. We decided to sleep the night at the cabin, instead of driving back into town, as it was a bit too late and our neighbors would be asleep by now. We set all our baskets down by the front door, and plopped ourselves into bed. 

As we slept, Furb went to work. It was a difficult thing she was trying to do, but hey anything for the bit. In the night she tried her best to freeze time for everything around us, except for my family and I. After the many hours this took her, she nestled herself into a blueberry basket and drifted off to sleep. 

We woke up with a bang that morning. My dad had crept out earlier than everyone else to relax for some time, so he had unlocked a window to let the cold breeze waft in. With a loud crack of the window slamming against the wooden walls, we all woke up. 

Drowsy but ready for another day we packed our stuff up into the car and drove back down to the city, Furb still deep asleep in our baskets. When we finally got to a more busy side of town we noticed that nothing was moving, no lights flickered, no wind whistled, and no wings were fluttering in the background. Hastily we moved our stuff into the house and closed the door. 

At the close of the door Furb awoke. Smelling mischief in the air she hopped to the kitchen. Catching my eye she hid behind the wall. I walked over to her and with nowhere to hide she stood still. Done with ehr games, I picked up the mischievous starcoon and plopped her down on the table. A look of recognition washed over my bestemor who had heard stories of the starcoon. 

Furb, realizing she had been caught, reluctantly admitted to what she did. At the time she claimed to have done it in the protection of her wooden home, but she now tells it as just another prank on the helpless humans. Furb wandered away after that, but met back up with us at the airport to fly home. Turns out she realized that she actually liked my little family and wanted to stick with us, as she had always wanted to see the USA. 

I took her in that day, and Furb has been with us ever since.