Little fox sat out in the field, grabbing grass with its paws and ripping it out of the ground. Tears fell from its face, cause it was sad. Its special bowl was taken.

It left it out by the stream to wash it later, but then Little Fox got too sad to do chores and too busy to do anything but what it was told. But then, when it finally came back to grab it... it was gone.

And Little Fox looked, and looked, and looked. Where did it go?! Bowwwwl! Oh, boooowwwwl!

Little Fox trotted around the whole length of the stream and back, and it asked all the forest folk where it could've gone, but everyone told it they didn't know.

'They could be lying to me,' Little Fox fretted, 'They coulda taken the bowl for themselves, and then didn't tell me cause it was so good and special, and study, too.'

It was a nice sturdy bowl, indeed. Dirty, but trusty. It had the bowl for a good few years and it weathered cooking and heat and cold just fine.

But now... gone. It coulda died.

But-- no! Bowls couldn't die! They didn't have cells or a heart of blood! It was just a pretty glass bowl...

But it was Little Fox's glass bowl. It weathered tough times with it together. And now Little Fox didn't have a good cooking bowl, and now it had to find one and pay up for a good one, and it had to learn about a different bowl all over again, cause different bowls had different temperaments because some were real tough but others cracked and others were good for making noodles in, and Little Fox needed those to live...

It whined and planted its butt on the ground. Sniff... its bowl... and now it was getting hungry, but it didn't have a bowl to make anything with...

Something lumbered out from the leaves, but Little Fox was too sad to lift its head. It lost a friend. A good one. And it might never get it back.

A great weight settled down in the grass next to it, and a big, wet nose sniffed at its tears.

"You're so sad..." Big-Cat cooed, "what's wrong?"

"My bowl!" Little Fox turned its face away from the prodding muzzle. It huffed, and it took a lot of will to not nip one of Big-Cat's whiskers off with a great big yank. "It's gone an I don know where it is! An it's gone an someone took it! I'll never get it back!

She hummed a nice, thoughtful note. Little Fox loved a lot of its things. Having to say bye to its special bowl forever... wasn't that a kind of grief?

"Can I lick your face? Your tears will stain your fur..."

Little Fox turned to face her and didn't look her in the eye. It was too busy thinking about how bad it wanted to make that bowl-thief pay, cause it was sure someone thieved it.

"It's sad that your bowl is gone..." Big-Cat washed the tears off its face, calm and careful. "If someone took it, they had no right to. Why was the bowl so special?"

"Cause... cause... it was really good. An it was nice and big an deep, an I could cook my noodles in it. Other bowls were too small so the water would just boil over, an I'd get reall mad."

"Hm... so it was a helpful bowl for cooking... It meant a lot to you. Would you want a bowl that can do just the same thing?"

"Ye-eah..." It sniffled and wiped its face on her fur. "Yeah I would. But it's hard to find a real good bowl all over again, an then when I'm not lucky I'll have to give up a lot for it..."

"Shhhh... I can make it work, okay? I can look for things, and you'll have a nice bowl again. It'll be alright, okay?"

"Y... Yeah..." Little Fox curled up into a little furry ball. "I just... wanna cry still. Is that okay? That there's a solution and I still wanna cry?"

"Of course. You're still dealing with the shock of losing it... Here, stay here, and you can cry your sadness out, rest your anger away. I'll be here."

"Thanks..."

And Little Fox cried and held Big-Cat's paw and soon cried itself to sleep. But after all that crying, it looked peaceful with its eyes loosely closed, and if Big-Cat squinted, she could've sworn she saw a little smile, and a grateful one, at that.