Rob turns red

Rob had always been blonde; it was only in recent hours that he could be considered a redhead, the hairs in his eyebrows too turning ginger with the hair on his head. It was quickly becoming a concern for all that could see him.

Inspecting the knit of the garment closely, Lewis spied through his magnifying glass in search of some kind of correlation between Rob’s transformation and the scarf tied round his neck.

“The scarf does, I think, seem to be making you freckle.”

This was no doubt. Rob’s face was speckled like an egg.

“Seem?” the ginger boy whined, gesturing at his face in a frenzy. “It’s furious! In no time, I’ll be looking like Bear!”

Bear chuckled behind him, his smile not anxious like Rob’s but instead humoured. He could not see what all the fuss was about; he had been red head to toe all of his life.

“So, why don’t you take off the scarf, Rob, to see if calms the reddening?”

He sighed, “I can’t do that. When the scarf was given to me, it was given to me with trust. I can’t lose that or it for that very reason. I must wear it at all times.”

“Could Bear not wear it, instead of you?”

“Bear is remarkably forgetful, you know that. He can barely remember his way back home.”

Rob turns red

“It’s true,” agreed Lewis, “he does lose himself easily for such a big creature.”

“We need to find a cure, some kind of ointment, cream, a leaf from the woodland? If there is even some way of creating a barrier between the scarf and my skin, maybe that’ll solve the problem.”

“And if the problem is not skin-to-scarf contact but instead a more ... spiritual reaction?”

“Codswallop, that kind of thing doesn’t happen in these woods anymore.”