Thomas came to feed us. I noticed a look of concern on his face. In his hands, he carried a round, black object, from which a long thread extended and shortened. He paced around, repeatedly pulling out the thread, muttering words and numbers under his breath.

“If the tube is long enough… but what if it gets clogged?” Thomas shrugged. “A problem for future me, if that ever happens.”

He continued with his peculiar task, moving from the pond to the birch tree, and then to his house. When he returned, he carried with him many different tools and human-made objects.

“All right, my little froggies. It’s time for, you guessed it, another pond!”

What? Another pond?

I couldn’t believe my tiny frog ears. A new pond? Here? But… why?

Without offering us any explanation, Thomas thrust his shovel in the ground between our home and the big birch. He began to dig squares with a square shovel, taking out easier patches of grass and earth with a rounder one.

“What is he doing?” Figgug asked, having just returned from an insect scavenging hunt.

“Digging a new home,” I replied, watching intently how Thomas worked.

“But we can’t live without water,” Figgug pointed out, running his tongue inside his mouth, likely trying to dislodge a bug’s leg or something.

“I suppose he will fill it with water once he’s done,” I guessed. “After all, it has been done once with ours.”

“What do you mean?” Figgug asked, the tip of a grasshopper’s feet sticking out of the side of his mouth. He was still trying to remove it.

“You don’t remember?” I asked back. Figgug shook his head. “When we were inside those bucket things, soon after he rescued us, Thomas and his father dug out our pond. I remember the scraping sounds he’s now making quite well. And at the end, there was a very pleasant sound. I think that was the water being poured in.”

Figgug didn’t seem too convinced. “Well, as long as we can swim in it,” he said.

Thomas kept digging, and digging, and digging some more. The sun was now high in the sky, and he was sweating so much he had taken off one layer of clothes. He often grabbed what he called a water bottle and drank from it, making a weird “ahh” sound at the end.

“Doesn’t look like he’s making much progress, does he?” Ghrruk said as she joined me by the edge of the pond.

“I think his father helped him last time,” I said. “Maybe that’s why? Or maybe his father will come and help him later.”

Just as I finished my sentence, the door creaked open, Thomas’s father stepping out.

“Speak of the predator…” I said nervously.

Nervous. That’s how I felt every time his father came around. Tense. Restless. On my guard. There was an unsettling glare in his eyes, perhaps evil, as if he hated frogs. Or cats. Or any animal for that matter. The only creature he had never said anything bad about was Mrs. Whibbles, which was impressive on its own. To me, she was the worst of all.

“Lunch’s ready,” his father yelled, not bothering to step into the garden. “Hurry up, you’ll finish that darn hole later.”

“Wait,” Thomas shouted as his father was about to close the door.

“What?”

“Could you help me?” Thomas asked, huffing and puffing from exertion. “Please?”

His father furrowed his brows. “Why?”

“Because it’s much harder than I recall it was,” Thomas said earnestly. “There’s so many stones in the ground, and I’m struggling to cut through the big birch’s roots. They’re gigantic near the surface.”

“You’re cutting the roots?” the father asked with a puzzled look on his face. “With a shovel?”

“With the square one, yes. But it takes time and they’re really hard,” he admitted, wiping sweat from his brow. “I think I need a different tool.”

After a moment of reflection, his father finally said, “All right, I’ll help you. Dinner’s on you for the next two days, though.”

“Deal,” said Thomas, blowing a deep sigh and curling his lips slightly.

He let his shovel fall on the ground with a thud, grabbed his bottle and the piece of clothing he had left on the grass and walked back home.

I looked at Figgug. Without exchanging a word, we both understood each other, waved our eyes and hopped away to the new pond under construction.

“So that’s how it looks like underground,” I said, looking at the cut off roots, pieces of rock, and… “Worms!” I exclaimed.

“You’re right,” said Figgug. “There are so many of them. Most are too big for us, though. But over there!” He nudged his head towards the center of the pond. “We can suck those up.”

Without warning, Figgug hopped into the hole.

“What are you doing?” I yelled. “Come back here. What if Thomas comes back?”

Figgug glanced back. “I’m fine, he just left. Let me get a few worms and I’ll climb back up.”

He hopped on, while I, sitting on the edge of the pit, nervously glancing from Figgug to the door for any sign of the humans returning to finish their work. Figgug was beyond himself. Catching worm after worm after worm, even playing with some, just like the cat had done with our brethren. I had never seen him in such ecstatic joy before.

“Quickly,” I yelled, tapping my legs. “You’ve eaten enough. We need to get back to our pond.”

“Coming,” Figgug replied, but not before catching a few more worms. His mouth was writhing in them as he hopped back to the edge of the hole. He swiftly gulped them down, and uttered, “Uh oh.”

“What now?” I asked.

“I… I think I can’t get out.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“It’s too steep,” he said.

“Well, try at least. You don’t know before you’ve tried.”

Figgug clambered on the cliffside, trying to grab onto protruding rocks and roots. He was halfway through when he fell down.

“Ow!”

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said, scaling it again, only to fall moments later. “I think I need to find a smoother place to climb.

Figgug hopped all around the hole, trying to find the perfect spot to climb, in vain. Every time he tried, he never got past halfway through before tumbling down. A lot of time had now passed and he began to panic.

“What should we do?” he squeaked. “I need to get out of here.”

Hopping around, he realized that he had returned to the center of the rectangular hole. “Oh, worms,” he uttered, eating a few more.

“There’s no time for that, Figgug!” I cried, my head snapping from the door to the hole. “You need to find a way out.”

“Right,” he said, slurping another one before moving on. “Those worms are so delicious I almost forgot.”

A loud creak came from behind.

Oh, no.

Indeed, it was Thomas, holding the door for his father, who didn’t seem pleased at all to have to go outside.

“Thanks, Dad,” said Thomas. “You’re a real lifesaver.”

The father held his hand on his round belly and let out a loud burp. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get going. I want to be done before night falls.”

My mind was racing. Figgug was still in the hole, desperately trying to climb out, while the humans were getting dangerously close to me with every step.

They’re almost to our pond. What should I do? What should I do?

That’s when my instinct took over. I scurried away direction the fence where there were still some higher patches of grass and stayed low.

Poor Figgug, I thought as Thomas and his father had arrived at the hole. If it was only Thomas… But his father… What’s he going to do?

“Looks like there’s many more stones near that tree,” the father remarked. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. You pull out those stones with a trowel while I –” He narrowed his eyes and hunched over. “Wait, there’s a filthy frog inside your hole.”

Figgug…

“You’re right, Dad!” Thomas uttered, jumping in. “Come here, little froggy, come over here.”

Dexterous as he was, Thomas lunged at the frog, creating a dome with his hands. Underneath, Figgug was jumping like a madfrog, to no avail.

“Gotcha!” Thomas delicately moved his hands in such way not to harm Figgug and threw him back in the pond. “Good bye, little frog,” he said with a large grin on his face. “You were a little too excited, eh? Give me a few more hours and your new home will be ready.”

“Ha!” spat the father. “A few hours. More like half a day, yeah.”

I waited in the grass until they began to work on the hole. As soon as I knew they wouldn’t notice me, I darted towards our home and plunged in.

“Figgug!” I called. “Figgug, where are you? Hey, you.” I stopped a frog swimming near the surface. “Have you seen Figgug?”

“I think I saw him near the bottom,” she said and swam away before I could thank her.

I kept going down, until, finally, Figgug had appeared. “There you are,” I said, stopping right in front of him. “I thought you were wounded. What are you doing here?”

“Wounded? Me?” he said. “No, I’m fine. Looking for leftover red worms under the sediment.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Figgug was still thinking about food while I was worrying needlessly.

“You could’ve said so,” I said.

He pulled his snout up, mud gently drifting off. “I suppose I could have. Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” I said and kicked my legs off the water to resurface and kept watching Thomas and his father work. I wasn’t happy about his demeanor. Not happy at all. But there was little I could do but argue. And I hated arguing. Especially after all that happened with Ghrruk in the recent and more distant past.

They kept digging, throwing rocks and pieces of roots on a pile of dirt that became increasingly big.

“Should I go and get the wheelbarrow, Dad?” Thomas asked, his shirt completely wet from sweat.

His father dug the shovel in the ground and leaned on it. He glanced at the mountain of dirt, puffing and flapping his shirt. “Yeah. Go get it.”

Thomas left the garden and, when he returned, he was pushing an object that resembled the grass mower, except it was hollow and had a single wheel. It also didn’t make a thundering sound when moved, or released malodorous smoke from it. Grabbing another shovel, he began to load the dirt into the wheelbarrow. Once it was full, he moved it out of the garden, through his house, and returned some time later with it completely empty.

I wonder where he’s throwing all that dirt away. Maybe inside his house to make a hideout like my twin stones?

Having never left the comfort of this walled garden, I had no idea what a human house looked like, and I could only imagine. I supposed it wasn’t too dissimilar to the place where I slept with Ghrruk and the others, minus the water.

The sun slowly descended through the sky, until it disappeared behind the wall. Darkness wouldn’t come for some time, still, but the entire garden was now devoid of sunlight, the sky becoming a deep shade of blue.

“Ah, my back,” grunted the father, climbing the pit he was in. He stretched his body while Thomas rolled away with the last bits of dirt.

When he returned, they grabbed a black roll that was laying in the shadow during the whole process.

The blackness!

They rolled it into the pit, and soon, took over its shape. They used stones to keep it that way, since the wind was slightly blowing the blackness away.

“Looks good. Get those stakes,” the father said, pointing at silver objects laying in the grass, “and hammer them in.”

Thomas did as he said and hit the stakes he placed around the top of the black pit with a hammer while his father was leaning against the tree, gulping down an entire small bottle of water at once. Never had I seen Thomas do that, but then again, his father was a lot bigger than him.

“Done,” said Thomas. “Gravel and sand first?”

“Yeah. Spread it evenly across the bottom, some more around one side to let them out – yeah, just like that. Some more over there.” He pointed at a corner. “Yeah, I think that’s perfect like that. Now get the hose.”

Thomas jumped out of the pit and went to the door that never opened near Mrs. Whibbles’s pool. From there, he unfurled a long, black hose until it was near the big birch.

“Here,” he gave it to his father. “I’ll turn on the water.”

How can water come out of such a weird thing.

I knew that Thomas had no reason to lie. And his father wouldn’t be joking around either, so I was certain that water would eventually pour out of that black earthworm-shaped object. But it seemed so weird.

Psht – pshhhhht

The sound! The sound I heard back in the bucket!

From the end of the hose came a cough of water, followed by a constant stream, slowly filling the pit. The sound was amazing. The air felt refreshing. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the perfume of water hitting the blackness and the sand within. It was otherworldly good.

And that sound! It reminded me of… memories older than my own birth. Like water flowing from… I didn’t know where. But I felt so comforted by it, I could’ve fallen asleep right there and then.

The filling of the new pond took much longer than I had anticipated. Eventually, it was filled to the brim with water – fresh water – and I couldn’t wait to jump in.

“Finally done,” Thomas exclaimed, running to the door to cut off the stream. As he tugged on the hose, spurts of water shot out, leaving a wet trail on the grass. He returned to admire his work.

“I’m glad it’s done before nighttime,” said his father, rubbing his lower back.

“So am I,” Thomas beamed, his eyes sparkling like sunrays on the water. He walked around it, chuckling now and again, until he froze. “Oh, no.”

“What now? A leak?” his father grunted.

“Worse than that…” Thomas crouched and grabbed a hollow object on the ground.

“Oh, that.” His father shrugged, pushing his body off the tree he was leaning on. “Well, you can’t get that tube in now, that’s for certain.”

“Is there really no way? I really want to connect those ponds…”

“No,” said his father, shaking his head and ambling toward the first pond. “Besides, there’s a lot of algae here.” He groaned as he crouched and swooped some of it with his hand. “Look at how much stuff there is here.”

Water dripped from the algae’s long, white roots hanging from his hand, together with some amphipods and other mayfly larvae trying to return to the pond.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked. Thomas shook his head. “Duckweed.” He threw it on the grass. “Some of it is fine, but this pond is full of it. You need to remove them all or it’ll kill your frogs.”

“Duckweed? So it’s not algae?”

“It’s a plant. One that rapidly grows, as you can see,” his father explained, removing some more. “If you want a healthy pond, you gotta clean it once in a while. Just like your teeth.”

“Ew,” said Thomas  with an air of disgust. “I brush my teeth every day.”

“Do you, now? Anyway. That’s it for today.” He stood up with another groan and waddled towards the house. Before he entered, he turned back and said, “Don’t forget that you’re making dinner tonight.”

Thomas sighed. “Guess I’ll clean that algae – er – duckweed stuff tomorrow, then. Goodnight, little froggies. Enjoy your new home.”

The moment I heard the door close, I ran towards the new pool and jumped in. I was the very first creature to enter this place and it felt fantastic. Those things I called algae – because of Thomas mistakenly teaching me that – were, while great for hiding, kind of suffocating in a way.

I kept swimming for a while, enjoying the freshness of the water. Little by little, other brethren joined in, splashing, playing, babbling about all kinds of things. It was the most fun I had in a great while, even if, at the end of the day, I returned to my twin rock hideout to sleep with Ghrruk, Rhugug and Figgug.