An unidentified but familiar pop caught Abigail’s attention. It was followed by a fizzy hiss, and door and wall muffled words of happiness — so it wasn't an electrical blowout. Now, she was very busy and the sample on the microscope slide wouldn’t last too long...but, she wouldn’t be a scientist without a little curiosity. She pushed away from the workbench and the stool rolled her across her lab to the shared door that gave quick access to the room next door.

Alas, proximity had offered no clarity to the words beyond and so she was forced to knock politely and wait. A moment and the door swung open to a smiling scientist of average height, with a conically-hatted head, and a brown-grey moustache. A fellow called Richard.

“Abigail!” It seemed a merry surprise indeed that he should find her here...despite being lab-neighbours for fourteen years. Abigail’s eyes fell to Richard’s hands and she remembered his inabilities regarding alcohol. In one tight grip was a half-filled champagne flute and in the other was a sensibly-priced bottle of low alcohol Prosecco.

She was wondering if dealing with a tipsy Richard was worth it when he shouted her name again. “Abigail!”

“Richard.” She did not match his enthusiasm, had in fact remained seated on her stool. “Sounds like a toast to success. What’s the breakthrough?”

“Well! Why don’t we show you!”

The We — Richard’s research and life partner, Ingrid — was in the center of the lab, her back to the door. Her head tilted back and a champagne glass crested for a moment and disappeared. Ingrid’s attention was on something at her feet to which she was cooing and baby talking in Dutch.

“Come in, come in!” Richard turned and walked away.

Abigail took a moment to wonder how rude it would be to keep rolling along on her seat. She sighed, slapped her knees and stood, but then stepped back, tripped on the stool and toppled backwards.

At the sound of her hands hitting flesh, something small and dark had darted around Ingrid and bolted at Abigail. She was staring at the ceiling and marveling at human reaction times, she hadn’t even gotten a good look at whatever it was, and she had reacted.

She also wondered if the eerie, questioning calm she felt was born of a sense of embarrassment or head trauma. And then she saw a face.

A round, brown-grey, squishy little face with a pair of kind eyes and flaring nostrils. Abigail blinked and the creature she knew to be a Hippo said: “Mump!”

As she sat up the small Hippo, no bigger than a large cat, bopped her face with its own, licked, said many quick mumps and then crawled into her lap.

“A baby hippo?”

“No.” Said the couple in unison as they cheersed another pair of overflowing fizziness.

“A Micro-potamus.” Said Richard, who then gulped his bubbly.

“Completely hypo-allergenic," Said Ingrid "Only needs a bit of a pool, but likes dry-land, loves people, and grows no bigger than that.”

“We’sh gonna be shhoooo rich!” Said Richard in a swiftly sauce-born slur.