The boxes were all stacked up by the door.
In one of them was Pigúiça's blanket. In another, her red ball and her water bowl. And in the smallest box of all, a pinecone she had found on the very first snowy day.
It was moving day. Pigúiça was going to live in a new cottage, on the other side of the hill. But she was sitting right in the middle of her old little house, not wanting to leave.
“I don't want to go,” she told Fofuxo, who had come over to help. “My window is here. That's where I see the moon from. What if the new cottage doesn't have a moon?”
Fofuxo thought for a bit. “Let's do this. We'll take the house with us.”
“You can't take a house with you, Fofuxo!”
“Sure you can,” he said. “A home is made of your things. Your blanket. Your ball. Your smell. All of that fits in the boxes.”
So they climbed the hill, carrying the boxes. Pigúiça went first, holding the pinecone in her mouth, very carefully.
The new cottage had a straw roof and an arch of roses over the front door. When Pigúiça walked under it, the roses swayed and said, all together, “Welcome!” She jumped a tiny bit, and then she thought it was funny.
Inside, everything smelled new. The floor made a creak she'd never heard before. Pigúiça put her ball in one corner, her water bowl in another, and the pinecone right on the windowsill. Then she spread out her blanket and rolled around on it, back and forth, until it smelled just like her. And then she ran out the open door to explore the garden.
There was a vegetable patch, a rock that hummed softly, and a perfect hole for hiding bones. And from the top of the hill, she could see her old house, tiny, way down below.
“It's still there,” said Pigúiça. “Can I visit?”
“Anytime you want,” said Fofuxo.
When night came, Pigúiça lay down on her blanket that smelled like home. She looked out the new window, not quite sure. And there it was, round and white, peeking over the roses: the moon. The same old moon, which had come along for the move.
Pigúiça let out a happy sigh. She said good night to the moon, good night to the pinecone, good night to the cottage. And she fell asleep in her new house as if she had always lived there.
