Under a Hat

Pixel read the message three times, but it still didn't make much sense. “Help! I'm under a hat!” Sounded bad, sure, but which hat? And where? And what was keeping Gwie stuck under the thing? It seemed to Pixel that his sister really could have been more specific.

He crumpled the note and stuffed into into his pocket. If she'd really wanted help, she'd have given more details.

As the afternoon wore on, he completely forgot about Gwie. It was only when their mother was setting the table for dinner and asked after her that he remembered the note again. He pulled it out and thrust it toward his mother, who took it with a perplexed frown.

The frown drew her eyebrows together in a way Pixel thought was funny, but as she read, they continued to creep closer to one another, and he started to get worried.

She lowered the paper and glared at her son. “How long ago did you find this?”

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he'd had it since right after lunch.

“And where was it at this unspecified point in history?”

He pointed at a corner.

“You, sit,” his mother said before stalking over the the corner in question.

He sat and watched as she pulled a book out of the air, flipped to the index, and looked something up. She muttered a quick spell under her breath and slid the book back into the ether before returning to the table.

“And, you,” she said to the chair opposite Pixel, “I hope you've learned something.”

Mom made a motion in the air that was remarkably similar to that of yanking a hat off a young girl and all of a sudden, Gwie was sitting at the table looking very, very ashamed of herself.

“Yes, ma'am,” the young witch murmured. “Cursed hats are called cursed for a reason.”

“Yes, they are.” Mom sighed and left the kitchen for the hall closet with a hat that was still invisible to Pixel's eyes. “And?”

“And...” Gwie said slowly. “Never trust Pixel for help.”

Mom laughed as she closed the closet door and came back to the kitchen. “Close.”

“Hey!” said Pixel, not thinking that was very fair. How the heck was he supposed to have known what the note was talking about? “How about, in the future, tell your rescuer where to rescue you from?”

Gwie rolled her eyes. “How about, in the future, rescue myself instead of waiting on other people?”

“Ding-ding-ding!” Mom said with a smile. “We have a winner!”

Mom pulled a chicken casserole out of the oven. “Now, where's your dad?”

“Um...” Gwie said, pulling a crumpled note from her own pocket and smoothing it out on the table. “He says he's stuck in a raincoat.”

I asked Google for a random word and receive "underline". I then asked for a random image based on the word. That image was from a page about making cascading style sheets but I think it worked well for a writing prompt. :)