Nora pressed the phone to her ear, listening to the pest control operator on the other end. She let out a sigh of relief. "It's fine, the rats around my house haven't been bothering me for several weeks now," she said, smiling as she canceled her payment to them. It seemed the problem had solved itself, and she hadn't spent a penny.
As the days passed, Nora busied herself with decorating the cottage she'd inherited from her grandmother. The house had a charm to it, but something unusual had caught her attention. Whenever she noticed an issue—whether it was mold, bugs, rats, or even cobwebs in the corners—it was always spotless before she had a chance to grab a cloth.
But outside, in places she hadn't yet tended to or even looked at, like the garden or the shower, she noticed something odd. Small footprints, no bigger than a child's, but not quite human, appeared in the dirt and dust. They were scattered around, almost as if someone—or something—had been walking around, unnoticed.
She decided to leave a note next to the small bowl of sugar cubes she had placed on the windowsill like how her grandmother use to tell her to do when she was younger, even if she wasn't much of a believer in folktales as she got older. It simply read: "Thank you for helping around."
The next morning, she found the sugar cubes were gone, and her note had been left untouched. Curious, she walked outside to the garden, which had once been overgrown and messy. Now, it was flourishing—small flowers bloomed where weeds had once taken root, and the cobblestones were perfectly clean, not a leaf out of place.