"Good morning Mathter/Mithtress, it's tho hard to tell these dayth, my name ith Igor, and I'm here to help." Suddenly finding an Igor(a la Terry Pratchett) on your doorstep. -- Knitnan
"I'm hallucinating. I have to be hallucinating. You aren't real. I've finally broken my brain from lack of sleep..."
"A helping hand where needed, thir or madam," the Igor lurched inside.
"Mx," said Fran. "I'm non-binary." Ze yawned. "I got two jobs, college, and I'm babysitting... I don't think I've slept in three days."
The small child using the couch as a trampoline singsonged, "Jigsaw man, patchwork man, his nanna stapled up his hands!"
"He's been like this since four. AM."
Igor regarded the clock on the wall. "It'th almotht midnight."
"...yeah..." Another yawn. "Too many cartoons..."
"Cartoon! Cartoon! Cartoon!" agreed the kid.
"Do you poththethth anything more... thoporific?"
"Uh... I got David Attenborough talkin' 'bout dinosaurs... you wanna see dinosaurs, kiddo?"
"Rawr, rawr, raaaaarrrrhh!"
Fran took that as a 'yes' and queued up the entire series. The kid actually sat down and cuddled their plush triceratops. Igor handed them a steaming beverage.
"Er," said Fran. "That doesn't have anything illegal in it, does it?"
"It'th jutht hot chocolate," slurred Igor. "How elthe may I be of thervithe?"
"Ugh," Fran sighed. "I gotta cram two months of study into less than an hour, get four hours sleep, and work twenty hours a day whilst also studying. Any suggestions?
"I have jutht the thing. Drink thith."
It was in a test tube, and it bubbled ominously. On the other hand it smelled like sarsaparilla and tasted like raspberries. And it gave hir the most restful sleep ze had ever enjoyed in a kitchen chair.
Igor was still there when Fran woke up. And so was a nutritious breakfast. And an amazingly well-behaved and clean child. And there was a helmet on Fran's head.
"Th' hell?" ze mumbled. "What was in that?"
"Thimply an Igor'th thpethial rethipe," said Igor. "I took the liberty of tidying up while you were abthorbing your thtudieth."
Fran took the helmet off. It was a steampunk's dream of cables, cogs, and scopes, with an ingenious device for turning the pages of whichever book it was reading for hir.
The neighbour with the emergency returned for her darling little 'Punkin' and never questioned Igor's presence.
Fran got the increasing feeling that hir entire life had gone surreal. "You're... staying?"
"A helping hand where needed," he bowed.
Fran refrained from saying, Is it yours? "Um. So. There's lots of people who need help. People who are worse off than me..."
"Yeth. But they are not the oneth who called."
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