[NOTE i haven't finished this book but I'm always working on it]
Stella Starflake Pearl rubbed the frost from the turret window and scowled out at the snow. She ought to be in the most splendid mood - it was her birthday tomorrow, and the only thing Stella loved more than birthdays was unicorns. But it was hard to be cheerful when Felix was still refusing to take her on his expedition. Even though she'd begged, pleaded, cajoled, threatened and stormed - none of it had done any good at all. The thought of being packed off to stay with Aunt Agatha again made Stella feel positively sick. Aunt Agatha didn't know much about children, and sometimes she got things completely wrong, like when the time she gave Stella a cabbage for her packed school lunch. No chocolate dinosaurs, or marshmallow cake, or treats of any kind - just a single, solitary, useless cabbage. Plus, Aunt Agatha had nostril hairs it was almost impossible not to sometimes stare at it. Stella had wanted to be an explorer ever since she was old enough to know what the word meant. More specifically, she wanted to be a navigator she never got tired of looking at maps and globes, and as far as she was concerned, a compass was just about the most beautiful thing in the whole entire world, after unicorns, obviously, and if she wasn't meant to be an explorer then why had the fairies given her a middle name? Everyone knew that only explorers had three names. Felix had given her his last name Pearl, but then hadn't known what to do about a first name, so he'd asked the fairies to name her instead. This was probably a good thing because Felix was fond of peculiar names like Mildred and Wilhelmina and Barbaretta. But the fairies had given her not one name, but two: Stella and Starflake. And surly that meant that she was absolutely destined to be an explorer. Stella scrambled onto the turret window seat and pulled her legs up to her chino her knees. It was getting dark outside, and she knew Felix would be looking for her to give her her twilight present. It was a tradition they had - Stella was always allowed to open one present the night before her birthday. But right now she was too angry and disappointed for presents, so she'd come up to the turret to hide. And if she tucked herself into the window seat then she couldn't be seen from the end of the corridor. Unfortunately though, Gruff liked the turret too, and he had come lumbering over almost as soon as Stella had sat down, poking his nose into her pockets in search of biscuits. Mrs sap, their house keeper, hadn't been very happy when Felix brought an orphaned polar bear cub, home one day, but the bear would have died otherwise. Not only was he an orphan, he had a misshapen paw as well, and might not have beed able to survive in the wild. Stella thought it was the best thing ever to have a polar bear in the house, even if he did almost flatten her sometimes when he wanted to cuddle. Polar bears were quite startlingly huge. She reached into her pocket for a fish biscuit and held it out to Gruff, who took it from her