Page 198 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

What Coffee Almost Didn’t See
Coffee, with no caffeine, lacks a bit in the energy department. And Coffee, without caffeine, soon fell asleep at her post of watching and waiting for the Mouse Queen to return. Fortunately, Coffee was a light sleeper. And even if she wasn’t, all the noise made by a major sled upending a major mouse onto the forest floor – even if it was covered by snow – made a major amount of racket.
Coffee jolted out of her slumber with flailing arms, and caused a minor avalanche of snow to cascade down from the branches of the fir tree, where she’d slipped off to sleep. All this commotion might have been noticed by a horde of rodents – close by – except that the mice were busy stomping and tromping on the Nutcracker and Clara. And the noise and confusion they made was much more than the noise and confusion that Coffee made.
So Coffee, wide awake now and completely alert to the danger, crept behind a bush to see what she could see, hear what she could hear and help where she could help.
And what Coffee saw was weird. 184