Hiccups

When I was reading Serena a bedtime story, she had some pretty insistent hiccups so, midsentence, I turned to her and said,
"Aagghh!"
She jumped, and cried.
Immediately sorry, I hugged her, comforted her, and tried to explain that I didn't mean to upset her, I was just trying to scare her hiccups away. She didn't look very grateful. More... distrustful. But she stopped crying.
And, for the record, she also stopped hiccupping. So I continued reading the story.
A few pages later, Serena interrupted. "Where are my hiccups?"
"I scared them away. Sometimes we can get rid of hiccups by scaring them away," I said, rather pleased with myself.
Serena was not so pleased, "No, you can't scare my hiccups. My grandma will get me some new ones and they will be mine. And you can't scare them. I will have them. Okay, Mommy?"
"Okay. I'm sorry. I thought you didn't want to have hiccups. I won't scare them away again."
We finished reading the book in peace. No more hiccups and no more reprimands from my 2 1/2 year-old.