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Tiny Totter Part 3


Totter was suspicious about the jumpsuits. He liked the color but he was leery about actually wearing clothing.

"Tough," Tammy said. "Office policy. I can't take you to work without clothes on." She fiddled with the toy set, watching him out of the corner of her eyes.

"I could stay in the carrier," he offered. "I'll never open the windows or drop the curtains."

"For the next thirty years, when I retire?"

"I'm willing to try," he said.

"I'm not." She put the toy down and lowered her head. "Look, Totter, if you absolutely hate the stuff, you don't have to wear it here at home. But you have to wear it at work. And I want to make sure it fits, 'kay?"

"'Kay, Tammy," he finally said. He picked it up and looked it over. And looked. And looked.

"C'mere," she said after a moment. The zipper was cosmetic. Velcro panels on the sides allowed him to get in and out of it.

She figured it out and held it open for him. "Put your foot in there. And the other one… That's it! Then you pick up this part and slide it… Very good, Trotter! Then wrap these bits. How does that feel?"

"Weird," he said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Can I take it off, now? You said I could here at home."

"I did," she said. "But just one second." She held out her hand, slowly moving to pick him up. He watched the hand approach and braced himself.

She carried him over to the air conditioner. Setting the fans to max, she held him over the outblast. He covered up automatically.

After a moment, though, he lowered his arms. He even spread them. The wind whipped the cloth around his body.

He moved the hand wonderingly into and out of the breeze. "It's warmer in the clothes," he said.

"Which is why we invented them," she said with a smile. She turned the temperature down a notch. He laughed.

Dad would have stripped him, she realized. Dangle him in the cool air and remind him that he had wanted to take them off just moments ago. Then peel him bare.

The thought brought a smile to her face. But she didn't really want to tease Totter.

Dad had had a long speech about how teasing toughened you up for the world. Cavemen probably pretended to be saber-tooth tigers, much the way modern fathers did the Frankenstein stomp.

It was a game, but taught kids to recognize danger and run away. Giggling, he acknowledged, but they ran away.

Totter's life had toughened him more than enough, she judged. What she wanted to do was exercise his trust muscles.

So she held him carefully and watched him play. The simple ability to be warm in the cold became a new and wonderful power in her eyes, seeing him exult in the insulation.

"Would…?"

"What?" she asked.

"Would the boots keep my feet warm?"

"Would you like to find out?" He nodded. She smiled wide enough she thought her face would crack. He returned the smile.

------

His folding cage took a corner by the window. It gave him a view of the TV and it let her see him while she was watching TV.

She carefully explained that the cage was to keep him safe. Not to limit his life, or keep him out of hers. He nodded. He was familiar with cages. He was okay with a firm split between what was and wasn't safe.

His acquiescence was almost as heartbreaking as protest might have been.

So they got that set up. A little place for the carrier to always go, the toy set, a little cardboard shack around the toilet.

She lay prone for a bit, watching through the mesh as he explored the interior.

"Is it okay?" she asked.

"Tammy, it's the best place I've ever been," he said softly. "Thanks.

"Okay. Then let's go fight." He grabbed his wire collar and stared. "Now, now. What did I promise?"

"That…you'll never hurt me?"

"And I won't." She opened the top panel and reached inside. "So come on. Please?"

-----

She set the boards up so they both faced the same side of the table. That way she could demonstrate how the sides worked together.

An early obstacle was the discovery that he was illiterate. "I know my numbers," he said. "I needed to know my standing. And my record.

"I was 10, 3 and 9," he said proudly.

"Win, lose, draw?" she asked.

"I don't know what a draw is. I had ten wins, three losses and nine rapes!"

"Uh…" They stared at each other for a long, silent moment.

"Don't worry, Tammy," he said. "You're a girl, but I would never rape you."

"Because you respect me?" she asked. Her thumb throbbed a bit under her bandage.

He shook his head. "Because if a Lord tried to tie you down on a table, I'm sure you'd kick his noodles up into his throat."

It was his matter-of-fact tone, as much as anything, that tore a barking laugh out of her throat.

Totter flinched away from her but quickly recovered. "Letters, huh?" she finally said, wresting the conversation away from the beds with restraints.

Tammy wrote the alphabet, A through J, on the inside of the box cover with a felt pen. "We'll use this to call out rows, until you're used to the letters," she said.

"Well, for now, you just point out, 'that one.' Okay?"

The mechanics of the game were quickly absorbed. 'Sinking' was difficult for him to grasp. They changed it to 'finding' and he seemed more comfortable.

They played two rounds with just one ship, where he could see both boards.

Then she got her spaghetti pot out and moved her board up to where he couldn’t see it. He got a little stressed, then.

"Totter, win or lose won't matter. Okay? You won't get hurt, either way. You won't be a toy, either way. If one of us wins, we both go 'yay' and 'darn' and then we move on."

She wasn't sure which frightened him more. The idea of losing or the idea of what she'd do if she lost.

They played another few simple one-ship games. She even gave him the destroyer while she played with the aircraft carrier.

He searched out her ship, with her help, while she just played in a predetermined pattern of an outward spiral.

When the shots snuck up to and veered around his ship, she thought he was going to pass out.

When he won, she taught him to pump his fist. "It's how my dad would want you to play. You shouldn't be a sore loser, but there's no reason to be a humble winner," she quoted.

Totter liked the fist pump. He kept looking at his arm as he did it, fascinated by the gesture. When he punched himself in the forehead that way, she managed not to laugh at him. But only barely.

By lunchtime, he was getting into the game. She made a sandwich. She lay a fingernail slice of beef on his plate and put Diet Coke in a cup for him.

He sat on the side of the game board, watching her every move and trying to copy them.

When she went to clean up, though, she dropped her plate. The clamor of the rattling plastic put Totter to flight.

He jumped up, turned away from the plate and ran across the Battleship board. Lucky for all, he tripped over his aircraft carrier. Tammy managed to pin him in place with one finger before he got up again.

Then she gently pinched his waist. She held him to her shirt and stroked his hair until he calmed down. She apologized about a million times.

When he stopped shivering, she cupped him in her hands and lifted him to her face.

"Would you like to rest for a bit, Totter?" she asked.

"Um… I'd like to play for real," he asked hopefully.

"Okay," she said with a nod. "You're on."

At first she used patterns. Different ones, starting in different places, but predictable fairly quickly.

Totter turned out to be a Battleship shark. He lost the first game, then politely asked to see her board. She showed him her deployment before breaking it down.

"Aha," he said. He never explained his epiphany, but he won the next two games handily.

"And those bastards just had to beating on each other," she said, shaking her head. "What a waste."

He had an odd look on his face as he considered this. He'd never even imagined doing anything but beat on sylphs until he couldn't do it any more.

"Odd concept, huh?" she asked in a teasing tone.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"You know what's odder?" she asked. He shook his head. "You forgot that you were going to be afraid of me if you won." His eyes bugged out, then relaxed as she laughed at him.

After that, she did her level best to win. They were about evenly matched. Two games passed with a win for each of them.

"Right," she said. "I'm 'shipped out. And I have chores." He didn't protest, but he looked disappointed. "I have to make the shopping list and figure out what we're going to eat," she explained. "Or there won't be any food."

"Oh," he said. "Then I can…wait. When can we play again?"

She picked him up and carried him to the cage. "Well, how about we play at least once every day? Every night, after dinner. So, after my chores, we'll eat, then play a game.

"Tomorrow, we'll get groceries. And do the laundry. And vacuum…" She looked down at her sylph. "I imagine that the vacuum cleaner will drive you right up the wall, won't it?"

He shrugged, looking up at her. "We'll take it a step at a time," she said.

She left him with his puzzle and ran down her checklist. There weren't too many staples she needed. But then she wracked her brain for meals to cook.

Wait, Ray had mentioned food. What had he…? Oh, yeah. Chocolate cake, a big fork and a tiny miner's helmet. That was Annie's suggestion. She'd have to introduce Annie and Totter some day.

She idly wondered if Totter liked milk or dark chocolate. Then she realized he probably had never had either.

Another crime those 'lords' would pay for in the afterlife, she was certain. All the flavors in life that she took for granted he'd never… Oh. That would work.

Just get little servings of the basics. Start on simple stuff, reinforce what works, avoid what doesn't. Oh, but that would mean his yogurt rejection would keep him from ever tasting tandoori.

She tapped her pencil on the shopping list. Her favorite meal was tandoori chicken wings, naan bread and raita. All three were made with yogurt and all produced a wide range of reactions among her friends. She'd have to educate his tastes before that.

She glanced out the balcony door. Hibachi season was almost over for the year. Tandoori could wait until later in their relationship.

And stir fry. And Creole. And lasagna. What was simple? Well, she thought, what were the basic flavor groups? Sweet, sour, bitter… 'And Bacon!' her father's voice sounded in her head.

"Bacon," she murmured as she wrote it on the list. A flavor and a food group, at least in her family.

A few other fruits, bread, oh! English muffins!

A few minutes later she folded the shopping list into her purse. "Totter, what are you up to?"

He was in a corner of the cage. He looked up with a smile as she knelt down next to it.

The stickers were all over the place. She'd forgotten putting them in there. The plan to show him how they worked had been missed, but he'd figured it out anyway.

Little cartoon pandas smiled and gamboled and slept upside down and… She smiled to see his efforts.

"Did I do it right?" he asked. There wasn't even any apprehension in his voice. She wanted to applaud.

"It's your cage, Totter. They're your stickers. Is this what you want?"

"I think so."

"Then it's right." She lay down with her head beside the cage. "Now, the stuff on the mesh itself probably isn't going to stick."

"It's not?" He didn't sound disappointed, just accepting new information.

"No, the adhesive isn't designed for this. They'll probably fall down after a while. But that just means we get more stickers. Or something different!"

"Okay," he said. "Will they stay up for as long as I'm here?"

"What? Totter, how long do you think you'll stay with me?"

"I don't know…" he said. "You said something about thirty years at work?"

"Yeah."

"Well…." He waved a hand towards the kitchen table. "How many Battleship games in thirty years? Thirty?"

She stared.

------

The wall calendar didn't impress him much. She loved castles, but to him they were rocks with flat sides and points.

The days though…

"This square? This is the day before we met."

"Okay."

"And this square is the day I picked you up on the sidewalk."

"Days. Two days?"

"Yes. And this square? That's today."

He walked across the week and stood on yesterday. With his hands out to his sides, he could barely reach across all three days. "Okay," he said slowly. "Three days. How many years is that?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. Now, all these squares with numbers? That's one month."

"Thirty one. Does that mean thirty one days?"

"Yes, it does! Very clever, Totter." He beamed. "Now, each page of the calendar is a month. Can you count them?"

He dropped to a crouch and counted the pages with his finger. "Twelve."

"Exactly. That's one year."

"Three hundred and seventy two days in a year?" he asked. She stared, mouth open. "Am…I wrong?"

"Well, not all the months have thirty one days. Some have thirty. One has twenty eight. So the total is three hundred and sixty five. But that was very good math, Totter." He shrugged.

"Now, thirty years would be thirty of these calendars. They'd be stacked about this high." She put a hand over the calendar in a rough guess.

Totter looked at the one on the table, then grabbed her thumb. He pushed and she let him adjust the height of her hand.

He stepped back with a nod. "That's thirty."

"Ooooookay. Well. THAT many games."

"Ah, I gotcha, Tammy." He crossed his arms and looked at her hand. "So, at least ten thousand nine hundred and fifty games."

Then he actually heard what he'd already said. "Ten…ten thousand…" He sat straight down on his butt, legs splayed and jaw limp.

"Totter? Are you okay?" She stroked his shoulder with a fingertip. After a moment she moved to rub his back. He stared. She waited.

"I knew a fighter…" he finally said. "He…. This guy, he had fifty fights before they put him in the pens. Fifty. That's…unheard of.

"A hundred would be a miracle. A thousand…. Not all the fighters I know could have a thousand fights, even counting their losses."

He was silent for a long time. She started to turn him to face her, then decided she could move. Keeping one hand touching him, she moved to sit in the direction he faced.

"Totter? Would that be okay? Do you want to stay with me for ten thousand and whatever games?" She looked into his eyes. On her other hand, under the table, she crossed her fingers.

"I'd… I'd like that, Tammy." He offered his hand. She gave him a fingertip and they shook on it.

"Okay. It's a deal. Now, how does Mac 'n Cheese sound for dinner?"

"It sounds… Macky?" he guessed.

"Close enough," she said. "Let's go find out." She moved him to the perch on the microwave so he could watch her cook dinner.

------

After dinner and the promised game (he won), Tammy carried him over to the sofa.

"What now?" he asked.

"I want to practice dropping you," she said. He looked panicked for a second, then obviously fought down his fear.

"I think you do that pretty well, Tammy," he said. He tried to make it sound like a joke but he was starting to sweat.

She knelt in front of the seat and held him above the overstuffed cushion, about a foot high. "Jump," she ordered.

He looked at her, then down. He jumped, bouncing easily across the fabric. "That's not a big height for a sylph, Tammy," he said.

"I know. In the store, the two of us nearly made you fall out of my hand."

"I remember."

"Well, I want to practice holding you. I want to try different grips, see what works. And I want you to know you can trust me. So we're going to go through a few holds, shifting from hand to hand, picking you up and putting you down."

"And if I fall," he said after a moment, "I just bounce on the chair."

"Sofa," she corrected. "But yeah."

He smiled and spread his arms. "That's a great idea! Let's do it."






Tiny Totter Part 1

Tiny Totter Part 2

Tiny Totter Part 4



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