Doting On


“You’ve never had an Idaho Spud Bar!?!”

The shock in Master’s voice was sincere. It matched his expression and the feelings over our bond.

The shock itself was ludicrous.

Electra and Magic both stared from his laptop, equally stunned. Cher looked more surprised by their shock than my inexperience.

I placed one hand on a smooth, dark hip and raised one manicured fingernail to point at Conrad’s eye.

“First of all, I’d never been outside of Massachusetts until I sylphed. I was never out of BOSTON until I was fifteen.” Two fingers. I raised a third. “When I WAS shipped to Idaho, I was not given a salary, nor time to spend money in gift shops for state emblematics.”

“No need for a gift shop,” Conrad had to explain. Lovely man, really, but he focuses on the tiniest details… Of course, since I’m the tiniest sylph in the household, that often works out in my favor. “Any convenience store-“ he was continuing.

“Delli has the floor,” Magic said in a stage whisper. Master shut up.

“AND,” another finger, “whenever anyone offered me a TREAT it was usually CHEAP candy. A single candy corn kernel, or a Kiss, or one marshmallow out of a box of Lucky Charms.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Delli,” Conrad said. He cupped a hand around me and went in for the finger hug. I had to let go of my hip to allow the embrace.

I allowed the embrace, of course. I was testy, but I wasn’t crazy. Giant attention is warm and safe and that pulse is like a tiny bonus massage.

I dipped my head to kiss the top knuckle. “Oh, I know, Conrad,” I said. “And since hiring me,” a euphemism, “you’ve treated me to back rubs and truffles and pizza and steak and-“

“Stipulated,” Cher said, a warning.

“We’ll allow it,” Conrad said. Like giant attention to a sylph, compliments are Conrad’s treasured interactions.

“Oh, I don’t know what all,” I said. “I’m HAPPY, Conrad. Food, shelter, many freedoms…” I didn’t mention his touch on my bare body, but that was the biggest treat.

Nothing sexual in it, Master’s heart was on a leash made of galvanized steel aircraft cable, the other end in tiny Electra’s fist.

But… He accepted me.

The first two shows I was on, the handlers only touched me if they absolutely had to. And talk? They told me what was necessary for the sylph I was costuming, and often just pointed to pictures on a page.

But even before shrinking, people from my old life were uncomfortable around me. My family had disowned me before the treatments. Half the people who knew me as a small, effeminate man, they had some line they couldn’t cross. The more female I got, the fewer people would look me in the eye when talking.

It’s disheartening to have to watch someone’s ear as they tell you nothing’s changed. When they’re the fourteenth person to flinch as they insist nothing’s changed…

Well. Conrad didn’t care. He didn’t touch or finger-hug me any less than he did Cher or Magic. Electra may have hugged me more, but she was just trying to make up for all those assholes she’d never met.

Magic couldn’t give a shit what was in my pants…when I wore pants. Make her a sturdy tunic with fourteen pockets and she was your friend for life.

And of course, Cher was turned on. Found out he wasn’t gay, or at least not as gay as he’d thought. Not quite sure what to call someone who’s gender preference is for a transgendered man-to-woman.

I mean, besides ‘boyfriend.’

Anyway, having discovered that I had never eaten the semi-official state candy bar of Idaho, all plans for the day were suspended.

He gathered everyone into his shirt pockets, in the usual configuration, and headed for the parking lot.

Lisa looked up as we passed. “Delli’s never had an Idaho Spud bar,” he said.

I’m pretty sure the shock on Lisa’s face was in jest. "Ghirardelli, of all people, hasn't had an Idaho Spud?"

Pretty sure. But she didn’t remind him of any appointments or deadlines, so off we went.

Conrad was trying to describe the delights of the candy without giving away the actual flavor.

“I don’t want to prejudice your first taste,” he said.

Electra whispered, “Nice thought, but he simply doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe it.”

“I know,” I whispered back.

-----

Then, after all the build-up, we went past three convenience stores to find a gift shop near the convention center downtown.

“Of course,” Cher said, holding me close in our pocket. “He’s going to make this a ritualistic presentation.”

Over in the other pocket, Electra and Magic withheld comment.

The shop was part of a chain, ‘Made In America.’ They had a bunch of stuff made within America and within Idaho. Conrad went in, looked left and right, then went to one counter. Sylphs were decanted and we stood there while he pointed me and Cher to a box display full of little candy potatoes.

They were about the size of his MP3 player, a chocolate potato wrapped in tinfoil as if it had been baked. White chocolate simulated the interior where it was cut open, and something yellow looked like a pat of butter.

“Now this, here,” our owner lectured, “is a bit of candy made for tourists. It has real potato inside, under the candy.”

“Sounds good!” I lied, trying to positive. I’d be honest after tasting it, but it sounded horrid.

“It’s horrid,” Master said.

“What?” Cher asked, confused.

“Oh, it is,” the woman behind the counter agreed. “Tourists buy it once. And only once. Or they buy it as a souvenir and it goes on their mantel and never comes down.” She grimaced. “Your little sylphs don’t want any of that.”

“I know,” Conrad told her, with a smile. “I was mostly just going to explain what an Idaho Spud bar was NOT.”

“Oh! So she never asks for the wrong thing by mistake!” Countergirl squealed.

She turned away and came back with two boxes, placing them down on the counter, careful not to squish any of the pets.

“So, this case has twenty-four bars, this box has eighteen. And we also sell them individually.”

“Individual,” Conrad said. “Three for me, one for the sylphs.” Then he thought. “And Lisa, I guess. And Glenda, if we get one for Lisa. And Jose, Norman, Terry...” He continued rattling off the roster. The saleswoman watched him, finally ringing up the sale for the case.

I knew we were going to end up there.

There was a soda machine on the way back to the parking garage. Conrad paused. “Cher? Delli? What soda would you like to have while losing your Spud virginity?”

We both gasped. This was a Coke machine. Master only drinks Coke. I’m half convinced that he would BLEED Coke in case of an accident.

This WAS a ritual! A sacrifice to the sylphs!

Cher tugged my elbow. “I haven’t had a Mr. Pibb in for-goddamned-ever!” he whispered.

“He’d disown us. And he’d never do THIS again. Sprite?” I asked.

“Doable,” he allowed.

-----

Conrad had developed a fondness for a particular picnic table on the Greenbelt. Willows surrounded it, branches training in the Boise River flowing by, and a few big buildings blocked much of the sound of city traffic.

Pretty cool, really, and at this time of day, shaded by… Um… An oak? I don’t know. It was a tree. Squirrels climbed it, if that helps.

God, listen to me. I sound like Master! The boy’s rubbing off on me!

On the other hand, he was wearing collared shirts to work these days, so I’m definitely rubbing off on him!

Anyway, he unwrapped the candy bar and placed it on the spread-out wrapper. He used his pocket knife to cut it into small pieces. He unwrapped another bar but only held it, watching us.

I stepped up to one corner, looking at it suspiciously. I could smell dark chocolate, marshmallow, and coconut.

It just didn’t look like marshmallow. It had been mixed with cocoa, I think. Before he cut it, it kinda looked potato-y. Kinda.

A long, oval lump, the dark chocolate was rolled in the coconut.

I took a sliver of the coating that held a bit of coconut, and had a touch of the marshmallow still attached.

Oh, my that was tasty. I purred as it melted in my mouth. Literally. I mean, it literally melted and I literally purred. It was amazing. The flavors sang together.

As soon as I smiled, Cher tried a piece. He smiled.

That was permission for Electra and Magic and Master. The Idaho natives dove on their portions.

Master simply wolfed his down. I briefly wondered what it might taste like, eating an entire bite that way. Dark chocolate on top and bottom and an entire ¼ cup of filling…

Down at my size, the girls were giggling as they chewed. I’m not sure if they were tasting the Spud bar right now, or reliving memories of bars they’d eaten before.

I swished a cup of Sprite, then tried another bite. I turned to smile at Master, found him staring at me.

“It’s everything you promised, Conrad,” I said. He burst with pride as if he'd baked the damn thing.

-----

After we were all full, and partially paralyzed, it was time for the rest of the ritual. Conrad started making noises about going back to work. His Pretending To Be Adult Sermon, Book I, Verse III.

“No one’s expecting us to come back,” Electra said, reading from the Book Of Afternoons Off, Verse XI.

“Some people have already left for the day,” Magic said. “If we give out candy bars now, we’ll never be sure if we distributed them fairly.”

“Good point,” Master agreed. “So what shall we do instead?”

“We could do Cher’s day early,” Cher said.

Master had decided that each of his pets deserved a day to be in charge for one activity. During production, he rotated it around. Everyone got one weekend out of four.

Between seasons, he gave an additional two weekdays to sylphs, in the same rotation.

Conrad would do anything you asked on Your Day. Participation was not mandatory for any other sylphs.

So Magic could ask for something suicidal like parachuting or teasing eagles and she wouldn’t need anyone else’s permission. Just sympathy cards in the inevitable end…

“I JUST filled you all full of sweets,” Master replied. “No one’s going to want to do Cher-thing right now.” He sipped at the Sprite, hardly making a face.

“We COULD go to the museum.” He was looking downstream, and across the river. One of the buildings blocking traffic noise was the Boise Art Museum.

“Why the museum?” Magic asked.

“Because we have an appointment there,” he said, checking his watch. “Which we can just make, if you guys are through lollygagging.”

“You are SUCH an asshole,” Electra told him. It’s okay, though, Master takes that sort of thing as a compliment.

-----

Long, long, LONG ago, a little boy named… Well, never you mind what his name was. A boy who’d one day be named Ghirardelli, and quite proud of that fact, went on a school trip to a fire station.

This particular fire station had a training tower where they practiced putting out fires.

The men at the station house let volunteers try to control a fire nozzle, to ‘put the wet stuff on the red stuff,’ as they said.

I was thinking about that at BAM.

Conrad had arranged for all four of his sylphs to get a chance with the body paint set-up.

It was an air brush that you wore, controlling it like a fire hose. You had to lean in against the pressure, like facing upwind, but not too hard because when you stopped spraying paint, you’d fall on your face.

They gave us blank canvas and Magic turned out to be the best at free-handing a drawing.

They also found some sketches that we painted over, like paint-by-numbers. I did a bit better there, but had problems staying inside the lines. Cher took honors at that stage.

Then there was the doll.

Conrad smiled his smug smile and produced a Barbie doll sized torso shaped like a woman in a dress.

It was on a spinner, so I stood in one spot, painting a dress onto the doll, switching colors with a click of the valve, thickening or thinning the coat, adding highlights, while the doll spun to wherever I wanted to paint.

Oh, baby, I could do this all DAY!

I finished the dress design and stood back. Master twisted it around for a bit so I could get a good look. Then he moved the torso and put a blank in its place.

I hefted the strap on the assembly. “Who’s next?”

“I wanna see you do that again,” Electra said.

“Yeah, you can have my spot,” Magic agreed.

Cher was looking at the blank. He shrugged. “it’s not in my size.”

“It’s not in anybody’s size!” I said. “It’s Barbie size!”

The sylph who normally operated this, Vermillion, was smiling. “I should have thought of this. We can get figures! Plastic or porcelain. People can paint them, buy them if they turn out well! Or BYOF!” He turned to wave at his owner.

“What?” I looked around. “This isn’t part of the normal exhibit?”

“No,” Vermillion turned back. “Your master talked us into trying it. Maybe we can keep it!” He pointed. A table away, Conrad was taking pictures of my dress, catching all the angles.

“Huh…” I grunted.

-----

There was an exhibit of cooking utensils designed for sylphs to use. Not functional designs, but, I guess, whimsy? A spoon you stirred a pot with by ballroom dance. A cutting board with an escape hatch. A way to make meatballs like the Inuit made igloos.

Cher got to talking with the artist and may have inspired another line of inventions, hair care products for sylphs to use on human skulls. He was thinking of a two-man saw made into a comb, and the artist started sketching like mad.

A chainsaw nose-hair trimmer, a porcupine suit to use as a brush, a sort of bicycle powered taffy pull machine to make braids…

We finally flagged and could no longer suffer through another exhibit. Master boxed up the dress torsos, pocketed everyone and we went home.

I was dozing on the weatherdeck of the Ark when it hit me. “So, this was a Conrad-day.”

“What?” he protested. “This was all for you guys!”

“You picked the candy bar,” Magic said. “And you made the appointment. And you scheduled the dress dummies.”

“You guys picked the soda!” he said, but weakly.

“From the options available at the machine you chose,” Electra pointed out.

“No one’s COMPLAINING, Conrad,” Cher said. “You’ve been wonderfully generous. We just realized that you’ve added yourself to the rotation.”

“And the rules are, attendance on a Personal Day is not mandatory,” I said. “You should have given us a chance to sit this one out.”

“I was just trying to be nice,” he whimpered. I bit on my cheek to keep from smiling. I think we all did. “I mean, I suppose I can see what you’re saying…” He paused to pull into the driveway and park. He sat for a moment, staring at the front door of the condo. “So, I guess,” he finally started in a soft voice. “In the future, I’ll make sure to say…” He turned and leaned close to the carrier. “Fuck ALL of you!”

He leaned back. “It is SO fucking hard to surprise ONE of you, much less all four, I’m going to consider this day a TRIUMPH! You had fun. All four of you had fun, and I know it. So take this ‘dogpile on Conrad’ shit and shove it.”

What could we say? We broke out laughing. He smiled. He’d realized we were teasing, and we realized he was teasing us back. All happy, all in fun.

Then, well… He got up and went inside. Leaving the Ark in the car… And us. He left us in the car. With the heater off. And the sun already because of the short winter days.

“Master?” I called.

“He’ll be back,” Electra said confidently. The kitchen lights came on. We stared at the window. He drew the curtains, then the lights went off.

“See?” Electra said. But the door didn’t open. “Any time now,” she promised.

Then the lights in the upstairs window came on…

“This is your fault,” I told Cher.

“YOU started teasing him!”

“And YOUR job is to throw a flag on the play when the teasing has gone on JUST enough!”

“So, it’s MY fault that YOU teased him too much? That’s rich!”

“It’s a matter of responsibilities!” I cried. I tried to get Magic or Electra to agree with me. They pretended to be deaf, staring up at the lighted window, or the front door.

Meanwhile, asshole Master had gone out the back door, run around the condos, snuck up behind Mr. Sommerville’s RV, ninja’d to the side of the car.

The door opened without warning, scaring the beans out of everyone in the car. We screamed.

He laughed, relaxing his mental hold on his emotions and flooding the five of us with glee. We started laughing at ourselves, seeing the stark terror through his eyes.

Bastard sum bitch…

“It’s people like you that keep the Sylph Uprising alive!” Magic accused as he lifted the Ark.

Kind of a wordy way to shout ‘asshole,’ I thought. He still laughed.

-----

Cher’s Day came that Saturday. We had a long, long talk the night before. All we did was talk.

In the morning, Master made sure that Cher’s request did not include plans for breakfast before he toasted some waffles.

We ate at our table on top of his table, then watched as he did the dishes. Or, well, the dish. He was starting to get nervous, waiting for the request.

His pets usually talked and talked and talked about it, so the day was properly scheduled.

Cher hadn’t wanted to ruin anyone’s breakfast, in case they were sensitive.

Finally, Master sat at the table and gave Cher his full attention. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to buy porn,” Cher said. EVERYONE at the table immediately turned to me. “I’m not breaking up with Delli,” he said, completely unsurprised by the reaction. “I just want… Something. I feel…”

“You don’t have to defend the choice,” Conrad said. “I mean, we’re willing to listen, if that’s important, but it’s not necessary.”

“Okay,” Cher said, a deep breath coming out in a rush.

“Alright.” Master looked at the wall for a moment. “There’s an adult books store over by the University. I heard good things about it when we were students-“

“You were a student,” Electra said. “I was an accessory.”

“We heard good things when _I_ was a student,” he corrected. “Books and VHS back then, so probably books and DVDs today. We can go see what appeals.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” Magic complimented Cher. “Can, uh, can I come?”

“Depends on what they have in stock, doesn’t it?” I asked. It was a silly joke, but it was perfectly timed. There’d been a bit of tension in the room, people wondering where boundaries were on this new topic.

So they laughed. And laughed and laughed. And blushed. And laughed at each other’s expressions.

After a while, Cher sobered up enough to say, “I’ve been saving my allowance, so-“

“Not today,” Conrad said. He thought for a bit. “I have no idea what prices are like, so I’ll tentatively offer a budget of twenty dollars a head-“ Massive laughter. “PER PERSON for today’s expedition.” He waited a beat. “Thirty if it’s something I’d be willing to watch, too.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Electra said suddenly. She turned to me. “Are YOU okay with him buying…?”

“I’m okay,” I assured her, and assured Master. “We talked. It’s not something I want, but it may be something he needs. He’s welcome to it. We’ll… We’ll figure it out.”

“What’s to figure out?” Conrad asked.

“Schedules, mostly. Viewing habits, attendance, privacy, snacks…”

“I can put the tape, sorry, the disk in,” Conrad offered, “then take anyone who isn’t viewing-“

“Or participating!” Cher shouted. Conrad stared.

“We’ll figure it out!” I repeated. “First, find out what we need to figure.”

“Right. Right,” Master nodded. “Okay. Who wants to come along?”

Cher and Magic were interested in shopping. There was nothing Electra wanted, except to see what the inside of adult book store was like.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and see someone in a trench coat,” Conrad told her. He looked to me.

“I actually want to stay home. This is about him, satisfying him,” I pointed out. “I don’t want him thinking I need to approve something HE wants.”

“Which is why I love her,” Cher said. Magic and Electra reacted to the L word with shock and glee. He’d used the word plenty of times, but never where anyone except me could hear it.

They giggled as Master planned the day. There was some non-adult shopping he needed to accomplish, then the book store would be open, then home.

An hour later, I was alone, the house to myself. I started jogging towards the TV remote.



-----
Index

21. Sailing On

23. Carrying On