Kitty Kitty




I have a very large family. Cousins all through Idaho and Utah. So I’m basically one node in a favor network. I’ve used it a few times, but that means I have to be available when others need me

One of those cousins needed help clearing out an old farm they’d inherited, called several of us over.

I ended up in charge of removing a huge pile of rotted crab apples. Moved five wheelbarrows’ worth of rotten fruit and ruined a pair of pants.

When I got home, all I wanted to do was shower and burn my jeans. So I had a to-do list. But the couch… Oh, the couch looked so tempting.

Just a little nap. Then the shower. Then the laundry-fire.

I just closed my eyes for a second. A blink. When the blink passed, I was staring into the eyes of a pet.

Almost a cliché. Like Aunt Claire talking about being woken by her cat, Southpaw, standing on her chest. Looking her in the eye as if to say ‘feed me.’

I smiled at my own pet, at her little expression. Then she said, “You stink.”

On the other hand, Southpaw can’t talk.

Delli stood in front of the sofa. She was just tall enough to rest her chin on her crossed arms atop the cushion. Her eyes were right next to mine.

“You’re back,” I said.

“Trixie saw the car in the driveway and dropped us off. We could smell you from the porch so we told her not to come in.”

“I agree,” I said. “I wouldn’t be near me if I could figure out how.”

“And now the sofa is gonna smell like this,” she said.

“I put the blanket down before I lay down!” I pointed out.

“Do you think that matters to sylph senses of smell?” she pointed out.

“But you’re not a sylph anymore,” I pointed.

“It still stinks!” someone shouted from somewhere near the floor.

“You tell him!” Delli said, bending over.

“I’m not going NEAR him!” Magic shouted. I heard the pitter patter of a lot of feet on the carpet, all running away.

“Sorry, guys,” I said. I’m usually more sensitive to my pets’ sensitivities. I sat up, holding my feet in the air for a second. I didn’t want to step on anyone.

“There’s no one between you and the laundry,” Delli said helpfully.

I lowered my feet. The laundry’s behind the kitchen. But my clean clothes were upstairs. I tried to think through the logistics of getting myself clean, in clean clothes, and delivering the stinky stuff to the washer…

Then I decided, fuck it. I’ve seen all my pets naked. And I certainly don’t think I’m particularly better than anyone else.

I grabbed the blanket off the sofa, went into the laundry room and stripped. Everything into one load, with a little extra detergent.

Not too much. This was the soap that my pets found the least objectionable in my clothes, but it was still pungent, they told me.

Then naked went I, up the stairs and into the shower.

There were wolf whistles, of course. A few catcalls. And I think I heard Magic tell Electra, “Mazel tov!” Have to say, I expected no less. Not from my family, anyway.

-----

Cleaned up and fragrant, I felt much more human. I spent a bit of time cleaning the sofa, or at least desmellerizing it. Then I sat in my easy chair. “So, how did the mock trial go?”

Delli climbed up into my lap. “I got off!”

“Trixie did say you would enjoy it,” I said, “but I didn’t think it would be THAT much fun.”

“She means!” Electra shouted. I reached down to the floor and picked up my sylphs. Set them on the armrest behind Delli.

“She means,” Electra restarted, “that she was acquitted.”

“Or,” Magic said, “if Undersized Americans were afforded legal protections and rights, then she’d have been acquitted of assault charges with respect to sylphing her attackers.”

“Based on what?” I asked.

“It was held,” Cher intoned, “that all the known situations where a gnome was created, their actions, in regards to shrinking their tormentors, were fully justified.”

“Self Defense sort of thing,” Magic said.

“And out of their control,” I said. I put a hand on Delli’s shoulders. “As I understand the testimony of all the gnomes I’ve met.”

“They assumed I was representative,” Delli told me smugly.

“That means they don’t understand just how very unique you are,” I told her. She smiled even more smugly.

Electra groaned. I’d used a modifier with ‘unique,’ again. Adverb? Adjective? I don’t know. It’s a pet peeve of hers. Nothing can be slightly unique, so nothing can be very unique.

Don’t say ‘very unique’ around Electra. And don’t say ‘assless chaps’ around Delli, for much the same reason.

“You know what was weird, though?” Cher asked with a little laugh. “The autographs.”

I smiled at Electra. “Your fame precedes you.”

“Wasn’t me!” she protested. “They were law students! They wanted Magic’s autograph.”

That sylph blushed. “The infamous Condensed Cannibal of Camas County,” she muttered.

“But you guys were in Blaine,” I said, with my usual social awareness. I shut up before offering two or three better nicknames. Itty Bitty Butcher of Blaine, maybe, or the Savory Sawtooth Sylph. Electra walked over to my elbow and kicked me. For the record, I’d already decided to shut up before she did that.

I am sensitive, when I think about it.

So, I decided to change the subject. I looked at Electra. “So, jealous to not be the biggest celebrity in the room?”

“Dude,” she said, one hand on her hip, “I’ve been out in public with Supersylph. You don’t know what celebrity is until you’ve stood down-spotlight from Supersylph.”

“Ah, Supersylph,” I said, eyes on the distant horizon that I couldn’t actually see. She kicked me again, but with a smile on her face. I couldn’t even fake the emotions to make Electra jealous.

I noticed the others smiling, too. I hadn’t fooled anyone.

Then I realized… DELLI was smiling. “Did you figure out that I was not seriously smitten by Supersylph through long association, or are you feeling my bullshit across our link?”

“It’s back,” she told me. “I feel you. And yes, you’re full of shit.”

We shared an intimate smile at that. Then I clapped my hands together decisively. “Okay, we’ve all had a productive day. Acting like adults and doing favors and supporting relatives. Who wants to blow off chores for the rest of the night and make s’mores?”

“What chores do we have?” Magic asked me.

“Well, I still have to provide two meals to sylphs,” I said.

“So… Feeding us isn’t exactly blowing off your chores,” Cher said, rubbing his beard. He had a beard again. Delli had gotten rug burn a time or two and made him shave it off once they were…together.

Now, she had no fears of damage from such a tiny thing.

Anyway, I said, “Piffle! Doing my chores with fire and chocolate is much more like playing hooky than being a grown-up.”

“We’ll allow it,” Magic said.

-----

Our barbecue grill has the shortest legs. They barely lift the pan above the patio. I usually sit cross-legged before it when I grill food.

This time I didn’t even use a grill, just got the coals started and toasted the marshmallows over the embers.

Delli broke the candy bar into pieces that Cher distributed across the graham crackers. I positioned the toasted sugar over the chocolate and held it as Electra and Magic pushed the top cracker down on it.

Then I kinda mashed it all together and they dug in. Not gourmet or anything, but they seemed to like it. Them. It was all about the sylphs, Conrad said with his mouth full of S’more.

-----

Friday I had a mission. Magic had wanted to do some shopping, just the two of us.

Well, Delli had a handful of new dresses she wanted Electra to try on, and Cher wanted to play with hairstyles for each look. We left them in Lisa’s capable hands and I took Magic to the mall.

Before we left, Delli was moaning about camping. “She’s going to make you buy tents and sleeping bags and hiking gear, isn’t she?” She fussed with her basket of clothes. “We’re all going to be eaten by foxes, I just know it!”

“Naw,” Magic told her. “Where we’re going, you need to look out for bears.”

Delli stared. Then she dropped to her knees at my ankle, tugging on my pants leg. “Tell me she’s teasing, Conrad. LIE if you must, but tell me she’s teasing!”

“She’s teasing,” I promised.

“You aren’t lying to me, are you?”

“YOU TOLD ME to lie to you!” I protested.

“Can’t you tell?” Cher asked her.

“Didn’t the link come back?” Electra asked.

“Oh.” Delli stood and drew a pants suit out of her basket. “Thank you, Conrad, now go off on your shopping mission. C’mere, ‘Lectra.”

I pocketed Magic and went to the car.

“Would you take us camping?” Magic asked.

“We’d have to work up to it,” I shrugged. “Or wait until Xander visits. He’s a scout, we’ll put him in charge.”

She smiled and settled down for the drive.

-----

Magic wanted to buy gifts for the others and she wanted something unusual. So I found the most remote corners of the mall.

Admittedly, the deepest, darkest corner of the downtown mall isn’t like an old curio shop hidden under a bridge in an ancient city… But it was a start.

There was a candy store with imports from six different countries. I walked through the aisles, holding her over the bins.

“No,” she said slowly. “I mean, it’s good stuff, but not quirky, you know?”

“Quirky?” I went back outside and looked for a bench. I ended up sitting on the sill around a fountain. I took Magic out of my pocket and placed her on the tile beside me. “Explain the need for quirky, please?” I tried to make the ‘please’ sound like I meant it. Like this wasn’t an order. She could refuse to answer.

She paced a bit and I waited. She kept glancing up at me. I saw, I felt, the moment she realized I’d wait as long as she needed me to.

“I, uh, I want to fit in,” she finally told me.

“To the family? You already do.”

“I’ve been welcomed, yes,” she said. “You guys are wonderful. Really. But I still don’t feel… I don’t feel like I’m a full member, not yet.”

“You do know I can tell your wolf-whistle from Cher’s, right?” I said with a smile. She smiled back, her gaze dropping to the tile. “You fit right in.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “But I want to show it, okay? I’ve been saving up for this… I want something, some gift, for each of the others. That shows I grok them.”

“See, using ‘grok’ alone shows you fit in with me and Electra.”

“Electra and I,” she corrected me. I stared at her, mouth agape. “I know, I know, that’s Electra’s line, but she’s not here, so someone had to keep you in line.”

“And that shows you’re Delli’s twin,” I muttered. I looked up and scanned the storefronts around us. And saw a quirky store.

“Is that quirky enough?”

She turned to follow my finger. “You DO remember I’m not taller than your thigh is wide, right?”

“I keep forgetting,” I said. I lifted her up and showed her.

It was a hodgepodge. A giant Russian nutcracker stood in the window, next to a Power Ranger chess set that was displayed on a console TV from about 1969. My grandparents had one just like it. A 20-inch television with a phonograph and a reel-to-reel tape player in the console.

I picked Magic up and walked over. Inside, there were no shelves, just stuff leaning on other stuff. A fishing tackle box was open to display little lead D&D figures, all of them painted Werewolf Brown.

A moose head hung on a ladder, balanced by a left-handed set of golf clubs. The moose wore a C3PO mask, with Spock ears.

A deck of Tarot cards was stacked into a house of cards, but really more of a card castle. The Knights of the four suits walked the ramparts.

Toy train tracks circled around the room up near the ceiling. A 1/32nd scale train ran along them, with flat cars holding a crystal ball, a toy tricorder, and one of those ‘elf on the shelf’ things. This one was dressed for leather bondage, rather than Christmas, though. Well, Santa knew Naughty, too.

It was, quite frankly, my sort of place.

“I’m going to need to run a tab,” I whispered.

“If I can’t find something here,” Magic said quietly, “I should mail myself to a convent.”

“I’ll drive you,” I promised. “I have relatives near there.” I have no idea if there’s a convent in Idaho, but if there is, I have family nearby.

I held Magic in my hand and let her examine the piles and piles of stuff.

“Welcome!”

I turned to find Santa Claus standing behind me.

That was my first impression, probably because of the shelf elf. An old guy, wire rimmed glasses, a furry white beard, stood in the front of the shop.

But he was small for a Santa. And no belly. He was more of a wizened little thing. Big smile, though.

“What can we do for you, son?”

“It’s not me,” I said, holding up Magic. “This is the customer.”

“Ah, letting her chose her gift,” he nodded as if understanding.

“No,” I corrected him, “she’s shopping for gifts to give her friends.”

“I have money!” Magic added.

“How big is your allowance?” Not-Santa asked her.

“She has a salary,” I said. I was not going to pick a fight with a wiry old man in a quaint little shop. That’s a fast trip to the late show. But he was being needlessly dismissive of Magic. “She has a job. She wants to make a purchase, but if that’s too confusing for you we can go back to the candy store.”

“No, no, no,” he said, turning to a pile of various fabric constructs. “Just trying to sort out the relationships, here.” He pulled up a roll of felt and spread it over the top of a barrel marked with four and a half x’s. Inside were twenty pockets holding little figures.

“Now, this is a set of Lilliputian Body Puppets,” he explained. He plucked one out of its pocket, a kind of lizard-man sort of thing, and held it before Magic. “See, if you’re human, they’re finger puppets, if you’re a sylph, they’re costumes.”

“And maybe a hand-puppet for Delli!” Magic said happily, reaching for the figure. She examined it, then asked to look at the rest.

The old guy gestured welcome and I lowered her to the cloth. The proprietor moved to stand beside me while she looked at all the faces, poked a hand into some of the heads.

“So, how many friends does she have?” he asked softly. Not so softly that she couldn’t hear him, of course.

“Dozens,” I said. “But not usually that many in one place.”

“Do you consider yourself one of her friends?” he asked me.

“YES!” Magic shouted.

“Do we have a problem?” I asked.

The little guy spread his hands wide. “Just sorting out the relationships.”

“What is it with you and relationships?” I asked.

“That’s the job,” he said. He turned to my sylph. “So, you like the puppets?”

“I do!” she said happily. “But how much are they?”

He didn’t answer right away. And he didn’t look for a price tag. He looked from Magic to me, then back again. Then he cocked a thumb at me and asked her, “You really think he’s your friend?”

“No,” she said. But that didn’t match what she was feeling. She rose to her feet and put hands on her hips. “I know it.”

He laughed, then reached down to roll up the felt. Magic skipped back, then turned and ran off the fabric.

He slid the bundle into a paper sack I hadn’t seen him pick up and handed it to me. “Take it. Fully paid.”

“She really does have money,” I insisted.

“Sylphs in this country don’t own anything,” he laughed. “And pets don’t have friends.” Then he dropped the smile and ominously added, “Yet.” He pushed the puppets into my hands. “Take them. See if… If anything changes.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. I cocked a thumb over my shoulder. “How much for the moose head?”

“I’m not for sale,” a voice said behind me. I didn’t spin around. Not because I have nerves of steel but because my muscles were frozen with fear. Others jump when startled, I tense up.

Always made me look guilty when things exploded unexpectedly, as if I knew it was coming.

Anyway, I managed to glance down to where Magic stood. She was staring at something behind me.

“Well, that’s all I got,” I said, tucking the puppets into my armpit and reaching for Magic. “I think it’s time for ice cream.” She jumped into my hand and we were out of the store.

I got a sundae at the ice cream counter and set it on a table. Magic climbed down my arm to stand beside the bowl.

“Did, uh, did the moose talk?” I finally asked.

She stared at a jimmy on the sundae. “I couldn’t see the lips. But it looked right at me. And winked.”

“That’s weird,” I said.

Magic gave a little laugh and finally looked up at me. “…the giant said to his shrunken woman pet?”

“Touché,” I said. “Okay, weird even by our standards.”

That she allowed. Then we dug into the ice cream.

I took the long way around to get back to the car. If the quirky little shop wasn’t there anymore, I flat didn’t want to know.

Magic noticed how I avoided that side of the mall. She smiled but said nothing, curling down into my pocket.



-----
Index

25. Moving On

27. Echo Echo