Annie LXXXIX: Rotating Blades

(Chronological index: Lasting Changes 5)

"It seems so unfair," Annie said. She sat on the foot of the bed, her legs swinging. The sylph was watching Pet and Denise pack for a trip. "I mean, we JUST got everything cleaned and put away and moved to the new apartment."

"Are you saying you don't want to go, Annie?" Denise asked.

"She HAS to!" Pet said before the sylph could react. "She HAS to be there! She's in the ceremony!"

"Of course I want to go, Pet," Annie said. "And Denise knows that. She just wants me to stop bitching if I don't really mean it."

"How do you know if Annie doesn't mean it?" Pet asked Denise.

"Think about what we're doing," Denise asked. "Would Annie really choose not to participate?"

"No," Pet said instantly. Denise made a 'there you go,' expression. Pet glanced down to see Annie with the same look on her face.

"You guys," she said with a shake of her head. "Chuck teased, but it was usually physical pranks. Burger King glasses of water over the doors or dental floss across a dollhouse doorway. I may never understand..." She sniffled a bit.

"How you guys..." She sat at the little table in the corner. "Reality is just an agreed-up..." The young woman started to get hiccups. She covered her face with her hands. "It's all a joke to you! Everything!" She sobbed.

"She sobbed convincingly," Annie said with a smile. Denise picked her up and moved to sit by Pet.

She put an arm around the quivering shoulders. "Too bad she can't keep a straight face to save her life."

"You saw?" Pet asked lowering her hands and looking at her friends.

"Never play poker, Pet," Annie said. "Except against me of course."

"You're too good a person to be a good teaser," Denise said. She lifted Annie who kissed Pet's cheek. Pet kissed her on the top of the head then kissed Denise.

She sighed and placed a head on Denise's shoulder. Annie jumped to Pet's shoulder and snuggled her throat.

Ray came into the room about then. He paused and gazed at the women that were, in his mind and heart, wives.

"I have dreams like this," he said.

"He sure does," Annie muttered. "Some of those bleed over into my dreams at night. But you're wrong."

"Wrong?" Ray asked.

"We have CLOTHES on, Ray. Not lingerie, not skin paint, not whipped cream and definitely not licorice bikinis."

"My word," he said. "The dreams do bleed over." He sat in the last chair and stared at the women.

"What are you doing, Ray?" Pet asked.

"Worshiping you," he said. Annie and he spoke together as he finished, "from not very far at all."

"Becoming pagan?" Denise asked. "Kneeling before the Triple Goddess?"

"Okay," he agreed sliding out of his chair and dropping to all fours. Pet squealed as he crawled across the floor. Denise giggled. Annie jumped to the table, then down to his back. "I'll save you!" she shouted, grabbing his collar and leaning back. Ray made choking noises.

"Hey!" Denise protested. "Who asked to be saved?" Rescues were deferred through unanimous votes, worship was conducted at little to no distance and the big pile of happy people ended up on the bed.

Ray spooned the back of Pet who spooned Denise who cuddled Annie to her throat.

"I could stay like this all day," Pet sighed.

"Are you saying you don't want to go, Pet?" Ray asked.

"Stop that," Denise said, lightly touching Annie's ass with a pretend spanking.

"What'd I do?" she protested.

"Oh, Ray's like a big puppet you run by remote control," Pet scolded.

"I missed something," Ray said. Pet stretched under his hand. Her muscles bunched and flowed, continuing as he squeezed. "But I suddenly don't care what I missed."

"Stop that," Denise repeated, slapping Ray's hand. "We only have two more days to pack. At this rate we'll never finish."

"We'll finish," Annie assured her. "If it's a choice of sex or missing the flight, we'll.... Hmmm."

"Throw stuff in the suitcases and shower at the airport," Ray said. Pet giggled.

"I can't do that anymore!"

"You can," he said. "They just look at you funny."

"Oh."

Hunger eventually drove them to dressing for dinner. Annie threatened to go naked. Pet said if she had to wear clothes, everyone that wanted to be treated like a human had to wear clothes.

Annie scurried for her traveling closet. "Don't go without me!"

Everyone in the halls still looked at the Foster women with awe. Even Annie's sacrifice was treated as a miracle by some.

At first, many had criticized her for making the choice she did. Or didn't believe any sylph, especially one who'd been human on The Day, could ever give up her chance. There was something fishy in the story.

Maybe Pet had kicked Annie out of the way?

Bubba Oversteed, a tattoo artist who'd been sylphed in the recent wave, famously solidified sylph opinion by a comment. "Denise Foster is willing to give her life for total strangers, the Night Watch, you people think she's a hero. Annie Foster gives her chance at being restored to someone she knows and loves, you think she's a fool? An idiot? Someone despicable?"

He'd shaken his head at the group of sylphs around him. "Someone loves another that much, gives me the most hope I've had since the day a gnome shrank me."

Bubba had also outed himself in that comment, but no one took him to task for it. Denise sent him a thank you note. Annie sent him chocolate. He'd shared it with his coworkers. The 'mere sylphs' he'd hesitated to protect the night of the rats.

Sam said he was starting to 'get it.'

They'd stopped asking for privacy at the restaurant. Now they had dinner in the main room, ignoring the 'that's them' whispers that circled the other tables. Ray sat opposite Pet and Denise so he could look in both their eyes. Annie sat in the middle and got samples and tastes from everyone's plates.

And she often pointed out to Ray that, "Those aren't their eyes!" "OH!" Ray said on the way back to their room. "Here." He fished a plastic bag out of his pocket. Inside was a necklace. A cheap plastic lanyard held a small mesh bag. Some sort of porous material was inside that.

He handed it to Pet. She looked at him funny as she pulled it out. "What's this for?"

"That's the necklace he wore the pillow cases in," Annie pointed out. "So we'd have something to smell while he was in Africa. Something that smelled like him."

Pet put it on and pressed it to her chest. "Okay. But we're all going, right? Right? No one's staying behind that'll need to smell me, right?"

"Right, Pet," he said. "This is just a precaution."

"For what?" Denise and Pet asked.

"Aha," Annie said.

"You're bluffing," Denise said with her eyes down to slits. "There's no way you could have figured this one out."

"If it was her idea, she could," Ray said. "Or if she worried there was a problem and directed me to fix it..."

"This is Ray fixing a problem?" Pet asked. She smiled. "Then it's okay."

"So you're all ganged up against me?" Denise asked as Pet unlocked their room. "Everyone's happy unless Denise is the one to rock the boat?"

"I think Denise's mood needs swift and sudden attention," Annie prescribed.

"Not really," Denise protested. Her partners lifted her up and carried her bodily to the bed. She lay back as they undressed her from either side. "But I guess, if you insist..."

---------

Butters reported to Sam that the van was around front, waiting for her and the Fosters. She nodded, finished the document she was reading and walked to the lobby.

Valets were putting luggage in the back but there was no sign of the guests of honor. She climbed into the limo, checking the time. Just when she decided it was too late to make the schedule, the door opened and three people rushed in. Pet was holding Annie and sat by Sam. The other two sat across from them.

"Where were you?" Sam asked as the driver started up. "I know it's a charter, but we have to be in the air on time or file a new flight plan."

"Gotcha," Pet said. She was panting. "Just had to wash up."

"They did," Annie assured Sam. "They were all....messy."

"They?"

"They. We. There was mess, and I can never turn down a shower, no."

Sam covered her ears. "I don't want to hear details."

"We can act it out," Ray offered.

-------

Sam's boyfriend was involved in something being argued at the Supreme Court and couldn't attend.

"He does understand how important this is to me, though, and sends you guys his best wishes."

"That's sweet of him," Denise said.

"Are we ever going to meet George?" Pet asked.

"Yeah, sure, he's been by the Center lots of times." She smiled as she belted in to the chair. "For people that live there, it's you guys that are strangely absent when he visits."

Pet and Denise smiled. Ray was staring at the window of the sylph container. It was carrying efreet volunteers, repatriated Sanc Dembuka sylphs, a few recovered salamanders, wedding guests, Kerri, Annie and a bucketful of chocolate.

"She'll be fine, Ray," Pet said.

"I know. I just..." He waved vaguely.

"Miss her?" Sam said.

"D'awwww," his other two wives said, resting their heads on his shoulders.

"No," Ray said. "But she's discussing her life with Kerri for the Book. Where we can't edit, explain or add footnotes." "And then?" Kerri asked. She whooped at the end as the plane dropped in turbulence. Her chair was strapped down and she had a harness so she didn't move.

Annie rose above her, pressing into the cushioned ceiling for a moment. Then she grabbed the padded stanchion with both arms and slid back down to the mattress.

"Sure you don't wanna try?" she asked with a smile.

Kerri waved towards where her legs would be. "I'm too terrified of skinning my knees."

"That's not it," Annie said. "You're just saving your toes for ballet."

They giggled for a bit. "And then?" Kerri repeated.

"And then, the President of Sanc Dembuka talked President Dorre into pardoning Ray."

"Doesn't... Wouldn't Ray have had to actually be convicted to be pardoned?"

Annie shook her head. "The Attorney General informed the state of North Carolina that it was self defense. And Dorre pardoned him of breaking in, speeding, carrying a bat with intention of folding a fuckwit around it, parking in a living room and making kitty scared."

"Sweeping." She made a note on her pad. "So, to restore the undine ceremonies, Dorre circumvented justice?"

"I prefer to think he merely sped it along to where it would justifiably have ended up anyway," Annie pointed out slowly.

"Ah." Kerri made another note. She glanced up and looked out the window. Annie followed her gaze. A second after they faced it, the window filled with Nolan's face.

Kerri waved, he waved back. There was a questioning look on his face. She gave a thumbs-up back to him. He went back to sitting by Samantha.

"Another well-sylph check?" Annie asked. "It's like he worries about you or something."

"Yeah," she replied softly. Then she shook herself. "I mean, he's terrified I'm going to bite someone and he'll get sued."

"Sure. Ray's always threatening to leash me, too." They gazed out the window for a bit.

"So anyway, we get back to DC. There's this bus..."

----------

The groups split off after the landing. Amelia had come by a separate flight. She and Sam reunited gleefully under the starry sky, then oversaw the sylphs here to participate in the ceremony.

Kerri and Nolan tagged along with the Fosters. A limo was waiting for them at the edge of the runway.

A dark red that nearly disappeared in the moonlight, the car gave an appearance of age, but lovingly maintained.

"Old but posh," Nolan said cheerfully. He froze as everyone else turned to stare at him.

"They think," Kerri said from his cupped hands, "that you're making fun of someone. They don't know you use the same tone of voice to say, 'that's ugly' as you do to say 'I want to have your baby.' 'Kay?"

The Fosters relaxed a bit. Only a bit.

"This is a 1981 Mercedes Benz Model 380," Nolan said. "I can only hope to look that good with that many miles on me."

"You were 22 in 1981," Kerri said. You're older than this car."

"So are you!"

"But I've been through a youthing!"

"I was right there, holding your shoes," he said. The Fosters climbed into the car. Claude moved his unlit cigarette around in his mouth and waited for Nolan to take the front seat. "Waiting for you to finish frolicking in the fountain."

"But on ME it worked," Kerri insisted. Claude smiled and drove smoothly off to their appointment.



Denise, Annie and Pet greeted Adilah in the entryway, and introduced Kerri and Nolan. A butler escorted Ray into Kisu's private office.

The man stared at his guest. Ray sat carefully. He'd always respected Kisu, even before knowing who the man was. He seemed an alright sort, but always a moment or a flash away from reminding you he held the power of a nation.

His stare seemed chilling in the warm African night.

"Are you making fun with me, Mister Foster?" he asked.

"God, no, Mr. President," Ray replied. "I asked the favor so that-"

"You wish to duck under your responsibilities by playing fast and loose with Sanc Dembuka traditions?"

"No," Ray said. He stopped trying to explain and just reacted to the questions. Kisu seemed to sense this change in Ray's intent.

He stood and stared to pace his office. "You are an American, used to getting his way."

"We met in your jail," Ray pointed out. Kisu nodded.

"And that still worked out for you. Now, you give me this grand plan, carefully noting what you need and what I need to give you-"

"No," Ray said.

"No?"

"No demands, no orders, no confidence that you will give me what I desire." He scooted forward on his chair. "This is what I need to make myself, my family happy. Not a desire. This is the only thing I can think of to make it all work out."

He leaned back and took a deep breath. "If you can't give it to me, if you think it's against your or your wife's or your nation's best interests, I'll accept that. I'll look elsewhere. I'll find a way. I don't want to compromise you or anyone, anything you feel you're responsible for.

"But, man, I'm begging you to reconsider, if you're going to say no."

Kisu regarded him for a moment, then nodded. "I believe you are sincere, Ray," he said and held out a hand.

"TOLD YOU!" Adilah shouted from beyond the door. Kisu rolled his eyes.

"I remember privacy," he said.

"RAY DOESN'T!" Annie shouted.

"Well, come on, then," Kisu said, pulling Ray to his feet. "We waited dinner on you."

---------

Pet crept out into the garden. Adilah rode on her shoulder. They knelt by the pond. Pet made soft kissy sounds.

There was a splash of water. She moved forward a foot. Then Happy was in the shallow end of the pond, his open mouth visible in the moonlight. He roared.

Unhappy, he informed the intruder that she was not welcome in his living room.

"Happy?" Pet called softly. "Happy, it's me! Pet!" Water frothed as the tiny hippo moved his head back and forth. Over her head, one of the figures outlined in the window stepped out of sight.

"He does not recognize you, Pet," Adilah said sadly. "He defends his home and his mate from an aggressor. Back away slowly, do not agitate Furahifu."

Pet sniffed and backed away. She rolled back to sit on her heels and stare towards the dark water. Happy had calmed and the water was smoothing. There was no sign of either hippo.

A door of the courtyard opened. Ray stepped out. Pet hadn’t turned but she knew who it was. "Come to comfort me, Ray?"

"No," he said.

"No?" She turned to look up at him. "I lost a friend. He doesn't know I came back to see him. He'll never know I... Why are you smiling? And what is behind your back?"

He smiled wider and showed what he was holding. It was a helmet for a sylph remote. "I need that bag around your neck," he said.

-------

She had such déjà vu. She held tightly to his collar and looked down as he arranged her body on the grass.

"And the pad I wore picked up my smell?" she guessed. "You think Happy will recognize it?"

"If you're small enough he doesn't think you're going to eat him, he'll take a moment to figure out who you are," Ray insisted. He stepped over by the pond and held his hand for her.

Happy was charging through the shallows. Pet's remote camera picked up an infra red signature under the fronds on the other side.

She dropped easily from Ray's hand and called out Happy's name. Ray beat a retreat to Pet's body.

Happy stopped in mid-charge, then galloped forward. "He recognizes me, Ray!" she shouted. The window shook with the cheers of the audience.

She reached out and hugged the huge barrel of a neck. Happy's tail wagged. He stepped on her foot but besides the stress warning light on her helmet, that didn't matter.

Pet and Happy got reacquainted. Then she led him carefully back to his body. Ray lowered the hand with peanut butter in it and flattened the fingers.

It didn't take long for Happy to connect Pet's smell to both bodies. But Furahifu only ever warmed up to the remote. Pet figured she could live with that.

"Maybe she is just finicky because she is so very pregnant," Kisu suggested.

Pet, Denise, Kerri and Annie squealed in delight at the news. The paperwork was done early the next day. Ray went through his wallet with the American consul. While he did, they talked about Ray's other trips to the country.

"Ah," the diplomat finally said. "Yes, the Kendall appointed, tight assed, mouth breathing, lip reading, finger pointing, brain dead Minister of Paranoia and Party Pooping. He was transferred the same day you were released from jail. Kisu said the man was harshing his mellow and Dorre said they need a diplomatic presence on Christmas Island."

"Sounds festive," Ray said slowly.

"I looked it up. The big industry there is mining guano."

"Mining...." Ray shook his head. He handed over his passport. The other man sealed everything in a manila envelope, the stood to shake Ray's hand.

"Good luck, Mr. Foster. I hope this works out."

"Thanks. I, uh, I have high level assurances that it will."

After that he joined his wives as they helped prepare the next deva ceremony.

The celebration was a bit more subdued than they remembered. It did seem that the entire nation's population showed up to honor the Earth, but few stayed behind for the party.

There was the same feeling of awe, though, and a common connectedness. Kerri made note after note on her pad, until Nolan pinched it away from her and put it in his pocket.

"I'm trying to record this experience!" she shouted.

"You'll regret it if you don't experience the experience!" he shouted back.

"Right! Fine! Great!" she snapped. "So, Mr. Knows So Much, where's the experience?"

Annie slapped Ray's wrist. He held her up to the hand Kerri was in. "Booze?" she asked, lifting a bottle.

"I forbid it," Nolan said. But he didn't move his sylph away from Annie.

"Sez YOU!" she snapped, snagging the bottle. The sylphs passed it back and forth. When they started singing a song written to encourage the Sylph Uprising, both men judged that they'd had enough.

---------

The next day was a smaller ceremony, though no less exciting. Witnesses watched a very calm Ray stand before Samantha and Amelia once more, waiting for the wedding to begin.

Sam was there to officiate the wedding for US legal purposes. Amelia had been recognized by Sanc Dembuka for the same function.

Everyone turned as the bridal march started to play.

--------

"Think it'll work?" Kerri asked on the way back to the US.

"It already has," Annie said. She lounged on the cushion next to the wheelchair.

"You're entirely too happy," Kerri snarked.

"Jealous?" Annie asked.

They both glanced at the window. Nolan waved, they waved back. "No," Kerri said simply. Nigel was waiting for them outside customs. The Fosters said goodbye to Kerri and Nolan and followed along to the waiting car.

"Boy," Nigel said as they pulled into traffic. "You guys have pissed off a lot of people."

"And?" Annie asked. Everyone else seemed to be holding their breath. She stroked Pet's knuckle and waited patiently.

Nigel shrugged. "The forces of Stupid complain that you can't just create a new ID for new people. The forces of law, as directed by the Attorney General, point out that's exactly what the Chief Justice said to do. Team Stupid says that's not what he meant. Team Law says he shouldn't have included it in his opinion, then, and what's done is a precedent. Ha and ha-ha."

Pet quivered a bit. Annie turned up to her face. "Don't worry, Pet. Don't sweat the legal talk. Nigel's in far too good a mood for it to be bad news."

"Really?" Pet asked, turning from the sylph to the lawyer. He nodded.

"Except for a few naysaying bastards," he said, "Ray's legal maneuver is working. Kerri's been posting parts of her interviews in her blog, and there's a real interest, an excited, happy interest in the book on you guys."

He turned to Ray. "As you hoped, people are more enchanted by the possibilities than the negatives."

A briefcase held some paperwork he handed over to Pet and Denise. "Okay, Ray's now a citizen of Sanc Dembuka. His American identity was incorporated before that, so he has part ownership of the scattered empire of businesses that was Ray Foster.

"These give you guys ownership of parts of that empire." Pet held the contract down where Annie could read it. She quickly pointed to all the places Pet Lovey Foster's full name was printed out. Pet squealed happily.

"You also have power of attorney for much of each other's holdings," Nigel went on. "In short, I've tried to legally contract every possible right normally held by married people."

"Are we bigamists?" Denise asked.

"Nope. The AG has decided that Ray's status as a diplomat to the US for SD issues of sylphs and devas lends itself to a generous interpretation.

"You, dear, as an independent woman, married Ray Foster in Sanc Dembuka, all alone. Same for you, Pet. And for you, Annie, though that won't be an issue until the Amendment passes."

"If," she said somberly.

"When," Nigel insisted. "You haven't seen the polls. Anyway, you've all three entered into three discrete marriage contracts that the US recognizes. The one person with three wives is not a US Citizen, so he's beyond any US jurisdiction to be punished, arrested or anything but jealous looks stabbed at."

"The burden I toil under," Ray said cheerfully. He rolled an arm behind Pet and Denise's shoulders.

Denise lightly shoved and elbow into his ribs. Pet lay her head on his shoulder and moved Annie to his chest. She hugged his shirt.

"Oh!" Pet said suddenly. "We're leaving Nigel out!"

"S'alright," he said. "Wife and kid are at the hotel, waiting for me."

"Ruth-Anne?" Annie asked, spinning around in Pet's hand.

"Not that anyone would want to hug and kiss their namesake cousin," Nigel said, "but yeah."

"DRIVER!" Annie shouted.

"We're pulling into the hotel parking lot," Ray said.

"Oh."

Annie had no paperwork to sign, not yet, so she concentrated on teaching the infant to play patty-cake. Ruth-Anne didn't learn, but she did think the capering sylph was the funniest thing she'd seen all day.

With signatures affixed and initials applied in all the right places, Nigel let everyone else hold the burbling baby for a while.

Then they finally went back to their room at the Center.

----------

"Literally," Pipkin said, "One full ton of flowers. We stacked the cards in the rooms next to yours. The flowers themselves are in here...."

She opened the sylphdoor to the conference room. The floral scent hit the sylphs like a solid wall.

"Wow," Annie said. She coughed a bit. Pipkin was holding her breath. Sylphs could do that a lot longer than full-sized humans. Annie wasn't going to give up on the perfume yet, though.

She breathed deeply, though her nostrils rebelled and her stomach recoiled. Too much of a good thing.. She finally ran into the hall, gulped a lungful and ran back to spin and look.

All kinds of bouquets were on and under tables. They'd run out of room for vases so there were just big buckets of water with blooms shoved side to side.

There was barely room between the plants for light to filter down, green and red and orange and... "Wow," she repeated.

------

A few floors above, Pet was giving orders to her work force. A few hundred pairs of eyes looked up at her from the floor. Stacks of cards were around them all.

"I want names in the computers, that's a given. We want to know who we owe thanks to. Even if they're anonymous. And if there's a message, add that. So we can reply in kind." Someone raised a tiny hand. Pet took a careful step forward and knelt down.

She was still getting used to identifying features from her current altitude, but the face looked familiar. "What is it?"

"Miss Pet, I appreciate the job and all, but I can't read."

"Oh, that's fine. I figured the people that can type got the computers and the people that can't can carry the cards back and forth and keep tracks of stacks. You guys figure out where to put cards that have been recorded and take care of all that. Okay?"

"Okay," he said with a smile. Then she knew him.

"You made me mad once, didn't you?"

He didn't try to deny it. "Yes, Miss Pet, I did make fun of your Miss Denise once. Learned my lesson and never did it again."

"Okay," she said and stood. He sighed in relief. Pet was quick to anger, quick to forgive. If it'd been Annie that had recognized him... Half the work force sighed in sympathetic relief.

Meanwhile, Pet had crouched down beside a terminal with a handful of cards. "Someone type for me? This is from... mister... and... missus... Trace... Oh!" She put that one in her pocket to give to Annie. "This one is from...miss...Heart and miss...Diamond...."

--------

Denise was in the next room working at her terminal. "Know what your net worth is, Mister Foster Incorporated?"

"No," he said, curious. She counted on her fingers.

When she reached a certain number she nodded. "Whatever it was, it just went up by 1 percent."

"Fast," he said absently. He was on his own laptop. "Kerri says that I invented the term 'undine.' I didn't."

"You did," she said.

"Annie invented it."

"Annie publicized it," she corrected. "She asked you for a better name for water elementals than 'water elemental.' You said undine."

"I said three or four things," he protested. "Annie picked the one that stuck."

"And your mom says you and Annie are one mind, separated at the hip. She'd never have picked that word if you hadn't suggested it." She went back to trying to create an organizational chart for the various lumps of enterprise.

------

And another few floors up, Amelia and Samantha were staring in shock at the latest polls about the Amendment.

Before them on Sam's desk was their lawyer's report on how the Supreme Court decision impacted the Amendment. Not public opinions, or votes, but straightforward legal bearing.

Short answer: Not at all.

Longer: He explained that the decision was in support of the Sylph Act. Whether or not it was repealed, the language of the Amendment made it null and void. And the decision attached to it became moot as far as precedents went.

Hidden under that was a report from Dionne Trace about a federal investigation into possible influence peddling connected to that decision.

If all went well, the Anthony' hoped, the decision would become nothing in the legal world except evidence in someone's incarceration.

-------

And halfway across the continent, Millie sat up in her crib and looked at the door of the motor home Mildred had bought. Someone was sneaking across the construction site of Tammy's new home. They cursed the foundation, they cursed the material. They shook blood on the ground and cursed the property.

Millie waved her hand and went back to sleep. Outside, much smaller voices cursed in surprise, cursed in fear and cursed to hear the call of an owl....





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