Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Let's find out!
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
- Thread starter arianedartagnan
- Start date
Haha, we will very soon!
Chapter 35: A Clowder of Cats
Chapter 35: A Clowder of Cats
"See? This is Mr. Turtle! He's my friend!" Taila's muffled voice proclaimed as she fished in her pocket.
I shrank into the deepest corner and pulled my head and legs into my shell, hoping she'd get distracted by something else before she found me.
No such luck. Questing fingertips brushed my shell.
Well, there was no helping it. With a dart of my neck, I nipped the closest finger.
A shriek. The hand vanished. My world started bouncing up and down as Taila screamed, "He bit me! He bit me!"
Well, that seemed a little melodramatic. It was just a tiny, warning nip, to remind her that my existence was supposed to be a secret. I hadn't drawn blood. I hadn't even broken skin.
"Here, Taila, lemme see that finger." The cat spirit sounded patient, as if he had plenty of experience dealing with small children and their tantrums.
Something jostled me, and I pictured Taila thrusting her not-at-all-injured hand at him.
There was a brief pause, and then the cat spirit crooned, "It's just a lil' boo-boo. Lemme lick it better."
A rasping noise, followed by Taila's giggle. "That tickles! Uncle Tasy, that tickles!"
"What'd I tell you? All better now!"
Just then, a new voice, shrill with panic, broke in. "What's wrong? What's wrong? Taila! Taila! Master Gravitas, what's wrong with Taila?"
Ugh, I couldn't see anything from inside this pocket! I started chewing a hole through the cloth.
"It's all right, Mistress Khun," soothed the cat spirit in the same tone he'd used on the four-year-old. "Taila had a lil' boo-boo, but it's all better now, ain't it?"
Apparently she agreed, because I was bounced around some more, and then she was announcing, "Auntie Jo! I had a boo-boo here, an' it hurt a lot, an' Uncle Tasy licked it, an' now it don't hurt anymore!"
Oof, okay, that grammar needed fixing. Maybe I could work out a system in which I poked her or kicked her every time she messed up.
Throughout all this, I'd kept chewing on the fabric, and at last I broke the last thread. Through my new peephole, I saw a blur of stained, brown cloth that could only be Mistress Josy's skirt.
After ascertaining that Taila's finger wasn't in danger of swelling up and killing her with blood poisoning, the woman relaxed and stepped back far enough for me to glimpse more of her. It was that sweet potato vendor. And wait! The brown cloth I'd seen wasn't her skirt at all: It was her apron! Stars and demons, had the woman never heard of laundry? And she sold food for a living? Seriously, who'd eat anything she prepared?
At times like this, I yearned for Cassius' palace and its horde of impeccably clean chefs, sous-chefs, food tasters, footmen, and serving women.
Plonking her hands on her hips, Mistress Khun shouted in a very good imitation of Mistress Jek, "JEK TAILA! What're you doin' here on yer lonesome? Does yer ma know you ran off?"
None of Cassius' servants had talked like this either.
"Ummmmm…." In my field of vision, Taila's shirts shifted, and the toe of her shoe started digging a hole into the dirt.
Well, on the bright side, the girl wasn't a liar. That made her easier to handle. Marginally.
"JEK TAILA! Don't you DARE tell me you sneaked out and came all the way into town!"
At that, Taila started to wail. "But I didn't sneak out! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle! Tell Auntie Jo!" She plunged her hand back into my pocket.
Seriously, could the girl not take a hint?! This time, I didn't try to hide. I stretched out my neck and nipped her finger again, harder since she was clearly a slow learner.
A scream, as loud as a dying goat demon, punctuated the wailing.
I was getting a migraine, and I didn't even know turtles could get migraines. Pulling my head into my shell – not that it blocked the noise one bit – I cursed Master and Mistress Jek for having Taila, Aurelia for continuing to care about her ex-daughter, Flicker for enabling Aurelia's obsession, Lord Silurus for not eating Mistress Jek while she was pregnant, the Goddess of Life for granting my request to let me keep my mind when I reincarnated, and Lady Fate for recruiting me to end Cassius' dynasty and hence setting off the whole chain of events that led to me being here, in this pocket belonging to a screaming, tantrum-ing child, right here and right now. I hate screaming, tantrum-ing children.
Seriously, could the day get any worse?
And that, of course, was when we got swarmed by a clowder of cats.
Jumping off rooftops and streaming out of alleys, they streaked across Main Street, tripping people and donkeys and turning the throng of peasants into a shouting snarl. Out of the tangle strolled a grey tabby with broken stripes, which started rubbing its head against Taila's legs.
Oh boy. The creature better not have fleas.
My world jolted again as Taila flung herself to the ground and wrapped both arms around the cat, howling something that might have been "star" as she wept into its fur – or tried to.
The cat, being a cat, meowed and squirmed and, when that wasn't enough to convince the girl to let go, kicked off her chest with its back legs, twisted midair, and bounded off. The other cats backed up a few steps and regarded her with sharp eyes and twitching tails, poised to flee.
"Noooooo, Staaaaaar! Come baaaaaaack!"
Well, it was good to see that I wasn't the only living creature she treated like a toy.
A different tabby, with thick whorls of dark grey, bright yellow eyes, and a white chest, skirted around Taila and padded up to the sweet potato vendor. "Meow-stress Josy, whatcha doin'?" He twined around her legs and flopped down between her clunky shoes. "D'you have any food for meow-e?"
In the blink of an eye, Master Gravitas leaped over his worktable, landed in a crouch between the sweet potato vendor and the rest of the cats, and swatted the tabby.
He shot behind the clay oven. The other cats' milling moved back by about a foot.
Master Gravitas growled and hissed in Cat, then commanded, "Stop buggin' people, all of you. You'll get fed when it's time an' not a second sooner."
"Oooooo-kaaaay."
"Fiiiine, Master Gravitas."
"Meow!"
Not acting particularly chastened, the cats, both normal and awakened, loped into the nearest alley and melded with the shadows.
But now Taila clomped forward to tug on the sweet potato vendor's filthy apron. "Auntie, Auntie, I wanna red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"
"A red-bean sticky rice dumpling? This time of year?" The woman sounded startled.
"Uh huh. Uh huh. Mr. Turtle said I could. 'Cuz I was good."
"Mr. Turtle?" The woman cast an inquiring glance at Master Gravitas, who just shrugged. Squatting so she was at eye level with Taila, she explained in that sickly sweet, singsong-y voice that people who are not me or Mistress Jek use on small children, "Sticky rice dumplings are for summer, Taila. For the Dragon Boat Festival. 'Member the Dragon Boat Festival? When we go to the river and watch the boat race?"
"Uh huh. Uh huh."
"So we don't have any right now. 'Cuz it's winter. But if yer a good girl, I'm sure yer ma will give you a biiiiiiiig one for the Dragon Boat Festival."
"Uh huh, uh – " Taila started to agree, before it registered that she wasn't going to get the promised dessert right now. "Noooooo! I want it nooooooow! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle!"
Apparently, the sweet potato vendor was also hitting the end of her patience. "Taila – " she began in a warning tone, before a burning smell filled the air.
With a curse that shouldn't be used in front of children (or anyone, really), she sprang to her feet and scuttled back to her oven, where she hauled out a string of sweet potatoes. Her cursing doubled in volume when she saw how black and crispy the skins were, and flowed without a break from expletives to furious accusations such as, "That no-good sister-in-law o' mine, lettin' her kids run wild, ruinin' honest, hardworkin' people's work."
By now, many of the peasants who'd been tripped by the cats had clumped up to watch what passed for street entertainment in the Claymouth Barony. Naturally, they all had their own opinions on Mistress Jek's, Mistress Khun's, and one another's parenting skills, all of which they proclaimed loudly and definitively and, depending on your relationship to the parent in question, completely offensively. Some of the arguments got pretty heated.
I started wracking my brains for an exit, but Master Gravitas beat me to it. Throwing back his head, he let out a loud "Meoooooow!"
At once, cats raced towards his workshop from all directions. A fluffy black one even jumped out of a large bowl on a shelf. All told, a good dozen cat spirits and normal cats assembled in front of him.
"Take Taila home right now," he ordered, then meowed the same instructions (I assumed) in Cat.
"How 'bout some treats first?" bargained the whorled tabby who had hustled the sweet potato vendor for food earlier.
A lithe black cat with a skinny tail hissed, stuck out a paw, and smacked him while Master Gravitas glared at him.
"Done," a third grey tabby with a white face promised Master Gravitas. (Seriously, did cats around here only come in shades of grey?) "C'mon," he called to the other cats. "Y'all know what to do."
And apparently they did, because they surrounded Taila and started rubbing their heads against the backs of her legs and standing up on their hind legs to push her away from the workshop and sweet potato stall.
It was none too soon.
When we were one shop away, a brawl broke out behind us. Apparently people get pretty passionate in the defense of their or their relatives' parenting skills.
Well, if any humans got hurt here, it was not my fault – and even if it were, it was not my problem. Aurelia had promised to see to that.
Above the din, Master Gravitas' voice roared, "Pepper, get back here! Now!"
At the sound of its name, the fluffy black cat twitched its ears – and then kept ambling along as if it hadn't heard a thing.
"I'm not jokin', Pepper. I said NOW!" He added a long string of yowls.
The white-faced tabby that seemed to be head babysitter walked across Pepper's path to block it, but it still refused to turn back. So the same fierce black cat started rumbling a low growl, stalked up to Pepper, hissed, and swatted the side of its head. Only then did Pepper finally slink off.
As the rest of the cats herded Taila out of town, she whined, "Why can't Pepper come? I want Pepper to come. Liliiiiiiiiiiii, whyyyyyyy…."
Licking her hand, the white-faced tabby explained, "Pepper can't come out when it's cold, 'member? She'll get sick."
"But I wanna play with Peppeeeeeeeer."
"Well, sucks t' be you," muttered the whorled tabby, who apparently got grumpy when he was hungry.
"Oy, shut it, Tip," ordered the black cat. "'Less you want a smack upside yer head too."
Looking injured, Tip removed himself to Taila's other side. "C'mon, Bell! I was just sayin'…."
Ignoring them, Lili went on in a practiced way, as if he had to give this explanation all the time – or maybe just every time he saw Taila in the winter. "Pepper's Master Gravitas' only baby, 'member? Should I tell you the story again? Once upon a time, there was a family of cats who lived behind the carpenter's workshop. There was a papa cat and a mama cat and a whoooooole litter of kittens. You like kittens, don't you, Taila?"
"Uh huh! Uh huh!" agreed Taila. She sounded engrossed in the tale.
"The carpenter fed the cat family. The papa cat was big and grey, so he named him Gravitas. Now, Master Gravitas had lived a looooooong, loooooooong time, so he had already awakened and turned into cat spirit."
"Like yoooou!" squealed Taila. "An' Bell, an' Tip, an' Targee…."
"Yes," agreed Lili, cutting off the recital. "Like us. But his wife and babies were still young, so they were still normal cats. One winter, it was very, very cold. It snowed a whole bunch, and all of them got sick. They had runny noses – you know what runny noses are like, right? And they sneezed a bunch. The carpenter let them sleep in his workshop so it would be warmer. Master Gravitas and Pepper got better, but his wife and the other kittens didn't." Here Lili paused, as if their loss were too painful for words.
I couldn't see why. Feral cats died all the time – like all living creatures. Where would we be if everybody lived long enough to awaken?
"An' then? An' then?" pestered Taila, who had no more patience than I did.
"And then…the carpenter was very nice. He took Master Gravitas as an apprentice. When he died, he left the shop to him. And that's why Master Gravitas is our carpenter, and why he and Pepper still live above the workshop, and why Pepper can't come out when it's cold."
"When will Pepper turn into a spirit? I wanna talk to Pepper!"
"Don't worry, it's not long now. Mebe fifty more years?"
"Nooooooooo! I wanna talk to Pepper noooooooooooow!"
"But you can talk to Pepper now, 'member? You tell us what you want to say, and then we tell her, and then she tells us what to say back. And when she turns into a spirit, she'll have lots and lots to say to you."
"Oh, will she ever," muttered Tip.
Bell shoved her head under Taila's hand for petting. "So you be a good girl and listen to yer ma and pa and not go off on yer lonesome. And you'll live fifty years and be around when Pepper turns into a spirit."
I held my breath, waiting for Taila to claim that I'd given her permission to leave Honeysuckle Croft and accompanied her into town, but she didn't. She must have too busy dreaming about the day Pepper awakened and the two could converse directly.
It would never happen. I planned to have her trained and educated and working far away from Black Sand Creek long before then.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!
"See? This is Mr. Turtle! He's my friend!" Taila's muffled voice proclaimed as she fished in her pocket.
I shrank into the deepest corner and pulled my head and legs into my shell, hoping she'd get distracted by something else before she found me.
No such luck. Questing fingertips brushed my shell.
Well, there was no helping it. With a dart of my neck, I nipped the closest finger.
A shriek. The hand vanished. My world started bouncing up and down as Taila screamed, "He bit me! He bit me!"
Well, that seemed a little melodramatic. It was just a tiny, warning nip, to remind her that my existence was supposed to be a secret. I hadn't drawn blood. I hadn't even broken skin.
"Here, Taila, lemme see that finger." The cat spirit sounded patient, as if he had plenty of experience dealing with small children and their tantrums.
Something jostled me, and I pictured Taila thrusting her not-at-all-injured hand at him.
There was a brief pause, and then the cat spirit crooned, "It's just a lil' boo-boo. Lemme lick it better."
A rasping noise, followed by Taila's giggle. "That tickles! Uncle Tasy, that tickles!"
"What'd I tell you? All better now!"
Just then, a new voice, shrill with panic, broke in. "What's wrong? What's wrong? Taila! Taila! Master Gravitas, what's wrong with Taila?"
Ugh, I couldn't see anything from inside this pocket! I started chewing a hole through the cloth.
"It's all right, Mistress Khun," soothed the cat spirit in the same tone he'd used on the four-year-old. "Taila had a lil' boo-boo, but it's all better now, ain't it?"
Apparently she agreed, because I was bounced around some more, and then she was announcing, "Auntie Jo! I had a boo-boo here, an' it hurt a lot, an' Uncle Tasy licked it, an' now it don't hurt anymore!"
Oof, okay, that grammar needed fixing. Maybe I could work out a system in which I poked her or kicked her every time she messed up.
Throughout all this, I'd kept chewing on the fabric, and at last I broke the last thread. Through my new peephole, I saw a blur of stained, brown cloth that could only be Mistress Josy's skirt.
After ascertaining that Taila's finger wasn't in danger of swelling up and killing her with blood poisoning, the woman relaxed and stepped back far enough for me to glimpse more of her. It was that sweet potato vendor. And wait! The brown cloth I'd seen wasn't her skirt at all: It was her apron! Stars and demons, had the woman never heard of laundry? And she sold food for a living? Seriously, who'd eat anything she prepared?
At times like this, I yearned for Cassius' palace and its horde of impeccably clean chefs, sous-chefs, food tasters, footmen, and serving women.
Plonking her hands on her hips, Mistress Khun shouted in a very good imitation of Mistress Jek, "JEK TAILA! What're you doin' here on yer lonesome? Does yer ma know you ran off?"
None of Cassius' servants had talked like this either.
"Ummmmm…." In my field of vision, Taila's shirts shifted, and the toe of her shoe started digging a hole into the dirt.
Well, on the bright side, the girl wasn't a liar. That made her easier to handle. Marginally.
"JEK TAILA! Don't you DARE tell me you sneaked out and came all the way into town!"
At that, Taila started to wail. "But I didn't sneak out! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle! Tell Auntie Jo!" She plunged her hand back into my pocket.
Seriously, could the girl not take a hint?! This time, I didn't try to hide. I stretched out my neck and nipped her finger again, harder since she was clearly a slow learner.
A scream, as loud as a dying goat demon, punctuated the wailing.
I was getting a migraine, and I didn't even know turtles could get migraines. Pulling my head into my shell – not that it blocked the noise one bit – I cursed Master and Mistress Jek for having Taila, Aurelia for continuing to care about her ex-daughter, Flicker for enabling Aurelia's obsession, Lord Silurus for not eating Mistress Jek while she was pregnant, the Goddess of Life for granting my request to let me keep my mind when I reincarnated, and Lady Fate for recruiting me to end Cassius' dynasty and hence setting off the whole chain of events that led to me being here, in this pocket belonging to a screaming, tantrum-ing child, right here and right now. I hate screaming, tantrum-ing children.
Seriously, could the day get any worse?
And that, of course, was when we got swarmed by a clowder of cats.
Jumping off rooftops and streaming out of alleys, they streaked across Main Street, tripping people and donkeys and turning the throng of peasants into a shouting snarl. Out of the tangle strolled a grey tabby with broken stripes, which started rubbing its head against Taila's legs.
Oh boy. The creature better not have fleas.
My world jolted again as Taila flung herself to the ground and wrapped both arms around the cat, howling something that might have been "star" as she wept into its fur – or tried to.
The cat, being a cat, meowed and squirmed and, when that wasn't enough to convince the girl to let go, kicked off her chest with its back legs, twisted midair, and bounded off. The other cats backed up a few steps and regarded her with sharp eyes and twitching tails, poised to flee.
"Noooooo, Staaaaaar! Come baaaaaaack!"
Well, it was good to see that I wasn't the only living creature she treated like a toy.
A different tabby, with thick whorls of dark grey, bright yellow eyes, and a white chest, skirted around Taila and padded up to the sweet potato vendor. "Meow-stress Josy, whatcha doin'?" He twined around her legs and flopped down between her clunky shoes. "D'you have any food for meow-e?"
In the blink of an eye, Master Gravitas leaped over his worktable, landed in a crouch between the sweet potato vendor and the rest of the cats, and swatted the tabby.
He shot behind the clay oven. The other cats' milling moved back by about a foot.
Master Gravitas growled and hissed in Cat, then commanded, "Stop buggin' people, all of you. You'll get fed when it's time an' not a second sooner."
"Oooooo-kaaaay."
"Fiiiine, Master Gravitas."
"Meow!"
Not acting particularly chastened, the cats, both normal and awakened, loped into the nearest alley and melded with the shadows.
But now Taila clomped forward to tug on the sweet potato vendor's filthy apron. "Auntie, Auntie, I wanna red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"
"A red-bean sticky rice dumpling? This time of year?" The woman sounded startled.
"Uh huh. Uh huh. Mr. Turtle said I could. 'Cuz I was good."
"Mr. Turtle?" The woman cast an inquiring glance at Master Gravitas, who just shrugged. Squatting so she was at eye level with Taila, she explained in that sickly sweet, singsong-y voice that people who are not me or Mistress Jek use on small children, "Sticky rice dumplings are for summer, Taila. For the Dragon Boat Festival. 'Member the Dragon Boat Festival? When we go to the river and watch the boat race?"
"Uh huh. Uh huh."
"So we don't have any right now. 'Cuz it's winter. But if yer a good girl, I'm sure yer ma will give you a biiiiiiiig one for the Dragon Boat Festival."
"Uh huh, uh – " Taila started to agree, before it registered that she wasn't going to get the promised dessert right now. "Noooooo! I want it nooooooow! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle!"
Apparently, the sweet potato vendor was also hitting the end of her patience. "Taila – " she began in a warning tone, before a burning smell filled the air.
With a curse that shouldn't be used in front of children (or anyone, really), she sprang to her feet and scuttled back to her oven, where she hauled out a string of sweet potatoes. Her cursing doubled in volume when she saw how black and crispy the skins were, and flowed without a break from expletives to furious accusations such as, "That no-good sister-in-law o' mine, lettin' her kids run wild, ruinin' honest, hardworkin' people's work."
By now, many of the peasants who'd been tripped by the cats had clumped up to watch what passed for street entertainment in the Claymouth Barony. Naturally, they all had their own opinions on Mistress Jek's, Mistress Khun's, and one another's parenting skills, all of which they proclaimed loudly and definitively and, depending on your relationship to the parent in question, completely offensively. Some of the arguments got pretty heated.
I started wracking my brains for an exit, but Master Gravitas beat me to it. Throwing back his head, he let out a loud "Meoooooow!"
At once, cats raced towards his workshop from all directions. A fluffy black one even jumped out of a large bowl on a shelf. All told, a good dozen cat spirits and normal cats assembled in front of him.
"Take Taila home right now," he ordered, then meowed the same instructions (I assumed) in Cat.
"How 'bout some treats first?" bargained the whorled tabby who had hustled the sweet potato vendor for food earlier.
A lithe black cat with a skinny tail hissed, stuck out a paw, and smacked him while Master Gravitas glared at him.
"Done," a third grey tabby with a white face promised Master Gravitas. (Seriously, did cats around here only come in shades of grey?) "C'mon," he called to the other cats. "Y'all know what to do."
And apparently they did, because they surrounded Taila and started rubbing their heads against the backs of her legs and standing up on their hind legs to push her away from the workshop and sweet potato stall.
It was none too soon.
When we were one shop away, a brawl broke out behind us. Apparently people get pretty passionate in the defense of their or their relatives' parenting skills.
Well, if any humans got hurt here, it was not my fault – and even if it were, it was not my problem. Aurelia had promised to see to that.
Above the din, Master Gravitas' voice roared, "Pepper, get back here! Now!"
At the sound of its name, the fluffy black cat twitched its ears – and then kept ambling along as if it hadn't heard a thing.
"I'm not jokin', Pepper. I said NOW!" He added a long string of yowls.
The white-faced tabby that seemed to be head babysitter walked across Pepper's path to block it, but it still refused to turn back. So the same fierce black cat started rumbling a low growl, stalked up to Pepper, hissed, and swatted the side of its head. Only then did Pepper finally slink off.
As the rest of the cats herded Taila out of town, she whined, "Why can't Pepper come? I want Pepper to come. Liliiiiiiiiiiii, whyyyyyyy…."
Licking her hand, the white-faced tabby explained, "Pepper can't come out when it's cold, 'member? She'll get sick."
"But I wanna play with Peppeeeeeeeer."
"Well, sucks t' be you," muttered the whorled tabby, who apparently got grumpy when he was hungry.
"Oy, shut it, Tip," ordered the black cat. "'Less you want a smack upside yer head too."
Looking injured, Tip removed himself to Taila's other side. "C'mon, Bell! I was just sayin'…."
Ignoring them, Lili went on in a practiced way, as if he had to give this explanation all the time – or maybe just every time he saw Taila in the winter. "Pepper's Master Gravitas' only baby, 'member? Should I tell you the story again? Once upon a time, there was a family of cats who lived behind the carpenter's workshop. There was a papa cat and a mama cat and a whoooooole litter of kittens. You like kittens, don't you, Taila?"
"Uh huh! Uh huh!" agreed Taila. She sounded engrossed in the tale.
"The carpenter fed the cat family. The papa cat was big and grey, so he named him Gravitas. Now, Master Gravitas had lived a looooooong, loooooooong time, so he had already awakened and turned into cat spirit."
"Like yoooou!" squealed Taila. "An' Bell, an' Tip, an' Targee…."
"Yes," agreed Lili, cutting off the recital. "Like us. But his wife and babies were still young, so they were still normal cats. One winter, it was very, very cold. It snowed a whole bunch, and all of them got sick. They had runny noses – you know what runny noses are like, right? And they sneezed a bunch. The carpenter let them sleep in his workshop so it would be warmer. Master Gravitas and Pepper got better, but his wife and the other kittens didn't." Here Lili paused, as if their loss were too painful for words.
I couldn't see why. Feral cats died all the time – like all living creatures. Where would we be if everybody lived long enough to awaken?
"An' then? An' then?" pestered Taila, who had no more patience than I did.
"And then…the carpenter was very nice. He took Master Gravitas as an apprentice. When he died, he left the shop to him. And that's why Master Gravitas is our carpenter, and why he and Pepper still live above the workshop, and why Pepper can't come out when it's cold."
"When will Pepper turn into a spirit? I wanna talk to Pepper!"
"Don't worry, it's not long now. Mebe fifty more years?"
"Nooooooooo! I wanna talk to Pepper noooooooooooow!"
"But you can talk to Pepper now, 'member? You tell us what you want to say, and then we tell her, and then she tells us what to say back. And when she turns into a spirit, she'll have lots and lots to say to you."
"Oh, will she ever," muttered Tip.
Bell shoved her head under Taila's hand for petting. "So you be a good girl and listen to yer ma and pa and not go off on yer lonesome. And you'll live fifty years and be around when Pepper turns into a spirit."
I held my breath, waiting for Taila to claim that I'd given her permission to leave Honeysuckle Croft and accompanied her into town, but she didn't. She must have too busy dreaming about the day Pepper awakened and the two could converse directly.
It would never happen. I planned to have her trained and educated and working far away from Black Sand Creek long before then.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!
Nooo, she really isn't. It's just one of the many reasons Aurelia didn't want her near the princes and princesses.
Yeah, it's going to be a problem until Piri learns to be a decent person...which will take a while.
You'll see what the cats are up to!
Chapter 36: Taila's Reward
Chapter 36: Taila's Reward
After that fiasco of a jaunt, I assumed that Taila would forget about her reward – but oh no, she had a longer memory than that. Never underestimate the tenacity of a four-year-old who's been promised dessert.
As soon as the cats herded her back into Honeysuckle Croft's yard, rubbed against her legs, and trotted off, and even before they were out of sight, she reached into her pocket again. This time, I let her wrap her fingers around my shell and pull me out. Although I was expecting teary eyes and a blubbery expression, that was not what I saw.
On the girl's plain features, indignation warred with outrage. "Mr. Turtle! You PROMISED!"
Had Cassia Quarta also remembered all my promises? I'd made some pretty extravagant ones back in the day – paving the slums with gold, roofing the houses with jade, throwing her a birthday party where we invited every single child in the empire, forbidding the study of Serican grammar, issuing an edict banning the existence of older brothers…. If the princess had remembered my promises, she hadn't held me to them.
Or maybe she'd tried to but couldn't find me, and her nannies and governesses had prevailed upon her to give up. I wasn't an easy person to track down when I didn't want to be found, and making myself available to Cassius' children wasn't a top priority.
Hadn't been a top priority.
"You SAID, Mr. Turtle! You SAID I could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"
I cursed whoever invented the things. Their soul had better be rotting away inside a tapeworm.
"I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"
I sighed, craned my neck over her shoulder, and made sure that the cats were out of earshot before I soothed, It looks like they're out of season. Be a good girl and wait for the Dragon Boat Festival, all right? You'll get it then. Now put me down and go see if your mother needs assistance. We're done with classes for the day.
I thought that would be the end of that, but –
"Noooo! I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!!!"
Her screaming brought her mother pelting around the corner. The woman's eyes were wild, her hands and apron caked with mud, and her hair sticking out in all directions. "Taila! Taila! Where've you been! We've been searchin' everywhere!"
Among humans, panic is contagious. Which is sometimes a useful fact.
Just not right now.
Because Taila's reaction to to her mother's fear was to burst into tears and wail incoherently about red-bean sticky rice dumplings and cats while her mother berated her for vanishing and "scarin' the living' daylights outta us!"
Under cover of all the screaming and crying, I tried to slip away – but no such luck. Spotting me at the edge of the yard, Mistress Jek threw herself to the ground and prostrated herself.
"Emissary! Thank you so so so much for bringing Taila back safely! Where did this bad girl go?"
Oh, curses. I wasn't going to get to soak in Caltrop Pond any time soon, and I was exhausted. I should probably have ordered Taila to let her mother know where we were going, shouldn't I? It might have saved me a lot of hassle.
Still, maybe I could tell Mistress Jek about the dessert – or lack thereof – and let her deal with it. Since Taila behaved so well in class, I promised her a reward. We went into town to procure it.
"A reward?" Mistress Jek looked shocked, which puzzled me until she clarified, "Y'mean, like on them Wanted posters?"
"Those Wanted posters," not "them," I corrected automatically. And yes. In a manner of speaking. I told her she could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling, since she appears to have a sweet tooth.
Mistress Jek responded the exact same way the sweet potato vendor had. "A WHAT?! But it's nowhere close to the Dragon Boat Festival!"
Yes. So I had gathered. As I was unaware that these desserts are not available year-round, I would like to enlist your aid in finding an acceptable substitute.
She gawked.
With another sigh, I translated. What can we give Taila instead?
"Oh…. Lemme – let me think about it."
I would appreciate that.
Giving her a regal nod, I escaped at last. I was going to swim around in Caltrop Pond until it was time for the Dragon King's party, and then I was going to dance all the way through the night and past dawn.
That was the reward that I'd earned for my hard day's work.
"Mr. Turtle!"
The next morning, Taila pounced as soon as she spotted me.
Briefly, I considered correcting her and telling her to address me as "Rosie" or "Rosette" or "Great One," or even "Emissary," but it was too much effort. Last night, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond had been in a mood for some sort of newfangled dance that involved finding a partner, forming into two lines, and prancing in repeating patterns up and down the lines. Since Bobo had grabbed Stripey and my usual Dawn Dance rice paddy snake partner hadn't attended the party, I'd gotten stuck with a random frog who tromped all over my feet. He'd even kicked me in the shell!
In short, I didn't have the energy to care what one single human called me. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be "Piri" anyway.
Running all the words into one, Taila demanded, "Ma-and-Pa-say-I-can-have-an-egg-but-only-if-you-say-it's-okay-so-can-I-have-an-egg!"
An egg? As in, a chicken egg? She got that excited over a regular old chicken egg? Didn't they have hens laying eggs in their bedding every morning? Well, whatever. As long as it made her stop whining.
Only if you repeat that more slowly and more properly, I told her. It's "Mother" and "Father," not "Ma" and "Pa." And it's "may," not "can."
"Mother and Father say I may have an egg, but only if you say it's okay, so may I have an egg?" she parroted at a marginally less breakneck pace.
Good enough. Yes. You may.
"Yay!" She ran towards the cottage, skidded to a halt, turned back, cried "Thank you!" and vanished through the doorway.
What was the big deal about an egg?
Moving at my turtle's pace, I followed her into the cottage, where Mistress Jek was stirring a pot of porridge over the hearth. As soon as she saw me, she dropped the ladle and knelt.
"Mornin' – I mean, good morning, Emissary."
Good morning to you too. Taila tells me that you proposed an egg as her reward for studying hard?
Mistress Jek might have trouble producing proper speech on her own, but she understood it just fine. She nodded, her frizzy bun bouncing. "Yes, yes. It's no festival food, but it's the best we could come up with."
That will be acceptable. While she got a basket and started picking through the straw in the hens' corner, I asked, Don't you have fresh eggs every day? Why is Taila so excited about getting to eat an egg?
She flinched, as if she expected me to punish her for malnourishing the girl. "Emissary…the eggs are for sellin', not eatin'. We can't…we can't eat them."
I was stunned. The Jeks grew eggs – I meant, raised chickens that laid eggs – but didn't get to eat any themselves? How could this be?
You mean, you never eat eggs? Taila's never tasted an egg before?!
"Oh, yes, she has," Mistress Jek assured me as she picked up the brown eggs, gave each a quick inspection, and arranged them in the basket. "Every year on her birthday, she gets to have one. She chooses how to have it too. She likes pocketbook eggs."
Pocketbook eggs?
Mistress Jek was unsurprised that I hadn't heard of them. She'd long since painted a mental image of me living a pampered life in Heaven with no idea of what peasant lives on Earth were like. (Which was half true.) So she didn't hesitate before explaining, "You fry an egg until the white is crispy and the yolk is just about done, and then you fold it in half. So the yolk looks like a coin inside a pocketbook."
In short, it was the sort of crude, simple dish that anyone could make. Eh, not everyone had the talent to work as a palace chef, I supposed.
It was oddly soothing to watch her hunt through the straw and collect eggs one by one in a smooth rhythm. Long, long ago, when I'd first moved down from the mountains as a young fox spirit, the farmers in the plains of northwestern Serica had kept chickens too. I'd loved chicken eggs.
Actually, I'd loved chickens even more, but those were harder to catch, and if I ate too many, there wouldn't be any more chickens or eggs. Plus the farmers would go to their local lord for help, and he'd hunt me with his pack of foxhounds.
I hated foxhounds. Almost as much as I hated raccoon dogs. The one was a threat to my literal existence, the other an affront to my sense of aesthetics.
But that reminded me of something: According to Taila, raccoon dogs didn't live around here, but were there foxes that might steal eggs and kill chickens? I hadn't seen any so far, but that didn't mean much. Foxes were good at hiding, and fox spirits had no reason to reveal themselves to a turtle. Maybe fear of fox predation was why the Jeks kept their chickens under the same roof as themselves.
But when I asked, Mistress Jek just gave me a blank look. "Where do you keep chickens in Heaven, Emissary?"
Well, for starters, I was fairly certain that you didn't. In chicken coops, of course.
"Chicken coops?"
You know, a hen house? A small building where the chickens lay eggs and sleep at night so they're safe from predators?
"A hen house, a hen house…," she mused. After a couple repetitions, her eyes lit up. "What does a hen house look like, Emissary?"
And that was how I ended up designing my first-ever chicken coop.
In the winter, farmers had free time for building, so Master Jek, Ailus, Cailus, and Nailus cobbled one together following the schematics that I sketched in the ground. Their coop wound up looking a little wonky since they weren't carpenters and couldn't afford to hire Master Gravitas, but I figured it would be fine as long as it didn't collapse and crush the hens. My main goal was to get the poultry out of the bedding anyway.
After that, I – or rather, the male Jeks – tackled the pigsty. By the time the pig was out of the cottage, Honeysuckle Croft looked a lot more presentable.
All right, making progress here! Next up: beds!
Meanwhile, in town, Khun Josy was chatting with Master Gravitas, as she did every day when she had sweet potatoes to roast and his shop was open.
Or, rather, she was chatting at him while he made the occasional "Mmm" and "Mmmhmm" in response.
It didn't bother her. Master Gravitas had never been the vocal sort, whereas Josy, well, Josy could talk the ears off a parrot, according to that no-good sister-in-law whom her brother had insisted on marrying.
"Dontcha think Vanny's been acting weird lately?" she asked the cat spirit as she fed more branches to the fire in the bottom of her clay oven.
"Mmmm," said Master Gravitas, who was carving a ladle while Pepper sat on his work bench and chewed his tools.
With the fire tended, Josy started picking up sweet potatoes from a basket and ramming a hanger into each one. She was proud of her hangers, which she'd designed herself and ordered from the blacksmith, Master Shay. They had a hook on each end, bent in opposite directions, so she could stab the bottom hook into a sweet potato and then use the top hook to suspend it from the hanger in the previous sweet potato. When she'd built up a long string of them, she removed the pot that she used as an oven lid and checked the sweet potatoes that were already roasting. They were done, so Josy pulled them out and dumped them into the pot. Then she lowered the string of raw sweet potatoes into the oven, hooking the top hanger onto a hoop that ran around the inside edge. Back over the oven went the pot, to keep both the heat in and also the cooked sweet potatoes warm.
"I mean," she continued as she worked, "have you heard her talkin' lately? It's all 'thou art' and 'he hath' and 'I pray thee' this or that. Come on, who talks like that?!"
Clio, the pub serving maid who was Josy's sister's husband's cousin's daughter, ducked across the street to grab a bite to eat and overheard Josy's rant. As she plonked down a copper, she added, "The boys too! Have you seen how Cailus and Nailus walk these days? They throw out their chests and push back their shoulders and just – just – swagger! Like nobles in a play! What in the name of Heaven are they doin'?"
Josy passed her a sweet potato, still steaming hot, and Clio took a big bite without waiting for it to cool. "I don't know what they're doin', but I tell you what – that sister-in-law o' mine has always been crazy. The Loms have always thought they're better than the rest o' us, even when they're dirt poor. There's a streak of madness in that family. It's comin' out in Jek Lom Vanny now, you mark my words. She probably thinks she's some hoity-toity fancy lady livin' in the Empire! I told my brother when he started courtin' her, I told him, 'Nothin' good comes from hangin' with the Loms.' And I was right! See? Ten children born, only five still alive, and she lets 'em run wild! Did you see Taila th'other day? She's four! And her ma lets her run around on her own! No wonder Maila, may her soul have a better next life, got eaten by the catfish demon!"
The blacksmith's wife, Mistress Shay, was passing by on her way to bring him lunch. She also stopped to chat and, since she was there, bought a sweet potato to munch on. "I hear from Bobo that the Jeks have been buildin' fancy contraptions. A chicken coop? A pigsty? What's wrong with keeping their chickens and pig inside their house, like the rest o' us? Do they think they're too good to sleep with the animals?!"
At that, Master Gravitas actually spoke up. "A chicken coop and a pigsty?"
Mistress Shay nodded several times, making her messy grey bun bounce. "Yes! Very shoddy ones too." She clicked her tongue. "You should take a look, Master Gravitas. Mebe give 'em some tips."
"Mmmm," he replied.
"You do that, Master Gravitas," Josy ordered. "At this rate, those buildings are going to fall down and crush the animals, and then those poor children will starve to death before spring."
"I'll look into it," he promised.
Then he turned back to his carving and, no matter how soundly Josy, Clio, and Mistress Shay roasted Jek Lom Vanny, the cat spirit said no more.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!
After that fiasco of a jaunt, I assumed that Taila would forget about her reward – but oh no, she had a longer memory than that. Never underestimate the tenacity of a four-year-old who's been promised dessert.
As soon as the cats herded her back into Honeysuckle Croft's yard, rubbed against her legs, and trotted off, and even before they were out of sight, she reached into her pocket again. This time, I let her wrap her fingers around my shell and pull me out. Although I was expecting teary eyes and a blubbery expression, that was not what I saw.
On the girl's plain features, indignation warred with outrage. "Mr. Turtle! You PROMISED!"
Had Cassia Quarta also remembered all my promises? I'd made some pretty extravagant ones back in the day – paving the slums with gold, roofing the houses with jade, throwing her a birthday party where we invited every single child in the empire, forbidding the study of Serican grammar, issuing an edict banning the existence of older brothers…. If the princess had remembered my promises, she hadn't held me to them.
Or maybe she'd tried to but couldn't find me, and her nannies and governesses had prevailed upon her to give up. I wasn't an easy person to track down when I didn't want to be found, and making myself available to Cassius' children wasn't a top priority.
Hadn't been a top priority.
"You SAID, Mr. Turtle! You SAID I could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"
I cursed whoever invented the things. Their soul had better be rotting away inside a tapeworm.
"I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"
I sighed, craned my neck over her shoulder, and made sure that the cats were out of earshot before I soothed, It looks like they're out of season. Be a good girl and wait for the Dragon Boat Festival, all right? You'll get it then. Now put me down and go see if your mother needs assistance. We're done with classes for the day.
I thought that would be the end of that, but –
"Noooo! I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!!!"
Her screaming brought her mother pelting around the corner. The woman's eyes were wild, her hands and apron caked with mud, and her hair sticking out in all directions. "Taila! Taila! Where've you been! We've been searchin' everywhere!"
Among humans, panic is contagious. Which is sometimes a useful fact.
Just not right now.
Because Taila's reaction to to her mother's fear was to burst into tears and wail incoherently about red-bean sticky rice dumplings and cats while her mother berated her for vanishing and "scarin' the living' daylights outta us!"
Under cover of all the screaming and crying, I tried to slip away – but no such luck. Spotting me at the edge of the yard, Mistress Jek threw herself to the ground and prostrated herself.
"Emissary! Thank you so so so much for bringing Taila back safely! Where did this bad girl go?"
Oh, curses. I wasn't going to get to soak in Caltrop Pond any time soon, and I was exhausted. I should probably have ordered Taila to let her mother know where we were going, shouldn't I? It might have saved me a lot of hassle.
Still, maybe I could tell Mistress Jek about the dessert – or lack thereof – and let her deal with it. Since Taila behaved so well in class, I promised her a reward. We went into town to procure it.
"A reward?" Mistress Jek looked shocked, which puzzled me until she clarified, "Y'mean, like on them Wanted posters?"
"Those Wanted posters," not "them," I corrected automatically. And yes. In a manner of speaking. I told her she could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling, since she appears to have a sweet tooth.
Mistress Jek responded the exact same way the sweet potato vendor had. "A WHAT?! But it's nowhere close to the Dragon Boat Festival!"
Yes. So I had gathered. As I was unaware that these desserts are not available year-round, I would like to enlist your aid in finding an acceptable substitute.
She gawked.
With another sigh, I translated. What can we give Taila instead?
"Oh…. Lemme – let me think about it."
I would appreciate that.
Giving her a regal nod, I escaped at last. I was going to swim around in Caltrop Pond until it was time for the Dragon King's party, and then I was going to dance all the way through the night and past dawn.
That was the reward that I'd earned for my hard day's work.
"Mr. Turtle!"
The next morning, Taila pounced as soon as she spotted me.
Briefly, I considered correcting her and telling her to address me as "Rosie" or "Rosette" or "Great One," or even "Emissary," but it was too much effort. Last night, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond had been in a mood for some sort of newfangled dance that involved finding a partner, forming into two lines, and prancing in repeating patterns up and down the lines. Since Bobo had grabbed Stripey and my usual Dawn Dance rice paddy snake partner hadn't attended the party, I'd gotten stuck with a random frog who tromped all over my feet. He'd even kicked me in the shell!
In short, I didn't have the energy to care what one single human called me. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be "Piri" anyway.
Running all the words into one, Taila demanded, "Ma-and-Pa-say-I-can-have-an-egg-but-only-if-you-say-it's-okay-so-can-I-have-an-egg!"
An egg? As in, a chicken egg? She got that excited over a regular old chicken egg? Didn't they have hens laying eggs in their bedding every morning? Well, whatever. As long as it made her stop whining.
Only if you repeat that more slowly and more properly, I told her. It's "Mother" and "Father," not "Ma" and "Pa." And it's "may," not "can."
"Mother and Father say I may have an egg, but only if you say it's okay, so may I have an egg?" she parroted at a marginally less breakneck pace.
Good enough. Yes. You may.
"Yay!" She ran towards the cottage, skidded to a halt, turned back, cried "Thank you!" and vanished through the doorway.
What was the big deal about an egg?
Moving at my turtle's pace, I followed her into the cottage, where Mistress Jek was stirring a pot of porridge over the hearth. As soon as she saw me, she dropped the ladle and knelt.
"Mornin' – I mean, good morning, Emissary."
Good morning to you too. Taila tells me that you proposed an egg as her reward for studying hard?
Mistress Jek might have trouble producing proper speech on her own, but she understood it just fine. She nodded, her frizzy bun bouncing. "Yes, yes. It's no festival food, but it's the best we could come up with."
That will be acceptable. While she got a basket and started picking through the straw in the hens' corner, I asked, Don't you have fresh eggs every day? Why is Taila so excited about getting to eat an egg?
She flinched, as if she expected me to punish her for malnourishing the girl. "Emissary…the eggs are for sellin', not eatin'. We can't…we can't eat them."
I was stunned. The Jeks grew eggs – I meant, raised chickens that laid eggs – but didn't get to eat any themselves? How could this be?
You mean, you never eat eggs? Taila's never tasted an egg before?!
"Oh, yes, she has," Mistress Jek assured me as she picked up the brown eggs, gave each a quick inspection, and arranged them in the basket. "Every year on her birthday, she gets to have one. She chooses how to have it too. She likes pocketbook eggs."
Pocketbook eggs?
Mistress Jek was unsurprised that I hadn't heard of them. She'd long since painted a mental image of me living a pampered life in Heaven with no idea of what peasant lives on Earth were like. (Which was half true.) So she didn't hesitate before explaining, "You fry an egg until the white is crispy and the yolk is just about done, and then you fold it in half. So the yolk looks like a coin inside a pocketbook."
In short, it was the sort of crude, simple dish that anyone could make. Eh, not everyone had the talent to work as a palace chef, I supposed.
It was oddly soothing to watch her hunt through the straw and collect eggs one by one in a smooth rhythm. Long, long ago, when I'd first moved down from the mountains as a young fox spirit, the farmers in the plains of northwestern Serica had kept chickens too. I'd loved chicken eggs.
Actually, I'd loved chickens even more, but those were harder to catch, and if I ate too many, there wouldn't be any more chickens or eggs. Plus the farmers would go to their local lord for help, and he'd hunt me with his pack of foxhounds.
I hated foxhounds. Almost as much as I hated raccoon dogs. The one was a threat to my literal existence, the other an affront to my sense of aesthetics.
But that reminded me of something: According to Taila, raccoon dogs didn't live around here, but were there foxes that might steal eggs and kill chickens? I hadn't seen any so far, but that didn't mean much. Foxes were good at hiding, and fox spirits had no reason to reveal themselves to a turtle. Maybe fear of fox predation was why the Jeks kept their chickens under the same roof as themselves.
But when I asked, Mistress Jek just gave me a blank look. "Where do you keep chickens in Heaven, Emissary?"
Well, for starters, I was fairly certain that you didn't. In chicken coops, of course.
"Chicken coops?"
You know, a hen house? A small building where the chickens lay eggs and sleep at night so they're safe from predators?
"A hen house, a hen house…," she mused. After a couple repetitions, her eyes lit up. "What does a hen house look like, Emissary?"
And that was how I ended up designing my first-ever chicken coop.
In the winter, farmers had free time for building, so Master Jek, Ailus, Cailus, and Nailus cobbled one together following the schematics that I sketched in the ground. Their coop wound up looking a little wonky since they weren't carpenters and couldn't afford to hire Master Gravitas, but I figured it would be fine as long as it didn't collapse and crush the hens. My main goal was to get the poultry out of the bedding anyway.
After that, I – or rather, the male Jeks – tackled the pigsty. By the time the pig was out of the cottage, Honeysuckle Croft looked a lot more presentable.
All right, making progress here! Next up: beds!
Meanwhile, in town, Khun Josy was chatting with Master Gravitas, as she did every day when she had sweet potatoes to roast and his shop was open.
Or, rather, she was chatting at him while he made the occasional "Mmm" and "Mmmhmm" in response.
It didn't bother her. Master Gravitas had never been the vocal sort, whereas Josy, well, Josy could talk the ears off a parrot, according to that no-good sister-in-law whom her brother had insisted on marrying.
"Dontcha think Vanny's been acting weird lately?" she asked the cat spirit as she fed more branches to the fire in the bottom of her clay oven.
"Mmmm," said Master Gravitas, who was carving a ladle while Pepper sat on his work bench and chewed his tools.
With the fire tended, Josy started picking up sweet potatoes from a basket and ramming a hanger into each one. She was proud of her hangers, which she'd designed herself and ordered from the blacksmith, Master Shay. They had a hook on each end, bent in opposite directions, so she could stab the bottom hook into a sweet potato and then use the top hook to suspend it from the hanger in the previous sweet potato. When she'd built up a long string of them, she removed the pot that she used as an oven lid and checked the sweet potatoes that were already roasting. They were done, so Josy pulled them out and dumped them into the pot. Then she lowered the string of raw sweet potatoes into the oven, hooking the top hanger onto a hoop that ran around the inside edge. Back over the oven went the pot, to keep both the heat in and also the cooked sweet potatoes warm.
"I mean," she continued as she worked, "have you heard her talkin' lately? It's all 'thou art' and 'he hath' and 'I pray thee' this or that. Come on, who talks like that?!"
Clio, the pub serving maid who was Josy's sister's husband's cousin's daughter, ducked across the street to grab a bite to eat and overheard Josy's rant. As she plonked down a copper, she added, "The boys too! Have you seen how Cailus and Nailus walk these days? They throw out their chests and push back their shoulders and just – just – swagger! Like nobles in a play! What in the name of Heaven are they doin'?"
Josy passed her a sweet potato, still steaming hot, and Clio took a big bite without waiting for it to cool. "I don't know what they're doin', but I tell you what – that sister-in-law o' mine has always been crazy. The Loms have always thought they're better than the rest o' us, even when they're dirt poor. There's a streak of madness in that family. It's comin' out in Jek Lom Vanny now, you mark my words. She probably thinks she's some hoity-toity fancy lady livin' in the Empire! I told my brother when he started courtin' her, I told him, 'Nothin' good comes from hangin' with the Loms.' And I was right! See? Ten children born, only five still alive, and she lets 'em run wild! Did you see Taila th'other day? She's four! And her ma lets her run around on her own! No wonder Maila, may her soul have a better next life, got eaten by the catfish demon!"
The blacksmith's wife, Mistress Shay, was passing by on her way to bring him lunch. She also stopped to chat and, since she was there, bought a sweet potato to munch on. "I hear from Bobo that the Jeks have been buildin' fancy contraptions. A chicken coop? A pigsty? What's wrong with keeping their chickens and pig inside their house, like the rest o' us? Do they think they're too good to sleep with the animals?!"
At that, Master Gravitas actually spoke up. "A chicken coop and a pigsty?"
Mistress Shay nodded several times, making her messy grey bun bounce. "Yes! Very shoddy ones too." She clicked her tongue. "You should take a look, Master Gravitas. Mebe give 'em some tips."
"Mmmm," he replied.
"You do that, Master Gravitas," Josy ordered. "At this rate, those buildings are going to fall down and crush the animals, and then those poor children will starve to death before spring."
"I'll look into it," he promised.
Then he turned back to his carving and, no matter how soundly Josy, Clio, and Mistress Shay roasted Jek Lom Vanny, the cat spirit said no more.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!
Occasionally she can be a good influence in spite of herself.
Glad you enjoyed the peek at her early years!
Things might go swimingly, or they may lead to disaster.
Mushu would be proud.
Mushu would be proud.
As long as they lead to disaster in an entertaining way, right...?
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Bullshit politics. As part of Piri's old boss' plot to not admit that Piri was entirely on-mission when she ruined everything, she promoted Cassius as an "apology."
Yep! It's all about politics up in Heaven. Lady Fate got mad at Cassius for defacing her temple, sent Piri to ruin his dynasty ahead of schedule, and freaked out when Cassius executed his cousin who was supposed to found the next dynasty. Lady Fate didn't want to admit her mistake, so she blamed Piri's demonic nature for all the bloodshed. At the same time, Heaven didn't want to admit that an emperor it had approved would be such an awful ruler. So in the end they deified Cassius, his executed empress, and his executed cousin. It's a little awkward.
A Report on Caltrop Pond, Submitted by Agent G
One of you asked for a picture of the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, and here it is! Those of you who have read the Patreon short story "The Apprentice Cats" might be able to guess who Agents G and P are.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vIx_2oxp13G9DCOuudMX5hf2d3fCFEo-/view?usp=sharing
In case you can't see it, here is the direct link.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vIx_2oxp13G9DCOuudMX5hf2d3fCFEo-/view?usp=sharing
In case you can't see it, here is the direct link.
Thanks! He's definitely drunk.
Haha, now I want a crispy egg too. My grandparents used to make them for me.
Chapter 37: That Cursed Chicken Coop
Chapter 37: That Cursed Chicken Coop
As the wintry days passed, Honeysuckle Croft and its inhabitants started to edge towards presentability. And by presentable, I mean that they no longer bedded down with the livestock, ate with one boot propped on the bench, or butchered the Serican language quite so often. I hadn't succeeded in getting them off the floor and into proper beds yet, but that was mostly because they lacked the supplies, the carpentry skills, and the money required to hire someone with aforementioned supplies and carpentry skills.
Still, overall, things were looking up for all of us – the Jeks because they no longer slouched along with their eyes on the ground, and me because just look at how much I was improving these humans' lives! Think of all the karma I was earning! Reincarnee of the Decade, here I come!
As the New Year approached, I was feeling optimistic.
And not just because of my career in home improvement, but also because the Kitchen God was due to leave Earth on the twenty-third of the Bitter Moon, return to the Bureau of Reincarnation for a week, and make sure Cassius wasn't trying to wrest power away from him. No matter how incompetent a bureau head the absentee Kitchen God was, I guaranteed that Cassius would be worse. He held a deep and personal grudge against me. As for the Kitchen God, well, I doubted that he was even aware of my existence. He was too busy flitting from kitchen to kitchen across the length and breadth of Serica, spying on families for his end-of-the-year report to Heaven and scrounging for offerings (a.k.a. bribes) from his worshippers. The zeal with which he tackled that portion of his responsibilities suggested that he wouldn't have much power in Heaven otherwise.
Always good to have a supervisor who doesn't bother to supervise you.
So anyway, I was in a good mood when that cat spirit carpenter, Master Gravitas, dropped by for a visit one morning. It wasn't too long after dawn, so I was still dragging my exhausted, danced-out self across the fields from Caltrop Pond when I heard Taila's squeal of delight.
"Uncle Tasy! Uncle Tasy!"
The cat's voice drifted to me on the wind. "Hullo, Taila. Mornin', Master Jek, Mistress Jek. Ailus, Cailus, Nailus."
"Master Gravitas!" exclaimed Mistress Jek in the second-most respectful tone I'd heard from her. (First place went to the one she reserved for me and Flicker.) "What a pleasure to see you!"
At the polite phrasing, I nodded to myself in congratulations. Just look at what a good teacher I was!
Her next sentence partially spoiled the effect, though. "What brings you here so early in the mornin'?"
Ugh, sigh. I rolled my eyes. She was still dropping her "ing"s. We'd have to work on it more.
The cat, however, didn't register her faux pas. In even worse Serican, he said, "I was hopin' t'catch both o' you afore Master Jek goes out t'check on the fields."
"Oh, fer real?" asked Master Jek, who didn't learn nearly as fast as his wife.
At the same time, Mistress Jek inquired, "What about?" Then, recalling her manners, she invited, "Won't you come in, please? Have you eaten yet? You should have breakfast with us. Rice porridge and pickled greens. Ailus! Go get Master Gravitas an egg! Master Gravitas, how d'you like your eggs cooked?"
"Oh no no no, no need, I ate before comin'. I'll just have some tea."
Their voices moved indoors as I finally plodded to the edge of the yard. Circling around it, I found an angle that let me see through the doorway and make out their vague shapes inside the dark cottage. Then I hid in a clump of dead grasses so neither Master Gravitas nor Taila would catch sight of me. No amount of berating or biting had ever taught her not to introduce her turtle friend to everyone she met.
Wooden spoons clunked dully against wooden bowls as the Jeks and their guest ate their breakfast porridge. Over his protestations, Mistress Jek had forced a bowl on Master Gravitas and even topped it with a pocketbook egg. Taila was staring at it, googly-eyed.
"I heard from Mistress Shay that you built a chicken coop and a pigsty," Master Gravitas was saying. "I was hopin' to have a look-see."
The elder Jeks exchanged nervous glances.
"Oh, haha, those!" Mistress Jek sounded too flustered to not be guilty of something. "They're not very good…we just sorta threw them together…they're really not worth seeing…. I'm sorry you came all the way out here for that!"
As for Master Jek, he raised his bowl to his mouth and slurped his porridge to hide his face. On the opposite bench, the boys were elbowing one another and peeking sidelong at their little sister.
Aww, curses. None of them possessed the slightest talent for dissembling. I needed to teach them how to act too.
"Oh, no, no," Master Gravitas assured them, "the coop's really interestin'! I got a bit o' a look from the road, and the design's different from what I've seen 'round these parts. Actually, I din't think people still built coops 'round here."
"Oh, haha, well, it's because it's not really a design, we just sorta made it up as we went…."
At that, Taila managed to drag her eyes away from the half-eaten egg long enough to meet the cat spirit's gaze and announce in an earnest voice, "It's because Mr. Turtle – "
"Eggs!" broke in Mistress Jek desperately. "Why don't we all have an egg to celebrate Master Gravitas visitin'? Go pick out an egg for yourselves, kids!"
Forgetting everything but their stomachs, the boys cheered and dove off the benches to hunt for the perfect egg. Taila stumbled after them, whining, "Heeeey! No fair! Wait for meeeeeee!"
I feared for the coop.
Although, come to think of it, it might not be a tragedy if the wretched thing collapsed before the carpenter got a good look. It had never occurred to me that chicken coops might have their region-dependent architectural styles. It was a box for hens to lay eggs in, for crying out loud! How many possible designs could there be?!
Apparently, too many.
If Mistress Jek had hoped to distract the kids from blurting out the family secret, she'd succeeded. If she'd hoped to prevent Master Gravitas from scrutinizing the design of the coop, however, she'd failed. Miserably.
"I'll just go with the young'uns and help 'em pick," he said, rising from the bench and padding after the children.
As his tail swished around the doorframe, Master Jek hissed at his wife, "Whatcha go and say that for? You were practically beggin' him to go look at it!"
She threw up her hands. "I freaked out, okay? It's not like you were helpin' any!"
"Well, what d'we do now?"
"You're askin' me?"
And they both scrambled after Master Gravitas. By the time they caught up, the children were fighting over who got first pick of the eggs, while the carpenter ambled around the coop, examining it from all angles. The tip of his tail twitched with curiosity as he ran his hands over the joins. Putting one palm on a corner, he pressed experimentally. The coop wobbled but held.
"That's a good design," he pronounced, and I smirked to myself.
Of course it was a good design. I'd come up with it, hadn't I? I, of all people, knew my way around a chicken coop.
Master Gravitas started to stroll towards Master and Mistress Jek, but right at that moment, Cailus shouted in triumph and dashed right in front of him into the coop. The cat spirit made a near-vertical leap over the boy's head to avoid crashing into him, landed lightly, and kept walking as if nothing had happened. "A little old-fashioned," he remarked, "but good and solid."
I grumbled a little to myself. Old-fashioned indeed! What was I – somebody's creaky old spinster great-aunt?
"Gladja think so," said Master Jek, not hiding his relief.
"You're too kind," Mistress Jek added, remembering what I'd taught them about good manners.
There were thrashing sounds off to the side, from the members of the Jek family who didn't remember my lessons. Ailus and Nailus had teamed up to haul Cailus out of the coop by the legs. He slithered out on his belly, hands cupped protectively around an egg.
Mistress Jek opened her mouth to bellow at them, then gritted her teeth instead.
"How'dja come up with the design?" asked Master Gravitas, pretending not to notice the civil war raging next to him. "It reminds me a bit o' how they build coops in the northwest."
I froze. Of course it reminded him of chicken coops in the northwest. That was where I'd come from, long, long ago.
You might expect animals and humans to awaken with the same frequency everywhere on Earth, but that wasn't the case. No one knew why, either. The Imperial Mages had had theories, of course, but since they ran the gamut from semi-probable to improbable to wildly improbable to obviously impossible, I'd ignored them. Apart from throwing funding at them when they groveled nicely enough.
Anyway, most spirits awakened in a few specific areas. The Jade Mountains along the northern coast were one, and the Snowy Mountains that ran down the western coast and roughly east-west through the middle of Serica were another. Since the mountains were also where demon kings and human bandits liked to hide out, and since newly awakened spirits didn't have the best grasp of, shall we say, socially acceptable standards of behavior, we called those areas the Wilds. I'd awakened in the northwestern corner of Serica, more or less where the two mountain ranges met. After serving as a demon king's courier and spy for a while, I'd decided to explore the settlements down on the plains.
Which was where I'd discovered chickens.
And chicken coops.
And chicken coop designs that were apparently specific to the region and a dead giveaway for my true identity–
Breathe, Piri. No one's going to connect a weird turtle with a nine-tailed fox from five hundred years ago. No one except for Aurelia and Flicker know you're here – and if Heaven finds out, the star goddess and the clerk will be in a lot more trouble than the soul they reincarnated.
It would be okay. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to stop hyperventilating.
Meanwhile, Master and Mistress Jek weren't handling Master Gravitas' prying any better than I was.
"Oh, really?" asked Master Jek unconvincingly. "The northwest? That's really interestin'!"
"Mmhmm," agreed Master Gravitas. "You see the shape of the doorway? They do that in the northwest to keep foxes out."
"Foxes?" asked Mistress Jek with genuine blankness. "Are foxes a problem for chickens?"
Wait – was the reason that I hadn't seen any foxes around here that there literally weren't any foxes around here? At all? But there should be! We lived everywhere!
"Mmhmm," replied the cat. "Foxes steal chicken eggs and eat chickens. Not 'round here, o' course. The lords and ladies hunted 'em out. For fun, y'know, 'cuz foxes are smart critters? But last time I was in the northwest, they still had a fox problem. Dem'd things come outta the Wilds."
A shiver of rage went through me. How dare anyone hunt my brothers and sisters for "fun"!
Almost at once, the shiver of rage transformed into a cold shudder. Fox hunting had not been an aristocratic pastime back in the Empire. I mean, why would you do it? Why would you kill innocent creatures – okay, sometimes not-so-innocent creatures – for sport? What was the point? If you weren't a demon, I meant? Had this part of Serica had also turned into the Wilds?
But no, that wasn't the impression I'd gotten, and I'd spent enough lives in the vicinity of Black Sand Creek to tell. So that meant that sometime after the fall of the Empire, Sericans had begun to eliminate the fox population by casting it as fun and games.
Why foxes in particular? We had our rivalry with the raccoon dog spirits, of course, but also with the wolf spirits, who scorned the deer and serow spirits, who competed with the black bear and cloud leopard spirits, and so on. But no one group had ever considered eradicating another. Not seriously, anyway.
It couldn't be my fault that Sericans hated foxes so much, could it?
No, no, of course not.
No one would be so dumb as to blame all foxes for one nine-tailed fox demon's actions. That would be like wiping out all humans because Cassius had existed.
Modern-day Sericans were just weird. They wore weird clothing, lived in weird homes, spoke in weird ways, and had weird pastimes.
Well, I'd just have to fix that. One family at a time.
I turned my attention back to my current group of work-in-progress, modern-day Sericans in time to hear Master Gravitas praise them, "You did a good job here. The coop should hold. Lemme know if you wanna build anything else. I'm always happy to help out."
After some pleasantries about the weather and the upcoming New Year festivities, and some praise for Mistress Jek's cooking, Master Gravitas bade the family farewell and padded back down Persimmon Tree Lane.
I lumbered out of hiding to start Taila's lessons, giving the chicken coop a wide berth.
A/N 1: Thanks to my readers for fun discussions and cute ideas, especially Spectrum and Silvan Eldar!
A/N 2: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!
As the wintry days passed, Honeysuckle Croft and its inhabitants started to edge towards presentability. And by presentable, I mean that they no longer bedded down with the livestock, ate with one boot propped on the bench, or butchered the Serican language quite so often. I hadn't succeeded in getting them off the floor and into proper beds yet, but that was mostly because they lacked the supplies, the carpentry skills, and the money required to hire someone with aforementioned supplies and carpentry skills.
Still, overall, things were looking up for all of us – the Jeks because they no longer slouched along with their eyes on the ground, and me because just look at how much I was improving these humans' lives! Think of all the karma I was earning! Reincarnee of the Decade, here I come!
As the New Year approached, I was feeling optimistic.
And not just because of my career in home improvement, but also because the Kitchen God was due to leave Earth on the twenty-third of the Bitter Moon, return to the Bureau of Reincarnation for a week, and make sure Cassius wasn't trying to wrest power away from him. No matter how incompetent a bureau head the absentee Kitchen God was, I guaranteed that Cassius would be worse. He held a deep and personal grudge against me. As for the Kitchen God, well, I doubted that he was even aware of my existence. He was too busy flitting from kitchen to kitchen across the length and breadth of Serica, spying on families for his end-of-the-year report to Heaven and scrounging for offerings (a.k.a. bribes) from his worshippers. The zeal with which he tackled that portion of his responsibilities suggested that he wouldn't have much power in Heaven otherwise.
Always good to have a supervisor who doesn't bother to supervise you.
So anyway, I was in a good mood when that cat spirit carpenter, Master Gravitas, dropped by for a visit one morning. It wasn't too long after dawn, so I was still dragging my exhausted, danced-out self across the fields from Caltrop Pond when I heard Taila's squeal of delight.
"Uncle Tasy! Uncle Tasy!"
The cat's voice drifted to me on the wind. "Hullo, Taila. Mornin', Master Jek, Mistress Jek. Ailus, Cailus, Nailus."
"Master Gravitas!" exclaimed Mistress Jek in the second-most respectful tone I'd heard from her. (First place went to the one she reserved for me and Flicker.) "What a pleasure to see you!"
At the polite phrasing, I nodded to myself in congratulations. Just look at what a good teacher I was!
Her next sentence partially spoiled the effect, though. "What brings you here so early in the mornin'?"
Ugh, sigh. I rolled my eyes. She was still dropping her "ing"s. We'd have to work on it more.
The cat, however, didn't register her faux pas. In even worse Serican, he said, "I was hopin' t'catch both o' you afore Master Jek goes out t'check on the fields."
"Oh, fer real?" asked Master Jek, who didn't learn nearly as fast as his wife.
At the same time, Mistress Jek inquired, "What about?" Then, recalling her manners, she invited, "Won't you come in, please? Have you eaten yet? You should have breakfast with us. Rice porridge and pickled greens. Ailus! Go get Master Gravitas an egg! Master Gravitas, how d'you like your eggs cooked?"
"Oh no no no, no need, I ate before comin'. I'll just have some tea."
Their voices moved indoors as I finally plodded to the edge of the yard. Circling around it, I found an angle that let me see through the doorway and make out their vague shapes inside the dark cottage. Then I hid in a clump of dead grasses so neither Master Gravitas nor Taila would catch sight of me. No amount of berating or biting had ever taught her not to introduce her turtle friend to everyone she met.
Wooden spoons clunked dully against wooden bowls as the Jeks and their guest ate their breakfast porridge. Over his protestations, Mistress Jek had forced a bowl on Master Gravitas and even topped it with a pocketbook egg. Taila was staring at it, googly-eyed.
"I heard from Mistress Shay that you built a chicken coop and a pigsty," Master Gravitas was saying. "I was hopin' to have a look-see."
The elder Jeks exchanged nervous glances.
"Oh, haha, those!" Mistress Jek sounded too flustered to not be guilty of something. "They're not very good…we just sorta threw them together…they're really not worth seeing…. I'm sorry you came all the way out here for that!"
As for Master Jek, he raised his bowl to his mouth and slurped his porridge to hide his face. On the opposite bench, the boys were elbowing one another and peeking sidelong at their little sister.
Aww, curses. None of them possessed the slightest talent for dissembling. I needed to teach them how to act too.
"Oh, no, no," Master Gravitas assured them, "the coop's really interestin'! I got a bit o' a look from the road, and the design's different from what I've seen 'round these parts. Actually, I din't think people still built coops 'round here."
"Oh, haha, well, it's because it's not really a design, we just sorta made it up as we went…."
At that, Taila managed to drag her eyes away from the half-eaten egg long enough to meet the cat spirit's gaze and announce in an earnest voice, "It's because Mr. Turtle – "
"Eggs!" broke in Mistress Jek desperately. "Why don't we all have an egg to celebrate Master Gravitas visitin'? Go pick out an egg for yourselves, kids!"
Forgetting everything but their stomachs, the boys cheered and dove off the benches to hunt for the perfect egg. Taila stumbled after them, whining, "Heeeey! No fair! Wait for meeeeeee!"
I feared for the coop.
Although, come to think of it, it might not be a tragedy if the wretched thing collapsed before the carpenter got a good look. It had never occurred to me that chicken coops might have their region-dependent architectural styles. It was a box for hens to lay eggs in, for crying out loud! How many possible designs could there be?!
Apparently, too many.
If Mistress Jek had hoped to distract the kids from blurting out the family secret, she'd succeeded. If she'd hoped to prevent Master Gravitas from scrutinizing the design of the coop, however, she'd failed. Miserably.
"I'll just go with the young'uns and help 'em pick," he said, rising from the bench and padding after the children.
As his tail swished around the doorframe, Master Jek hissed at his wife, "Whatcha go and say that for? You were practically beggin' him to go look at it!"
She threw up her hands. "I freaked out, okay? It's not like you were helpin' any!"
"Well, what d'we do now?"
"You're askin' me?"
And they both scrambled after Master Gravitas. By the time they caught up, the children were fighting over who got first pick of the eggs, while the carpenter ambled around the coop, examining it from all angles. The tip of his tail twitched with curiosity as he ran his hands over the joins. Putting one palm on a corner, he pressed experimentally. The coop wobbled but held.
"That's a good design," he pronounced, and I smirked to myself.
Of course it was a good design. I'd come up with it, hadn't I? I, of all people, knew my way around a chicken coop.
Master Gravitas started to stroll towards Master and Mistress Jek, but right at that moment, Cailus shouted in triumph and dashed right in front of him into the coop. The cat spirit made a near-vertical leap over the boy's head to avoid crashing into him, landed lightly, and kept walking as if nothing had happened. "A little old-fashioned," he remarked, "but good and solid."
I grumbled a little to myself. Old-fashioned indeed! What was I – somebody's creaky old spinster great-aunt?
"Gladja think so," said Master Jek, not hiding his relief.
"You're too kind," Mistress Jek added, remembering what I'd taught them about good manners.
There were thrashing sounds off to the side, from the members of the Jek family who didn't remember my lessons. Ailus and Nailus had teamed up to haul Cailus out of the coop by the legs. He slithered out on his belly, hands cupped protectively around an egg.
Mistress Jek opened her mouth to bellow at them, then gritted her teeth instead.
"How'dja come up with the design?" asked Master Gravitas, pretending not to notice the civil war raging next to him. "It reminds me a bit o' how they build coops in the northwest."
I froze. Of course it reminded him of chicken coops in the northwest. That was where I'd come from, long, long ago.
You might expect animals and humans to awaken with the same frequency everywhere on Earth, but that wasn't the case. No one knew why, either. The Imperial Mages had had theories, of course, but since they ran the gamut from semi-probable to improbable to wildly improbable to obviously impossible, I'd ignored them. Apart from throwing funding at them when they groveled nicely enough.
Anyway, most spirits awakened in a few specific areas. The Jade Mountains along the northern coast were one, and the Snowy Mountains that ran down the western coast and roughly east-west through the middle of Serica were another. Since the mountains were also where demon kings and human bandits liked to hide out, and since newly awakened spirits didn't have the best grasp of, shall we say, socially acceptable standards of behavior, we called those areas the Wilds. I'd awakened in the northwestern corner of Serica, more or less where the two mountain ranges met. After serving as a demon king's courier and spy for a while, I'd decided to explore the settlements down on the plains.
Which was where I'd discovered chickens.
And chicken coops.
And chicken coop designs that were apparently specific to the region and a dead giveaway for my true identity–
Breathe, Piri. No one's going to connect a weird turtle with a nine-tailed fox from five hundred years ago. No one except for Aurelia and Flicker know you're here – and if Heaven finds out, the star goddess and the clerk will be in a lot more trouble than the soul they reincarnated.
It would be okay. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to stop hyperventilating.
Meanwhile, Master and Mistress Jek weren't handling Master Gravitas' prying any better than I was.
"Oh, really?" asked Master Jek unconvincingly. "The northwest? That's really interestin'!"
"Mmhmm," agreed Master Gravitas. "You see the shape of the doorway? They do that in the northwest to keep foxes out."
"Foxes?" asked Mistress Jek with genuine blankness. "Are foxes a problem for chickens?"
Wait – was the reason that I hadn't seen any foxes around here that there literally weren't any foxes around here? At all? But there should be! We lived everywhere!
"Mmhmm," replied the cat. "Foxes steal chicken eggs and eat chickens. Not 'round here, o' course. The lords and ladies hunted 'em out. For fun, y'know, 'cuz foxes are smart critters? But last time I was in the northwest, they still had a fox problem. Dem'd things come outta the Wilds."
A shiver of rage went through me. How dare anyone hunt my brothers and sisters for "fun"!
Almost at once, the shiver of rage transformed into a cold shudder. Fox hunting had not been an aristocratic pastime back in the Empire. I mean, why would you do it? Why would you kill innocent creatures – okay, sometimes not-so-innocent creatures – for sport? What was the point? If you weren't a demon, I meant? Had this part of Serica had also turned into the Wilds?
But no, that wasn't the impression I'd gotten, and I'd spent enough lives in the vicinity of Black Sand Creek to tell. So that meant that sometime after the fall of the Empire, Sericans had begun to eliminate the fox population by casting it as fun and games.
Why foxes in particular? We had our rivalry with the raccoon dog spirits, of course, but also with the wolf spirits, who scorned the deer and serow spirits, who competed with the black bear and cloud leopard spirits, and so on. But no one group had ever considered eradicating another. Not seriously, anyway.
It couldn't be my fault that Sericans hated foxes so much, could it?
No, no, of course not.
No one would be so dumb as to blame all foxes for one nine-tailed fox demon's actions. That would be like wiping out all humans because Cassius had existed.
Modern-day Sericans were just weird. They wore weird clothing, lived in weird homes, spoke in weird ways, and had weird pastimes.
Well, I'd just have to fix that. One family at a time.
I turned my attention back to my current group of work-in-progress, modern-day Sericans in time to hear Master Gravitas praise them, "You did a good job here. The coop should hold. Lemme know if you wanna build anything else. I'm always happy to help out."
After some pleasantries about the weather and the upcoming New Year festivities, and some praise for Mistress Jek's cooking, Master Gravitas bade the family farewell and padded back down Persimmon Tree Lane.
I lumbered out of hiding to start Taila's lessons, giving the chicken coop a wide berth.
A/N 1: Thanks to my readers for fun discussions and cute ideas, especially Spectrum and Silvan Eldar!
A/N 2: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Turtle-woman, it has probably been centuries since you even saw a chicken coop.
Yep! Doesn't stop her from complaining though!
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Are we seeing empathy? Morality, even? Regret for past actions?
I think we are. If only the beginnings of it.
- Location
- PA
Ah poor Piri, who's likely to spend half as much time trying to redeem the image of foxes after she got caught in Heaven's schemes as she spends getting back to her desired karma level.
But yeah, Gravitas seems to know something's up, though not much…Unless he's doing his 'old sage' impression to tip Piri off that he knows things without outright blowing her cover…
But yeah, Gravitas seems to know something's up, though not much…Unless he's doing his 'old sage' impression to tip Piri off that he knows things without outright blowing her cover…
A little bit! Just a tiny, tiny bit of empathy for fox-kind!
Yeah, redeeming the image of foxes on Earth is going to be a challenge....
You'll find out what Master Gravitas knows or suspects!