Day Twenty Three

One thing can’t be denied…

A lot of things are expected of the Turks. They are, according to popular rumor, assassins of the kind only seen in movies and cheap novels, intelligent, trained in more nasty ways to off a person than one would care to count, and above the law. They are not, however, romantically inclined. Ask anyone who had spent the night with the Boss Turk or his second in command, and they would have a tearful story of how they had been removed from the hotel room or apartment they had been in, often without the chance to even get properly dressed, and dismissed with a careless word.

For the most part, they were right.

But not in the case of the youngest and most unusual member of the current Turk force: Elena.

Unlike the other active branches of ShinRa's military, the Turks were nearly evenly split between sexes. Women were welcomed into their ranks, and often excelled. What made Elena different was the way she behaved. She wore sparkly lip-glosses and put brightly color clips in her hair. She complained when she was teased, and sometimes cried when the teasing became too much. She submitted reports with doodles of cats and flowers in the margins. And she read romance novels. Her specialty was demolition.

For some strange reason, Reno couldn't get enough of her. The day she'd arrived, he had made it his god-given duty to make her life a living hell, because that was what you did to the Rookie. He planted things in her desk, stole her lunch, put dyes in her shampoo, added 'accidentally' put her suit in the wash with bleach, made crude remarks about her figure, and generally behaved like he was a twelve year-old on a rampage. He had loved it, but had quickly realized that it wasn't the teasing that he enjoyed- it was the fact that it was directed at Elena.

This discovery lead to his confusion; Elena wasn't his kind of girl. He liked them tall and curvy and dark haired, with tits big enough to suffocate himself with and dirty mouths. Elena was...short, blonde, well mannered, barely a B-cup, and only just managed to have more curves than Tseng did.

Still, after walking in on her in the showers one afternoon, he had to admit that at least she had something going for her physically, because the rest of her couldn't be what attracted him. Nope. No way.

An assignment in the Icicle Inn area taught him otherwise. Even when Elena was bundled up in half a dozen layers and a fluffy purple parka, he still couldn't stop bothering her. She put a stop to it, on that mission at least, by triggering the slide of an entire roof's worth of snow directly on top of him.

Back in Midgar, he was back at it again, starting with giving her a stick of gum that turned her mouth black and getting in a nice grope in the elevator on their way up to Rufus' office.

And while he doubted anything would ever come with his little office infatuation, one thing could not be denied: she might not like what he did to her, but she wasn't stopping him, either.

Day Twenty Two

This is not about…

"Wait! Baby, hang on, don't just- ow! Hey!"

"Don't you 'baby' me, Reno, or the next thing I throw will have sharp edges."

Reno gulped.

"Come on, Vin, we can talk about this, right? It's not...it's nothing. It's okay."

Vincent turned to glare at Reno.

"Okay? When did it become okay to sleep with your boss just because your lover is away for work, hmm? How is throwing a bottle of whiskey at me when you're drunk okay?"

"It...it didn't hit you..."

"Because I saw it coming! If you'd been with a normal human being, they would have been flat on their back on the floor!"

"But you're not a-"

"Don't you think I know that?" Vincent snarled, and turned away again, storming across the little apartment and into the bedroom. Reno trailed after him, watching as he dug his belongings out of the mess that was Reno's organizing system.

"Vin, I didn't mean-"

"My name is Vincent. Use it. Or, better yet, use my last name."

"Why?"

"Because this is over, Reno. Consider our relationship purely professional now. Distant professional at that." He shoved three and a half pairs of socks into a duffle bag, kicked a pile of laundry out of his way, and added a sweater to the bag.

"Over? You can't just-nnh!" He suddenly found himself against the wall with Cerberus' triple barrels pressed up under his chin. Vincent was very close to him, cold red eyes boring into his.

"The thing is, Reno, that I can. And I am. You just don't seem to understand that."

"But I-"

"This isn't about you."

"What?"

"I am tired of you. I'm tired of your flirting and your skirt chasing. Your drunkenness and smoking is no longer charming, and your sloppy ways are getting on my nerves. I'm sick of takeout for dinner and leftovers for breakfast whenever I stay over. I hate being second to your helicopter. I don't want to wonder who or what you slept with while I was away anymore. So I'm going, and you are not coming with me."

"You can't fucking-hggk!"

"Yes, I can," Vincent purred, leaning in so close he could have kissed Reno if he had wanted to. "I have always been able to. I just never felt like it before now."

"If you even-"

"Please, Reno. You couldn't stop me if you wanted to. You couldn't even slow me down."

Reno knows this is true. Vincent can- and, on two occasions in the past, has- throw a small truck a fair distance. His gauntlet was designed to hook into an opponents belly and tear him to bloody shreds. He's a crack shot, hell in a close fight, fiendishly intelligent, and too creative for his own good. He can cook up strategies that no man in his right mind would even attempt, and he makes them work. In short, Vincent is very good at killing.

"But-"

Vincent kissed Reno, slowly and gently, the way he had when they had first begun sleeping together. Reno kissed back, eyes closing, confident that Vincent had had a change of heart.

Then Vincent bit him, and left him slumped against the bedroom wall with blood dribbling down his chin.

He didn't come back.

Day Twenty One

A note: It's Hell Week, that glorious week before finals in which every project, essay, and extra-credit assignment is due. I've got prompts all over the place, in notebooks as well as on the computer, but actually finding the time to put them up is proving difficult. Therefore, I'm announcing the summer program a little early. Since I'm working a lot this summer and will not have the same kind of access to a computer that I do now, updates will be in bulk, as I will be saving up the dailies and putting them up when I have time.

That said, please enjoy this little world-building experiment!

Write about something different

If you knew where to look, the shopping in an area populated by multiple species was a paradise. Back-room tables and cabinets might hold off-world jewelry, while opaque boxes in the chiller contained vegetables that simply don't grow in human soil. But you have to know where to look.

My favorite place is a back-street row of shops, referred to by those in the know as the NightMarket, mostly because a fair number of the shop keepers are nocturnal, and only open their shops in the late afternoon, staying open long after shops in other parts of town are closed.

You can go during the day, if you want to. In the mornings, a few places are open, like the pet shop run by a dwarf couple that takes orders for animals to be eaten as well as to be cherished. I've been there when mermaids stop in to pick up their lunches of goldfish and guppies and tender tadpoles before they go to work in the offices at a dozen BIDA facilities in town, or when a naga comes looking for the perfect furry little tidbit for their hatchling's First Whole ceremony, the first time a baby naga kills and eats a whole animal on its own. Other places are also open, the fabric store with the back room stuffed full of exotic bolts and spools, the cafe that caters to the flower folk, so only those who appreciate nectar, honey, and pollen are really comfortable there, the bookshop tended to by a very well-mannered naga with the markings of a spectacled cobra, which he hides under a wrap unless it's a particularly hot.

After noon, the shaved ice seller sets up shop on a corner of the flowerbed that divides the street. He wears a pair of wet jeans and a belt of bottled syrups, and he shaves the ice off his chest, scooping it into the plastic cups on the wall beside him and molding it into a perfect cone before drenching it in brightly colored flavoring. He does a brisk trade, whistling soft little tunes that sound like ice cubes clinking together in a drink. After he arrives, the jewelry store in the center of the south side of the Market opens. They sell the usual collection of bracelets, earrings, rings, and necklaces, but the window display also contains heavy metal bands made to be clamped around tails, ear cuffs designed for rabbit ears, horn decorations, studs and bars for body piercings, big silver gauges for bat and dragon wings, and chain-mail pieces made for a dozen different creatures. They sell magic rings, by request only.

By nightfall, half of the shops are open, and there are always customers trickling in and out, examining goods and haggling over prices. After true dark falls, however, is when the interesting things happen.

Once the lights from the shop windows are the only things illuminating the street, the Ifrit who lives in the apartment over the jewelry shop comes out and lights the lamps with a clear fire that burns brightly for hours. When she is feeling creative, she colors the flames, so that they cast pink and green and silver light over the concrete.

The lighting of the lamps is a signal, of sorts. Within half an hour, the street performers arrive, elves and undines and centaurs who dance and juggle and sing for small knots of people. Perched on the edge of the flowerbed, a tall harpy shows a gaggle of children slight of hand tricks, and teaches them how some of them work, so they know that there is no true magic involved.

All of the shops throw their doors open and lay out displays on tables set against their outer walls, competing with streetsellers for space. Some spaces are undeniably the property of one individual, like the three by three foot square of cobbles outside the bakery, where a beautiful woman with six arms sits, cross-legged, and tells fortunes. Others are hotly contested, until some compromise is made for the night, so that perhaps the knife-sharpener with his whet stones and his wide, smiling mouth is seated back to back with the old coyote and his talismans, each one charmed for luck or fertility or a clear head.

The three little cafes on the NightMarket share patrons with the food vendors that roam the Market, but they never mind too much. Three identical pixy girls selling wildflower honey hover around the door to one cafe, proudly announcing that their honey is the only kind used by the kitchen. Hanging from one of the lampposts, a bat-winged changeling sells pastries stuffed with meat and gravy from the cart below him. In a particularly shadowy corner, a young woman has a cooler filled with ice and plastic pouches of fresh blood, each labeled with the species and blood type of the donor.

As it gets later, the child-pleasing performers pack up and leave. The pixies go inside and sell their wares there. Outside, delicate young dancers prance and pose on the wall of the flowerbed, wearing nothing more than thin, gauzy scarves that they twirl and flick under the noses of appreciative watchers. For a price, they can be rented for the night and taken away for private performances. There is never any trouble from their audience- everyone there knows that each dancer has also been trained in at least ten ways to kill a customer who intends to hurt them, and many of them have poison in their fangs or their nails or in stingers hidden by their hair.

When the false light preceding the dawn touches the tops of the taller buildings, the Ifrit comes down again and douses her lights. In the dim twilight of the Market, the last remaining vendors pack up their things. Shop doors close and signs are hung in windows, urging visitors to come back later, at a more appropriate hour. Only the bookshop stays open, with a new sign advertising hot herbal teas. The cobra who owns it has gone to bed, leaving his mate, a brightly colored, extremely exuberant corn snake, to man the shop and tend to the tiny little burners that keep water and tea hot. He drapes himself over the counter and braids new charms into his thick black hair, drawing anyone who sets foot in the shop into conversations that sometimes last for hours.

Once the sun comes up properly, the pet shop and the fabric store and the BumbleeBee Cafe will open again, and the day will begin again

Day Twenty

Write about meeting someone for the first time

Rheese had been in the room for half an hour already, sulking about the tiny space he was going to be calling home for the semester. It was just a few strides from the door to the sink at the other end of the room, a meager expanse of uninspiring tile running between two raised beds and a pair of desks. He’d lived in smaller, honestly, but never with someone else, and never with so many people so close around him.

He just hoped his roommate was tolerable.

The door swung halfway open, letting in the noise of the courtyard beyond. A heavily tattooed hand and a collection of chunky silver bracelets flailed in the open space for a moment, then was rather abruptly followed by a lot of red hair and a stack of cardboard boxes.

Rheese caught the boxes. He did not catch the individual carrying them.

When he looked down, there was a stocky redhead lying at his feet, staring up at him with a rather dazed expression.

“Rheese?” the redhead asked. Rheese got a look at his ears and noted that he was an elf of some kind.

“Takumi?”

“Last time I checked.” Takumi offered his hand, which Rheese shook, trying not to stare at the tattoos. “Hi.”

“Um…hi.” He was, without question, the most attractive man Rheese had ever met, comfortably seated on the fence between pretty and handsome, his pupilless black eyes made all the more dramatic by the whorls of ink that spilled from their corners and the tiny silver rings in his eyebrows.

“Could you put those on my desk?”

“Huh?”

“The boxes.”

“Oh! Right!” Rheese scrambled to put the boxes down on the empty desk. The top box fell off the stack and landed on its side, spilling crayons and chalk over the mottled grey desktop. “You draw?”

“You could say that.” Takumi got to his feet and rubbed at the side of his head. “Ow. It’s a madhouse out there. I’m lucky I made it up the stairs without being trampled.”

“I didn’t have any trouble.”

He began putting the chalk and crayons back in the box. “You’re tall enough to get a little respect. I’m not even should-high to half the idiots in the lobby.”

“You’re not that short.”

Takumi snorted and took a step back, turning to face Rheese. Standing directly in front of him with just a few inches to separate them, he had to look up to look Rheese in the eye.

“Tell me that again.”

“I’m six six. That’s hardly a fair comparison.”

“And I’m five six. You have a foot on me in your socks.”

Rheese nodded faintly. Takumi pulled away from him and began bustling around, moving boxes here and there, dropping the duffel bag he’d had slung over one shoulder on the bed, and peering into things. Rheese watched him, admiring the way his jeans fit.

“I can feel your eyes on me,” Takumi murmured, pulling a small wooden box out of one of the cardboard boxes and opening it to examine the gleaming things inside.

“Er…”

“It’s rude to star.”

“I didn’t-“

He turned to face Rheese, the corners of his mouth turning up in a smile far more genuine than the one he’d offered when they had introduced themselves.

“Like what you see?”

Day Nineteen

Yeah, so between Blogger and the dorm connection both acting up, I've got a bit of a backlog. Here ya go!

Write about a time you did something you didn’t want to do

“I’m not arguing with you about this, Vincent. You’re going.”

“No, I am not.”

“Yes, you are. You’re being ridiculous!”

Vincent shrugged and sipped at his tea.

“I am also an adult, Tifa, and therefore allowed to make my own decisions.”

Tifa scowled at him.

“You’re living under my roof, and that means you play by my rules.”

Cloud clomped into the kitchen, wind-blown and cold from an early-morning delivery.

“Morning, Tifa,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Vincent.”

“Cloud, tell Vincent he has to listen to me.”

“What are you telling him to do?”

“She wants me to have a physical and to get a flu shot,” Vincent murmured. His voice echoed slightly in his mug.

“Why don’t you want to go?”

“I’m dead, Cloud. I need neither a flu shot nor a physical.”

Cloud dropped into the chair across from Vincent and accepted the mug of coffee Tifa handed him.

“You can still get sick, Vincent.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“Irrelevant? You spent a week in bed this spring when that last round of flu went around.”

“Yes, but-“

“That could have been prevented if you’d gotten a flu shot. And anyway, you’re undead, not dead. Your body still functions.”

“When I will it,” Vincent pointed out.

“And you usually do, because you know nobody will be particularly happy about you wandering around without a pulse and absolutely no color to your skin.”

“But I can, with no ill effects.”

“Vincent, the last time you spent any lengthy amount of time without a pulse, you got that chest infection, remember? The one that had you practically coughing up a lung for all of October and most of November?”

“That’s one instance.”

Tifa put a platter of French toast on the table and gave Vincent a cold look.

“Before the chest infection, there was the fungus in your stomach. And before that, the rash.”

“All of which occurred while I was still roaming. I have a stable home now; there’s no swamps here for me to go slogging through, and no unfamiliar plant life to fall into.”

Cloud drizzled chocolate syrup over his French toast and took several bites before speaking.

“It can’t hurt you to go, Vincent. You can go to the doctor I use- she’s used to unusual people.”

“No.”

Two weeks later, Vincent was curled up on the couch with a hot water bottle clutched against his chest when Tifa came returned from picking the kids up at school. She peeked over the back of the couch, shook her head, and carried her bag of groceries into the kitchen. Moments later, Marlene ran in.

“Tifa! Vincent’s sick again!”

“I know.”

“Why does he get sick so much?”

“Because he doesn’t take very good care of himself, sweetheart.”

Marlene frowned and ran back into the living room. Tifa heard her climbing onto the couch, demanding that Vincent wake up, and scolding him loudly when he began to cough.

She continued to lecture him even as he sat up, dropping the water bottle, so he could breathe properly, though she did get up to pat his back and stroke his hair.

Once Marlene had finished and had gone to start on her homework, Vincent shuffled into the kitchen and meekly asked Tifa to schedule an appointment for him with Cloud’s doctor.

Day Eighteen

Just beyond the edge of the woods

There is a village in the hill country, nestled against the great mountains that mark the divide between two countries. The village sits on the boundary between grazing land and forest. The grazing land is crisscrossed with faint paths, broken here and there by dirt roads that eventually turn to stone as they near larger settlements. The forest side of the village, however, is bare of anything more than grass and shrubbery. Dogs do not chase rabbits there, cats do not hunt the mice, and children do not pick the wildflowers. Just beyond the edge of the woods, there is a flat road of stone. It is all of a piece, a smooth expanse of slate that curves invitingly along the length of the village before vanishing into the trees. It is because of this road that the villagers do not enter the forest.

The road meanders through shady stands of oak and sun-dappled meadows where delicate wildflowers are a banquet for a host of jewel-toned butterflies. It crosses two streams, a brook that dances over white stones worn smooth and round as eggs, and a wide river as deep and dark as the night sky.  The bridges are made of slate, just like the road, but they are jet black.

The land begins to rise as the road moves into the mountains, and the trees begin to change. Where there were gracefully sweeping willows there are now shivering aspen, whispering to themselves even when there is no wind, and the stately oaks make way for tall, bristly pines that cast thick, cool shadows on the warm stone of the road. Squirrels chatter in the pines and throw cones if anyone dares to pass under them, but nothing ventures into the delicate cage of the aspens' branches. The air becomes heavier, thick with the scents of old pine needles aspen leaves, lying in years of layers on the forest floor like a carpet. There are no leaves on the road. There never are.

Slowly, even the pine trees begin to thin out. The pine needles and ferns are replaced by stone, the jumbled, broken stone of the mountains. In the shaded places under them, mosses grow like patches of velvet and fur, emerald green, jet black, mud brown, tawny gold. A soft wind moans through holes in the stones. It is the only sound.

The road climbs through a pass and falls into a little bowl of a valley set in the heart of the mountains. Soft grass carpets the stone with no earth to grow from, waving softly in the wind. It smells of mint and lavender in the valley, and of smoke. There is a pool in the center of the valley, perfectly round and sunk into a patch of bare stone that is ringed by fat purple toadstools, each as large as a man's fist, patterned with creamy spots.

No one sees the dragon lying against the high stone walls of the valley until it gets up and moves over to them, and ever so gently pushes them into the pool. They never surface.

Day Seventeen

Write about what’s under your house

There’s a secret place under my house. Mom doesn’t know that I even know it exists, let alone how to get down there, but I found the door in the back of the pantry months ago. What bugs is that it took me a week and a half to figure out how to get it open- Mom doesn’t know I can do magic, either, since I just realized it myself- and setting the alarms on it off would have gotten me grounded until graduation.

Behind the door, a spiral staircase goes straight down, much deeper than our basement. It ends in a short hallway, which opens into a room twice as large as the ground floor of the house, more or less. There are two doors at the far end, triple-decker bunk beds lined up against the right wall in two long rows, and an ever-shifting arrangement of tables, chairs, couches, beanbags, and rugs that covers most of the remaining space, with shelving built into most of the walls. The only constant is a roped-off ring roughly ten feet across that is always halfway down the room and against the left wall. The doors lead to a kitchen/dining area and a communal bathroom.

At any given time, there are between twelve and forty-two elves down there.

When I went down the first time, I pretended that Mom knew I was there, so the fourteen elves in residence talked to me like I knew what was going on. It took them less than an hour to realize I was lying.

Angry elves are scary as hell.

For some reason, they didn’t tell Mom that I had been down there.

When I went back, two weeks later, there were seventeen elves, most of them cheering a boxing match going on in the roped-in ring. When I moved closer to watch, they made room for me. Afterwards, those who had been there on my first visit apologized for scaring me off and started asking me all kinds of questions. I answered them and asked questions of my own. By the time I had to go back up to the house, I had learned that they weren’t really much older than me, relatively speaking, visiting the city for the equivalent of training exercises.

Over the course of the next month, I learned all about BIDA, The Hub, and all the things Mom never told me about. At first, I was mad that she hadn’t said anything, but one of the guys explained that it was usually best to not awaken the Sight in a kid who doesn’t have it naturally, because you can really get hurt that way, and telling me that there really were fairies and elves and all that would not have been a good idea if I couldn’t actually see them. Late bloomers like me are rare, and since there’s no way to ID them, it was safest to keep me in the dark. Fair enough. I’ll tell her that I know about everything. After I graduate, so there are only a few months left that she can ground me in.

What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, after all. She doesn’t need to know that the trainees she hosts have been my teachers in elementary magic, sparring partners in martial arts that humans don’t even know exist, and a source of Friday night dates for six months already.

But I really will tell her. Eventually.

Day Sixteen

Written yesterday, but left the spell-checking and posting for today.

Write about falling from grace

Riley was a bit of an odd duck. One of five children in a family of hereditary magicians, he inherited none of the natural affinity for things that sparkled, flashed, vanished, or were never really there that his twin and other siblings did. Three tests later, it was determined that he was not, thankfully, entirely without magic. His talents simply lay elsewhere, in sorcery.

Determined to make the most of this strange addition to their family, Mr. and Mrs. Valentine made sure Riley had instructors as good the ones his siblings had, the best they could afford. By the time he was ten, Riley was showing signs that he could be an upper-tier sorcerer, something neither of his parents could believe.

In middle school Riley played sports, joined the chess and craft clubs, and was generally a good son. He took the second sorcerer’s test and joined the sixth tier.

When Riley was fifteen, he approached Shandra Tulane, one of the most attractive girls in the junior class, and asked her to accompany him on a nighttime nature hike. Encouraged by Riley’s social status, Shandra accepted.

Half an hour into the moonlit stroll, a wolf attacked the couple. Riley woke up alone in the woods, abandoned by the girl he had attempted to protect, with his wounds suspiciously healed over. The single test performed by the local BIDA clinic confirmed what he already knew: the wolf had been a werewolf, and Riley had contracted the virus.

He spent the next two years hiding in the house, homeschooled, afraid to go out in public lest he lose control of his animal side and hurt someone. His parents provided for his every need, sure that their son would eventually heal and return to his old sociable, model-student ways.

Riley returned to school for his senior year. He turned down all invitations to rejoin the sports teams he’d been on, removed himself from the contact lists for the clubs he’d been in, and withdrew from the Honor Society. His friends slowly drew away from him, as he began spending time with students who were, like him, hiding magical abilities, handicaps, and forms from the unaware majority of the student body.  He graduated eighth in his class.

Autumn neared, and Riley’s parents expected to see their son packing his things in preparation for moving into a dormitory at the private college in Illinois they knew he’d been accepted to. When mid-August came and went without so much as a single box packed, they asked when the move-in date was.

“What move in date?”

“For your dorm, dear. Isn’t it getting close to time for classes to start?”

“What classes?”

“College classes.”

“I’m not going.”

“What?”

“I’m not going. I let the registrar’s office know a month and a half ago.”

“Not going? Why on earth not? Are you planning on taking a gap year?”

“Nope. I’m not going to college?”

“And what, pray tell, do you plan to do instead?”

“Travel. Do free-lance for BIDA. Maybe find a pack to run with.”

Riley was disowned and homeless by September, declared a failure and a disgrace to the Valentine name. Only Stephanie, the baby of the family, even cared that he was gone. Whenever possible, she sent him letters, which he responded to with pages of tales about his latest escapades.

Six years later, Riley was registered as a fourth tier sorcerer, equivalent to a rank higher than any his family had achieved in the last few generations. He had traveled to every continent, established ties with packs on three of them, and become a bounty hunter recognized by BIDA. He still wrote to Stephanie, who took a secret delight in knowing how her parents had underestimated him.

In early summer of the seventh year, Riley ran from a kitsune and wound up hitching a ride with a college dropout, an elf who had been dead once, and a kitten they’d found by the side of the road. He signed on to help them complete a quest of sorts, and, just like every other time something altering had happened in his life, he didn’t look back.

Day Fifteen

There are things women don’t know about love

I suppose the first straw that opened the split between my family and me was the marriage they had arranged for me. I was only seventeen, still training for my eventual position as the family heir, and the thought of spending the rest of my life with a stranger didn’t appeal to me. It didn’t help that I was busily exploring my sexuality, in the middle of discovering that I liked men as much as, if not more than, I liked women.

By the time I became Boss Turk, I’d been in more relationships than I have digits to count them on, and more sexual conquests under my belt than the average employee of the HoneyBee Inn. I knew three things:

1)   Sex is fun. Have it often and with many different people.

2)   Gender doesn’t make a difference.

3)   Love is an overused word and really only an excuse to have regular sex with a single person. Avoid using it, hearing it, or falling into it.

These were my three great truths, and I lived by them for years, happy to go through life as a promiscuous little shit. Then Reno happened.

Have you ever had a one-night stand that turned into a weekend spent in bed? The weekend turned into a month, and the month called in relatives, and before I knew it, Reno was more than a convenient booty call.

My last true relationship had ended more than four years before. Lilia had been too clingy, too emotional, and too intent on changing me into the perfect man for me to stay with her long. She had started spouting words like ‘love’ and ‘soul mates’ within two weeks of our initial meeting, and things just went downhill from there. It was what had turned me off relationships for good.

With Reno, though, it was different. He stayed over most nights, but there was rarely any cuddling involved. If we showered together, it was either as efficient a shower as you could wish, or it devolved into sex against the wall. No candlelit baths or flowery shampoos involved. Mornings were nearly silent, since neither of us liked them, and the only thing we shared was a pot of coffee before getting into our suits and going to work. The only change to our interaction at work was the occasional long lunch break spent in whatever private space we could find at the time.

But things changed. Reno was two days late on returning from an away mission, and I didn’t realize I had been worrying about him at all until, after Reno had been debriefed and sent home to rest, Rude asked me when I had last eaten and I admitted that it had been two days prior, before Reno had gone missing.

When a bomb sent the car Rufus and Reno rode in through a guardrail and into a construction site, I ran into Reno’s room in the hospital first.

Reno broke into my apartment and force-fed me medicine when I was stuck at home with the flu, and I let him do it.

He took to brushing my hair for me, and braiding it before bed at night, when we weren’t so tired that we just fell onto the bed.

We had been together in some way or another for two years before he said anything about it. When he did, there was nothing cliché about it; we were in the elevator on the way up to see Rufus, and he turned to me.

“Boss?”

“Yes?”

“My lease is up next month. Mind if I move in with you?”

“Your collection of porn mags is not allowed outside the bedroom.”

“Deal.”

Somewhere between drunken sex on his kitchen floor and Reno’s clothes in my closet, we fell in love. We said so very rarely, and only at times when it was appropriate, but it was…good.

Now that Sephiroth is gone, the Geostigma has been cured, and impending doom isn’t descending on the Planet in any of its many forms, I have the time to reflect on how Reno and I got to the point we are at now, which involves raising a small army of kittens and trying to keep them out of my orchids, and why I didn’t find him or someone like him sooner. I have come to the conclusion that while I like sleeping with women well enough, the emotional Velcro effect they tend to gravitate towards bothers me. I believe that I am pansexual, but not panromantic. Loving a woman is impossible. Why?

1. A woman has natural instincts that drive her to want to settle down and had children, which I do not want.

2. A woman looking for an appropriate mate wants one who is masculine. My habit of breeding orchids is not masculine.

3. The emotional attachment between a woman and a man is geared towards the sappy, soft emotions, like sadness and contentment, which are all well and good until you’re like me and you prefer passion and hunger and inspiration.

4. Most women won’t physically fight for dominance.

5. A woman won’t let me lick my wounds in peace after a mission.

6. There is more to love than the sweet parts. Being able to fight and make up is key, but something that woman prefer to avoid.

7. The instinctive desire for a feeling of safety does not come from a soft, curvy body. While a woman with a man may feel safe in his arms, the man has nowhere to get his comfort. A man with another man is both the comfort and the comforted at the same time.

These days, I spend parts of my working hours with Reno leaning on me. Rude and Elena don’t even blink anymore. Rufus thinks we’re cute, and it’s a contest to see which of us objects to that first.             I share a massive sleigh bed and a comfortably appointed apartment with nine cats, twenty-seven orchids, and one lean alley cat of a Turk. I am deeply, madly, incredibly in love. And I understand, now; there are some things women don’t understand about love.

Day Fourteen

Write about slumming

It was just Rufus’ luck that Tseng walked in while he was getting dressed. Under other circumstances, this wouldn’t have been a problem. This time, however, he was pulling on a pair of battered jeans and a ratty t-shirt, clothing no one even knew he knew existed, let alone actually wore. Naturally, Rufus froze.

“Should I ask, sir?”

“No.”

“Is this something your father would kill me for letting you get away with?”

“Probably.”

“Does it involve doing anything that might end in your injury or death?”

“Defiantly.”

“You aren’t going to let me come along, are you?”

“What do you think?”

Tseng sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Rufus, you are going to be the death of me.”

“Probably.”

“Be back by midnight, please.”

“Why should I?”

“Because the shift changes at midnight and I am not explaining to my relief why you aren’t in bed where you are supposed to be.”

Rufus scowled and finished dressing, yanking a purple and grey beanie down over his hair.

“Spoilsport,” he grumbled.

“No, I’m one of your bodyguards. I’m supposed to make sure you stay alive long enough to take over the company, and then I make sure you survive to have bratty children just like you.”

Rufus opened his window, swiped some of the grime off the outer wall onto his fingers, and smeared it onto his face. Acceptably grubby, he grinned at Tseng, who stepped to the side and let him leave.

“Don’t forget your curfew, sir.”

“I won’t!”

---------------------------

It was just after one when Rufus slipped back into his room. He was much messier than he had been when he’d left, he smelled like he’d rolled around in the lost and found heap in a high school locker room, and his beanie was missing.

“Didn’t I tell you midnight?” Tseng asked silkily, pushing away from his post against the wall.

Rufus jumped.

“Tseng? What are you still here for?”

“I could have fried an egg on Reno’s forehead, so I sent him home and took over his shift. Look at you. Where have you been?”

“Out,” Rufus said shortly. He allowed Tseng to strip his grimy clothes off, leaving him in boxers that had escaped the mess.

“Out where, sir?”

“Just out! Why does it matter?”

“It matters because you’re cut up and if you tell me where you were, I can figure out how many shots you’re going to need, rather than just signing you up for a full complement of them.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me, sir.”

“That’s not- you can’t- I should have you- Tseeeeeeeeeeng, that’s not fair!”

“Neither is life.”

Rufus huffed and accepted the damp washcloth Tseng handed him, beginning to clean the soot and slime from his skin.

“I was under the Plate.”

“Which Sector?”

“Does it matter?”

“Is there a difference between HIV and the Plague, sir?”

“Sector Five.”

“Mmm….could be worse, I suppose. There haven’t been any major outbreaks of anything serious down there recently.”

“You worry to much.”

“No, sir, I worry just enough. Now, brush your teeth and get to bed.”

“I’m not a child, Tseng, you don’t need to tell me what to do.”

“No, but you are sixteen and due in a meeting at seven this morning.”

“I’m what?”

Day Thirteen

Write about a time you changed your mind

I wasn’t going to go to the dinner part tonight. I’m tired, I’m sore, I have work to do, and I was up before 5 so I could register for my classes early. I did not want to make two lemon meringue pies for a house full of tired, crabby college students. I did not want to deal with the noise and the nerdiness and the cat underfoot. I did not want to listen to the inevitable argument about some pointless thing I probably wouldn’t care about anyway. I did not want to defend my drink from all the fiends who hadn’t gotten their own.

I was very close to picking up the phone and saying ‘screw it, I’m staying home. Make your own pie’. But I didn’t.

And now I’m glad I did. It took me roughly three hours, some yelling, eight eggs, canola butter spread, greasy fingers, a lot of mess, and some juggling to get everything done, but I produced two very nice pies. For my efforts, I received thanks, praise, and big ol’ smiles.

Things I have learned from this evening’s events:

-Meringue is easier to make when it is cold. Sticking the bowl in the fridge works better than sticking the person beating it outside.

-You can make good piecrust with just your hands to mix with, but it is very messy.

-You can get a nice crust into your pie pan without using a rolling pin.

-Do not put the cornstarch into the sugar water after it has been heated, because there will be massive lumps you cannot get out and you will have to do it again.

-Remove each sticker from each lemon before you zest. Not only will this prevent getting stick bits in the zest, you now have stickers to apply to friends’ foreheads.

-Squeeze the extra lemons anyway. You may need the extra juice.

-Hot custard filling on the stomach hurts.

-It is difficult to make meringue without a mechanical mixer. If you must do it, use a team of guys to do it for you.

-Make sure you have everything you need before you start.

-Hydrate.

-Margarine and butter are not created equal. Neither is canola-enhanced butter spread.

- Run your iPod cord under your shirt to avoid getting it in things.

-Hydrate.

-Watch where you step.

- Meringue gets everywhere.

-Meringue is sticky.

- Having the oven and the stove on in a house that has ten people in it and no air conditioning is a disaster. Shove the cat in a bedroom and open the door before someone has heat stroke.

-Listen to your iPod while cooking to avoid getting sidetracked by conversations that really have nothing to do with you anyway.

-Dance to the music.

-The promise of samples and spoon-licking will keep most people out of your hair.

-Not being fed is a threat to be reckoned with.

-The sniff test works on dishtowels.

-The Kitchen Goddess has the last word.

Day Twelve

Dubious Intentions

“Oh! Ian, how nice to see you.”

“Hi, Mrs. Donlan. Is Katy home?”

“She’s upstairs. Are you here with homework?”

Ian nodded, holding his backpack up as proof. It was stuffed with binders, textbooks, and papers.

“Do you save it all for the days you come over here? I swear Katy never has this much to do at once.”

“Katy isn’t taking art and poetry,” Ian pointed out. “They require all kinds of weird assignments that make no sense, like ‘write a poem about a found object while never naming the object itself’ and things like that.”

Mrs. Donlan laughed.

“Go on up, sweetheart.”

“Thanks!”

Upstairs, Katy was stretched out on her bed with a bag of gummy worms and a biology textbook, reading through a chapter on cells. The radio was tuned to a rock station, making a soft background noise for her to work by.

“Save some for me,” Ian laughed, pushing the door open and flinging himself onto the bed. Katy, the book, and the gummy worms were momentarily airborne.

“Gah! Ian, where did you come from?” When the bag landed, the gummy worms scattered. Ian pounced on them, and Katy had to scramble to rescue a few.

“From the bus stop. Help me with my Trig homework?” He unzipped his backpack and dug out a binder plastered with rainbows, pink triangles, and a variety of gay pride stickers.

“Again?”

“We do get homework at least twice a week,” he sniffed, opening the book to a page marked with a tattered post-it note. “Please?”

“Fiiiiiiine. Let me get mine. You get started and I’ll help when you need it.”

“Works for me.”

Twenty minutes and a lot of sine and cosine later, the door to the bathroom that connected Katy’s bedroom with her brother’s opened and Matt padded in, fresh from soccer practice. His gelled-up brown hair was flattened and damp in places, and he was covered in grass stains.

Ian put his pencil down and rolled onto his side, casually moving his textbook so it was angled towards the door.

Ignoring his sister- considering how long they had been living in this house, it was to be expected- Matt peeled his jersey off and tossed it at the hamper in the corner, then turned the water on in the sink. When it was warm enough, he bent down and stuck his head under the tap, one hand scrubbing at his hair to get the gel out.

“Mom’s gonna throw a fit if she finds out you’ve been doing that again,” Katy pointed out, not looking up from her notes.

“If you tell her I’ll tell her that you borrow her earrings when she’s not home,” Matt said pleasantly, scrubbing harder. “I’m not hurting anything.”

“Barbarian.”

“Hippie.”

He groped around until he found the bath towel hanging off his door and yanked it over to dry his hair with. Once his hair was a damp mass of waves, he hung the towel back up and returned to his room, closing the door behind him.

As soon as the lock clicked, Katy shot Ian a dirty look.

“You were watching him again.”

“Yeah? So?”

“You’re pretty obvious, you know.”

“Am I?” Ian rolled onto his back and grinned cheekily at Katy.

She threw a stuffed walrus at him.

“I might not have figured it out if you didn’t always come over on days Matt has soccer practice.”

Day Eleven

Write about a body part

I like hands. No, actually, I think hands are the most beautiful part of the body. They’re just so…perfect. I had a therapist once who said that my liking hands is a fixation caused by the scarring on my own hands. She claimed that I hated my own hands and focused on the hands of others because that was what I wanted my hands to look like.

Personally, I think that’s bullshit. Why? Because I love my hands. They may be scarred all to hell, but they let me do my work. I wouldn’t be able to mould clay without them, or paint, or make jewelry. You can’t work in a forge without hands. Can’t cook or garden either. No hands means no running fingers through Rheese’s hair and no rolling meatballs between palms. All the things I love need hands to do. Besides, I made the scars mine, too. These tattoos aren’t for pretty, like I let everyone believe. They’re my way of saying that the scars don’t prove anything. I was a foolish child when I got the scars. Since then, I’ve stopped caring what others think of my heritage and focused on defining myself as an individual. I think I’ve done a good job of it.

Now that I think about it, that therapist also said that I like men because I didn’t spend enough time with my mother as a child. Nothing I said could make her believe that I like both sexes equally, just as I’ve liked the few hermaphrodites I’ve met. Gender doesn’t matter. She claimed that you can only be gay or straight, which is so far from the truth it’s not even in the same world with it. Guess she was a phony. Whatever.

Have you ever just stopped and looked at your hands? Really looked at them? They’re a mass of intricate systems. In a human, there are at least 27 bones in one hand. In an elf, there are at least 32. Why so many more? There’s an extra joint in our fingers, which means another bone for each finger.

Hands are such breakable body parts. There’s no real padding of muscle or fat to protect them from sudden impacts. It’s just a bunch of little bones that fit together and are held there by tendons and skin. The bones themselves should be easy to break fracture and crush. The open spaces full of fat and muscle should be prone to build up of toxins because of the lack of space for vessels to remove them. The joints ought to be easily locked, jammed, or twisted out of place. And yet we abuse our hands in countless ways and they still function perfectly.

Hands say a lot about a person. To someone who knows what to look for, they’re as telling as a full personal profile. Take Rheese, for example. He has large hands, big even for someone his size. I’ve seen him carry close to a dozen eggs stacked neatly in one hand, and he can palm a basketball. My hands are lost in his.

Rheese gets into things. If, by some chance, you meet him when he isn’t up to something, you can look at his hands and see the marks from previous escapades; there are burn scars, old cuts, stains from ink and sap, scrapes, dirt under a few fingernails, and bruises.

His fingers are long and bony, made just for working their way into things. I’ve seen him open wooden chests swollen closed, draw tiny treasures out of cracks in old stones, and retrieve all kinds of small things out from under the desks, beds, and bookshelves they roll under. In addition to getting into places, those fingers were made to be combed through hair. It’s no wonder Rheese’s hair is always a mess. I know that after a few passes, mine is a ruffled disaster, but it feels too good for me to stop him.

The palms of Rheese’s hands are callused and leathery, appropriate for someone who spends as much time outside as he does. It gives him quite a grip. On skin, the calluses scrape gently. They are not rough, though. Rheese takes good care of his hands.

I’m not saying that hands are all good. I’m no naïve little dreamer who thinks there’s only one pretty side to the coin. Hands can do terrible things, too. It was hands that hid my sparrow when I was little and led to my scars. Hands fight in wars. They murder and rape and destroy. But I don’t think about that, much. There are much better things to do with your hands.

Day Ten

“I still don’t know…”

They hadn’t planned for the stop, but Victoria was becoming too antsy with Hughnin sleeping in the back of the Jeep, Everest tucked against his chest, and it was getting on Riley’s nerves. He pulled off the highway at some podunk town in the middle of nowhere and headed down a narrow, winding state forest road. It wasn’t long before they were bouncing on packed dirt and gravel. Hughnin didn’t wake up.

“Riley, where are we going?”

“Somewhere we can take a break and Hugh can sleep in a real bed.”

“All the way out here?”

“I know some people near here.”

“But…should we really come barging in like this?”

“You’re worried about that fever he’s running. I’m tired of watching you fidget. It’s best to get this handled now, before we get into trouble we’re not equipped to handle.”

“Couldn’t you just-“

“I’m a sorcerer, Vic, not a healer.”

“But you-“

“The plants I know how to use don’t grow in places as dry as this.”

“Oh.”

They turned off the dirt road onto a set of ruts leading off into a small canyon. This time, the rattling around did wake Hughnin, who sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes.

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere in Nevada,” Victoria grumbled. “Off the map.”

“Going to visit friends,” Riley corrects. “How’re ya feelin’?”

“Sick. Which friends?”

“Just friends.”

‘Just friends’ turned out to be a tangle of naga, who had dug into the side of the canyon wall to connect to old tunnels built by a colony of dwarves who had put down temporary roots during the Silver Rush and moved on when the humans’ mines had begun to fail.

Victoria had seen naga before, but Hughnin had had very little exposure to them. When they entered the tunnels and were greeted by a particularly large male with the distinctive coloring of a coral snake, he blinked and gave the naga a very confused look.

“You don’t have legs,” he said, after a bit of a pause.

“This is why you’re here, Riley?” the naga asked, gently nudging Hughnin out of the way of the door with the tip of his tail.

“Yep.”

“He’s already dead.”

“I know, Marshall. It’s complicated. We just need a place to stay for a few days, and treatment for him.”

“I suppose. Will his mate want to stay with him, or with you?”

Riley chuckled.

“I think she’d be better off staying with me.”

It took Victoria a while to realize that Marshall meant her when he referred to Hughnin’s mate. She sputtered about it while they followed Marshall down the cool stone tunnel, holding Hughnin’s hand to keep him with them.

They left Hughnin with the plump black mamba guarding a door with the apothecary’s symbol burned into it. She herded him into the room, murmuring gently to him, and the last Victoria had seen of him was his bare back as the woman stripped his sweaty clothes off of him.

After that, Marshall showed them to a small guest room and left them to their own devices. Riley had promptly settled in for a nap. Victoria paced for a bit, then forced herself to sit down with her journal and write about what had happened and where they were, taking care to provide copious detail on everything concerning their surroundings.

In the evening, twin rattlesnake girls came to escort them to dinner. Victoria was surprised to find that most of the naga ate their food cooked, when most of the naga she had met before had said they preferred their food still twitching. When she brought it up, all those within earshot laughed and told her that city naga often pretended to have barbaric tastes because they liked teasing other species, not because they actually liked live food.

Riley suggested going for a swim later on. Curious as to where they could swim in old mining tunnels, Victoria accepted.

As it turned out, one of the lower tunnels had been dug too close to a water source, and it had flooded the tunnel. When the tangle had moved in, they had expanded the flood area into a wide cavern better suited for swimming and playing. The place was dimly lit with charmed crystal lanterns.

“So. Have you gotten over yourself yet?” Riley asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor in a shallower part of the pool, his chin just above the water. Victoria perched on the wall above him, drip-drying.

“Have I what?”

“Gotten over your problem with this whole trip.”

“Who says I have a problem?”

“I do.”

She scowled and kicked water at him.

“I don’t have a problem.”

“You don’t want to get to Taos. You want him to stay here.”

“So what if I do?”

“Vic, you know he can’t.”

“He should.”

Riley sighed.

“He’s dead. You know that. The only reason you met him at all is because he needs a guide to get him where he needs to go. You can’t deliberately sabotage his chances at an afterlife.”

“I know, but-“

Riley sighed and patted her leg.

“You have feelings for him.”

“I...um…” Victoria blushed and looked at her feet, then realized that also meant looking right into Riley’s eyes and turned away. “I still don’t know, really, I just…it’s not fair. I can be myself around him. I-I don’t see any kind of horrible death for him. He understands when I just can’t put my pen down, and he likes his coffee the way I do, and…I don’t know. Maybe.”

“One of the paths an elf can take after they die is reincarnation, you know. You could meet again.”

“But it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be the guy with the kitten in his pocket and the god-awful orange sneakers and the artist’s hands. It wouldn’t be Hughnin.”

Riley stood up and shook water out of his hair.

“Better to love a brief, happy memory than to live with the knowledge that you condemned someone to eternal damnation, Victoria. Keep that in mind.”

She nodded dumbly.

“Need me to show you the way back to the room?”

“No, I can…I’ll manage.”

“Alright. Don’t step on any tails on your way.”

After Riley was gone, Victoria slipped back into the water and cried.

Day Nine

You’re asleep. You’re not at home

You never knew what was going to happen in the general SOLDIER quarters. There might be a fight of the kind that ended with broken furniture and holes in the walls, or perhaps a few of the men might pool their resources and purchase enough high-proof alcohol to get themselves pleasantly buzzed. On a good night, nothing happened. On a bad night, no one got any sleep.

Or, in Zack’s case, a pipe could burst and your room could be flooded with a shower of icy water just after midnight, scaring you half to death and leaving you without a place to sleep.

Being Zack, however, meant that he had options.

Sephiroth wasn’t in. He was on assignment somewhere, not due back for another four days, or until the suits decided it was safe to let the Demon of Wutai back into the offices after he’d put his sword through the office wall over a backlog of paperwork. Therefore, his couch was out. Zack wasn’t about to go pick the lock and sneak in- he knew Sephiroth would know he’d been in there, and he’d throw a fit.

He tried Reno’s place, but judging by the sounds coming from the other side of the door, the redhead had several lady friends in there with him, and there were some things that even good friends didn’t share. Besides, Zack was looking for a place to sleep, not an armful of willing flesh.

He knew Angeal hated being woken up, but he had a key now, so he could just let himself in and sleep on the couch. Even better, there would be breakfast that hadn’t come from the mess hall the following morning.

Or not. Genesis was stretched out on the couch, his battered copy of Loveless lying open on the floor under his hand. Zack scowled at him and wandered into the kitchen. He rummaged around in the fridge for a bit, since he didn’t have anything better to do, shot a last look at Genesis, and padded across the little apartment to the bedroom door.

Angeal was a softly snoring lump in the middle of the bed. He didn’t move when Zack peeled off his damp uniform and crawled under the blankets in his boxers, balancing precariously at the edge of the bed to avoid waking Angeal. When Zack settled down and closed his eyes, however, Angeal rolled over and sighed.

“Why are you up here, Puppy?”

“Burst pipe,” Zack yawned, and draped his arm over Angeal’s face. “See? I’m all clammy. One minute, it was dry and I was asleep, and the next it was like being in the middle of a cloudburst. Why’s Genesis here?”

“Because he fell asleep reading and I didn’t feel like listening to him bitch if I woke him up.” Angeal scooted over, giving Zack a little more space. There wasn’t a whole lot of extra space, but that was to be expected when trying to fit two men as big as they were into a small area.

“Oh. Okay.” Safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t going to be thrown out of the bed, Zack tugged the blankets over his head. “Are you making breakfast tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to whine if I don’t?”

“I don’t whine!”

“You do.”

“I do not!”

“Puppy, you whine. Get over it.”

Zack pouted at this, but did not object.

“Waffles, please?” he asked.

Angeal groaned.

“Waffles? Does it have to be waffles?”

“Yes.”

“Zack, those take forever. We’ll be in the kitchen half the morning, and I have to work.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re a General. You can make your own schedule.”

“Go to sleep, Zack.”

“Yessir.”

After Angeal fell asleep once more, Zack snuggled close to his side and closed his eyes. He was asleep in moments.

Day Eight

Write about your father’s hands

I can’t really call any kind of image to mind when I think about my Dad’s hands. I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at them for that long. But I can think of all the things his hands have done, and I think that’s much more important.

My Daddy’s hands…

- tied the sled rope to the dog’s collar so she can pull me down the gravel strip in the winters.

- picked me up and thrown me into snow drifts

-been making sourdough muffins, pancakes, waffles, omelets, and tortillas espanola for as long as I can remember, every weekend that he has ever been home.

- taken a scrub brush to my knee when I flipped my bike and pretty much took the skin off the kneecap. It hurt, but it healed and there’s not much of a scar anymore, so I guess the yelling and crying was worth it.

- made a super special sourdough chocolate cake for Mom’s birthday for years, and now they make them for Crissi and me when we ask nicely, even if he doesn’t do the frosting.

- chopped firewood at every house we have ever lived in, so we can all laze around in front of crackling fires in the wintertime.

- dragged a Christmas tree home every year

- helped build a cave in the show shoveled off of the driveway- it was by far the coolest snow fort in all of creation.

- cut my hair just right for years.

-brushed my hair just because I ask.

- grilled countless steaks, ribs, chops, burgers, salmon filets, barbeque chicken, and numerous other grilled treats that have left me utterly spoiled for food off the grill.

- picked out the puppy that grew into our loveable idiot of a world’s best dog.

- gave every cat we’ve ever had scruffles and pulled their tummy fuzz.

-built the beautiful house that I call home.

-put lion’s head doorknockers on the bedroom doors upstairs so we can start our days off with a heart attack.

-taught me how to change the oil and filter, rotate the tires, replace the wiper blades, and generally take care of my car.

-do the greatest Lobster Eye ever!

-unpack all kinds of goodies we know Mom didn’t put in the bag when we stop for lunch on a hike.

-wax and maintain our skis.

-deal with that bundle of spaz we call a horse.

-feed apple slices to the rabbit-who-shall-not-be-named, who happens to be a spoiled brat and loving it.

-keep going out and catching that dumb cat, even though he doesn’t like her, because she’s my baby and I love her.

-give the greatest hugs ever, even when I think I don’t want them.

-wax my car for me.

-fold laundry, which is great even when they also decide that wearing undergarments on one’s head is a good idea.

-poke Crissi until she squawks and I laugh.

-write me sweet emails sometimes, when I least expect them.

-dial the number to my dorm at least once every couple of days, which is awesome even when all he has to say is that there’s food at home and it’s awesome.

So maybe I don’t remember what my Dad’s hands look like or feel like. But what I do remember about them is more important.

Day Seven

Write about a town you passed through

After the wide, dry expanses of Utah and Arizona, the darker, wetter mountains of Colorado were a great relief to Victoria and Hughnin. They both cheered when they drove through the first puddle on the road, and Riley teased them both about it. They stopped at a picnic area just to walk through the trees for a bit, enjoying the sun-dappled shady spots and the smell of moist pine needles. It was the first time Everest had seen pine needles. She picked her way across the patches she couldn’t go around, stopping every so often to sniff her paws and sneeze.

They stopped early, in a tiny town that didn’t appear in the big atlas and was only a dot with its name printed in minute lettering on the map of Colorado that Riley produced from his backpack. It wasn’t big enough to have a motel, and the clouds threatening in the distance prompted them to rent a tiny cabin at the south edge of town.

There was just the bed and a love seat that wasn’t going to be big enough for any of them. Victoria suggested the sleeping bags, saying that Hughnin ought to take the bed because he was still a little sniffly from his flu and shouldn’t sleep on the floor.

“I’ll take the floor,” Riley offered. “You two can share the bed.”

“But-“

“Riley, I-“

“No buts. I’m not leaving a lady to sleep on the floor, and Hugh could do with the extra body heat. Put a pillow down the middle of the bed if you’re so fussy about the idea.”

There was a diner in town, the old-fashioned kind with most of the seats at the counter, a blue plate special, and six different kinds of pie. They walked to it, Everest riding in one of Riley’s many pockets, and sat in a blue vinyl booth that had salt and pepper shakers shaped like rattle snakes. The waitress was a friendly older woman who took one look at Hughnin falling asleep against the window and brought him a cup of fresh coffee.

“This will perk you right up, honey,” she promised, sliding it across the table to him.

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Where did you three come in from?”

“They’re from Montana. I’m from everywhere,” Riley chuckled. “And our little friend here is from somewhere up in Oregon.”

She hurried back behind the counter when Riley showed her Everest, and when she came back, she had a little dish of milk with her.

It was raining when they left the diner. Riley shoved his hands into his pockets and started back to the cabin, then stopped when he realized he wasn’t being followed.

“Aren’t you coming?”

Hughnin and Victoria hesitated, then hurried after him. Victoria squeaked at the chill of the rain, drawing her hands up into her sweater sleeves to try and keep them warm.

“It’s not that cold,” Riley muttered.

“You’re used to cold weather!”

“It’s still not that bad.”

It wasn’t quite eight o’clock, but the town was all but shut down. Lights glowed behind curtains in a few homes, and a few others were lit by the flickering light of a television, but there was no sound beyond the steady hiss of the rain and the occasional rumble of thunder. Six ornate street lamps cast puddles of wet yellow light on either side of the street, making the space around them seem darker.

The walk back was quiet. Riley tried to start a conversation twice, but the first try ended abruptly when Victoria tripped over a raised part of the sidewalk and nearly fell, and the second one died a slow, painful death because it had been directed at Hughnin, who was nearly asleep on his feet.

Riley left them at the cabin, saying that he wanted to do a bit of exploring, and loped off into the woods as a wolf. It was the first time that Victoria didn’t ask why he deliberately deprived himself of sleep to explore like that, and only the second that Everest didn’t throw a fit when there was suddenly a wolf just inside the hand-carved door.

When he returned, soaking wet and smelling of wet earth, the lights were out in the cabin. Everest was asleep in one of his boots by the door.

He stole a peek at the bed while he combed the knots out of his hair, and grinned. There had been a pillow between Hugh and Victoria at some point, but it had been kicked down to the bottom of the bed before he’d arrived to make room for proper snuggles. Being roughly the same size, they fit together quite neatly.

In the thick, warm darkness of the rental cabin in Nowhere, Colorado, Riley burrowed into a sleeping bag at the foot of the bed and fell asleep.