Archive | May 15, 2012

Requiem for the Sugar Cat

May15

Drake passed away today at the vet’s, after a short struggle with a bug that wouldn’t let go and, they believe, the beginnings of cancer in his lungs.

He was a good cat. Not a smart cat, not a graceful or subtle cat, but a loving cat and a good, big, sharp cat.

When we brought him home, all of half a pound, he looked at our older cat – Gatsby, already four years old and a grown up – and hissed at him. All balls, that cat, even after we finally had him fixed.

He once won an intimidation challenge against a house-guest – Drake insisted it was his chair, and the guest relented and picked another seat. 16 lbs at his heaviest, 12 lbs only when he wasn’t feeling well, Drake was a flesh-eater with a well-deserved violent reputation. More than one of our friends bears scars from learning the hard way that Drake should not be fucked with.

He was, at home, an affectionate cat, a lap cat, demanding in his affection (he liked to rest his head on my mouse hand so I had to pay attention to him). He liked to sleep under the blankets, but unlike his brother, who predeceased him in 2010, he couldn’t stand to have his face under the blankets.

He was never good at fetch, but he sure liked to try (He was good at the “get,” but not so good at the “bring it all the way back”). Like all cats, his favorite toys were things like the seal on milk containers, or a balled-up piece of paper (this caused trouble when starting a fire in the fireplace sometimes).

I could go on forever. We had him for eleven years, and it was not nearly long enough. I will miss my Draker for a very, very long time. I keep picturing picking him up and squishing him to me, the way I did when I was upset. But I’m upset now, and I can’t hug him.

Bear with me for a few days? I may be a bit rawer than normal

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/341007.html. You can comment here or there.

Eggshells and Lineman’s Hopes

May15

For flofx‘s second prompt.

Long before Guarding the Church and referencing Strange Neighbors.

Tia Lian was born, as her kind were, in an eggshell watered with the tears of an unmarried woman and fertilized with the hopes of an unemployed man.

Or so she liked to tell people… and in her childhood, she was so small, so clearly fay, so touched by the other, that people tended to believe her.

The truth might have been more prosaic, but it was no less magical. Born to a fairy mother in the doorway of the Stanton Arms, gotten on that mother by a goblin line worker who couldn’t find work (the unions were going through an era, back then, where they didn’t like the fay), left on the doorstep of a church and from there taken to an orphanage, Tia was a midsummer baby, touched in magic and born in the mundane.

Although her mailing address was the Antwerp Orphanage, the place was only two blocks from the Stanton Arms in one direction and three from the church where she’d been left in the other, and a young Tia Lian ruled all and the places in between, running the small gangs of children and fay by the time she was old enough to spin a lie.

“Born in an eggshell,” she fibbed proudly, “blessed by my father’s hopes and my mother’s tears. As fay as they come and as wild as they can’t cage.” Her elders, fay, priest, and state, despaired of teaching her discipline. Her peers despaired of ever being as cool as she was. Soon, boys despaired of the chance of a kiss. She was as she’d made herself, fay and wild.

And then she met Bao Bao.

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C.A.K.E., a superheroes story for the May Giraffe Call (@Rix_Scaedu)

May15

For Rix_Scaedu‘s second prompt. After Creation Story and When the Storm Came.

Names from Fourteen Minutes and Seventh Sanctum, human name from @Anke

“…and the rest was cake.” Fusefauna leaned back in her chair, making an expression they had learned to interpret as a smile.

“C.A.K.E, she means.” Chloroshining had never really gotten over being paternal over his daughter, which, at the moment…

“Which sounds exactly the same, spoken, unless you’re being an asshole.” Switchphase glared over his wife’s head at his alien father-in-law. “Seriously, Chlor. Give her a break.”

“Do not presume to tell me how to…”

“Father. #’$hi*sth.” Fusefauna clicked out the short Thundesitioni admonition. “Daniel, please.”

Modificationnaut listened to the three of them and silently vowed to never marry. “So C.A.K.E?” he prompted. “It’s an interesting acronym.”

“It is a very arrogant acronym,” Fusefauna allowed, “but it was the seventies, and we were very arrogant at the time. This was of course before the explosion of altered beings, when there were only a handful of us on the planet. It stands for Combined Altered Kyrie Elite.”

“Combined…” It didn’t take Modificationnaut long to piece that together. “The altered gods, more or less.”

“Lords.” It was almost nice to know Chloroshining was an ass to everyone, not just his daughter. “The Amalgamated Lords of the Altered Genome… but that was too arrogant even for us.”

“And now… it’s just the three of you?”

“The two of us. Switchphase belongs to another group.” He seemed very firm on that one. “Yes. The others retired, as much as one can do that, or died, or went off-planet.”

“And we are left.” Fusefauna click-churred a Thundesitioni laugh. “To be our C.A.K.E., just us two.”

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