Standing At Falas Special Clutch
Name: Lethe Gray
Aliases: Shard, Baeris, Vanya, Sanger, Tani, Viridia, Charybdis, endless others
Gender: Female, obviously
Gender preference: Male, but wants to be one. Go figure.
Age: 38
Hair: Brown, often dyed multiple colors
Eyes: green hazel with gold and orange flecks (requires glasses, not shown)
Skin: Art! (as shown!)
Rank: technical writer, Acces I/O Products, explorer, Internet DJ PFFFFLOL
Marital Status: single, ex boyfriend (yummy)
Pets: Cats. Lots of Cats. (Toots, Boxer, Purrsephone, 13375qu34k, Rex, Mews) and Snake (Carmine at a friend's house), Whiplash, talking flitter
Talents: Artwork, Scripting, novel writing, website design
Dragon: Blue Bhavaiyath; Pet: Gold-Mottled Blue male Talking flit Whiplash
Prelude (Drew) - Page 1 - Page 2 - Nik
Bhavaiyath and I moved around the Nexus for a bit, he had to rest a little more often than I thought he would, but then again I wasn't the one doing the teleporting and hard work! Whiplash continually reminded me that all I did was boss-boss-boss.
I pinched his tail, "who's got the thumbs, buster?" To which he bit my ear, so we were even.
Eventually though, after meeting a dozen more Sangers, a couplefew Shards, Daverin, a handful of Engells (woo. now, I outdid myself with that fan-girlish remake of a real person!), and even Eton... We were getting a little tired. I wanted to write, get my cats, and settle down into a ... well, what?
A career? How? With a dragon, I couldn't go back to my real home - not for any length of time.
"Time!" I blurted out, "that's it... that's... it." I paced around, Whiplash enjoying the ride on my shoulder. I'd gotten so used to him being there, I didn't even realize that he'd trained himself up to my pacing rants.
"Time is what?" He asked. His voice was high, nasal - not quite like a parrot's tone, because he didn't have a large muzzle or beak to amplify the sound.
"Time is the key to me being able to find a place to live, and get my cats, and collect my stuff."
"I thought you didn't need your 'stuff' any more?" Whiplash asked, and I felt Bhav echoing the sentiment.
"Well," I said, sitting down on a nearby stone, we were out somewhere on Zekira enjoying the singing beetles. I quoted, "it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done. I'd rather go get it, and gripe to myself that there's a crapload of it, later. It's not tying me to anything now, I'll work out how to get someone else to feed the cats if we have to leave."
I knew I'd probably be welcome in the Healing Den for any length of time, but frankly I liked the feel of sunlight on my face too much, the sense of wind and air - even though I'd invented the Den and its asteroid and everything, it was a bit too confining for me. Baeris and them, they didn't much mind because they'd spent the early parts of all their lives on Pern or something similar, in cavern homes which it emulated nicely. So I wanted to find some place...
I could just make one.
***
Was it that I was a God on this world? Or was it just that I happened to choose a place which would accept what happened in it, unconditionally? I landed with a handful of stuff, on the soft grass. Bhavaiyath set down the big crate of boxes, we'd have to do this again at least two more times, before everything I owned was in the house. He was big, but he was no bronze - I couldn't just move wholesale into a new place with everything I owned on his back!
I had chosen to go back in time, to the day that I was Searched, after having left. Mom was thankfully asleep - after such a 'rough' day arguing with me (three years ago my time) she had crashed and wouldn't be up and about until morning.
I would not be back.
It panged me enough to leave my bank account stuff for her, but then I just began piling things into boxes. The cats were freaking out, of course but they'd come last. I wasn't leaving them with Her.
So it was, and then the next day I went to my storage rooms and gathered stuff out of there. I didn't even have to pull my truck in, of course - we just teleported into the alley street and didn't worry about anyone noticing. The place was always pretty well dead. The only folks there were a pair of Mexican gardners putting their grass-covered (mmm, I love that smell of cut grass) lawn equipment into their storage room. They gave Bhav a weird look, crossed themselves, and left.
You have so many things, where will you put them all? Asked Bhav.
"The house's big enough. Trust me." I chuckled. Yes I did seem to have a ton of crap, but honestly boxes take up so much more room than just books! By the time we'd set everything up in the house, all the shelves and such, I had a big pile of cut-down boxes and lots of room on the floors.
My house... MY house... I just kind of dreamed it up. It became fact that on this world, near the edge of a nice planned community below, was a hill that had a largish Victorian era home (whether this world had a Victorian era or not!) and a big yard - acres - behind it and down the hillside. It wasn't one of those 'don't go there it's haunted' houses, it was almost freshly built. But the floor plan was great, with built in shelves and a gigantic kitchen, a two-story tall library room that would still freak me out because I'd never quite conquored that fear of heights. It was Istvan's house, mostly, but not as creepy.
It had room in the back area, behind where the hill hid it from the community, for not just Bhavaiyath. It was quite expansive, it would remain entirely untamed. I had no intention of ruining the little stream or brambles with buildings or cement. There was a fence, and it would have to be reinforced. After all, I intended there to be cheetahs on this ranch. And they're not the normal kind... I knew where I could get my hands on a whole bunch of blue-eyed half-shapeshifter cheetahs.
***
Bhavaiyath moved his wings silently, and blew wind at the little creatures. I giggled, "don't blow them away, Bhav!"
He tilted his head, and snorted - causing a lot of the aviary's foliage to shake. That was not so hard! Look at them, they can fly already, I am merely ... helping them learn!
"Glad I missed that part," Whiplash grunted from my shoulder. He appraised the hatchlings, and sure enough they were already able to flutter up into the air - with or without Bhav's assistance. Whiplash looked rather smug. They were his offspring anyway, he had good reason.
Most of them appeared to be of the normal non-intelligent variety, but there were a couple gems in there. A big clutch, he'd managed to convince Drew's flit Nightwish that they should do the naughty... Or maybe she convinced him. Drew and Nik visited a few times a month, it was really neat watching the whole community down there come out and stand on their rooftops while the dragons came in to land. Heh.
It was even better when the flits who remained (some up and flew off, some teleported away to wherever their little brain could imagine but three stayed) decided to breed as well... I was about to have a plethora of multicolored, talking flitters... But there was a school down there and kids who would love to have a pet. Apartments too small for a dog? No problem... No cats allowed? Well if someone has a bird, they're not going to be able to refuse you one of these.
A few of the parents wanted to pay me for them, one insisted I take this little devil-spawn back (I gave it to the kid's neighbor, a wizened old dude who used to be a surfer and grew pot in his garage... yeah, just the sort of guy to have living next door...) so he wouldn't be left out. I think the intelligence of the pets grew as they went on, because that one got the idea that as long as the parents weren't around, he could hang out with his first true bond, the boy named Kirk.
I managed to fund an aviary, yes, improvements to the fencing, a strip of high fence to keep people out and cats in. No one asked how. I mean hey, I was there because I wanted to live there. I could have abused that fact to no end. But really, it was all I wanted, to have just this place and the creatures around me. Nik was happy to see all the critters too, he had continued his vet training and could now say he was a dragon healer! That was superb, I thought. And Drew... Well, sometimes when Drew visited me he was Melora, which was ultra cool...
***
Then one day I got this weird package... I had to sign a bunch of things to get it, it was stuck at the post office and they wouldn't just put it in a truck and drive it to me. Apparently they wanted to see what was in it, because it was post-marked "giant flitter mail" and had been delivered to them via a FLOCK of flitters...
"Well, here we go, what's this?" I said, trying to read the card. Deliver to Shard. Well, okay they found one of me, apparently the flits knew who I was in my off time... (Which I still had the internet, but I'd long ago determined that this world was not my home world, so how could I have the same friends or ... never mind. Just, never mind, don't think about that.)
I busied myself taking the brown paper and box parts apart. A piece of pink became visible.
"Pink?" I said, "oh, this can't lead anywhere good, can it?"
It looked plastic. I wasn't really sure whether it was or not. It was strangely warm to the touch... But it was a cool lawn ornament. It'd fit right in. After all, I had a flock of flitters acting like little gargoyles on my porch and rooftop. I thanked the post office folks, noticed that two of the workers had managed to get their own flitters to help them sort mail.
I planted the flamingo-dragon on the soft grass just up from the long driveway. I didn't have a car, of course. I wouldn't want to drive it up that hill anyway. It'd just slide right down...
It was shortly after I got the flamingo when more dragons started coming into my life. Bhav might have found them, he went out frequently to fly over the town or to the Nexus. Whichever, he came home one day and... this... was following him.
And I felt a very strange lump in my throat. Because she was me.
Canny, three headed, and entirely too talkative. Well I suppose that without the heads, she was still me. She had almost glowing wings with the distinctive Matrix markings (had she started there? or just got them modified there?) and that whole chimeric head thing was pretty cool once I got used to it.
"I think you should do more art," said the cat head. She tapped her forehoof, and the goat head agreed. "Or more writing, stories are always good. You know that you didn't quite create us, yet you are still our self."
"Never mind the mysterious horny one," the dragon said, with a grin. She flicked her poison tipped tail, "you ought to create more worlds again. We cannot do it alone, you know."
"We are rather like Aslan," the cat-head asserted with a hissing laugh. "Only not so allegorical."
"Especially with a beast like you connected," said the goat to the dragon. The dragon bit at that head but the horns kept her at bay.
Wouldn't this be entertaining...
***
Chimera-me - who for some reason loved being called by all three of her names - Sara was the cat, Letha was the goat, and Katrina was the dragon - managed to get it into her heads that she should chase off visitors. One day, I was chatting with the librarian in the school, and she handed off this piece of 'fan art' to me.
"I think they're a bit scared of the ... other dragon..."
"I bet, I think I'm a little scared of her. Oh my gawd," I said, looking at the picture. "The only thing wrong is there's only one cat."
"No there's two, look, behind your aching butt," she pointed out the shadowed feline. "Oh wait, here's another one, I think they were trying to get into the yard. Your cats, you know..."
"My cats, the cheetahs? Ooookay," I took the next, and it was apparently a running gag that I'd yelled 'get off my lawn' more than once in jest. Maybe they didn't realize I was kidding?
"I'll have a talk with her, because this," I waved the paper in the air, "is hardly how I want to be remembered..."
I determined that the fencing on the cheetah run needed a couple larger signs. Or maybe I should just let one or two of the cats eat some kids... oh, wait, I didn't say that out loud did I?
Would I live my life out here? On a hill surrounded by cats and dragons?
Is there a link on Next? Dunno, maybe I will, maybe I won't. Tune in next time.
