Boots 3 (ver 3) (Patreon)

Does anyone else remember gluppets? Talk about the cheapest freebie ever! Even the modern disposable food service gloves that are intended to make a single sandwich were more rugged than these things. Oh well. Ykahi really has her heart set on one of them for some peculiar reason.

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Ykahi swiped at the giant’s strand, scrolling past photos on the website’s gallery. “Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled. “These are all crap.”

“Crap?” chortled Botabriask. “I recognize some of those. They’re masterpieces!”

The tiny ringel shrugged. “Maybe for those of you who can see infrared and ultraviolet,” she huffed. “But those of us limited to the visible color spectrum … well, there’s just not a lot to appreciate.”

Ykahi’s scrolling slowed when she advanced to the website’s landscapes and portraits section. “These I kinda like,” she admitted. “2C talked a lot about these, and I really enjoyed that.”

The krakun touched a talon to the screen and clicked a link. “Each of the photos includes a link where you can read more about the painting,” he explained. “The artist, the era, the influences. And there’s additional links under there if you want to know more. You could get lost for days just learning about a single painting.”

The ringel shoved her shoulder hard against Bota’s talon, pushing it away from the screen. When it was finally clear, she beat angrily at it with the flats of her paws for several moments before shouting over the music that blared perpetually from the apartment’s television. “Stop that!” she shouted.

Then, hitting “Back” on the browser, she returned to her trip through the photos. “You don’t understand, Botabriask. 2C wasn’t telling me about history and other boring facts! She was telling me about what she felt while she was standing there, looking at them. That’s what I’m missing out on, lizard. I can read facts all day, but I’m never gonna experience that feeling if I’m not allowed to go look at the paintings myself.”

The krakun rolled his eyes. His mouth opened to speak, but then something else caught his attention. “What are you doing out?” he screamed as he launched from the table. “Is this daytime? Am I at work?” Without setting down his beer, he brought one boot down over and over, smashing it against the linoleum with crash! after crash!

Ykahi raised her paws and shrunk in upon herself, terrified but unable to look away. Each time Botabriask raised his boot back up, she was certain it would reveal a huge, bloody mess, but instead, the terrified geroo on the floor kept shrieking and dashing out of the way just in the nick of time. At long last, the furry creature dove, disappearing into the inky black hole in the side of the cleaning crew’s shoebox.

“Damn mammals!” the krakun grumped. He flopped back down, slamming his beer hard on the table so it foamed up and out the bottle’s top like a tiny volcano.

Ykahi glared at him for a long while before he eventually shrugged. “Not you, Ykahi,” he finally amended. “You’re great.”

She hrumphed and turned back to the strand. “Yes, I am,” she said before sliding on to the next photo.

“It’s just the damn cleaning crew,” he grumped. Laying his claws down on the table and resting chin upon them, he added, “They really piss me off.”

When Ykahi’s browsing reached the natural history section of the museum’s site, she began bouncing excitedly in place. “This is my favorite part!” she shouted.

Bota looked at the screen while she scrolled by photos of dioramas and taxidermy until she finally reached the fossils and skeletons. He barely stifled a laugh. With the back of a talon, he gave her a nudge where the stripes on her chest looked like ribs. Though he pushed at her gently, she was so much smaller than him that his touch nearly bowled her over. She turned and hissed at him just as loudly as she could manage, looking like a tiny, angry skeleton.

“You like looking at the bones?” he asked. “I could never have guessed that!”

“But look at this!” Ykahi shouted at him. “Look! 2C said that these bones are so old that they actually turned to stone!”

Botabriask nodded absently. He took a swig from his beer bottle and set it back down—softer this time. “Fossilization, yeah,” he said.

She glared at him. “You’re old, Bota. Like, ancient!” She climbed up on his arm and hopped repeatedly in place, her grabby paws landing right where the least meat padded his bones underneath. “What about your bones? Have they turned to stone yet?”

The krakun snorted and pulled his arm away, dumping her on her tail. “I don’t think they do that, Ykahi!” he said. “I don’t think bones can fossilize before they get buried in the ground.”

She glared at him and pointed at his snout. “You don’t know that!” she shouted. “You could be all stone inside and not even know!”

The bright blue krakun leaned close, his face just meters from hers. “I do know lots of things,” he said with an enigmatic grin. Then, he stood and walked to the kitchen.

“Yeah? What?” she shouted at his back. “What do you know?”

“I happen to know,” he said when he returned, “that a certain ringel was looking for these…” He set two plastic bags on the table, each nearly as large as she was.

Ykahi gasped and fell back a pace. “Gluppets?” Then, realizing she’d guessed right, she dove for them, gathering them up in her paws and admiring them. “They are! Dead Gods gluppets! Look! It’s you as a skeleton. It’s a krakun skeleton!”

She held a bag up for him and he smiled. Each bag was little more than a white plastic mitten with a lunging krakun skeleton printed on either side. “I’m glad you like them,” he said. “I had to suffer through two WhelpMeals to get them.”

Ykahi bounced in place. “I love them! Put them on!”

“What?” he asked. “No, my claws are way too big. I’ll tear them.”

“Please, Bota?” she begged. “Dance with me!”

Reluctantly, the gigantic krakun squeezed the talons on his left claw together and tucked them inside one of the flimsy bags. He then squeezed his right talons together but quickly realized that his left was now useless and couldn’t assist in getting the right gluppet on. Ykahi grabbed the bag and helped him slip it over his talons.

“I feel really stupid,” said Boots.

“They look great!” Ykahi yelled as she pranced in time to the music. “Dance with me!”

Botabriask shrugged then lowered his arms so the two Dead Gods gluppets peeked up over the edge of the table. The plastic was stretched so tightly over his talons that he didn’t dare bend them hard for fear of splitting the cheap plastic seams. Instead, he just bounced his claws up and down, tilting them slightly to the beat.

Ykahi closed her eyes as she danced, her ears grinning wide. She raised both of her fists and swung them wildly as she danced.

Over the music, a loud pounding sounded from the apartment’s door. “Botabriask!” Korosovak shouted from the hallway. “Turn that music down now!”

“Oh shit! Oh shit!” gasped the bright blue krakun, his eyes darting wildly around. “The super sounds pissed!”

Ykahi shrugged, nonplussed. She continued to dance. “Ignore him,” she said.

“No!” hissed Boots. “He’s got a key! He’s gonna come in here. Hide me!”

“Hide you?” she scoffed.

“Yes! Please!” he begged, curling his talons and threatening to shred the gluppets he wore.

Ykahi shrugged. “Okay, if that’s what you want…” With a grin, she pointed all her fingers at the behemoth, channeled power up from her toes and recited the mystic incantation she’d been rehearsing all week, “Ixyyryr patze zaily, pynaz ygupa pozy … jiedu!”

There was a puff … not of smoke or sound, but of … energy. And then, when it cleared, Ykahi no longer stood alone on the table, a bright blue geroo—ears confused and wide with wonder—stood beside her.

“Wha…? Wha…?” gasped the geroo in the golden boots. “What?” He stared at his paws, eyes and ears opened wide.

Ykahi ignored him. Instead, she grabbed one of the torn gluppets and with a hop, pulled it down over his head so only his long light blue tail stuck out the bottom.

No sooner was the krakun-geroo hidden from view, the door burst open. Korosovak stomped in and jabbed a claw into the television’s remote, dropping the apartment into silence. “Botabriask!” the super howled. “Where are you, 2B?”

A small figure trembled inside a gluppet but said nothing. The super’s eyes scanned the apartment, then he marched to the bedroom and bathroom before returning. When he spotted the skeletal ringel standing on the table, he demanded, “Where is he? Where is Botabriask?”

Ykahi looked up for a moment and shrugged. “No idea,” she said before returning her attention to the photos on the oversized strand. “Haven’t seen him.”

Korosovak scowled. “What do you mean, ‘No idea’?” he demanded.

The ringel sighed and sat down on the screen. “I mean, I have no idea where he is,” she lied. “I came up here to tell him to keep it down, but he’s not here.”

“What?” her owner gasped. “He left with his music blaring?”

“No idea,” she said again. “Mebbe, he got abducted by geroo. Did you check the shoebox?” She jabbed a finger toward the slave quarters and the cluster of geroo faces that had been peeking out vanished back inside.

Korosovak stared at the box a moment before turning back. “Huh. Weird,” he said. The krakun took a step toward the door but then paused and turned back. “If you see him, tell him to knock this shit off. Show some consideration for a change.”

The door slammed shut and Ykahi grinned wide. Standing, she peered in one of the holes that had been torn in the plastic gluppet. “You okay in there?” she asked.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ap05CauIRHw48DaVAgPx0avMUqeQ8UlSfMW0hQzB90w/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?