Boots 5 (ver 3) (Patreon)

I'm a bit worried about this story. Not getting much feedback. Do you guys like it?

Edit: Thanks to @Dan Huber for noticing that I uploaded the wrong file. This is the right one, LOL!

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Botabriask was lying on the floor beside a bowl of Tasty Frooties when the skeletal ringel approached. She stared at him a moment before raising her voice over the music booming from the television. “What are you doing?” she shouted.

He gestured with a finger past the bowl to the corner of the room where some of the geroo had ventured from their box. “I’m watching the geroo play.”

Ykahi climbed over the bowl’s edge, then disappeared beneath the colorful snacks. With a look bordering between amusement and disgust, Bota watched the bowl, the contents shifting about here and there before the ringel finally surfaced. She draped her arms over the bowl’s edge like a swimmer relaxing between laps. “What are they playing?” she finally asked.

Boots shrugged. “I don’t know.”

The two watched the game unfold. Some of the players ran in circles around the edges of the “field”. Some moved inside, hopping from place to place. Others wandered, eyes closed and arms outstretched as if they were trying to find the other players.

“Geroo stuff,” huffed Ykahi with derision. She grabbed one of the Tasty Frooties and hurled it at the players like Botabriask had done with his energy drink some days before. The tiny snack sailed only a couple meters before it bounced off the floor and rolled to a stop.

Bota stared at the wayward snack, and a strange feeling filled him … a feeling of regret? Remorse, perhaps? He had thrown his bottle in anger because the slave had asked him to turn the music down. It really had been … a reasonable request from someone who was trying to get their cubs to go to sleep. So, why had it made him so angry? He wasn’t sure now.

And then he threw a bottle at him? That could have really hurt the tiny slave if he hadn’t have missed. And even then, it left a big sticky mess that the slaves had to clean up in the morning.

He looked away from the snack and forced his eyes back to the game, trying to push the feelings away. “It looks fun,” he said.

Ykahi shrugged. She gestured toward the slaves with a flip of her paw. “So, join them,” she said.

Boots rolled his eyes at how ridiculous and unrealistic the ringel could be. “I can’t join their game!”

The tiny creature picked up a second Tasty Frooty and took a bite out of it. Then, speaking with her muzzle full, she said, “It’s running and jumping and finding people with your eyes closed. You’d be great at all of that.” She tossed the half-eaten snack to the side so it disappeared in with all the others, then stared at him while she chewed with big open-mouthed bites. “You can run faster and jump higher. Your arms are huge! It would be easy for you to find people with your eyes closed.”

The krakun chuffed a laugh, imagining how the geroo would flee in terror, screaming as they tried to avoid being stepped on.

“Tell ya what,” she said, wading across the bowl to rest at the edge closest to him. “Let’s swap. You go play geroo games, and I’ll go to your job and do krakun things.”

Bota laughed much harder at that, his eyes gleaming with mirth. “Oh, will you, now?” he asked the ringel.

“Yeah! I can do your job,” she announced, grinning proudly. She stood there at the edge of the bowl for a long moment before her ears began to droop. “What’s your job?”

Botabriask’s face lifted into an easy smile. He lowered his snout closer to the fuzzy creature. “I work in advertising.”

“Easy!” she laughed. She snapped her fingers, her ears lifting into a grin. Then, they slowly drooped once more. “What’s advertising?”

He rested his cheek on a palm, explaining, “Advertising is convincing people to buy something they don’t want to buy.”

Ykahi rolled her eyes. “That sounds simple! If I were a krakun, I’d be great at advertising.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked. Then, licking his lips, he suggested, “Suppose your client was the Silver Coin. How would you convince people to go eat there?”

“I’d threaten to break their knees if they didn’t go,” the ringel said with a nod. “Nobody wants their knees broken. They’d go for sure.”

Bota laughed and pounded the floor with a fist, making the snack jump and dance all about her. “You can’t do that!”

Her ears fell. “Why not?”

“It’s…” he started to say, but the words ran out. Eventually he turned away. “Well, it’s against the rules, okay?”

“That’s dumb,” Ykahi grunted. She turned about and crossed her arms, leaning back against the side of the bowl. Ever so slowly, she sank among the snacks. “They give you a super-easy job and then make up rules why you can’t do it.”

Boots sighed. “Yeah, I guess.”

She stood up suddenly, turning toward him. “I’ll tell you what. You go play that dumb geroo game, and I’ll make up an advertising to get people to eat at the Silver Coin. Something about dancing, maybe.”

“I can’t join their game, Ykahi,” the krakun explained. “I’m too big.”

“It’s … against the rules?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“What is it with everyone making up dumb rules in their games?” Ykahi shouted over the music. With arms outstretched, she let herself fall backwards until her black and white pelt covered most of the snacks.

He raised his massive head and stared straight down at her. “I dunno.”

Ykahi reached up and petted the scales on his snout for a while. In a quieter voice, she suggested, “If you wanted it to be hard to win, I could turn you into a geroo again.”

His mouth turned up into a smile, but only for a moment. “That’s nice of you to offer,” he said, “but that spell doesn’t last long enough. I wouldn’t have time to play the game.”

With two paws, she grabbed the rim of one of his nostrils and scrambled up on top of his snout. She sat there in a crouch, staring him in the eyes. “Actually,” she said, “It would last longer this time.”

Botabriask started to tilt his head but stopped himself, not wanting to dump her onto the floor. “It would?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” The two stared at each other for a long, long time. “You want me to do it or not?”

He bit his lip. “Yeah, okay, do it.”

With a flip of her paw, Ykahi gestured toward the television’s remote control, sitting within his arm’s reach. “Turn off your music.”

Without hesitating, he snatched the remote off the floor. The sleek thing was tiny in his claw, looking more like a good luck charm than an electronic device. With a tap, the apartment went silent. The geroo paused their game and turned to watch the other two.

Botabriask set the remote back on the floor.

Ykahi smiled, her ears lifting high. Then she gestured at his face with all of her fingers and recited, “Ixyyryr patze zaily, pynaz ygupa pozy … jiedu!”

There was a puff of energy, then the two were standing side-by-side; a little ringel looking a bit like a skeleton and a bright blue geroo in a pair of golden boots.

Bota stared at his paws in disbelief. “Wow,” he whispered over the silence. “And it’s gonna last longer this time?”

She nodded.

“How long?”

Ykahi patted him on the arm. “Don’t sleep in their box tonight,” she said. “You’ll be huge again by morning.”

Bota turned back to the geroo, and everyone stood in silence for a long while.

“Hey geroo!” Ykahi finally shouted. She gave the blue geroo a shove, and he stumbled forward a step. “Bota’s gonna play your dumb geroo game with you!”

None of the geroo moved a muscle. They just stared at each other until one of the slaves finally lifted a paw. With a flip of his fingers, he beckoned for Boots, and the grinning krakun-turned-geroo sprinted off to join the rest without ever turning back.

Ykahi grinned wide. Bending, she scooped up the TV remote and made her way back to the hole in the baseboard.

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z7F1sLnsVO2ymD7-oz5sMVdh4RxPK-NewjOrICur8Y4/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?