Boots 2 (ver 5) (Patreon)

I woke up today feeling much healthier and excited to make progress on "Executioner's Gambit". Still no promise on when Ky will sketch the cover, but it was enough to crank out a new version of Boots 2.

I definitely feel the new Botabriask and Ykahi. I like them a lot. I hope you guys do too.

Boots 1 (ver 5)

———

With the cleaning crew sorted, Botabriask turned back to the tiny ringel who was still looking up dance clubs on her strand. He unclipped the strand from his necklace and tapped twice to pull up a map. Then, he set the communicator down, face-up on the counter in front of the striped slave.

“Whoa!” Ykahi gasped, taking in the sight. “Is that… Is that a 14J?” she squeaked.

“14J,” he scoffed, flipping the strand over. Though smooth, black, and shiny like any metal or plastic case, the digits indicating the current time sparkled like starlight. “16J, more like.”

She gasped once more, covering her muzzle, then reached tentatively out for it without even asking his permission. “16J? Wow, it’s made of real leather,” she practically moaned. Then, she pressed her face against the case and closed her eyes. “It’s as soft as a kit’s kisses!”

“Yes, enough of that,” grunted the krakun. He flipped the device back over, dumping her unceremoniously onto the countertop, but caught the unit’s leather edge with a talon tip to give the ringel an extra moment to avoid being pressed underneath.

“Ha-ha!” she laughed as she got back up on her paws. “This is so much better. The screen is huge!” Then, she hopped up on the device’s face and made some quick selections with three of her four paws. Pushpins appeared across the map, and she performed a quick gymnastics maneuver to resize and recenter the view.

“There!” Ykahi announced, standing atop the apartment building in the center of the map. “Just look at them all. There’s Riches to the north and Decadance to the southeast. Hoard is over on Prosperity, and The Silver Coin is above that dentist’s office.”

Botabriask scowled. With a dubious look, he asked, “The Silver Coin is a dance club?”

The ringel looked up. “It’s a restaurant, but they have a dance floor! I’ve seen photos,” she said. With paws on her hips, she looked around at the glowing pins and her ears brightened. “Hey, look! Now they’re in walking distance for me. Boop boop boop. I’m going to See and Be Seen.” Ykahi took a series of tiny shuffling steps as she made her way across the map.

Botabriask laughed and shook his head. He leaned an elbow on the counter, lowering himself closer to her face level. “Okay, paint me intrigued, but why would a ringel have any interest in krakun dance clubs?”

Ykahi threw up her paws in desperation, whining, “I’m not allowed to go anywhere! This planet is so full of fascinating places to go and things to see, and I never get to enjoy any of it!”

Bota raised an eyebrow ridge high. “I still don’t see why—?”

The tiny ringel pointed a finger at an angle through the countertop beneath her perch. “1A? Downstairs?” She looked up into the bright blue krakun’s steel grey eyes. “He never eats a meal at home. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he goes out. So, I make him take photos of every place he goes, every meal they bring him.”

“You … make him…?”

“He tells me how the service was, whether the waitress was pretty, how long the wait was, what the food tasted like.”

Bota blinked, paying closer attention to the little mammal now than he had before. Her stripes were wrong! That’s what made her look so unusual. Bands of white covered her tail, but the stripes on her arms and legs went long-way instead of around, making the white fur look like skeleton bones. And on her face, gloppy white paint covered some of her black fur, clearly with the intention of giving her a matching skull-like look. “The guy in 1A shows you photos of everything he eats?” he asked with a healthy heaping of skepticism. Why would any krakun document his life just for the entertainment of a slave? How could anyone be pathetic enough to require validation from a lesser being.

Then again… he mused at his own folly, here you are, indulging her yourself!

Ykahi plowed ahead without looking back. She turned and pointed again. “The gal in 1C loves bookstores and javea shops. She tells me about the shops, the books, the smells, and everyone she sees.” Readjusting again, she said, “2A is addicted to pastry and sometimes he’ll bring me back a little crumb that’s leftover while he goes on and on about cold butter versus melted, layered crusts versus rolled.”

She looked up at him, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “2C loves museums. She won’t bring me any photos, but she doesn’t really need to. After each visit, we look up pictures online, and she tells me about how they made her feel when she stood before them in person.”

Botabriask nodded. He looked over at his still-open front door and the “2B” engraved at eye-level. “Hrm. I suppose that still leaves 1B…?”

“I live in 1B!” she wailed. With a shuddering breath, she wiped at her eyes. “We. Don’t. Go. Anywhere!”

The krakun sighed, and without even really thinking about it, he reached over and gently petted the little creature’s back with his claw. He cleared his throat. “Oh. Well, I was thinking about grabbing some dinner at The Silver Coin tonight…”

Ykahi brightened in an instant. She bounced in place so hard that she nearly vibrated. Beneath her, the communicator beeped, asking if she wanted to plot a course to See and Be Seen. “Oh! Oh! Oh! You gotta go late, okay?” she insisted. “1A always eats out early, and he said he’s never seen anyone dancing there, so you gotta go really late to give it the best chance, okay?”

Despite himself, the corners of Bota’s wide mouth turned up slightly into a smile. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “I’ll go late and see if anyone is dancing.”

“And then you’ll tell me about it?” She grabbed onto his claw with both paws. “I wanna know what songs they play, who you dance with, whether they were sexy. Take pictures for me!”

The krakun rolled his eyes. He could imagine the sorts of looks he’d get if he started taking pictures of strangers. “I’m not going to promise photos,” he said, waving a talon and trying to pull free from her grip without injuring the furry little thing. “That’s kind of creepy.”

“Okay, not photos,” she conceded, “but you’ll tell me all about it when you get back?”

With a heavy sigh, “Yeah, all right. I’ll tell you what I see … if I go.”

Ykahi bounced angrily in place, starting navigation. She put both paws to his knuckles and shoved at him just as hard as she could manage—which wasn’t all that hard at all. “Aw, c’mon! You gotta go out for dinner anyhow. You just moved in,” she said. “You probably haven’t even unpacked your plates yet.”

His smile was even more genuine now. As if he would pack or unpack his possessions when moving! “Yeah, okay, okay. I’ll go.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V78QtqUYaCroTji0eTDJvY4jAKsCsbQRli_DkTbtf0U/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?