Boots 4 (ver 5) (Patreon)

Yes! I definitely have the characters and plot hammered out now. Nothing can stop me.

Also, I'll be headed to Missouri on Thursday to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday. Hopefully, I'll still be able to get a little writing done. We'll see.

Boots 1 (ver 5)
Boots 2 (ver 5)
Boots 3 (ver 5)

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Ykahi flattened her ears and looked up at the ceiling, but it was her roommate who groaned, “Oh, no. Not again!”

She listened for a moment before shrugging. “Just music this time. At least he’s not dancing.” From her perch on the couch’s armrest, she flipped to the next page on her strand.

Korosovak shook his head. “The other tenants don’t care if 2B is dancing. They care that his music is blaring through their walls.”

The little ringel looked up at the ceiling once more, then shrugged. “Well, I suppose if they start calling, you’ll have to go up and tell him to turn it down.” She smiled at him. “I did it last time.”

He cursed under his breath. “Why in the dead gods’ names did Zebs have to die?”

She squinted at her roommate, trying to understand the nature of the question. Zebs hadn’t been much of a tenant. Like most krakun, he was grumpy and foul-tempered. When Ykahi had gone up to introduce herself, he’d hurled a plate at her and then demanded that the super get the building fumigated. “Because…” she offered with little conviction in her voice, “he was old?”

The red krakun ignored her. “This is bad,” he muttered, “really, really bad.”

“Pfft, whatever,” she laughed. She stood, and with fists raised, she kicked her heel toward him. “You’re a big ol’ krakun. Just shove his door in and shout, ‘Turn that fucking music down, you twat!’ He’ll be terrified.”

He stared at her. “I can’t go kicking down doors. Besides, I’m the super. If his door is broken, then I’m the one who has to fix it!”

She smiled. “See how convenient that would be? He wouldn’t even have to call to let you know it’s busted.”

Korosovak rubbed his forehead with a palm. “You really don’t get anything, do you, Ykahi?”

“Get what?”

“If 2B keeps this up…” He paused as if waiting for her to complete his thought, but she waited politely for him to finish. “Then, the neighbors will stop asking.”

Ykahi chewed at her lower lip, nodding and staring at him for several long seconds, trying to puzzle out the red krakun’s point. “Problem solved…?”

“No, not problem solved!” he groaned, throwing his head back onto the cushion. “They’ll stop asking and just move out.”

“What? No!” she shouted, her eyes suddenly wide enough that white shown all around her irises. She scrambled from her seat, up his shoulder, over his head, and trembling, squatted at the end of his snout. She babbled, “No, no, no! You can’t let them move out! They’re my friends!”

Her heart raced and blood pounded in her ears. No photos of restaurants and pastry shops? No more late night chats about bookstores and museums? What would that leave her, just endless days with only her never-leaving-the-building roommate for company?

Oh sure, she was pretty good at making friends, but she had zero doubt in her mind that 1A, 1C, 2A, and 2C were all highly unusual krakun. Most krakun were like Zebs, angry and cruel—not the sort of people she could befriend and certainly not the sort she could convince to bring the outside world to her.

She needed them—introverts who were desperate for someone to talk to.

Korosovak’s brow ridge tightened with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Ykahi,” he said, reaching up to gently stroke her back. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. But there will always be lots of cleaning crews—tons of people you can be friends with.”

“What? No! Nobody on the cleaning crews ever leaves the building. You can’t let the other tenants move out,” she begged, stroking his snout now with both palms. “You can’t let them leave me.”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I can’t—”

“Evict him!” the little skeleton demanded, slapping her paws down on his snout. “Kick him out of here so my friends won’t go.”

Her roommate frowned. “I can’t do that. I’m the building’s superintendent, not the landlord.”

“Yeah, well,” she begged, “but you work for the landlord…”

Korosovak rolled his eyes. “So does the lawn crew. Can you see one of them demanding that a tenant get evicted?”

A long moment passed, then Ykahi got to her paws. She walked up her roommate’s snout, over his head, and down his shoulder. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m gonna stop Boots from scaring off my friends!” she announced without turning back.

“Oh yeah?” said Korosovak with a smile. His tone gently teasing, “You’re not going to kick his door in, are you? If you do, I’m the one who has to fix it.”

“I’m not gonna kick his fucking door in,” she grumped as she marched her way to the kitchen, clearly unamused at the mental image of a tiny ringel trying to kick in a krakun-sized door.

“Oh yeah? So, what then?” he asked as she climbed the ladder up the side of their refrigerator. “Make him a sandwich?”

She ducked into the ringel-sized hatch he’d installed on the side of the fridge and was out of sight for a very long time. In fact, Korosovak had risen from the couch and was about to open the refrigerator door to check on her when she reappeared at the hatch once more. “I’m gonna turn him into a slave,” she said, continuing their conversation as if she’d not gone anywhere.

The little ringel clung to the hatch’s rim with her toes, heaving with exaggerated groans as she tried to pull out a whole stick of butter.

The krakun grinned, staring as the skull-faced mammal toiled. Eventually, he had to ask, “You’re going to enslave 2B … with a stick of butter?”

She turned her head back to him, dark eyes wide and gleaming in the kitchen’s weak light. “Yes!” she hissed. “I’ll brew it into a magical ointment that will steal away his life force!”

Her roommate crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. “No.”

Ykahi hung from the stick by her fingers, her legs dangling down beneath her. She looked up at the red krakun with sad eyes. “Please?” she begged, drawing the sound out into a whine.

“No,” he said again. “You’re not using up all of my butter to make a magic anything, or I won’t have any to spread on my toast in the morning.”

She pouted.

“How about half a stick?”

The ringel scrambled up atop the stick, sitting her tail down on it as if the wedged dairy product was a ledge. Her ears fell in disappointment. “Half a stick isn’t enough. If I make the ointment with a half-stick, it won’t work!”

Korosovak frowned. “Well, it’s half a stick or none of it. Which will it be?”

She sat and stewed a long while, head hanging from her shoulders and her black ears out in a pout. Eventually, she looked back up, all smiles once more. “Half a stick, please!”

“Very well,” he laughed. Pulling the stick out of the access hatch, the krakun grabbed a knife from the drawer and prepared to slice the foil brick. Ykahi hopped anxiously behind it, waving both of her palms at the blade, willing its position. “Little more,” she whispered. “Little more. Little more.”

He sliced the butter and closed one half of it back in the refrigerator door. Then, he grabbed the other half and the ringel hopped onto his wrist for a free ride up to the top of the fridge. There, around a central cauldron, she kept candles, plastic skulls, a mortar and pestle, and jars and bins filled with curious herbs.

Korosovak deposited the butter into her cauldron, then waited while she peeled away the foil. After tossing the discarded foil in the trash, he watched her drag out an oversized lighter that she used on a tea light. Then, she swung the cast iron arm, so it suspended her pot above the flame.

The krakun smiled while he watched her. She knew he didn’t believe in magic, but he humored her and never tried to convince her otherwise. When she had first started painting her face, he had tried locking up the wall paint he used to touch up repairs, but Ykahi was as stubborn with her looks as she was with everything. The ringel started experimenting with bleach to lighten some of the darker fur on her face.

Her roommate didn’t like that at all and explained how he was afraid that it might drip down into her eyes. In the end, he bought her a tube of artist paint that he hoped would be safer and let her do as she pleased.

“Got everything you need?” he asked.

“No,” she groaned as if it were obvious. “I need more butter.”

Korosovak’s wide mouth turned up at the sides. “Anything apart from that?”

“No,” she sighed.

“Okay, you be good,” he said, planting a kiss atop her head. “Don’t make a mess.”

“I won’t,” she whined, chastised.

“And be sure you snuff out that candle when you’re done,” he added as he walked from the kitchen.

“I will!” she promised, then started poking at the butter with a used popsicle stick to break off some of the quickly melting chunks.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZHiIJuyvkZ8gB2D05rUSSLF6VEybCsxtQTGpNBOBuIM/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?