Boots 8 (ver 5) (Patreon)

Really rolling now!

Boots 1 (ver 5)
Boots 2 (ver 5)
Boots 3 (ver 5)
Boots 4 (ver 5)
Boots 5 (ver 5)
Boots 6 (ver 5)
Boots 7 (ver 5)

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The spell wore off that evening without any warning or notice. One moment, Botabriask was small and furry, and the next the galaxy was sliding sideways until he had his own body once more. Fortunately, no one was around to witness the transformation.

He left without a word and immediately took up residence in a series of shady motels, not staying in any one of them for more than a single night.

He paced around the dingy rooms, scheming, worried, wondering. He couldn’t let Ykahi find him, not until he was ready, at least. Her first attempt had transformed him for a minute, and the second had lasted a day. If she touched him again, the spell could very well last forever, and he couldn’t bear the thought of living the remainder of his life as a ringel!

So, he waited, hoping that in the meantime she’d have perfected her ointment. When at last he returned, he didn’t go straight home. Instead, he stopped by Ykahi’s apartment first.

“Uh, 2B,” said Korosovak in surprise as he opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting a visit from you…”

Botabriask wanted to cringe at the super’s ineptitude. He didn’t even know his own tenant’s name! Disgraceful. But the bright blue krakun had a strategy in place and didn’t let his true feelings show on his face. “I wanted to apologize,” Bota said with an easy smile. “I think the two of us started out poorly with the dancing and loud music. You must be so furious, living right beneath me…”

“W-well, I…” Korosovak stammered in surprise.

“May I come in?” Bota asked. He sidestepped the big red krakun and entered without waiting for permission. “What a lovely place. I barely know you, but this apartment seems to suit you so well,” he said, smiling pleasantly at the moderately run-down furniture and out-of-date decorating scheme.

“Uh, sure,” said Korosovak, belatedly. He closed the door to the hallway.

“And your pet? That little ringel?” Botabriask asked casually as he scanned the home. “She’s not around?”

Korosovak shook his head. “2C just returned from a trip—the National Museum down in Enterprise. I’m certain he’ll be bending her ear about it all day.”

“Fascinating!” said Bota said with a grin. “I’ve truly never met a creature like her—going where she pleases, making herself at home in everyone’s apartment.”

“Yeah, she’s something else,” the super agreed with a sheepish grin. “I hope she didn’t rub you wrong. Ykahi is more of a force of nature than a pet. I wouldn’t sell her for all the emperor’s golds, and I wouldn’t accept a second one like her if you held a blaster to my temple. Y’know what I mean?”

The bright blue krakun laughed long and loud. “Yes, I understand completely. She is unique!”

“So, about the music and dancing…” said Korosovak, bringing the conversation back around to the beginning once more.

“Yeah,” said Bota as he casually wandered the apartment. “I think perhaps that I was expecting a different sort of nightlife here at Fortune Smiles—with all the dance clubs in the area, y’know?”

“Uh, you were?” asked the red krakun with the yellow horns.

“Well, sure!” said Botabriask as he wandered his way into the kitchen. “I expected the other tenants to be more like me—going to parties, blasting tunes, dancing, having a good time. But they’re not so much, are they?”

“No, not so much.”

“Right. I’m not fitting in,” he agreed. “It would probably be best for me to move out and find a crowd more like myself, so my … mannerisms aren’t constantly upsetting the others.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the super, “but I think you’re right. You’d probably be happier with a different set of neighbors, and I know the other tenants miss the peace and quiet.”

“Well, look at this!” Bota exclaimed, pointing at the decorations atop the refrigerator. “It’s so adorable! It’s all spooky and sweet!”

Korosovak laughed and leaned his elbows on the counter that separated the living room and kitchen. “Yeah, that Ykahi is something else. She insisted on a space where she could work on all her spells and potions.”

“It’s so cute.”

“Don’t touch her altar,” Korosovak warned. “She’s so protective of that.”

With a grin, Botabriask raised his palms. “I wouldn’t dare. She’d put a hex on me or something.” Then, he picked up the little black cauldron suspended over a burned-out tea light. He scooped out a healthy glob with a talon and brought it to his nose for a sniff. A longish pause, then he looked over to the super. “Is this … butter?”

“Probably,” the super laughed. “She won’t admit it, but I think she’s obsessed with dairy products. I once asked her to put a hex on 2A that would keep him from clogging the toilet with entire rolls of tissue, but when she told me how much cheese she’d need to cast the spell, I decided it would be simpler to just keep plunging out the clogs as 2A made them!”

# # #

Under the cover of darkness, Ykahi crept into 2B. Apart from a soft krakun snore emanating from the bedroom, the apartment was silent.

She crept to the bedroom and climbed the access ladder that the cleaning crew used to change their owner’s sheets. A gigantic mountain of krakun loomed before her, the sheet pulled up only over Boot’s hips in the warm air.

Don’t wake up. Don’t wake up, she chanted over and over inside her head as she crept ever closer to the sleeping giant. At last, she was within arm’s reach. She set her bottlecap down on the gently sloping covers, squished one palm into the cool ointment, and then turned to face the wall of scales that filled her vision.

Trembling, she swallowed her fear. She pressed her paw against his back and announced in a clear voice, “Voaris dohoaiea!”

Acting like a spiritual superconductor, she could feel her soul sliding out through her paw, through the ointment and into the krakun, while the krakun’s soul poured out and filled the void left within her body. This time, everything was working perfectly. She had no doubt that the spell would last, that it wouldn’t be only a temporary effect like her two previous tries.

Her perspective shifted sideways, and in only a moment, she was no longer a tiny ringel. Her body was huge, muscular, and glistened in the dim moonlight with glossy scales. Boots, however, was now just a tiny striped mammal, lying on his back and staring up in terror at the enormous krakun that loomed over him.

Scooping him up with one claw, she held him up gently but firmly, taking a moment to admire how perfect his aura looked. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought it was natural, that he had always lived within a ringel body. “Perfect,” she chuckled with a wide grin.

“No! No! Wait! Don’t hurt me!” squealed the little ringel. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand all too well,” the ringel-turned-krakun chortled.

“No!” the krakun-turned-ringel screamed. “He told me to sleep in his bed, that he’d turn me back in the morning only if I did as he instructed.”

She studied the aura once more, her brow lifting in surprise. She realized that she had made a mistake. It wasn’t Boots’s aura she was seeing. “Roli?” she whispered in krakun tones.

Something moved among the sheets and a small greasy paw pressed firmly against her calf. A little geroo voice proudly announced, “Voaris dohoaiea!”

“No!” cried Ykahi, and despite how her soul dug in and clung to the krakun body for dear life, she could feel herself draining away as the galaxy spun sideways.

Only a moment later, she stood atop the sheets in a male geroo’s body. Above her, a gigantic krakun loomed. She turned and dove for a second bottlecap that lay a short distance away, but the krakun was too quick. He scooped her up and grinned wide.

“I gotcha,” Boots cried, back in his own body once more. “And you’re not going anywhere.”

He grabbed a huge plastic bottle from the nightstand, and with an unceremonious shove, he deposited the little geroo inside it.

Ykahi scrabbled hard against the bottle’s smooth sides, her paws quickly turning orange from all the cheese powder that dusted them, but only a moment later the jar’s plastic lid fumbled into place and screwed down tight.

The ringel-turned-krakun-turned-geroo stared up in horror. She felt a tiny relief when she saw all the holes poked in the lid, but only just that. She was trapped!

Boots grinned at her through the jug’s side. “Make yourself comfortable, Ykahi,” he chuckled mirthlessly. “In the morning, you and I will have a long talk about making my dreams come true … and whether or not I’ll actually need any of your help to accomplish them.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fhKgyEzMTsy3BTa626UdAW74O8xxyRMxMPa3J_QH5II/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?