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Fictionlet
“It used to annoy me when my elders would bemoan the sad state of the world,” said Greg. “But in this case, things really did used-to-be-better. All of our society’s evils linger on like a cold that just won’t go away, while everything good withers and dies.”
Brigid narrowed her eyes. “Is that some kind of crack about my mother?”
“What?” said Greg. “No! Your mother is a national treasure. I’m talking about the degradation of our culture.”
“Anything specific?”
“Even Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t carry crullers any more,” said Greg.
Brigid nodded sadly. “We live in an age of barbarism.”
Greg sighed, clearly fighting off despair. “How can we have fallen so low?”
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
“You ever notice that people don’t squeeze the Charmin any more?” asked Greg.
“What?” said Brigid.
“Well, I was just—”
“Why would I notice a thing like that?” Brigid demanded. “Why would you notice a thing like that? Frankly I find it hard to believe that anybody in the history of ever actually did squeeze the Charmin!”
Greg shrugged noncommittally, but now that Brigid was warming up, she wasn’t about to stop. “I mean, come on. I know you’re Mr. Airy Persiflage, but you’re not stupid. Squeezing the Charmin was something some Madison Avenue suit came up with, just like the San Francisco treat or the quicker picker-upper. You’ve got to know that, haven’t you?”
“Mmm,” said Greg, more focused on his driving than her rant.
“‘Mmm’?” echoed Brigid. “Don’t you have anything more to say than ‘Mmm’?”
Greg glanced over at her. “You’ve got ring around the collar,” he said, then focused his attention on a tricky left turn. The fact that he was the one in the driver’s seat is probably what saved his life.
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
“So what exactly is your point then?” asked Isadora. “I’m afraid I’m not following.”
“Nothing terribly grand, I suppose,” said Greg. “I was just thinking, that Roy Clark is to guitar, as Victor Borge is to piano.”
Brigid wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t know who either of those people are.”
Greg winced at her. “Do you say these things just to hurt me?”
“Oh please,” said Isadora. “Do you really mean to suggest that Mr. Picking and Grinning is on the same plane as Phonetic Punctuation?”
“Suggest it? I’m stating it explicitly!” said Greg. “Look at the facts. Both extremely capable musicians. Both leaning on humor to the point of being defined by it. Both constantly being asked to ‘play something straight.’ Roy Clark doing a duet of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ with Johnny Cash is right up there with Victor Borge and Leonid Hambro playing the Hungarian Rhapsody. The only difference is NBC or PBS.”
“Bah. Never!”
“I resent the fact that you two understand each other better than I understand either one of you,” said Brigid. “Can we talk about traffic accidents or something?”
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
Greg paused, staring at a forkful of alfredo noodles.
“What?” said Brigid.
“Do you suppose,” Greg said slowly, thinking it through, “that when Harry Nilsson starts going wah-woh-wah-wah like one of Charlie Brown’s teachers, that’s supposed to be all the people talking at him that he can’t understand?”
Brigid plunked her fork down on the table. “For fuck’s sake, Greg,” she said. “Don’t you realize how old that song is?”
He blinked at her. “I guess so?” he said. “But you still knew which song I meant.”
She winced and closed her eyes. “I hate you,” she said.
Greg shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “Next time I’ll try to be a little more gentle on your mind.”
“SHUTUP SHUTUP SHUTUP!”
-The Gneech
Fictionlet
They sat in silence.
Brigid was slumped in a chair, staring into space.
Greg had his legs up on the couch with Ozymandias in his lap, and also stared into space.
“I want to go back to college,” Brigid said.
“I want to go to college and never come back,” Greg replied.
Silence resumed.
-The Gneech
Shady and the Tiger, Revisited
Just a quickie story from the D&D game I play in, for your enjoyment. :)
I apologize for all the names being so similar; that’s just something that’s happened organically in the campaign as it’s progressed.
SHADY = Shade-Of-the-Candle, my tabaxi swashbuckler
SILMA = weretiger amazon who recently joined the party
SHANA = another player’s tiefling warlock
—–
“So this is the Laughing Axe Tavern, it’s the closest thing we have to a base of operations really,” said Shade-Of-the-Candle, holding the door open. The enormous weretiger Silma had to duck her head to clear the door coming in, drawing more than a few turned heads, which neither Shady nor Silma acknowledged. “Maybe not the Lady Patrician’s Manor, but it beats living in an alley,” the much smaller tabaxi said.
“More than adequate,” said Silma. “I’m used to life on the road.”
The group drifted off to various open seats in the crowded room; Rulita, Rai, and Shana ended up at one small table, while Leuco and Capsaicin went to the bar. Finding nowhere adequate to the task of seating her, Silma went to an apple barrel in the corner and climbed up onto it for a makeshift stool. As if taking a cue, Shade-Of-the-Candle hopped up and sat on the end of the bar next to her.
“Oy!” said the bartender, putting his fists on his sides and scowling at the tabaxi. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m ordering a round of drinks for me and my friends, that’s what,” said Shady, slapping a few gold coins down on the bar.
“Well put your butt on a stool, not on my bar.”
“What stool?” demanded Shady. “The place is packed! Besides, I’m having a conversation with my friend here.” Turning to Silma, she said, “Whattya wanna drink, Simmie?”
The weretiger blinked. “Simmie?”
“Yeah?” said Shady. “Whattya wanna drink?”
“Wine and water will be fine,” said Silma.
“You heard her,” said Shady. “Same for me. Get a move on.”
The bartender frowned, but collected the coins and stepped away all the same.
Silma cocked her head at Shady. “Where did ‘Simmie’ come from?”
Shady shrugged. “I dunno. Easier to say than ‘Silma.’ I give people names. It’s just a thing I do.”
“Like ‘Sea-Legs’ and ‘Devil-Girl.’”
“You got it.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Silma. “You are a tabaxi, after all.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“I meant no offense,” said Silma.
“No, I mean seriously, what does that have to do with it?”
“Oh, just tabaxi, and their propensity for nicknames. I’ve always found it a charming quirk.”
“Tabaxi have a propensity for nicknames?”
Silma adjusted awkwardly on her barrel. “It’s just a stereotype, I suppose.” Looking around, still shifting uncomfortably, she asked, “Is it always this crowded?”
“Waxes and wanes,” said Shady. “There’s a big Thessalanian whaler in the harbor, probably half the people here are off of it.”
“I hope there’ll be somewhere to sleep.”
Shady blinked at her. “What, in the common room?”
“That was my plan,” said Silma.
“Oh. Uh.” Shady’s ears twitched. “I’ve got a whole room, upstairs.”
“All to yourself?” The weretiger gave a half-smirk as the bartender returned with her watered wine. “Being the owner of a ship has made you extravagant.”
“Hey, I’m a proper somebody now,” said Shady, grinning. “But what I’m getting at, is you don’t have to sleep in the common area. You can stay up in my room.”
Silma’s ears folded down, and she stood up from the barrel. “No thank you,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Huh?” said Shady.
“I’ll find a room in one of the other taverns in town. You can find me through the Golden Compass Society when it’s time to continue our pursuit of Captain Aranthé.”
Shady jumped down to the floor after her. “What? Why?”
Silma glowered down at the tabaxi. “I don’t know what kind of person you are, but I don’t fall into bed with someone I’ve just met and I don’t appreciate—”
Shady’s ears shot up and her eyes widened. “Fall into bed? You mean—?” In a loud and confused voice that caused the weretiger to flinch and look around the room, Shady announced, “I don’t want to have sex with you!” A peculiar noise not far off may have been Leuco snorting into a mug of ale.
“Oh, please!” snarled Silma. “Ever since you first showed up in that cave you’ve been following me around, making eyes at me, acting like a show off—”
Shady’s own ears pinned down. “I have not!”
“And now you’re proposing that I share your room.”
“So what? I’d let any of my friends share my room if they asked!”
“But you didn’t invite any of them. Only me!”
Shady blinked at that, and stared at Silma for a beat. Finally she said, “Well… well yeah, okay, I have been coming on a little strong. But it wasn’t because I was hitting on you! I mean, I’m not not hitting on you, I guess, if you wanted to have sex I’m not against the idea, but it’s not… I mean… that wasn’t…”
“Well what, then?” demanded Silma.
“I just…!” said Shady. “I just, I just… you’re the only person I’ve ever met like me.”
Silma furrowed her brows. “Like you?”
Shady looked down. “Everkeep has humans, and elves, and dwarves… and we’re right by Humblewood, so there’s mouse people and fox people and bird people and squirrel people and who-knows-what-else. But I’ve never met my kind. Never another cat person. Never. Not once.” She turned her eyes up to Silma. “Until now.”
Silma’s ears tilted forward. “Not once? No parents or siblings? No—”
“Not. Once.” Shady snarled. “I can’t even speak or read my own language. I know what my name looks like, but I don’t know how to say it. You tell me tabaxi give people nicknames? That’s news to me.”
Silma smiled, gently. “I am not a tabaxi, Shade-Of-the-Candle.”
Shady looked away, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly. “No, I know you’re not. But… you’re more like… one of us… than one of… them.”
“Shady,” said Silma. Her voice had jumped up a full octave or more, and lost its gravelly sound, but it was unmistakably her.
Shady jerked her gaze back to see not a seven foot tall tiger woman, but a nearly-normal human before her, with a dark cast to her skin and black hair. Only the golden, slit pupils of her eyes hinted at the feline. The tabaxi’s ears drooped, and she somehow seemed to shrink.
“Shady,” said Silma again. “I am not ‘your kind’ in the way you think I am. I am as human as I am tiger. When you say ‘them’ you are also talking about me.”
Shady blinked, and looked down at her clawed hands. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“But you aren’t so alone. Soon you will have a ship. It can take you to Port Nyanzaru, to Setranophis, or even Payit, where tabaxi are plentiful. Maybe you have a family out there still, trying to find you.” Shifting back into her weretiger form, Silma put a massive paw on Shady’s shoulder. “When this business is done, perhaps we could go find some for you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Shady again. She slipped out from under Silma’s grasp, and walked away.
