Chapter 64: A Big Smile

A thoughtful stare.

Once he's come up with today's plot, Percival warns Kay about the giant spiders they'll be facing in battle.

Kay... meows.

Cats do that sometimes.

Only, Percy could have sworn he heard the cat say something.

"Don't go... what? Where?" Percy looks around, but there's nobody there. Just Kay.

Get a grip, Percy. Cats don't talk. Cats definitely don't talk. .... ... ... Smells like Mom's making pancakes for breakfast!

Not seeming to sense the child's discomfort, Kay communicates affection.

Or at least ownership.

Speaking of battles, Mittens barely wins a fight in this virtual reality simulation.

She'll have to make sure to keep this device a secret from her son. One look at all this blood, and he might never sleep soundly again.

Visual representation of Percival sleeping soundly.

Mom and son biking together.

War Machine follows Snowberry into old age.

Mittens with a parrot.

INTENSE

Mittens is not happy to get home to find Percival playing that zombie video game again.

"Get out of that chair or I'm shutting off my laptop in five... four..."

"Mommm! I'm desensitizing myself!"

"Except you're going to be awake all night shivering in terror."

"I shall not fail!"

Mittens folds her arms. "Alright then."

Mittens has a small birthday party.

There's cake, and Ambrosine is here so Mittens can feel like she has friends.

For Percy's sake, she ages with grace. That is to say, a big smile.

She bought herself a new scarf and sweater.

Percival's second experience with cake is even better than the first.

"I love this stuff soooo much I could eat it every day but Mom won't let me because childhood obesity leads to early death which isn't always true because I'm pretty sure old man Fleet has been fat since the dawn of time but anyway I promise I'd do thirty laps around the school track every day if she'd let me have more cake I think the little icing stars are my favorite part or maybe the chocolate yeah I think definitely the chocolate cake part is my favorite part of the cake. There are these two boys at school who always fight about what's better chocolate or vanilla and the chocolate guy always freaks out if he gets like a chocolate milkshake that's actually vanilla with chocolate syrup in it because he can taste the vanilla bean and he hates the taste of vanilla they are like sworn enemies him and vanilla. I kind of wish I had a sworn enemy. Miss Ambrosine, what's it like being an actress?"

Percy fixates on the subject of acting. Ambrosine doesn't want to talk shop with family, but doesn't see a way out of it.

Percy attends a sleep-over at a friend's house, leaving Mittens and Ambrosine free to pillow fight in his bedroom. Ambrosine remembers doing this when they were much younger; back when little Mittens's psychological well-being seemed uncertain. At least, Ambrosine's mother River seemed to think that was the case. Ambrosine now wonders if they worried for no reason. The girl grew into an accomplished scientist.

"No... no! You're not..." Ambrosine gasps for breath. "You're not winning this one!"

"Percy sounds like such a handful," Ambrosine remarks. "I don't understand how you do this alone."

"You're kidding, right? I wouldn't trade a minute I have with him for the world."

"Oh, I love my kids, but it's not all great all the time and if Heri weren't there, I'd go mad."

(Heriberto is Ambrosine's husband.)

Mittens frowns. "What can I say? The right guy hasn't come up again."

"You need to stop looking for Reg in other men," Ambrosine chides. "How many dates have you been on since your son was a toddler? One?"

"I'm NOT looking for Reginald in other men," Mittens replies, her temper flaring. "What an insulting thing to say. And what do you know about dating? Heri was your first boyfriend. You married him almost straight after high school. You've been together forever. That's what I wanted, too!"

Mittens sighs. "Sorry. Can we just go out for a drink, already?"

After the night out, Mittens retreats to the bathroom and searches her face for wrinkles.

"My best years aren't behind me," she tells the woman in the mirror. "They are me. There's only the present. Or some other such philosophical thing." She pauses, getting to the root of her anxiety. "I'm still attractive. If I met somebody, they wouldn't be put off by my age. And I'm not looking for anybody. So I. Don't. Care."

Time passes, and Percival grows into a lanky teen.

His best friend these days is Tiberius Annan.

They've been unwittingly inseparable since Percival's first day of high school. Which was hell.

As newbie to the class, Percival was victim to incessant pranking and other nonsense. Even Tanya and Iris, his childhood friends, refused to talk to him. And letting him sit anywhere near them at lunchtime would be uncool.

Thus Percival found himself shunned from all but the last lunch table, where the sullen looking guy was sitting.

"...Hi."

Lunch devoured already, Tiberius stared back, unamused. "What. What do you want."

"I was just saying hi."

"Piss off."

"That was curiously rude."

Tiberius glanced around, but saw no-one looking their way. "Someone put you up to something, Legolas?"

"That's racist. But no! No one sent me to bother you, if that's what you're thinking."

"So you're bothering me on your own time."

"Yes! I mean, I don't mean to. But you see there was no place else to sit down." Percy chomps into a apple, conveniently retrieved from hammerspace. "Except on the ground. You want me to sit on the ground, Tiberius? It's Tiberius, isn't it?"

"Yeah yeah. I remember you. Middle school. You dressed up as a dinosaur and attacked everyone with a balloon sword during the winter holiday play."

"Someone dared me to do it. You know, my mom could still cure your pink hair."

"My grandma had this hair color," Tiberius said, deadpan. "I loved my grandma."

"All-righty."

Percy wonders what it's like to remember one's grandparents.

After that, they had lunch together every day.

Tiberius hates school. Why? He doesn't need a reason. He just does.

Tiberius lets Percival in on his plot to shut the school down for a few days.

Percival decides to go along with it, since obviously one should help friends complete quests.

After some careful planning, the two break into the school at night, and flood it.

Then they run away.

Tiberius remembers he didn't have supper.

He had that argument with his step-father and stormed out of the house before the family could eat.

"Shhh! You're making me hungry now," Percival complains.






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Etc.: Tiberius is Terra's grandson.

Chapter 63: Too Many Books

Percival is one of those "energetic" and "imaginative" children.

(People use those words, but they mean something else.)

Any household object could be something it's not. This stone from ancient China could be an alien artifact, or a tracking device, or a bomb, or the long lost piece to a puzzle...

Mittens often finds her son talking to himself, or to his toys, but she doesn't worry too much about that.

This is the childhood I missed out on, Mittens decides. I was too busy trying to figure out my surroundings, trying to tell my father's fiction from fact.

Percy also likes to play with the old dollhouse. Mittens doesn't tell him it's "for girls" or call its pinkness to attention; Percy seems to have an adorable little narrative going on. The green-shirted man is married to the red-shirted woman, and they're renovating the attic because they're going to have a bunch of kids.

Sometimes the kid stops in his tracks and stares off into space.

To think hard about something, apparently you've got to leave your real world behind.

Kay has grown into a large cat.

Mostly, he is a good cat.

But when he wants down, he wants down.

Percival is very slight and easily knocked over.

Percival follows his mother around like a puppy, even when she's using a chainsaw.

His paintings aren't very good, but nobody ever started out any good at painting.

"Mom! What's that?"

"Mm? ...! That's an airplane, honey. Military design. ...Seems like it's going to pass us by."

"Not that. That. Those green thingies."

"Plumbobs," Mittens says carefully. "My grandmother, Stella Archer, had recurring nightmares about them."

"Why?"

"I suppose they're dangerous? The one in the foreground looks like it's about to crush that guy's car."

Snowberry pawing at her food instead of eating it.

Tagging a tiny bird.

Bringing a specimen home to show Percy.

Reginald had a cliche fascination with what humans lump into the general word "nature."

Mittens does her best to pass some of that eco-awareness on.

 Absolutely not allowed to fire the cannon.

"Mom-"

"No."

"Pleaaase?"

"No!"

The cannon is, by far, not the strangest thing Arjun left behind.

"The plaque says it's a dragon," Percy points out.

"Yes but it's not really a dragon..."

"Then what is it?"

Mittens winces. "Something my father fished out of a cursed lake. I should throw it away."

"I found it in the box!" Percy protests, widening his eyes to beg. "It's mine."

One day, Grim walks in and snatches the cat.

Snowberry doesn't seem any happier about this than anyone else.

"You hate me or something, don't you?" Mittens sulks.

Kay mourns his mother.

Mittens finds her son isn't in his own bed.

"...Kiddo?"

 "Nightmare," he says vacantly.

"About...?"

"I don't know."

Mittens doesn't press.

She puts off going to bed herself, and reads him a bedtime story.

The Life and Times of Mr. Chan has been passed down in this family for a while. On the back of the front cover someone wrote "Happy Birthday, Pavel" in neat, looping letters.

 Fast asleep.

 Mittens slips into bed next to him, thinking vaguely of the unsolvable maths problem she's been trying so arrogantly to solve.

It's not an uncommon thing, to find the kid curled up next to her in the middle of the night after something's spooked him. For this reason, she's forbidden him to watch horror films. He knows it's all fake, but he can't stop thinking about it. The convincing looks of terror on the actors' faces haunt him even if he can see the zipper on the swamp ghoul's costume.

She notices immediately when Percy's there; a slight weight increase on the other side of the bed that causes her to remember when someone else was there, even after all this time. Percival has replaced his father in the sense that he's the only person left whom Mittens fiercely cares about, and she's introspective enough to see this. But it saddens her, because a child is something a mother can't cling to.

If she does her job properly, he'll be independent very soon. All grown up. Possibly out on his own.

Percival's first friend is Tanya Rome.

They play catch outside. Tanya is sure they will be best friends forever.

"How are you so good at catching?!" she demands, nearly falling on her ass in a failed attempt to throw a curve-ball.

He shrugs. "How are you so bad at it?"

"You never miss!"

"Tanya, it's easy! You watch the ball, it gets close, and then you catch it."

Percival and Tanya go inside to hold royal court.

"What's that? The Spanish are attacking? Egad and gadzooks!"

Tanya figures this is what happens to people when they read too many books.

She vows to never read a book again.






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Etc.: Elves +20 accuracy -70 durability.

One night Percy went to sleep with his eyes open, and the resulting screenshots were so creepy I had to use one.

His bedroom is gray-ish because that's his favorite color. I probably wouldn't have acknowledged his favorite color, except I'm under the IT'S SO YOU goal with Mittens. 

It kind of disturbs me how the sims melt into ghosts, but Grim shows up and grabs the cat while it still appears alive. What is the implication, here? 

Being a cat person, Mittens got a worse moodlet when Snowberry died than she got when Reginald died. I didn't reflect that in the story because that's kinda messed up.