The Kitten Psychologist vs the Kitten's Owners

(Just jumping in now? Read the previous installment, The Kitten Psychologist Broaches the Topic of Economics, here, or the first story, The Kitten Psychologist, here.)

Boy, was I in trouble. I think it would have been worse if I hadn’t called my friends the day I left for vacation, which is exactly why I did that. But, man, give them two weeks to steam off and they were still mad.

And, okay, yeah, I deserved it.

When I got back, they demanded an accounting of exactly how much money their kitten had paid me out of their bank account for our sessions and how often. They didn’t need to. I’d spent half my vacation angsting about the whole thing and had all my documentation prepared by the time we met in their living room.

This wasn’t just some strategy to placate them and get out of trouble. I’d had a lot of time to think during vacation, and I couldn’t escape the fact that what I’d done was wrong. For someone who spent a lot of time and energy trying to ignore my conscience when it suited me, it was sure uncomfortable having it yelling at me from three inches away.

Consciences really need to learn a thing or two about personal space.
It also bugged me that I hadn’t gotten back to the kitten about its email when it found out what I did.
Fuzzy as it is, that thing can be darn intimidating.

But now I couldn’t talk to it. My friends had made sure of that.

“Why would our kitten even need a psychologist?” asked the one with the green shirt. (I may be a coward, but even I know to keep my friends’ identities private online. You’re welcome, friends.)

“It’s sentient. Even humans find that uncomfortable, and we’re supposed to be that way.”

They didn’t appreciate the joke.

“How could you take advantage of it like that?” asked the one in the worn jeans.

Wait, what? “It called me! I had no idea-”

“You could have refused it at any point. Heck, you should have!” Green Shirt fumed. “It’s just a kitten, for crying out loud. It doesn’t know any better.”

“It’s a kitten that-” I stopped myself. Thinking before I spoke was probably a better strategy in this situation if I didn’t want it to turn into a warzone. Well, more of one.

“What? A kitten that what?” My friend’s eyes had taken on the uncanny appearance of someone aiming a gun. I cringed.

“Uh. First: yes. I should have refused. I’m sorry I didn’t, which is why I called you in the first place. Second: you didn’t know your kitten was sentient until just over two weeks ago. How do you know it’s not capable of seeing the right and wrong of its actions for itself?”

“It’s a kitten!” exclaimed Worn Jeans.

“More than that, it’s a cat,” said Green Shirt. “Cats aren’t exactly known for their strong grasp on morality.”

“Well, they do know what it is,” amended Worn Jeans. “They just don’t follow it. On purpose. So, in the case of our kitten…”

“Cats will be cats?” I supplied.

They nodded.

“And, since your kitten is now too young to know these things, and will grow up not to follow them anyways, it’s up to us to make all of its moral decisions for it?”

“As much as possible, yes,” said Worn Jeans. “We do know we can’t be there all the time in every situation.”

“Which is why it’s so important that we only let it be with people that are committed to the same thing, and not boneheads like you,” Green Shirt said, arms crossed.

“Boneheads?” said Worn Jeans. “That’s a little harsh.”

“Well, it’s true!”

I fidgeted. “Should I leave?”

“That depends. Are you going to leave leave or go talk to the kitten again?”

“Well, see, it sent me an email that I haven’t responded to yet…”

“It has an email address?” asked Worn Jeans in bewilderment.

“And a tumblr, too.” I pulled out my phone. The kitten’s latest post was a picture of a fall forest, with the caption ‘We are more than we feel’. The previous was a sepia-filtered photo of latte art.

“It has a hipster blog?” said Worn Jeans. Green Shirt grabbed my phone.

“I’m not sure how to process this.” Green Shirt’s eyes were concerningly wide. “Is that latte telling me to live my dreams?”

“Maybe you should, uh, get to know your kitten better?” I suggested. “And, meanwhile, we can work on a payment plan for me?”

“Yeah,” said Green Shirt, still scrolling through the kitten’s tumblr. “But, uh, I’m beginning to see why it needed a psychologist.”

That sounded hopeful. I swear my bank account perked up at it. And, if I wasn’t still having an attack of conscience, that would have been that.

“You know, I think your kitten is plenty able to do what’s right. Enough that making those decisions for it is only going stop it from wanting to.” Damn, damn, damn. I knew from their expressions that that had been the absolute worst thing to say.

Green Shirt handed me back my phone. “I think we understand our kitten better than you do. We’ll work out a payment plan, but we’re not budging on our requirements for your behaviour with it.”

“Or we can just pretend I never said that.”

“Really?” said Worn Jeans. I gulped. “I can’t believe you.” At which point my friend upped and left the room.

This is what I get for being a psychologist to a kitten. Correction: for being desperate enough to be a psychologist to a kitten.

“We’ll, uh, work it out over email,” I said as I high-tailed it out of there before Green Shirt could do anything.

So, that was finally that. Years of friendship hanging precariously in the balance all because we disagreed about what their kitten could and could not handle.

It’s one of those moments where you’d like to laugh over the ridiculousness of it, but it was a little too serious for that.

I mean, we’d have never been in this situation if I hadn’t let the kitten take advantage of them.

But wouldn’t that mean that the kitten would have always been stuck? Aren’t I doing it a favour by standing up for it to my friends?

I don’t know.

Morality is hard, guys.

Dear psychologist human,
 
I cannot believe you showed my humans my tumblr. Do you not understand that it was meant to be ironic? They think it’s serious!
 
On another note: You still have not responded to my previous email. This displeases me. I require that you respond in a timely manner.
 
We must speak.
 
Sincerely,
You know who.

The story continues in The Kitten Psychologist Tries to be Patient Through Email.

If the World Were Flat

There once was a world that was flat. On one side, the sun shone all the time and, on the other side, the moon and stars reigned. Right in the middle of the moon's side sat a woman who spent her days staring up at the stars with sadness and hope in her eyes.

One day a pelican flew from the side of the sun to the side of the moon, and saw the woman, cross-legged at the centre of the world. It landed next to her and asked:

"What are you looking at?"

"The stars and moon. I wish they were bright enough to show me myself."

"The sky on the other side of the world is much brighter than this one," said the pelican. "What if I took you there, where you could be lit up by the sun?"

"Oh, no." The woman drew her legs to her body and shook her head. "This light is all I am meant to have. Any more and every would see how hideous I am." The pelican paused for a moment, as if to think, then flew away. After a while, it returned and placed a rock in the woman's hand.

"This is a gem of great beauty," it said to her. "But yours is greater by far." The woman smiled politely and turned the stone over in her fingers. It looked like nothing of value in the light of that side of the world, but it felt smooth.

"Thank you. It's nice," she said, setting it aside, and resumed her staring. After a pause, the pelican flew off again, this time returning with a full mouth of more smooth rocks which it placed next to the woman.

"These are gems of great beauty," it said, "But yours is greater by far."

"They look like nothing to me," said the woman gently. The pelican shook its head and flew off again, returning with more of these rocks. It proclaimed the woman's beauty, and the woman politely disbelieved, which only caused the pelican to go and return again with more. This continued until the pile of rocks next to the woman had become a mountain, but the pelican's insistence did nothing to change the woman's mind.

Then, while the pelican was away, an eagle came to the moon's side of the world. It noticed the woman, the hope in her eyes, and its heart fell to see the sadness that kept the hope powerless. It flew down and settled next to the woman, asking the same thing that the pelican had, and received the same answer.

"My lady," the eagle said, "I am an eagle, and my eyes are the strongest of all creatures, but even the blind mole could see your beauty, no matter what lit the sky." Then it flew away, but its words echoed in the woman's heart and the hope shone bright in her eyes.

"Even the blind mole?" she asked herself. On a whim, she stood and stepped towards the mountain next to her, suddenly hungry to see its supposed grandeur. With that step, the balance of the world shifted and it started to turn upside down, rotating slowly at first, but with greater speed the closer she came to the mountain. Before long, a bright light peeked over the edge of the moon's side of the world. It rose gently from the horizon, filling it with blue. The woman stopped moving, watching the sun as the world settled again, watching as the brightest of lights came to rest in the centre of the sky. And when the woman looked back at the mountain, she put her hands to her mouth in surprise.

The mountain blazed with colour, with ruby and emerald, sapphire and diamond. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen...

Until she saw herself reflected in it.

May you see your beauty as clearly as those who know you.

Fox Red: An Interlude

Seventeen: An Interlude

Imagine, if you will, a young boy—about seven, say—who thinks he’s the cleverest thing in the whole damn world. Sadly for him, he’s not far wrong—but clever doesn’t mean wise.

This kid, this boy—this genius—has played in the bush behind the house forever, wandering all the way down to the pine plantations that line the highway that’s the lifeline of this little two-bit town called Jilamatang. Regional Victoria, back of the Snowy Mountains, over an hour to the nearest thing they’ve got to a city. He’s outgrown the place and he isn’t even in double digits. Good thing they have the internet, even though the connection’s slower than the post from Melbourne.

He wanders far and wide, spends the whole day exploring while his parents think he’s a good lad in school—an easy ruse because school’s also easy—and one day, he discovers something worthwhile. Not far from town, a couple of kilometres or so, there’s an old train line. Barely anyone remembers it, and even the real old timers hardly know it’s there. But he knows. It’s always been a sort of demarkation, the eastern border of his domain, and he’s had it in mind that he probably oughtn’t cross it. Crossing it, he feels, is maybe a step too far from his parents’ world.

But of course, one day, his curiosity gets the better of him and, breath held by tightly pressed lips that quiver with anticipation, he skips across old rails rusted to the colour of fox’s fur. At first, nothing seems to have changed. The air tastes the same, the same wind blows against his skin, and the same sun beats down upon his shoulders.

But then the trees overhead grow denser, gnarled eucalypts and wattles give way to lofty, straight-trunked pines, needles flared against the bright sun and crisp air of early autumn. Their leaves will not succumb to the on-coming cold. Never mind that neither will the eucalypts’; the pines would have everyone know that needles, at this altitude, this close to the highest mountain in the whole entire country, are superior, which is why their trunks are so tall and straight while the poor little natives twist and bend, backs crooked in submission to the wind.

The thick mat of rust-coloured needles devours the boy’s footsteps more effectively than any carpet, and for a while it’s eerily quiet. It grows colder, too, and the boy shivers, even though summer still lingers in the air in long, hot afternoons and the true bite of winter is months away.

Through the trees, something shifts, and he catches glimpse of something moving, something big—something alive. And although his heart pounds like it wants to escape his chest and run right back home to the safety of his kitchen, the boy continues. This, he knows, will be a sight worth seeing.

He follows the half-glimpsed beast for maybe thirty minutes, though it seems that either seconds or hours have passed, and then—at last—he reaches a clearing in the pines where granite boulders pile up high like someone has torn away the skin of the world and exposed its spine. And there, atop the boulders, head thrown high against the sky, antlers broad and strong enough to tear apart the clouds, stands the last thing he’d have expected to find in alpine Australia: a giant grey deer, easily as tall at the shoulder as the boy is himself—and he is hardly short for his age.

The stag tosses its antlers, and the boy can feel—feel—the words the stag would say, if it could talk—if it would talk.

Welcome, the stag says. Welcome to the home of the Winter King.

The boy bows politely, because it seems like that is a thing that should be done, and when he straightens up again, the stag is gone.

But he knows, now, the boy, where this Winter King lives, and now he'll never leave it alone.
Time after time he returns, at any hour of the day: the crisp, bright light of of a dew-covered morning, the frosty bite of a late autumn evening, the blazing hot midday summer sun as he runs through the bush, wild and free while school is out.

Time after time, the boy returns to the Winter King, and slowly, he begins to love him. Both hims, that is, come to love the other him, and they stand with each other for hours, foreheads pressed together or flank to flank, saying all the things the Winter King would say if the Winter King decided he wanted to speak.

The boy rubs the knot at the end of the Winter King’s spine, right before it turns into a tail, and brings him sweet carrots and apples and old-fashioned lumps of cane sugar. The Winter King whispers secrets into the little boy’s heart, right before it turns into his consciousness, and feeds him joys and delights too subtle for words to make out. Probably the Winter King enjoys it as much as the boy does, for although the boy is lonely—at school, at home—at least his has his parents, and they love him very much.

The Winter King has no one.

Well, that is not quite true, the boy learns. The Winter King has his storm foxes, ethereal spirits that ride the winds like hawks, soaring and diving and tumbling. The storm foxes love the spring storms best of all, when thunder splits the sky like canons and the lightning flashes strobe-like across the forest. They love the storms because storms bring freedom: the Winter King cannot contain them when the heavens open and rage, and through spring and summer his power wanes almost entirely.

Then, one day, the boy has no one either. His mother and father fought, and although that wasn’t unusual, the fact that his mother left and didn't come back was.

He didn’t realise until years later what the little plastic stick in the bathroom bin had meant; why his mother had cried for three days straight before the fight that ended it all; why his father had been so relieved to see her go. Not that he ever said he was relieved, and the boy knew his father missed his mother—but he also walked as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. An important weight. A weight of about seven or eight pounds, if the boy understood things correctly, that would last some eight or nine months and then the rest of their lives.

The boy thought he might have quite enjoyed that weight. It might have been just heavy enough to hold his family together.

But alack, the weight had vanished—from his father’s shoulders, his mother’s body—and so his mother vanished from their family, and the boy felt all alone.

That was the night it happened. The night he told the Winter King what he wanted—and the night he learned that sometimes, what we want is the worst thing we can imagine.

He was supposed to fly.

Instead, he thudded to the ground. And he learned that even foxes can cry, if they’re really, truly sad enough.


If you enjoyed this story, check out the That Moment When anthology, which contains the first part of Fox Red!

Plane Travel

            Plane Travel:

You                              start

like                              this

            elbows in

         ankles crossed

         never touching

       but      s    l     o      w       l        y

you start to  s

                        p

                          r

                               a

                                     w

                                              l

Because       HOUR   HOUR   HOUR

                     HOUR   HOUR   HOUR

                     HOUR   HOUR   HOUR

                     HOUR   HOUR   HOUR

                     HOUR   HOUR   

                                                is a really long time.

            Elbows bump.

            (sorry)

            Knees touch.

             Sorry.

A baby’s foot brushes your leg.

             Sorry!

It’s not a problem. Also, he’s adorable.

            …Thanks!

This is how friendships begin.

Is fourteen hours long enough to make

                        a friend?

            Maybe.

     in the right time

     in the right place

with the right people.

            Either way,

             You   can

              now sit

              likethis

The Kitten Psychologist Broaches the Topic of Economics

There once was a little kitten. No, not the kitten I wrote a story about in September.

Definitely a different kitten. A very different kitten.

Oh, fine. It’s the same kitten. So I’m reusing characters. So what?

This kitten had had a hard time going outside. Which is as much to say as it didn’t. Not after its first experience with snow, which is probably like a person’s first experience with horseradish: you either like it or you don’t. And, in this case, the kitten didn’t like it.

In the last story, wherein the kitten realized that there was probably maybe some benefit to going outside after paying me good money to sit around and ask it questions containing answers that it decided it had come up with all on its own, wondering what I was doing with my life being a psychologist to my friends’ nine week old kitten.

The only problem with this picture (I mean, aside from the obvious) was that the kitten wasn’t paying me out of its own money. Let’s be serious: I can be a kitten psychologist all I want, but we have to admit that a kitten having its own income stream at nine weeks stretches credibility quite thin. Which is as much to say as that this kitten had mastered the use of arcane computer enchantments and pulled the money from my friends’ – its owners’ – bank account.

Frankly, I thought my friends would have figured it out on their own. It might have been a bit cowardly of me to wait until they got a clue and started investigating but either this kitten was more clever than I thought or my friends had an awful memory for their own spending habits. I’m not actually sure which is more concerning, but I had plenty of concern on hand to spend no matter which it turned out to be.

In other words, while my friends were out of the country a couple of weeks later, I house-sat. And, as I sat the house, I had a conversation with my friends’ kitten.

“You really have to stop this,” I said.

“I don’t pay you to have an opinion,” the kitten said with a swish of its tail.

“You pay me to be a psychologist. That’s exactly the same as paying me to have an opinion.”

“What happened to unbiased objectivity?”

“Fine. In my unbiased, objective opinion, you have to stop this.”

The kitten tapped its chin. “Stop what?”

“Paying me from my friends’ bank account without their knowledge or consent.” As if it didn’t already know.

“If you don’t like it, I can always find another psychologist…”

“That’s not the point.”

“And how do you propose I tell them about it when the idea of my sentience is patently absurd to them? Certainly you can’t. They already think you’re crazy.”

Obviously, I was going to have to have a conversation with more than just the kitten. “And how would you inform a potential new psychologist of this patently absurd idea?”

“That’s different. They’re not my human. They aren’t used to me. They don’t have ingrained ideas or habits about me to contend with.”

I bit back a sarcastic remark about the strength of eleven week old habits. For the kitten, that was a lifetime. That and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t had plenty of ingrained habits and ideas of my own about the nature of kittens when this one hired me. I wondered if maybe I should have kept one or two of them. No amount of income was worth this trouble. Well. Perhaps not certain amounts of income.

“Well, just give it some thought and see what happens,” I finally said.

The kitten avoided me after that.

Which could have been the end of that, I suppose. Certainly it seemed like it, which I was a bit peeved about, to be sure. But, in a few days, I received an email:

Come at once. My humans are away. Sincerely, you know who. 

I wondered if the kitten had finally got to my friends’ YA collection. That and I went.

“So, I told my humans.”

“How did they take it?”

“Now they’re seeing a psychologist.”

“Oh.”

Silence.

“You know-” the kitten stretched- “I’ve come to a realization.”

“Oh?”

“This is a ridiculous situation. I’m a kitten. Why do I even need a psychologist?”

I shrugged.

“Exactly. I should be going my wild way on my wild lone. Except…” it glanced at the couch. “…I don’t think I’m prepared to give up the amenities of my current living situation.”

“Then don’t.”

“Oh, I’m not. This may not be ancient Egypt, but this is certainly something. Do you suppose you could talk to my humans? Now that I have, that is.”

And admit that I’d been complicit in what was essentially theft? Um. “No.”

“Drat. I had a feeling this was my fight.”

Sure. That’s exactly what it is.

“Well, do you have any advice on what I should do next? Some words of wisdom I’ll probably ignore when I inevitably come up with something better? Like nothing? I rather like the idea of doing nothing.”

“If you’ll just come up with something better, then why do you need my advice?” No, theft was too harsh a word. Underhanded dealing, perhaps?

“It’s amusing.”

“So, am I psychologist or court jester?”

“Whichever makes you feel better, I suppose.” The kitten yawned. “I’m going to have a nap. If you come up with something, email me. Or stop by. I’ll pay you as soon as you do.”

Who was I kidding? It was definitely theft. By the time I’d got home, I realized that. I also realized that, despite the fact that the kitten really should be acting responsibly with its humans, so should I with my friends. With a sigh, I picked up the phone.

I wondered how long I’d be paying them back.

Dear psychologist human,

I’m not entirely sure what you stood to gain by informing my humans of your part in all this. My intention had been for you to merely vouch for my sentience. You have done me a service, and it is right that you should be compensated in turn, not that you should throw that all away.

But no matter. We shall speak when you return from vacation. I think you will see things much more clearly when this is all over.

Sincerely,

You know who.

The story continues in The Kitten Psychologist vs the Kitten's Owners.

A Glimmering Green Hope

Galen Andez crossed the threshold to his living quarters and set the door code to private. There were times when he would welcome the intrusion of his flight. Some days he left the door open hoping he'd catch someone from the training fleet to come and join him for an evening meal. Today his head ached, his muscles screamed in protest after extensive use, and he was the kind of fatigued that would end either with eighteen hours of sleep or with killing someone.

There wasn't an in-between on days like this. Too many hours linked to a Daylion Pride fighter could kill a man. This week he'd been hitting his limit every day ending in Y.

Stripping off his sweat-soaked shirt he tossed it in the general direction of his room before prowling over to the kitchen. Food. Lots of food, heavy on carbs and vat-grown proteins, and then he was going to sleep like the dead. Showers could wait.

He eyed the remains of a kitchen that had gone through this carnage six days trying to find something. Going out shopping was out of the question. Having his food delivered would require more human interaction than he could mentally entertain at the moment. There had to be something. A ration bar if nothing else.

A wink of emerald green caught his eye.

He tilted his head, watching the shimmering green to see if it would wink away, a hallucination caused by too many hours uplinked to a machine. Nope.

Stalking into the receiving area he stared down at the emerald green bra draped casually over the arm of one of the low, comfy chairs. None of the women in fleet wore bras under their body armor. It was, he'd been told, both uncomfortable and redundant. The body armor did an excellent job of keeping bouncing to a bare minimum. This... he ran a finger over the curve of the plush bra before picking it up. This was a fancy cage for full breasts.

The scent of warm wood and fresh grass lingered on the fabric like the memory of a ghost. Lyrian treesilk... expansive and luxurious. He caressed the fabric. Oh, hell yes!

There was only one woman he knew who would wear Lyrian made clothing. Last time he'd seen her he'd been a junior cadet still fighting for a chance to become a fighter pilot. She'd been... something else. Nothing like fleet. Nothing like the station-raised normcore people he'd been raised with. No ground pounder or starchaser could compare.

Just remembering her set his blood burning. The taste of her kiss was addictive, her voice hypnotic... Women like her were trouble. Sometimes the cause of it, but sometimes just there, like a rogue catalyst in the chemical equation of life.

A background sound he hadn't registered in his fatigued stupor became silent. He looked toward to the refresher room where the sound of water had stopped. Oh, hell no.

"Shyla?"

The door cracked open and a vixen with brindled hair curling from the refresher's humidity grinned at him. "Hiya, handsome. Dinner's in the chiller. I'll be out in a moment."

"Oh. No." Galen shook his head as his body tried to divide into two equal halves. One half wanted to run like a star was about to collapse in front of him. The other half wanted to rush to her embrace.

She tilted her head to the side, the little coquette. "No?" One bare foot crossed the threshold between the door and the living area. A tanned, toned leg followed, hinting at the naked body hidden from view. "Should I come out now?"

"What are you doing here?" His mouth was dry. Aching muscles found new life. She could have asked him to dance across the vacuum of space and he wouldn't have stopped to grab an EVA suit.

"My room wasn't ready, and I needed to shower. I didn't think you'd mind. Do you?" Her voice was pitched perfectly, a cross of sweet innocence combined with the fluster of a girl who knew he was cross but couldn't quite understand why.

Which was a bloody lie. Shyla was a 'pathic, one of the rare humans who could touch other human minds.

Every computer could read a person's fingerprint. Every 'pathic could read a mindprint, the unique pattern than belonged to an individual. She wouldn't have had to consult anyone to find him. She'd probably walked past, felt the impression of him in the room, and waltzed in without further thought.

"What if this were my girlfriend's room?" Galen asked, crossing his arms across his chest.

"I checked for women's clothes and signs of a lover. I wouldn't have stayed if I thought you were with someone." She stepped out of the refresher room wearing the shortest dress he'd ever seen on a woman. It might have been a long shirt. The navy blue fabric dropped from a string around her neck and unapologetically covered only the most spectacular views. Her back, arms, and legs were free to view, and he did, reveling in the sight of her.

Shyla reached out and stroked the side of his face with a gentle hand. "You're hurting."

He closed his eyes and took her touch too. The pain in his head eased, his muscles relaxed, the tension that wrapped around him like a boa loosened its grip. "Shyla..." He'd meant to rebuke her, to push her away, but it came out as a prayer.

One moment she was standing at arm's length, the next she was pressed against him, the heat of her body washing through him. Her lips found his, and he was lost.

When he opened his eyes he was laying on his bed with Shyla propped up on one elbow beside him. His pants were still on. The magical blue dress was still clinging to her and hiding everything he wanted to see. Shyla had added a knowing smile to her wardrobe. And he felt better than he had since the war started.

He flopped back on the pillow with his eyes closed. "Shyla."

"You needed it."

"No. I was fine."

"You were close to breaking."

"I was fine. I needed some nutrients and some sleep, not a full healing."

Two points of warmth touched his bare chest. Fingers, walking from his navel to his sternum, then dragging back down with the faintest hint of pain as her nails abraded his skin. He arched his spine involuntarily as she pulled her hand away. Every nerve in him thrummed with needing.

"You need so much more than healing, Commander." Her breath was hot against his ear.

"Shyla." This time her name came out as an impatient growl. Seven years without her. Seven years of thinking of what he would say next and all he'd managed to grind out was her name. Galen pressed his palms to his eyes in a desperate attempt to center himself. "Why is it that I can't think around you?"

"Because you haven't had a decent sex partner in three years and you've spent every waking hour since we parted beating your body into a pulp for the glory of the fleet and the safety of humanity."

"It's not about glory." Not anymore.

"Dying to save the rest of the species isn't a very efficient plan," Shyla said. She shifted on the bed and he felt the weight of her pulling the mattress down, the heat of her body near but not touching. "You should at least donate to the gene pool before you kill yourself."

A horrible thought occurred to him. "You're not-"

"No." She didn't need to hear the question. She probably didn't need to hear him talk at all. "Breath, Galen. I'm on the station for work. Lawfully hired. You aren't aiding or abetting a fugitive."

"This time."

"This time," she agreed. "Nor did I come to seduce you, well, not with the intent to procreate. Children aren't really in my five-year-plan at this point." The bed bounced as she got up. "Come on, flyboy. You need to rehydrate before you fall back asleep."

He let her take his hand and pull him out of bed. "Shyla?"

She stopped in the doorway, silhouetted by the light of the kitchen. "Hmm?"

"I'm glad you're back."

The Crystal Mountain

Somewhere in the world is a crystal mountain. People often ask it why it's made of crystal, to which it replies:

"Why does green make you feel happy?"

To which a number of psychologists opened their mouths, but the mountain quickly added:

"It's a rhetorical question. I don't know why I'm made of crystal. Why would I know the answer to that?"

To which the philosophers opened their mouths--

"Rhetorical question, guys."

Now, inside the mountain were several angler fish and goblin sharks, and they could be seen through the sides of the mountain. They swam about within the mountain, completely unperturbed by the implausibility of their own existence. Various people tried to ask the fish how they could possibly survive inside a mountain, and how they could survive without food, for none of them were ever seen to eat.

This proceeded to do nothing but give the mountain a headache, about which it complained loudly.

At the centre of the mountain was a star, which shone very brightly at night and faintly during the day.

"How does it change brightness like that?" the people asked the mountain, correctly assuming that trying to ask the star this would end the same way as the fish interrogation.

"What about my questions?" asked the mountain. "Why do you get to ask me all the questions? Don't I get answers, too?"

The adults all looked at each other, trying to figure out if they should be offended.

"What answers?" said a five-year-old.

"Oh, I like this one. This one's smart." Then the mountain leaned in close - complete with its implausible fish and changeable star - and continued in a quieter voice. "Why do people say they'll be friends forever with someone only to not call them when they move away?"

"Dunno."

The mountain harrumphed. "Well, why do children make fun of one child just like them and exclude that child from their number?"

"Because they're weird."

"Really?"

The five-year-old thought about it. "Probably not."

"Then why?"

"Dunno."

"You're not being particularly helpful."

"Sorry."

The mountain leaned back. "Does anyone else have an answer?"

All the people around the mountain began speaking all at once, but none of them could agree on the answers to the mountain's question. After more of this than it could stand, the mountain shouted at them all to be quiet and leaned in towards the five-year-old again.

"I gather no one else knows the answers to those questions, either. They just take more words to finally say it. Why don't they know the answers?"

The five-year-old, who had never considered that adults might not know something, had to think very carefully. "Maybe they're not old enough yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes when I ask questions, my parents say:" the five-year-old pointed a finger at an imaginary child and said in a lower voice "'You'll understand when you're older.'"

"What do you do when they say that?"

"I stick my tongue out at them. Then I play with my toys." The five-year-old held up a set of Lego. "These are my favourite."

"I've never played with toys before." The mountain looked sad. "I don't even have toys."

"Do you want to play with mine?"

"May I?"

"Yeah! Here, you can be this one…"

So, while all the people looked on, the mountain and the five-year-old sat down together to build a kingdom, with a unicorn and a dragon and lasers and spaceships and mountains and cars and aliens and knights...

Frankly, they ignored everything else so thoroughly that all the people left them to their play.

It was the best day ever.