the animorphs

[instar]

Renée is gone in the morning, a pot of maple oatmeal for the girls and Trouble cooling on the stove and a note on the fridge, she's going to be gone all day on a day trip to Tucson with her friends.

Andi wakes up first. Bella's not far behind.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

"And if something does come up, I'll try to tell you about it," he adds. "Soon as I can."

[instar]

"Thank you."

[aeskhyne]

He smiles.

[instar]

"Have we missed anything?"

[aeskhyne]

"Damned if I know."

[instar]

"Right. Well. If you think of anything. As long as Andi's upstairs - can we tell the others your stepdad is in the Sharing? No other details, necessarily, just that he's someone we can follow if we need to find Yeerk hangouts."

[aeskhyne]

He thinks about this.

Then: "Yeah. Okay."

[instar]

Bella writes.

Bella sighs.

[aeskhyne]

"I feel like I want to help you with something, but I don't even know where to start."

[instar]

"Well, I'm going to spend the rest of this bowl of oatmeal thinking of relatively low-risk experiments to do with morphing, then I'm going to call Robin and ask her to find and photocopy a detailed street map of Phoenix while she's at the library today, then I'm going to catch a butterfly."

[aeskhyne]

"I could help you catch butterflies," he laughs. "Or think of morphing experiments. I lost some scars on my way to Elfangor and back last night. Nothing anybody but me will miss. Maybe I should get a human morph so I can go back and forth without taking my clothes off - I bet Robin'd let me - and see what else it fixes. You'd probably want to take notes on that, right? When's good?"

[instar]

"I'd like to get as many experiments as possible handled before going to Forks, and today there's no school and Renée is out all day. I would appreciate help catching butterflies, since I'm certain to be dismal at it. I would like to take notes on any experiments like that."

[aeskhyne]

"Then I'll help you catch butterflies," he says. "And find Robin long enough to acquire her, and then drag Ethan back here so he can torture me in your basement."

[instar]

"Grand."

Bella writes with one hand and spoons oatmeal with the other. Then she puts her bowl in the sink, and says, "Since you're going to meet up with Robin anyway, you could also ask her about the map. We should expect to be doing some traveling as the crow-or-pigeon flies, and it will be more efficient to plot our own routes rather than rely on bus-oriented knowledge of the layout."

[aeskhyne]

"Got it," says Trouble. "Can I hear your list of bright ideas?"

[instar]

"Check speeds, check healing tolerances, check if we can control the order of operations at all, figure out just how tiring it is and how many times in a row we can pull it off, you already checked if we come with knowledge of how to move around in morphed bodies but I'll double-check with the butterfly, same with thoughtspeaking, it made some noise so I'll want to see if we can cut down on that for stealth. That's what I've got so far."

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah," says Trouble. "And I can't thoughtspeak when I'm human - I tried. Forgot to say."

[instar]

"Good to know. Pity, that would have been tactically precious."

[aeskhyne]

He shrugs. "Yeah. Oh well, I guess."

[instar]

"Yes. Let's go catch me a butterfly, and I can go practice with Andi supervising while you find Robin?"

[aeskhyne]

"Sure."

[instar]

"There should be some in the garden. Little drab ones."

[aeskhyne]

"Okay."

Out into the garden, then.

[instar]

There are some little drab ones.

Bella is terrible at catching them; she comes closest to succeeding when she finds one on a plant and tries to coax it into her hand, but never quite manages.

[aeskhyne]

Within five minutes, Trouble has a little white butterfly caged in his hands. He brings it to Bella.