the divulgence

[instar]

Bella assembles everyone (in the garage, out of politeness to Ax, who is standing in grass clippings that Andi took from two houses down for him) after she has organized her notes on Yeerking.

"I have tentatively concluded that the benefits of telling Renée outweigh the risks. We already use her house as a base of operations, and not having to work around her would be much easier, especially now that we have three people who don't officially exist to hide. She exists - and her official existence is an adult; she can drive us places and so on. She can excuse me and Andi from school, if Charlie morphs her he can be out in public as long as they coordinate and not have to pretend he's not our parent, she can make sure we have enough food in the house - and I guess for Ax we experiment with commercially available forms of hay, there aren't going to be grass clippings in Phoenix so readily available - to sustain extra people. She's flighty but not terrible with secrets. I do think we might want to avoid teaching her specialized vocabulary like 'Yeerk' or 'Escafil' or whatever, because that seems like the easier slip for her to make, but I think we should tell her what's going on. Charlie will be able to convince her that we can't just turn over the issue to the authorities."

Comments

[kindestgarden]

"I think I'm, er, convinced. But what are you doing - why can you turn into owls and such?"

[instar]

"Ax's brother crash-landed conveniently near us not too long ago and gave us some garage alien technology that lets us do it. We have to touch the animals to get them. We raided a zoo, a while back. And we're trying to come up with ways to use that ability and anything else we can get ahold of to get rid of possessor aliens."

[kindestgarden]

"...Okay."

[instar]

"Robin, d'you want to go see if Trouble and Ethan would like to come greet Mom?"

[hold_infinity]

"Sure."

She goes.

[aeskhyne]

When she returns, it is with a fluffy, purring kitty in her arms! Purrrrrr.

[instar]

"I'm gonna assume that's Trouble."

[aeskhyne]

<You are right!> says Trouble. <Hi, everybody.>

[hold_infinity]

Robin scritches his tummy.

[kindestgarden]

"This is really strange."

[hold_infinity]

"But fluffy," Robin says contentedly.

[kindestgarden]

"Yes - what kind of cat is that?"

[instar]

"It's a mix. You can do that, with closely related animals. Ax has a human morph that's all of us mixed up."

[aeskhyne]

<Part serval, part snow leopard,> says Trouble. <But I can pass for a weird domestic, can't I?>

He can! The fact that he is lounging in Robin's arms like a fluffy puddle contributes to the illusion.

[kindestgarden]

"I suppose you can. So do you all - turn into things for fun, a lot?"

[instar]

"That and telepathy. It's a little tiring and we can't stay in other forms for more than a couple hours or we risk getting stuck that way, but there's recreational applications, yeah."

[aeskhyne]

<Fluffy ones,> says Trouble, purring.

[kindestgarden]

"There's not room for all of you in the car," says Renée after a moment.

[instar]

"We don't have to all fit in the car. Trouble and Charlie need generic human morphs and will be flying to some population center where they won't be recognized to acquire the component humans. It would be nice to stow Ax and Ethan away with us in small morphs, so we'd have to stop occasionally to let them change out and back again - Ethan might be able to do it in transit, Ax can't - but that doesn't seem like it should be that serious a problem if we drive at night and don't take crowded highways, and if it proves really complicated they can get out and fly."

[aeskhyne]

<Yeah,> says Trouble, <getting around as a pigeon is pretty easy, as long as you can find good places to demorph along the way.>

[instar]

"Ax doesn't have a pigeon, is the difficulty here, he'd have a bit of a hard time following Ethan, but yes."

[aeskhyne]

<True. But they could figure it out, I bet.>

[instar]

"Do you think that should be plan A instead of sticking them in the car? I suppose maybe it should, the side of the highway is probably a bad place for Ax to be morphing. Either that or somebody should take a bird of prey and go bring in a pigeon for Ax."

[aeskhyne]

<I'll do it,> Trouble volunteers cheerfully.

[instar]

"Okay. It's dark, we can put you out the back door now if you want to do it right away."