the circle

[instar]

Trouble and Charlie fly to Las Vegas to get their collections of drunks. Ax, newly empigeoned, and Ethan loosely follow Renée's car back to Phoenix, so that Ax will not be stranded in an unfamiliar city obliged to demorph into Andalite form with no garage to hide in.

Renée makes a very large grocery trip. Ax deems alfalfa hay intended for consumption by guinea pigs and rabbits to be the hoof-eating equivalent of palatable; it also turns out he can eat a few other things, like carrot tops and turnip greens. He still doesn't like living in the garage, even though it's a different one. Andi finds him a little planetarium gadget that throws star-patterns onto the ceiling.

Renée installs a cot in the basement for Charlie. (His generic human morph is a man about ten years younger than him, plausibly Latino but just as plausibly not, plain and unremarkable. He also picks up a Renée morph. He will be able to drive the girls places, publicly know their names. They can tell he appreciates the opportunity, however weird it is.) Trouble is allowed to sleep on the couch, when Renée learns that he would prefer not to share the basement with Charlie.

Bella sews weights onto all the curtain hems so they won't be easily nudged aside.

The twins also collect generic-human-morphs. Both of theirs are college-age women, samples collected from going on premature college tours and shaking a lot of hands - Bella's looks maybe half Asian when she's done tweaking it, Andi winds up with a complexion much like her usual one but a surprisingly Hawaiian set of features.

Renée never asks to be enabled to morph. Bella eventually offers, "for emergencies", and Renée aggregates a number of her co-workers into the most stereotypical teacher-lady it is possible to Frolis into without requiring vision correction.

Renée makes the arrangements well in advance to homeschool the twins.

Bella quizzes Ax about all sorts of things, for large parts of each day.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

Kiss! Snuggly kiss.

[megale]

Quite snuggly indeed.

[aeskhyne]

So snuggly. Happy and snuggly.

[megale]

After a while - rather a long while - Rhea looks at her clock, and says, "My mom will be home in like twenty minutes and I can explain a kitty but I can't explain you."

[aeskhyne]

"I should probably head back to my secret pooka nest at some point anyway." He kisses her again. "So how about I turn into a soft cuddly owl and you cuddle me and I fly out the window and come see you again sometime?"

[megale]

"Sure!"

[aeskhyne]

"Awesome."

He turns into a soft cuddly owl, which for some reason involves his hair merging into giant feathers before anything else happens, and then the usual minute or two of other changes in apparently random order. But then he is a very sleek pretty barn owl, standing on her bed and looking huggable.

[megale]

She scoops him right up. "Oh you're soft."

[aeskhyne]

<And cuddly!>

[megale]

"You're the cuddliest." She kisses his feathers and opens the window for him. "Come back soon, okay?"

[aeskhyne]

<You bet,> he says, and swoops off silently into the night.

[megale]

She waves, then closes the window.

[aeskhyne]

And Trouble owls his way back to the Swans'.

[pandion]

Different windows are open at different times of day. It's usually the attic, but right now, in the dark, it's the girls' bedroom. Andi is in it.

[aeskhyne]

In he swoops.

<Hey.>

[pandion]

"Hi, Trouble. How goes?"

[aeskhyne]

<I made a friend! Where's Bella?>

[pandion]

"Kitchen, I think. Who'd you make friends with? Which of your excessive Frolis-humans?"

[aeskhyne]

<They're not excessive,> he giggles. <It's not like I don't have room.>

And then he is too far gone in his demorph to continue speaking, and he finishes up and heads downstairs with a wave.

[instar]

And there is Bella, in the kitchen with Renée. Bella is writing (as always) and Renée is mincing an onion, presumably to add to the crockpot.

[aeskhyne]

"Hi, Bella, hi, Renée. Bella, can we talk?"

[instar]

"I take it Mom is not supposed to be involved in the talk?"

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah, it's not hugely private or anything but there's stuff."

[instar]

"Okay. Basement's empty, Charlie's doing a stakeout kind of thing." She motions Trouble to follow and heads downstairs.

[aeskhyne]

"So I met this girl," he starts, "she feeds pigeons in a park across town, and she talks to them, and she's really cute, so I followed her for three days to make sure she's not a Controller and then said hi. As a pigeon."