Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
(Me. I knew the whole time.)
Anyhow, everything here on my end is great. The wife says hello. I keep meaning to pay you a visit but we're changing up the menu in a few weeks and it's just a hugely busy time for me. Maybe next month, right? Save us a room and we'll come by.
Big disgusting hugs,
Simone
PS - Let's comm soon! Miss you!
Seeing Simone's loopy handwriting makes me smile. We normally talk at least once a week on a comm connection, but for the past few weeks we haven't had a chance to coordinate time together. It makes her letter all the more touching. I set it down and tuck the packet of herbs into my bra, careful not to open it. Noli. That little minx. Zhur's going to be delighted.
I move closer to the window, peering out. One of the guards stands out in the clearing with my husband, his hands on his hips as he gestures at the broken machine. My husband is already bent over the machine, his upper torso hidden, the tip of his tail flicking in that way it does when he's thinking hard. It didn't take long for people to realize that Zhur loves to fix things, or that when he takes them apart and puts them back together, they work a lot better. Before we'd been here a month, he'd repaired an air-sled, the convection oven, and the comm unit. Now that we've been here for several years, it feels like there's a steady stream of broken things in need of repair that appear before my husband's nose.
Sometimes I wonder if the staff is breaking things deliberately because they know how much pleasure Zhur gets from fixing things. But I genuinely think it's just a big old house with a lot of people, and therefore something always needs looking at.
"Oh no," Sanassa says, drawing my attention back inside.
I turn and look at her. "What's 'oh no'?"
"I just got another anonymous letter from a 'Lord Purr,'" she says, making a face. "He wants to know if we have any marriageable humans."
Ugh. "They're not cattle, good lord. And what kind of name is Lord Purr?"
"A fake one, obviously." Sanassa types furiously into her datapad. "He says he's on his way to see what women you have. I can tell him you're unavailable, but you know how these lords can be."
Boy, do I. "I guess I'll go tell Zhur we might have a surprise friend showing up. And I'll tell the ladies to hide."
Sanassa nods, and I head out of my study.
Life here in “exile” hasn't been what I thought it would be. I imagined us in some sort of rustic backwood with very little to our name and no one visiting us. Ha. Clearly my idea of exile is very different than the rest of the universe. First of all, our house isn't rustic in the slightest. It's a sixteen-room palace, multiple rooms for visiting guests and entertaining. There are two kitchens and two dining halls. There's a music room. There's gardens. There's a friggin' observatory. There's a room I've repurposed as a library, too, but it's a work in progress as “human” books are hard to find. The floors are made of a delicate herringbone-pattern stone, and the walls are a stone designed to look like fish scales. It means the place is cool in both summer and winter, so I'm always putting on extra layers, as I don't have the fur that praxiians do.
A home this big needs staff, so even after our security was reduced from a dozen guards to a mere three, the maids and cook stayed on. Sanassa no longer tastes my food, but remains as an employee and friend, and Mrrrkuss is our chief groundskeeper. Apparently the big guy likes to garden...almost as much as he likes Sanassa.
It was about a month after we arrived to our “exile” that the first human and praxiian duo showed up on our doorstep.
"I don't know what to do with this one," the elderly praxiian male said, shoving the little boy at us. "I was told the small ones were cute, but this one is just messy and cries all the time."
(I admit, I had a small freak-out, thinking we had some horrible child-toucher in our midst. But no, the old praxiian lord just wanted a cute, trendy pet to romp at his feet.)
So the kid was re-homed to us. I sent a comm to Milly, asking for advice, and she located a relative living on Risda and then little Austin was sent on to go live with her. A few weeks after that, two human women were dropped on our doorstep without so much as a note.
After that, it continued on. Word got around that we'd take in human pets, no questions asked. We have women staying with us at all times, some younger and some older. One woman was sent to us because she was getting too old and her master didn't want to deal with the fuss. The older woman—Eunice—stayed with us. She's now our cook and loves to stay busy. She doesn't have to work, but Eunice complains of boredom if we try to make her slow down.