This story came about because of something Orcish said to me in an email regarding the last story. Enjoy!
The Collection
Daneera jumped.
She was not expecting anybody, so the sound of the doorbell startled her, just enough to make her jump at the sound. Nobody else was home, as usual, and Daneera was only in because she knew a bad thunderstorm was supposed to roll in later, so she sighed heavily and reluctantly went to open the front door.
As she opened the door, a chorus of screams blasted her in the face as several of her friends from school greeted her excitedly. Aloise, not surprisingly, was in front of the group, and Beryl was standing to her left. Gale was to Aloise’s right, smirking, Larasa was off to the side slightly, and behind them all towered Sharaka, who was rolling her eyes at the others.
“Surprise!” Aloise said.
“Hey, everyone,” Daneera said unenthusiastically. “What’s going on?”
Gale stepped into Daneera’s house and threw her arm around Daneera’s shoulders. “Well, we were out driving around, and we thought you could use a fun night out!”
“So here we are!” Larasa added.
“I tried to tell them it was a bad idea,” Sharaka said. “I didn’t even think you’d be here, honestly.”
“I wouldn’t be,” Daneera said, “but I figured I’d pass on the woods tonight, with that storm that’s coming through.”
“Storm?” Aloise said.
Just then, a tremendous clap of thunder shook the house, and the rain started to pour. It was not a slow build, either. It started falling in sheets almost instantly.
“Umm, Daneera?” Aloise said. “Can we, uh, hang out here for a bit?”
Sharaka and Larasa didn’t even wait for an answer, but pushed their way into the warm, and more importantly dry, house. Daneera sighed, and motioned Aloise and Beryl inside. Aloise had been standing under a small overhang above Daneera’s door, and was only a little wet, but Beryl, who had been standing off to the side, was already drenched. The poor girl looked miserable, like a drowned rat.
“I don’t suppose you have a towel I could use?” Beryl asked.
“No problem,” Daneera said, indicating down the hall. “Second door right down that hallway, on your left. I should have some spare shirts and jeans in there, too, I think.”
Beryl trudged off down the hallway to dry herself and change, while the others all plopped down in various seats in Daneera’s living room.
“You guys don’t watch the weather, I take it?” Daneera said.
Aloise shrugged. “I didn’t think about it. Besides, what kind of adventure would it be if we knew what was going to happen!”
“And I didn’t really care,” Sharaka said, picking at one of the scales on her left leg. “Anything to get out of the house, really.”
“Is it alright for us to be here?” Larasa asked. “Your parents won’t get mad or anything?”
“I doubt they’ll know,” Daneera said with a shrug. “It’s fine.”
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met your parents,” Aloise said. “Where are they, anyway?”
“Who knows?” Daneera said. “Probably off getting stoned somewhere.”
“Ha!” Aloise laughed.
Daneera didn’t, and after a moment, Aloise caught on.
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”
Daneera shrugged again, and tried to not think too much about her absentee parents.
“Do you think they left any stuff around here?” Sharaka asked. Daneera wasn’t sure if the Viashino was trying to be nonchalant or not. It was sometimes hard to tell with her.
“No idea. Feel free to sniff around if you want.”
“You two are horrible,” Aloise laughed.
Daneera, hoping to redirect the conversation, turned to Larasa. “So why’d you come along? Aren’t Fridays usually date nights for you and Morgan?”
“Usually, but he’s out of town this weekend. Knowledge bowl competition, hosted out at Zhiran’s Academy.”
“Nerd,” Sharaka said.
“Maybe,” Larasa said, “but at least he’s a cute nerd!”
“No one said they were mutually exclusive, Firecracker!” Sharaka winked at Larasa, who laughed.
“Aren’t you on the Knowledge Bowl team, Aloise?”
The blonde shook her head. “I used to be, but I had too many extracurriculars. But with Morgan, Lumina, AND Denner, they really didn’t need me.”
“Isn’t having Denner on that team a little, I don’t know, unfair?” Daneera asked. “I mean, total recall and everything?”
“It’s useful, sure,” Aloise said. “But, and I’m not trying to be rude here or anything, but you have to know something in order to remember it.”
Sharaka was taking a sip of soda or something like it from a bottle, and nearly snorted what she was drinking out of her snout laughing.
Aloise crinkled up her face a bit. “Was that mean? I didn’t mean it to be! I just mean, Denner knows a lot of things, but his areas of studies can be pretty far away from Knowledge Bowl stuff.”
“I bet he could recite the Victoria’s Secret catalog…” Sharaka mumbled.
“What do you mean?” Aloise asked.
Before anyone could answer, Beryl came back. She was still in her own clothes, and was still soaking wet. “Sorry, Daneera,” she said, “but I couldn’t find a towel or extra clothes in there. There is a lot of cool stuff in that room, though!”
Daneera’s eyes widened. “Beryl, did you take the door on your left, or on your right?”
“Right,” Beryl said. “That’s what you said, right? You said, ‘Second door, right.’ But there were just a bunch of…”
“No!” Daneera said quickly. “I said ‘second door on your left!’ You shouldn’t have gone into that room.”
“Not to take sides or anything,” Larasa said, “but what you said was ‘Second door right down that hall on your left.’”
“And from where Beryl was standing, the hallway was on her left,” Gale pointed out.
“Alright, well, no harm done…” Daneera said, shifting her gaze from one of her friends to another is quick succession. “Anyway, Beryl, it’s the other room. Across from that one…”
“Oh, okay. Sorry!” Beryl said.
“No, it’s fine,” Daneera said, forcing a laugh.
“You’re not usually that red, Daneera,” Sharaka observed with more than passing interest. “Are you…what do you humans call it…blushing?”
“Nope,” Daneera answered shortly.
“Yes, you are,” Larasa said. “I mean, no offense, but it’s pretty obvious.”
“Hey, what is in that room, anyway?” Gale asked.
“Nothing,” Daneera said, shooting a look back at Beryl.
“Oh, come on, Danee,” Gale said. “We’ve been best friends since we were kids. I’ve been over here tons of times over the years. And now that I think about it, I have literally never seen that door open, let alone seen what’s on the other side.”
“Yeah, because there’s nothing interesting in there at all. Just some old stuff. It’s a storage room, basically. When I’m at your place, to you give me a tour of your storage closet? Of course not…”
“I’m suddenly very interested in storage,” Sharaka said with a reptilian smirk.
“I’ll buy you a shelf for your hatchday,” Daneera shot back.
As they were talking, Aloise moved over to Beryl, and the two started down the hallway again.
Daneera said, “Hey, where are you two going?”
“We’re going to the door on the left,” Aloise said with undue emphasis. When she noticed Daneera’s displeased expression, she added, “I’m just, you know, going to help Beryl. That’s all.”
“Oh, really?” Daneera said with a sarcastic edge. “You didn’t seem to think she needed help before.”
“Huh? Oh, yes, I was, you know, remiss.” Aloise waited for a moment, and then she and Beryl turned and ran toward the hallway. Daneera sprang out of her chair and sprinted after them. Gale, Sharaka, and Larasa followed on her heels. Daneera got to the door on the right just as Aloise was reaching for the doorknob and stood in front of it, blocking the others.
“Oh, come on, Danee,” Gale said. “You know that we have to know now. There’s no way we’re leaving until we find out this big secret of yours.”
“I mean, it’s can’t be THAT bad,” Larasa said.
“It’s nothing bad at all,” Beryl said, mildly confused about the whole thing. “I think it’s kind of cool, actually.”
“And that’s another thing,” Sharaka said. “If Hotbuns already knows, we’re bound to find out eventually, right? May as well rip the bandaid off now, right?”
Daneera looked at each one in turn before deflating. She sighed, heavily, then spoke. “Alright, fine. I’ll show you. But I’m serious. This never leaves this house, alright? Seriously, never speak of this again.” She pointed at Larasa. “You don’t tell Morgan.” She moved to point to Sharaka. “You don’t tell Tryst!” She moved on to point at Gale. “You don’t tell, uh, the Sea!” She pointed at Aloise and Beryl. “You guys don’t tell, um, each other!”
Aloise and Beryl shared a mildly confused glance, but eventually everyone nodded. Daneera sighed again, then stepped aside. The others opened the door and stepped inside, all but Beryl taking a few moments to process what they were seeing. The room had been designed, originally, as a bedroom of some sort, but there was no bed in it now. Instead, there were tons and tons of stuffed animals. Shelves lined the walls on all four sides, and tables were placed around the room, to accommodate a special place for each one. It was an entire menagerie.
There were, of course, numerous teddy bears of a variety of sizes. The smallest were barely (bearly?) bigger than the palm of a hand. The largest, reclining in the far corner, was over six foot tall, and had several of the smaller animals sitting in its lap and on its head and arms. There were, in addition to the traditional teddy bears, several other types of common stuffies, including cats, dogs, rabbits, lizards, birds, tigers, and pandas.
In addition to these common animals, the collection also contained toy versions of an impressive array of mystical, magical beasts. Hanging from the ceiling near the three corners that weren’t by the door was, respectively, a stuffed dragon, a stuffed griffin, and a stuffed phoenix. On various shelves and tables, the girls found a stuffed hydra, a stuffed manticore, at least three stuffed baloths, and one particularly cute stuffed meepling. In the corner across from the six foot tall bear, there was a stuffed animal that looked like some sort of mushroom turtle.
There was an absolutely absurd number of stuffed animals throughout the room, but it had been organized in such a way that there was a clear path around the room. It wound around a central, circular table that housed several of the toy creatures, and so Daneera’s friends filed into the room and spread around, looking in silent wonder at the sheer size of the collection. Daneera followed them in last, her face burning as her friends examined her secret shame. She absently picked up her favorite of the entire collection, an adorable stuffed phelddagrif that, as a child she had named Fanny (Fanny the Funny Phelddagrif) because alliteration, and held it close to her.
“This…is…awesome!” Larasa said.
“Yeah, Daneera, this is pretty amazing,” Aloise added, looking around like a kid in a toy store. “If you had given me, like, twenty million guesses what was in here, I wouldn’t have guessed this!”
“I didn’t really have you pegged as a ‘stuffed animal’ kind of person,” Sharaka said.
“Yeah, well…” Daneera said, then trailed off.
Gale moved over and hugged Daneera. “You like animals. We all know that. This makes all the sense in the world, Danee.”
“I mean, it’s not like I need them or anything…” Daneera said.
“Oh, so if I just take one…” Sharaka said, reaching for one of the animals on the table.
“No! No, no, no, no no no no.” Daneera said. Sharaka laughed.
“This is really cool,” Beryl said. “I’m sorry I accidently revealed your secret, Daneera, but I thought it was awesome. I never had any stuffed toys as a girl. At least, not after Mom…passed away.”
Aloise hugged her girlfriend, and Daneera suddenly felt bad.
Daneera looked Beryl in the eye. “Do you…do you remember what you had before she died?”
Beryl thought for a long moment. “I remember a cat of some kind. But, it was one that looked like it was sort of on fire?”
Daneera nodded and walked over to the closet. She opened it up, and inside were piled several more stuffed animals. She rooted around for a minute or so before pulling out a red stuffed animal in the shape of a kitten.
“This is an embercat. Was it something like this?”
Beryl stared at the stuffed animal for a long moment, then nodded. “It…looks a lot like it, yeah.”
Daneera hesitated for a moment, then said, “Would you like to keep it?”
Beryl’s head snapped up. “What? Are…are you sure?”
“Sure. I mean, I love all my animals, but you’re my friend, and I think maybe it would mean more to you than to me.”
Beryl hugged the embercat close. “Thank you.”
Daneera gave a stuffy to each of her friends then. She let them choose from her collection (although several of them were “off-limits,” as Daneera had no desire to part with them). Gale choose a particularly soft dolphin plush, while Larasa took a little hedgehog that worked like a hand puppet. Sharaka was going to take a lizard, considering it appropriate, until she saw a phoenix (a smaller version of the one suspended in flight from the ceiling). Aloise chose one of the teddy bears. When Daneera asked her why, she said it would be the perfect emissary between Daneera’s legion of teddy bears and her own.
They admired the collection for a few more minutes before filtering back out to the living room, where they put on a movie and talked until the storm passed. They left then, thanking Daneera for hosting them, and for the stuffies. Daneera nodded and went to bed, leaving the door to her collection open for the first time she could ever remember.
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But how did Antine come to this misunderstanding, exactly? Is Mari Less Than Enthusiastic about the past gifts from her family or...?