aerial312 (aerial312) wrote in the_literatzzi, @ 2009-01-15 22:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | 11f, felix, maddy, robin |
11:f: I feel like everything I say...
More Maddy. This stuff comes to me really fast when I sit down to write it. I still don't know where I want it to go precisely, but I like to sit down and write what comes so far. At this point it is all sequential. [I'm also forcing myself to write a new original bit every time I write some fanfic...]
"I feel like everything I say is being weighed and measured. It's unsettling," I declared, sitting cross-legged on the uneven ground of the backyard.
"Unsettling?" Felix asked, sitting on the lowest branch of the cherry tree. "That was a rather profound statement for you."
"Everything is a test! It's annoying, even though I get everything right…", I kicked the protruding root nearest to me.
"Don't beat up the tree," Felix laughed.
"You sharpen your claws on it," I grumbled.
"What is it, little one?" Felix asked, jumping down gracefully to the half dead grass.
"It's not enough yet. There are more tests, right?" I sat on the knobby root.
"There are," Felix answered honestly, crossing over to rub against my bare knee.
"I hate it when you act like a normal cat now." I yanked my knee away.
Felix chuckled. "I have to pretend to be a normal cat. You know that."
"Why me?" I questioned, lying back on the cherry pits strewn across the straw-like grass.
"Beats me," Felix smiled. "I don't get to ask question. I just do as I'm told."
"Is that supposed to be a lesson for me?"
"Yes, I suppose it is," he told me, as he settled down beside me.
"I ask questions," I growled.
"Yes, I've learned," he sighed. "Endless questions."
"You've never had another kid?" I asked, turning onto one elbow to face him.
"The youngest human I had, prior to you, of course, was 25," he told me.
"I'm the youngest, by 15 years?" What was I in for?
I traced a face in the dirt as he answered me. "You are. And I have no idea why you were selected. Though, I must say, you are proving to be quite adept."
"Am I better than the others?" I asked, sitting up. The idea that I might be brighter than someone more than twice my age was exciting.
"In term of the kind of knowledge we are looking for, yes, you are. It has been a long time since I have had a human with such a predilection for the kind of skills we need."
"We?" I asked. I continually wondered if there were more talking cats. By now, I was convinced that there were.
""We've been over this," he sighed. "I have also never had a human who needed to be reminded of the rules so often."
I giggled. "Isn't that what makes me so good at the rest of it?" I took risks. Lots of them. I knew the rules, and went to great lengths to find ways to bend them all the time.
"That is exactly why you are such a quick learner. A blatant disregard for established rules."
I beamed at this off-handed compliment, pushing myself up to my feet. "Now what?"
Felix stretched, arching his back in a long line and pawing at the ground. "Let's go down to the pond."
I had gotten into trouble for wandering out of the yard yesterday. "I'll race you." I took off at a run down the dead end street, Felix in close pursuit behind me. I was pretty sure he was letting me win. I reached the guardrail, and scampered over it, skipping down the grassy hill to the sad little beach. The water at the bottom was a little green. A Coke can bobbed by my foot as Felix settled at my side.
"How far is it across?" he asked, in an offhand kind of way, as we stared across to the thin layer of trees that separated the far side from the main road beyond it.
"A quarter-mile," I told him, just as disinterested.
"Could you swim that?"
I looked at the swirling color in the shallow water. "This pond, no. A quarter mile of water, yes. I did it in Girl Scout camp last summer."
He chuckled. "If everything depended on your swimming across Randall pond?"
I grimaced. The only fish in this pond were dead, floating on the top. "I guess…"
"Not a flat out no. That's something," he laughed, pawing at an acorn that had fallen from a nearby oak tree.
I laughed, picking up a rock and skipping it across the slimy water.
"Can you climb this?" he asked, cocking his furry little head toward the old willow tree. It had fallen over partially during a big storm a few summers ago, but it's roots were too integral to the whole hill to remove it. The whole thing would erode if it were gone.
"All the way to the top," I bragged, running over to it, and vaulting myself onto the lowest branch. It was the type of tree with just the right wonky branch structure that made it easy to climb. I had ascended to the highest point in less than a minute.
"You're not afraid it will topple?" he asked, coming to sit at the bottom of the trunk.
"If you thought it might, you wouldn't be sitting there," I laughed.
"Indeed," he nodded.
"This tree has been sitting at this weird diagonal for three years now," I argued.
"It has actually been slipping at a quarter of a percent each year since," he cited.
"Do you have a study to back up your findings?" I scoffed, running my hand through the leaves of a hanging branch.
"Would you believe me if I said I did?" he questioned, looking up at me through the maze of branches.
"Really?" Cats had scientific studies? Well, I guess talking cats could do anything.
"Maddy? Maddy? Madeline! Dinner!" my mother bellowed from half a block away.
I sighed, and began my much slower descent from the tree. It was always harder to get down than to get up. "Go keep her busy," I ordered Felix.
He laughed at me. "That doesn't work on your mother the way it works on your sister."
I jumped the last six feet to the ground to land beside the small black cat on the green hill. "Shall we?"