Interlude - Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times - a pattern. (1/2)

*SLAM*

“Honey, I’m home!”

Minic jumped up from Minic’s seat and bounced around excitedly at those words. Minic was feeling fluffy because Big Sis had returned and Minic would get to spend time with her. Big Sis was sometimes a Big Bro instead, but Minic didn’t mind. Okay, Minic minded it a little since there were less soft things around when Big Bro was a Big Bro instead of a Big Sis.

“Welcome back, sweetie.”

Her Softness called out from the other side of the big box. Minic liked Her Softness because she had two of the softest softies that had ever softed. She often held Minic and presses its sensitive underside against them, which felt nice and fluffy. Sometimes, however, it would feel one or two hard nubs poking into its undercarriage, which was less-than-fluffy. But Minic learned to cope with it since Her Softness got angry at Minic whenever it tried to swat those things away. Big Sis didn’t seem to mind that behavior, but her softies weren’t nearly as fluffy as Her Softness. It was a bit of a shame, but Minic didn’t mind the size difference. Okay, Minic minded it a little, but Minic kept quiet about it because complaining about them would be rude to Big Sis. And Minic liked Big Sis a lot.

“Everything go well with Ariebelle?”

“... Who?”

“You know, the girl that tore you away from me?”

“Oh, right! Faehorn’s niece had a name like that, didn’t she?!”

“You seriously forgot? Just how much of a scatterbrain are you? Honestly!”

“Sorry Rowie… I guess in the end I only recognized her as Faehorn’s niece and nothing more. I know it’s rude but…”

Minic didn’t understand any of the words being thrown about, but Minic could read the mood from the tone of their voices. Minic understood this was a serious matter, so Minic tried to keep quiet. Otherwise it might get yelled at by Her Softness and be barred from her fluffy globes yet again.

“... Well, I’ll let it slide this time, but please work on your etiquette. I can’t have you embarrassing me like that in front of my parents.”

“I’ll, um, keep that in mind…”

“Good. Now then, I still have to finish preparing dinner.”

“Need any help?”

“No, I’m almost ready anyway. I had plenty of time to prepare since a certain someone spent the entire afternoon with another girl.”

“Hmm? Is Rowie being jealous, perhaps?”

“No, of course not.”

“Are you suuuuure?”

“... Alright, maybe a little.”

“Ehehehe! Rowie’s so cute when she’s flustered!”

“Har, har, har. What did she want, anyway?”

“Just some details regarding Faehorn’s will. Seems there was a misunderstanding that took some time to resolve, but in the end it turned out he bequeathed me with something from his personal collection.”

Big Sis reached into her clothes and pulled out a small square thing. It was shiny, bright red and a bit transparent. It was somewhat similar to Minic’s own shiny gem, but Minic’s precious place was completely different.

“Oh, wow! What’s that? Some magic item or something?”

“Nope, just a regular ruby. It doesn’t have any practical use and I don’t have the heart to sell it, but… it’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It is... Though I think you’re way more beautiful.”

“Rowie… I’m happy to hear that, but your dish is burning.”

“Oh, crap!”

It would appear that Her Softness finally noticed the red thing in the black pan has been giving off a weird smoke for a while now. Minic wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad, so it didn’t know if it should tell her. Well, either way it didn’t need to. Her Softness resumed tending to the smoky thing with clattering and hissing noises over at the yummy-station while Big Sis sat down on one of the chairs. However, she seemed to be feeling rather un-fluffy. Her mouth was curved the wrong way and the see-balls were half-hidden by the see-ball-curtains in a none-too-pleased manner.

Minic decided to try and cheer Big Sis up, so Minic went over over to her and bumped into her legs a few times, causing her to turn her see-balls towards it. They shone a lot like the warm ceiling-bright up on the Grand Ceiling. Was Big Sis feeling unfluffy because the ceiling-bright was slacking off again?

“What is it, Minic?”

Oh, Big Sis spoke to Minic! Minic couldn’t understand the words, but it didn’t need to. It came over on a mission and it would fulfil it! Therefore, Minic spit out half of the extra-big fur-fruit it caught earlier while it was alone. The partially eaten fur-fruit fell on the ground next to Big Sis’s leg with a small splat, sending the red juice everywhere.

“Yip, yap! Yip!” (Here, Big Sis! For you!)

Big Sis looked down at Minic’s gift and her juice-colored head tilted a bit to the side. The see-ball-curtains opened and closed a few times, but in the end she curved her mouth the right way up. She briefly turned towards Her Softness, who was facing the other way, and then grabbed Minic’s gift with her bare leg. A small mouth opened up on the underside of it, and it ate Minic’s gift with a few quiet crunches. Afterwards, tongue rolled out and licked up every last drop of the juice before the mouth disappeared. Big Sis then gently patted Minic on the lid with her leg and stroked its red gem with her leg-fingers. That tickled a bit, but Minic didn’t mind that feeling. Okay, Minic minded it a little, but this was how Big Sis showed her appreciation, so it just fluffily accepted it.

Several minutes later, Her Softness and Big Sis started eating the smokey thing from earlier. Big Sis tried to give some to Minic, but it refused politely with a ‘Bleh!’ noise. Her Softness saw that and said some harsh-sounding words to Big Sis. She then placed a bowl on the ground that had several slices of fresh big-tree-fruit. Each piece had glistening yellow meat, taut red skin and a few tiny black seeds stuck inside it.

Minic gleefully started eating its favorite treat. It was much tastier than the bits of old-tree-fruit it was given sometimes, mostly since this one was gushing with juice. Ah, but this was a different kind of juice than the fur-fruit. It was more watery and much sweeter, so Minic definitely preferred this one. Not to mention the fur-fruit’s long, off-white seeds were sometimes too hard for Minic to chew them. The fact that Big Sis could munch on them without even trying was kind of amazing in its own way.

After the meal ended, Her Softness and Big Sis climbed onto the big creaky bed and began rubbing against each other again. There was a bit of yelling and screaming, but Minic had already learned that whatever they were doing wasn’t as painful as it sounded. Therefore, it sat quietly on its personal bed that consisted of a single head-soft. It felt a bit jealous at first since the big bed had several head-softs, but it didn’t complain, because Minic is a good Minic.

Eventually the screaming died down and only breathing noises were coming from the bed. Minic still couldn’t see the point of just laying there for hours and hours, but Her Softness seemed to be back to full fluffiness when she got back up so it definitely wasn’t a bad thing. Big Sis on the other hand would probably have to leave soon.

And just as expected, Big Sis got up, stood next to the bed and started mumbling.

“Transfamiliar.”

There was a puff of green smoke and a flash of light as Big Sis disappeared back to her special hidey-place and Mother reappeared in all her softastic glory. As usual, her massive softies bobbed and jiggled with unparalleled fluffiness. Minic really wanted to sit on those, but Mother never let it do that, even back when Father was still around.

“Yaaap! Yap-yap-yip!” (Motheeeer! I want to sit on your softies!)

That didn’t mean that Minic wasn’t going to try, though.

“Shut up, you insufferable little gnat!”

Ah, it would seem it was denied once again. Minic didn’t need to know her words to understand that much, as it was the same un-fluffy tone she always used.

“Hmnnn… Huh... ? Keira, is that-”

“Sleep!”

*THUD*

“Zzzzz….”

Her Softness let out a few noises and stood up a little, but went back to doing what she was doing when Mother scolded her. Mother had a gift for scoldings, and often scolded Minic. However, that was just how Mother always was, so Minic didn’t mind. Okay, Minic minded it a little, but complaining about it would just earn it more scolding. Still, Minic believed that one day it would be allowed to sit on Mother’s softies and attain true fluffiness, so it would definitely ask again the next chance it got.

As for Mother, she kept glaring at Minic in a rather un-fluffy way and silently pointed at one of the lids of the big box. Minic never understood why these big boxes had such relatively small lids or how come there were so many of them, but it had just accepted it as fact. There were many types of boxes, after all. Minic was one, and Big Bro was sometimes a box, too. That’s what made Minic recognize Big Bro as a Big Bro in the first place, though it didn’t understand why Big Bro was sometimes a Big Sis instead. But Big Sis had softies and was a bit nicer to Minic, so Minic liked both of them.

“Get out or I’ll throw you out!”

“Yak!” (Oh, right!)

That’s right, Mother probably wanted some alone-time again. Minic had gotten sidetracked so it got scolded again. It walked up to the big wooden lid and exited through tinier lid on it. The fact that Big Sis could put a lid within a lid nearly blew Minic’s mind back then, so Minic was always a bit awestruck whenever it passed through. Those wriggly strangers that used to drop by awhile ago used it too, which was why Minic complained about them to Her Softness. It wasn’t sure why, but it was sent to another box for a while soon after. That whole affair was just another thing Minic would probably never understand, so it just went along with it until Big Sis came back and everything became fluffy again.

Regardless, Minic was given leave to play around, so it decided to do just that. At least until the ceiling-bright came back, which was usually when Big Sis would return. So Minic decided to keep exploring that one place it found recently, even though it was a bit far. It ran up to the edge of the floor and jumped off without any hesitation. Minic revelled in the free-falling sensation as it plummeted uncontrollably towards the ground.

As it fell, Minic felt a strong gust of wind push it from the side. Minic then crashed through a particularly leafy branch, bounced off a flying feather-fruit, got caught up in some dangling long-leaves, rolled across one of the slanted top bits of a brick box and landed safely in a bin filled with somewhat soft but nasty-looking stuff.

Minic then climbed out of the bin and skittered quickly-yet-casually across the dirt-covered floor, wondering for the upteempth time when someone would actually clean it up. Minic wanted to do it itself, but it lacked the means to do so. Minic didn’t have Sweepy’s outstanding cleaning skills, after all. If that slim, tall and bristly sibling was there, then Minic was sure it could handle this job without even trying.

Minic continued along the familiar, dirty floor until it came to a small hole in a stone wall, and crawled inside it. It climbed down into a dark, dank tunnel that had some extremely filthy water running through the middle of it. That water was bad news. Not only did Minic not care for the taste, but Her Softness would somehow know if Minic somehow got itself submerged in that stuff. She would then scold it while scrubbing it clean with some warm and slightly bubbly water. Therefore, while Minic was walking along the stone path next to the stream of water, Minic made doubly sure it didn’t slip or otherwise fall into it again. Because Minic was a good Minic.

After a long while of aimlessly walking the series of tunnels, Minic somehow made it to the place that Minic wanted to visit. Minic didn’t know how these mysterious and confusing tunnels worked and got lost with frightening frequency, but somehow always ended up at the right place. And the place in question was shaped like the inside of a super-sized stone box. There were several tunnels that carried the filthy water into it, while a slightly bigger one drained it away somewhere. There were a lot of these stone boxes around, but Minic knew this was the right one since that one tunnel in the corner had nothing coming out of it.

Minic walked along the edge of the giant box and hopped into that interestingly dry tunnel. It was much darker than the other ones, but Minic didn’t need see-balls to look around. It could see all of its surroundings all at once thanks to its shiny red gem, so while it often got lost it almost never tripped over stuff, except when it did.

However, all that walking around was making Minic feel a bit peckish, so Minic kept its gem open for a snack. It soon found some fur-fruits lying about the dry tunnel, though these ones were much too big to eat. They didn’t have any juice in them either, as most of it seems to have leaked out and dried up. On the other hand there were quite a few buzz-fruits floating around them. Those ones weren’t as filling as fur-fruits, but were much easier to eat and catch due to Minic’s flexible tongue. Unfortunately these tunnel-buzz-fruits were much nastier than the ones above, so in the end Minic decided to give up on them too. Minic was sure Her Softness would prepare another bowl of big-tree-fruit when it returned, so it had no qualms about passing up on these inferior snacks.

Minic kept resolutely skittering across the tunnel. Minic didn’t see anything interesting for awhile, other than a number of dried-up fur-fruits every now and then. Some of them had been here for so long that only their seeds were left behind. Eventually, Minic found itself inside another stone box, almost the same as the one on the other end of the dry tunnel. Well, other than the fact that this one was completely dry, had a bunch of fires lighting it up, and was really, really loud.

The noise was coming from a large number of things that were milling about. They looked a lot like fur-fruits, but were definitely different. For one thing, they were even bigger than those fur-fruits of unusual size that Minic came across on the way here, though not quite as tall as Big Sis. They did, however, have perky triangular listen-holes that looked a lot like hers. Their fur looked to be much fluffier than regular fur-fruits, too. It was mostly gray in color, although the area around their see-holes was black, while the bits directly above that and running along their long, protruding mouths were white. They also had fluffy-looking striped tails that alternated between gray and black, and their nose-detectors were small, black and round, almost like a woof-woof.

Some of them stood on their hind legs and most of them wore at least one article of clothing, such as old aprons, beat-up hats or rag-like shirts. They moved about with purpose, going in and out of appropriately sized boxes that appeared to made out of mud and wood. There were a number of them that had a bunch of random objects lined up on small wooden planks and exchanged them for shiny stones with the ones passing by. It was almost like that busy place that Her Softness went to get fresh big-tree-fruits every now and then. She had brought Minic with her once or twice, so it was quite sure it was the same atmosphere.

Minic curiously approached the bustling space that was filled with chittering noises of various kinds. Minic had never seen creatures such as these, and was very eager to sit on one of them to test out their softness. As luck would have it, there was one of them near the edge of all that hustle and bustle. It was splayed out on its back behind a particularly large box that sounded like it had a bunch more of them inside. A rather foul-looking liquid was dribbling from the corner of its mouth, but Minic wasn’t going to be deterred so easily. Minic approached the creature from the side and called out to it.

“Yip yap yap?” (Excuse me,  but may I sit on you?)