Author's Notes: Glad you all like the story so far and it honors me that I've kept ya all this long ^_^ Thanks for all the kind neomails and encouraging reviews. It means the world to me! :) Anywho, for those of you who've been chomping at the bit, wondering when I'm going to get to any potential romance, saddle on up, cuz here we go :) "The Rose" is (c) Bette Midler.
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The painting had gone off without a hitch and Snap was restored to his original brown color. Glitz had set him loose to run around on his own for a bit while the paint dried as he and Karma sat down at the puddleside in the evening's darkness to wait. She grinned as the doglefox sniffed at the water's edge, experimentally putting a paw into the water and whining in confusion when it came back wet.
"Goofball." she remarked. Snap looked up at her, wagging his tail a moment before bounding off into a clump of nearby grass. "Aren't you afraid somebody's going to run off with him again?" she asked.
"I'm keeping an eye on him." the techo informed her grumpily, trailing the doglefox's movements out of the corner of his eye.
"Alright." she said quietly, holding up her hands in a sign of peace. As they sat, he reached into his pocket and fumbled out a cigarette, poking it into his mouth and searching for his lighter. "Ugh, please..." she moaned, scooting away from him.
"What?" he asked around the cigarette in his lips.
"I just....I don't like the smoke very much." she told him, sounding embarrassed. He hesitated a moment and then plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and took out the box, putting the object of her loathing away. "Sorry, it just makes me gag."
"Feh..." he muttered disinterestedly. There was suddenly a great commotion in the grass where Snap had disappeared to, making both of their heads whip in that direction. "Not even back for a day and he's already in trouble again..." the techo groaned as he stumbled to his feet and hurried toward the commotion's source. "Snap, what're you...." he trailed off as the petpet bounded out of the grass, something perched on his nose.
"What's wrong?" Karma asked, having not stood but not liking the way he had stopped in mid-sentence.
"Look at this." The techo called over his shoulder, sounding bemused. She approached, peering down at Snap through the darkening night as the creature on the bridge of his muzzle flittered to the top of his head, alighting between his ears.
"What is it?" Karma asked, unable to get a good look at the small creature through the blinding crimson aura it was giving off.
"Fire faerie." he replied quietly. The tiny evanescent being took to the air again, flittering in a small circle around Snap as he happily watched, making a playful snatch at her once in awhile with his teeth.
"He won't hurt her, will he?" Karma asked. He shook his head.
"She can heal herself even if he does. They're not as delicate as everyone thinks." The frog nodded, and they watched as the faerie zipped dangerously close to Snap's mouth and, as best as she could gather from the blinding glow around it, planted a small kiss on the petpet's nose. Snap momentarily glowed a soft pink before it faded again and sat, dazed a moment before sneezing, accidentally blowing the small being backward and into the grass. She gave a high-pitched cry and, unable to stop himself, Glitz snickered.
"Always the gentleman, Snap." he remarked. Karma, however, was concerned, as she knelt and scooped the faerie into her cupped palms, examining her. The tiny creature sat up, goggling up at her through smouldering eyes.
"You alright?" she asked. The faerie hesitated and then gave what looked to be a small nod before carefully standing, walking to the edge of Karma's fingers and launching herself into the sky again, executing a lazy backflip in midflight as she blitzed across the sky, leaving a fading trail of red light behind.
"Well that worked out well." he muttered, walking a short distance away and settling back onto the grass. Karma followed suit and seated herself nearby him Nearby, neighboring the rainbow pool and petpet puddle was a small park that was usually packed during the day, but was mostly deserted after sunset. The blues and grays of evening gave everything a stoic quality, and overhead the stars slowly began to wink on as the first few crickets called out their tentative notes, joined by others as their nightly symphony began.
"Pretty, isn't it?" she asked.
"What is?" he looked confused.
"Just the nighttime." she explained. "I've never actually sat and looked."
"Hmm." he muttered, petting Snap absently as the doglefox rested its head on its front paws and drifted off to sleep. After a moment, he lifted Snap carefully off of his lap and set him down in the grass as he napped so that he could shift his position to something more comfortable.
"What do they make you think of?" Karma inquired.
"Are we on the same plane here?" Glitz asked, growing annoyed with Karma's ambigioity. "What does *what* make me think of?"
"Sorry....faeries. I was just thinking of the one we let go....was woolgathering, I guess." There was a long pause and she cleared her throat, ready to try something else. Before she could, however, he answered her.
"I don't know. They make me think of freedom until you consider that most of them spend more of their lives in a glass bottle than actually out flying."
"That's kind of a pessimistic view to take." she replied.
"Its true though." he told her. "Neopia made a regular business out of capturing faeries and selling them to people who want to re-release them and fanagle a blessing out of them....and then two weeks later they're caught again. That one you just released has probably been captured and let go more times than she can count."
"Yeah, but she'll spend tonight free, at least. You're only as captive as you make yourself."
"Your subtle symbolism astounds me." he said with flat sarcasm as he stretched out a bit on the grass.
"Oh shush." she chided. "I'm just saying you can't be a slave to something if you don't let yourself. I wasn't even applying it to you." she paused a bit. "But now that you mention it, that advice might help you too, you know? Get out of the pound and get a real life."
"I have a life." he argued.
"No you don't. You get crabby at work and then you bring it home with you and Snap is the only one who can get within a mile of you." He struggled for a rebuttal to this and, not finding one, decided to change the subject as his eyes skated the scenery around them, falling at last on a pair of shoyrus giggling and necking on a bench partially shrouded by bushes.
"Hmph, look at those two." he grumbled, pointing at them. "Don't they know people can see them?"
"So?" Karma shrugged. "They're not hurting anybody." The shoyress, thin and striped, nuzzled her mate's neck and whispered something to him, making them both laugh.
"Its sickening." he told her, plucking up a large piece of grass and busying himself by slowly tearing it into strings. "They have no consideration for other people."
"So don't look at them." Karma suggested. "We're being watched too, ya know." she informed him, pointing coyly at a chubby green bruce, red aisha and yellow wocky that were sitting beneath a nearby tree and had been staring at them on and off for the past few minutes, breaking to talk amongst themselves, sounding as though their remarks were being made in mingled jest and disgust.
"Lovely." he sighed. "Don't they have a home to go to?"
"Its a free country....at least, I assume it is." It occurred to her that she knew very little about Neopia's history. She found herself amused by his bitterness of the other couple and fought the smile forming on her lips as she looked at him out of the tail of her eye. He finished with the first piece of grass and picked up another, beginning to tear it apart as well. As much as she had promised herself that as of today, she would nix any and all warm feelings she had felt for him, suddenly they flared back stronger than ever. The pity, the intrigue, the fondness and even the anger at him from before melded together into one emotion that she couldn't shake and barely control.
"They're just upset that I'm here and wondering why you're not running and screaming from me." he added. "Its not like they have anything to look at." She bit her lip, trying to resist one final time as she told herself that it wasn't right and wouldn't do her or him any good to let on the way she felt. Despite this, the frog knew it was a losing battle.
"Care to change that?" Karma asked, hearing the words come out of her mouth before her mind registered that she had said them. It was very rarely that she found herself acting purely on impulse. He turned his head in her direction, cocking a brow.
"What're you talking a---mmph." the last word was muffled as he suddenly found her mouth upon his. His mind locked in mid-decision of whether to be terrified or outraged by this intrusion of his person. He had never been kissed before....hell, he'd never been close to a female before out of sheer lack of interest in any sort of romance. And now, he didn't know what to think, really. He couldn't pull back OR give in....and just remained rigid and blank. When she finally broke the kiss and drew away, he simply stared at her, the evening accentuating the utter confusion in his amber eyes. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice a bit hoarse.
"I'm pulling you out of your shell." she answered simply, smiling faintly and reaching up to touch his cheek gently with her fingertips. "Or trying to." She waited, inwardly cringing and worrying that he would be seized by a sudden outburst of anger. At length, he simply looked away again. "Glitz...."
"Don't, alright? Just...don't" he told her sullenly, crossing his arms over his chest. He took a deep breath. "I'm a bad person, Karma. You don't want to get involved with me."
"What if I do?" she asked, persisting, and placing a hand on his shoulder. He didn't shrug it off, but remained rigid, letting her know that it wasn't welcome.
"No." he said decisively. He looked slowly back up at her, a single strand of gray hair hanging in his eyes. He shook his head and sighed, gathering up Snap. "I need to go."
"But..." she began, and then relented, sulking as he walked away. "Goodbye, Glitz..." she sniffled, sitting alone for a long moment and ignoring the outburst of laughter from the group sitting beneath the tree behind her.
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"You idiot!" the techo cursed himself, pacing restlessly through the living room. Snap was seated on the sofa, watching him placidly as he ranted and raved aloud to no one. He had been doing it since he had gotten home and had reviewed over and over again what had happened in the park with Karma. "Son of a....Nrrghh!!!" he clenched his fists and trembled. "Alright....calm down." he told himself, since no one was there to do it for him. "Just calm the hell down." He said again, storming into the kitchen and yanking open a cupboard from which he yanked an unopened box of juppie cocoa mix and fumbled it uselessly between his hands for a moment before losing his already-shot patience and tearing it open recklessly, spilling the small white packets inside all over the floor.
Rather than clean up the mess, he simply, grabbed one up and tore the top off, dumping the powder inside into a mug sitting on the sink that had been washed but not yet put away. As he twisted on the hot water faucet and filled the mug, he chided himself again for behaving the way he had. Things had been fine up until the last few moments when she had clearly overstepped her bounds, but rather than be civil about it, he had gotten up and left like a tantrumy child. And now she had her feelings hurt, likely was very upset, and he realized that the entire evening and his plan to extend the offer of a distant friendship was shot utterly to hell.
Why did he care so much what she felt anyway? He'd sent hundreds of people home crying in his time employed at the pound and never flinched. Yet for some reason, the idea of the tree frog sitting alone somewhere and sobbing struck a very sour note with him. He took a long drink from the mug, not bothering to stir the cocoa beforehand as he pondered this. It occurred to him that the fact she had kissed him hadn't made him angry, really....nor had it hurt him. Well, what then? Why had he felt a sudden need to get as far away from her as he possibly could?
He paused, as the answer washed over him tauntingly. He had been scared, that was what. He growled something under his breath, growing digusted with himself. Scared of WHAT? He didn't know, and frankly didn't want to pursue it any further. He drank off the rest of what was in the mug and put it in the sink, returning to the living room to pace some more. Snap hadn't moved from his spot and thumped his tail once in greeting, as though knowing getting excited would be useless right now with his owner's current state of mind.
"I could go over and apologize..." he muttered, instinctively heading for the hook his coat was on and then shied away from it. "No, I can't." he corrected himself instantly. "What would you do?" he asked Snap, knowing he wouldn't get an answer.
"Whurf?" the doglefox asked.
"Nevermind." he grumbled, deciding that he'd go to bed. There was nothing else, really, that he could do that wouldn't involve bothering or hurting someone besides that as he stripped off his shirt and plodded toward the bedroom in resignation, not bothering to turn off the rest of the houselights. Snap pricked his ears and galloped after him, trotting into the bedroom and leaping onto the bed ahead of his master. The yellow techo took no notice as he finished undressing for the night, clicked off the bedside lamp, and climbed between the bedsheets, situating himself into a comfortable position. Try as he might, however, sleep eluded him.
At length, he sat up again in frustration in his tangle of sheets and turned the lamp back on, staring into space for a moment. The clock reported that it was just shy of seven-thirty...and far too early to go to bed by his standards. He grunted and got out of bed again, retrieving his clothes and putting them back on before patting the mattress to attract his petpet. "What do you say to some fetch, kid?" he asked as he picked Snap up and nestled him against his neck as he left the room and headed for the back yard.
He opened the back door and stepped into the evening air, breathing deeply of it as he set the doglefox into the grass and knelt to scoop up a small blue rubber ball he had gotten as part of a petpet care kit. Snap eyed it eagerly as he wheeled back and threw it into the far corner of the yard, making the doglefox chase off after it. No sooner had the ball left his hand then he heard someone sidling up to the fence and watched disinterestedly as a pudgy blue face peered at him and his petpet.
"Got your mutt back, I see." Jespie remarked, smirking as Snap trotted back with the ball in his jaws, proudly plopping it at his owner's feet.
"Shut the hell up." the techo grumbled, not in the mood to spar with his neighbor as he knelt to pick up the ball again.
"Woah-oh! Don't WE have a case of the uglies today!" the tuskaninny remarked. He hefted some more of his bulk against the fence, apparently intent on staying for awhile. As Dr. Death looked, he noted with some degree of disgust that Jespie was clutching a large bowl of tropical pudding in the crook of one arm. "So tell me. Did he run away? God knows *I* would if you were my owner."
"I think I'd pay to see YOU run anywhere." the doctor muttered, cocking his arm back and throwing the ball again, watching Snap chase after it. His patience was dangling by a single red thread....why had Jespie chosen that moment to heave himself outside? And as long as he was going to stuff his face, why couldn't he do it over on his back porch instead of inflicting himself upon him and Snap's time?
"You wound me. I bleed." the tuskaninny assured him sarcastically, picking up the spoon that had been swimming in the citrusy green swill and shoveled a large spoonful into his mouth with a disgusting slurp. Snap returned once again, offering the techo the ball. "Tell ya what you need to make you stop being such a jackass, is a nice tumble in the sheets with some willing chickie, Doc." He threw the ball again, blatantly ignoring what the tuskaninny had just proposed. "C'mon, don't make me spell it out for you. You're a big boy now, aren'tcha?" Jespie pressed.
"And tell me. How many of these 'chickies' have you had lately?" he inquired acidly. "And how many have run screaming into the night at the idea of you taking off your shirt?" The smug smile that had been on the tuskaninny's face slipped away.
"You wanna watch it, you bastard." he said threateningly. Glitz, deciding he had hit his neighbor where he lived, pressed the issue a bit further.
"And how many of them have you lost a date with because she had to stay home and 'wash her hair'?" he asked, chuckling a little. Jespie fumbled for an answer a moment before growing rosy in the cheeks with anger as the techo idly threw the ball again. Snap, however, didn't chase after it this time, as though sensing the tension between the two men, and instead sat down and watched the exchange.
"You better thank your damn lucky stars that there's a fence between you and me right now...or else I'd come over there and---"
"Sit on me? That DOES scare me. Who has the uglies *now*?" the doctor interrupted. Seeing that the conversation was quickly about to escalate itself from a mud-slinging match to actual blows, Glitz decided to be the bigger man about it as he knelt, scooping Snap up into his arms. "Sorry to cut this short, but I'm beginning to worry that I'll inhale some of the obesity fumes you're giving off and choke." he said flatly, turning and heading abruptly for the house. As his hand closed around the doorhandle, something wet and cold struck the back of his neck. He cried out and reached for it, pulling a mass of slippery green goo away from his hair and skin that smelled faintly of pineapples. The bastard had thrown a handful of pudding at him.
"Oops. Slipped." the tuskaninny remarked, glaring at his neighbor. Glitz paused for a long moment, forcing himself to calm down before wiping away as much more of the pudding from his neck as he could and casting a single look over his shoulder at the tuskaninny.
"Goodnight, Jespie." he said curtly, and slipped inside, closing the door behind himself. He set Snap down, wiping irately at the back of his neck to try and get rid of the rest of the pudding. The hair at the nape of his neck was still sticky and had begun to tangle itself as he sighed in disgust, heading down the hallway and pausing at the linen closet to select a washcloth before continuing into the bathroom and wetting it beneath the sink faucet, mopping at his neck with it. When he was satisfied that he had been cleaned to the best of his ability, he tossed the washcloth into the hamper, ventured back into the living room, sinking into his chair and sighing.
The silence was stifling and made him feel irritable. Snap crept up from behind and gently nosed his hand, making him jolt a bit before distractedly scratching the doglefox's head. Maybe some music would help, he decided, getting up out of the chair and crossing the room to where he kept his stereo, a small model that shared the space on the third shelf of his bookcase with some of his other novels. He switched the radio on, instantly breaking the silence with a raucous voice that filtered out of the speakers.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey-ey-ey-ey!!! Its the LIGHTNING ROUND!!!!" the speaker paused to ring a cowbell loudly and blather on for a moment in complete gibberish. "I'm ya host, Ace Rockola, and with me in the sidecar is the *LOVE* doctor, Dr. Drew. Lemme stop a minute to take a look at the time here...its....THREE MINUTES TILL THE TOP OF THE HOUR!!! BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH!!!! Theeeeeeeeeeee witching hour!! YEAH, BABY!!"
"Adam, you moron...." the techo sighed, shaking his head as he rotated the radio dial a bit. Now and then he was known to listen to the show in question in the evenings, but it irritated him badly when the co-host's high horse seemed to get out of its barn and resulted in...what else? The lightning round....an excuse for said co-host to make absolutely no sense for the remainder of the show. Several bursts of static and snatches of voices burst from the speakers as he sought a solid station, pausing at last as the final chords of what sounded to have been a lilting saxophone and base ensemble ended.
"That was Jazzmosis's latest hit, 'Brokenneck Blues'." a female DJ with a smooth, soothing voice declared. "Coming up later, we'll have the latest from Two Gallon Hatz and also coming up, an interview with M*ynci's lead singer. For now, we'd like to close this hour with an Earther-song, brought in by one of our listeners. This one's for all you hopefuls out there. Saying so, a haunting piano melody began. As a rule, Glitz didn't care much for brooding songs, which this was judging by the key it was being played in...but on the other hand, he enjoyed piano music. His hand paused on the dial and then dropped away as the singer, a throaty-voiced woman, came in.
~*Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and You its only seed.*~
A love song...great. Just what he needed right now, he thought to himself as he crossed the room and slumped back into his chair. What was the big deal anyway? Love, frankly, made him feel sick. People were far too occupied with it and why? It made them act stupidly and do ridiculous things in the name of some intangible emotion. The thought occurred to him to simply get up and change the station, but he frankly didn't feel like it. With any luck, this wouldn't be one of those songs that dragged on for five minutes and then reprised itself.
~*It's the heart, afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance.
It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes
The Rose.......*~
The song came to an end, the final piano chord resounding through the room and holding in the air for a long moment. The same female DJ spoke again, but this time the yellow techo didn't hear her. Something in the lyrics, despite the fact he had been rebuking the song earlier, had struck something in him that seemed to open an inner well in his being somewhere. He was lonely....very lonely, he realized.
As he shifted his position in the chair slightly, something trickled down his nose and pattered softly onto his shirt front. Tears? He reached up, touching beneath one eye gently and looking numbly back at his moist fingertips. Apparently, the lyrics had moved him and he hadn't even been aware of it. At the same time, something clicked into place in his head with startling clarity.
He didn't love Karma. That much was true....but he found that, despite his best denials, something in him DID care about her well-being. That explained why he felt so low for walking out on her at the park, he decided....but it was too late to do anything to fix it by now. He imagined that she was home by now and likely planning to stay away from him.
The lonliness closed in around him like a velvet glove, making him squirm a bit in his seat. It had never bothered him before....but of course, he had never really noticed before either. One thought occurred to him as he brooded silently...and that was that he needed to do something about the current standing with the tree frog. Apologize, talk to her, do SOMETHING other than just sit there and leave things as they were.
At length, he pulled himself to his feet and headed for the front door, yanking his jacket off of the hook. Snap trotted after him, looking at him in puzzlement.
"Not this time." he told the doglefox gently. "Just behave yourself for an hour or so, can you do that?" he asked, knowing he wouldn't get an answer. Snap sat down and cocked his head, looking cluelessly at his owner as he shouldered on his jacket. "I'll be back soon." And with that, the techo disappeared out the door, locking it behind him. Snap sat still a minute, contemplating why his owner had rushed out again after only just getting home not an hour ago. Staring at the closed door, he whimpered a moment, and then turned and walked back to the couch, leaping onto a cushion and curling up upon it. It seemed his owner had left him to his own devices for a bit.
Oh well...a shame to waste the time....the doglefox began to gnaw idly on the corner of the nearest couch arm.
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Karma sat alone at the table, absently stirring a bowl of neocrunch with the tip of her spoon. She didn't know why she had poured it....she hadn't felt like eating. In fact, the idea of summoning the strength to put a spoonful of the cold cereal and milk into her mouth made her feel ill. The apartment was eerily silent and dark except for the light in the kitchen. Half of her worried for the safety of Yahoo and Chomby and the other half was devastated by what had transpired that evening.
She supposed it was her own fault for having been so forward. But she somehow hadn't been able to help it. Well, no matter. She didn't hold high hopes of him ever speaking to her again after tonight. In fact, she decided she'd feel lucky if he wasn't insanely angry with her. She could just see needing to go to the pound at a future date for something and being accosted at the door.
The frog spooned up a bit of the cereal and slowly dumped it, listening to it spatter against what was already in the bowl. It occurred to her that she was being utterly pathetic...just like those women in the movies she used to watch who moped around like discorporated wraiths when the men they loved left their lives. She recalled laughing at them and swearing that she'd never let herself get that worked up over something or someone. Yet, here she was.
Another bout of tears stung her eyes and she hastily wiped at them. Her cheeks were chapped from the tears that had been spilling down them since she had gotten home and she didn't want to make them worse. She pushed the cereal away and stood, deciding she would give her cybunny and chomby another hour before she put in a call to the police station to keep an eye out for them.
From where she stood, she could see the last traces of daylight vanishing into utter darkness as she passed silently out of the kitchen and into the living room, pausing at the sofa and then slowly seating herself upon it. She had nothing especially in mind to do except sit there and count the minutes. Another pathetic idea. Glitz wasn't the be-all and end-all of her world....why was she acting like he was? She looked beside her and picked up a blue fuzzle that belonged to Chomby that had been stuffed between the cushions, turning it over in her hands. Its black eyes winked up at her from the dim light of the room and its small stitched smile seemed to mock her sadness. At length she tossed it aside and laid down, propping her head up on the arm of the couch and staring blankly at the paint blisters on the ceiling.
Maybe she just wasn't cut out for life in Neopia, she decided. It was going to be awkward trying to live down what had happened earlier in the park of the onlookers had decided to spread rumors. She could just see people having a field day with it as a potential Neopian Times headline flared in her head. "OWNER HAS ILLICIT AFFAIR WITH LOCAL NEOPET"
Just what she needed right now.
She supposed she could go home, back to where she had nothing in particular. Go back to college, ask for her old job at the local R-Mart back, and give up everything she had worked for. She shook her head, shooing the grim, yet tempting fantasy away. No. She had worked too hard for all she had now...and what about Yahoo and Chomby? What would happen to them if she just left them on their own?
Maybe she would just stick close to the house for the next few days and avoid everyone and everything. It sounded like a reasonable enough plan. And maybe once the rumors, if any had started, had died down then she could----
Her thoughts were interrupted by a tentative knock at the door. She remained on the couch, loathe to leave the position she had sprawled in.
"Its open, you guys, and you'd better have a good reason for being out this late." she called at the door, sure it was Chomby and Yahoo, knocking to see if she had gone to bed yet or not in hopes that they could creep in and fib about when they had gotten in tomorrow when she got up. There was an achingly long pause and then the sound of the doorknob turning and someone entering the apartment. She didn't look up to see who it was as she continued to lay across the couch, eyes focused on the ceiling. "Yahoo? Chomby? I promise it'll be a lot better if you just face the music about this..." she said. She had no intention of punishing them, really, but had learned early on with Yahoo that if she didn't exert some molecule of authority once in awhile, her pets would walk all over her.
The footsteps approached and paused at the side of the couch. "Alright...just tell me where you guys were and we'll leave it at that as long as you didn't blow anything up. Sound fair?"
"Karma..." Her subconscious recognized and placed the voice before the rest of her brain caught up and caused a knee-jerk reaction to it. She whipped herself onto her belly and goggled up at the shadowed form of Dr. Death standing over her, his posture awkward.
"You...!" she managed in a choked voice, scrambling off of the couch to confront him. "What are you doing here?" she asked. And then, all at once, her emotions exploded forth. "Why don't you make up your mind, for gods sake, instead of jerking me around like this??" she cried, making him flinch. "Either go or stay, but stop playing this like you/hate you game with me!! I mean, I can't deal with--"
He reached out, placing his hand over her mouth and muffling the last of her words as she glared at him, her eyes smouldering. Seeing that she wasn't going to fight with him for the floor to speak, he took his palm away from her lips and inhaled, ready to say his piece on the matter...but instead of words, he found himself tilting his head a bit, covering her mouth with his own, in the same way she had done to him earlier. He half-expected her to pull away and protest his sudden change of mood...but she didn't. Instead, she simply surrendered against him, abandoning the rest of the world for the moment.
The same rush of fear and inability to think straight washed over him again, but he steeled himself against it, determined he wasn't going to have a replay of what had transpired earlier. The kiss deepened a bit, and then, before it could go too much further, broke. The two of them stared at one another for a long moment, both of them looking equally bewildered by what had just transpired. At last, he spoke, the strength sounding robbed from his voice.
"I'll give this a try...." he hoarsely whispered, keeping his eyes levelly focused on hers. "That's all I can promise, Karma, I'll give it a try." He found that, despite the effort he had made, he still couldn't bring himself so far as to say he loved her, though there was most certainly something there that hadn't been before. A deep-seated fondness and patience that surely hadn't existed earlier that day, he was sure.
Karma found herself unable to piece her words together and only nodded faintly. A smile ghosted about his mouth for a moment as they brushed noses, leaning in again....
"SURPRISE!!" Yahoo cried, leaping in through the door with Chomby trailing close behind. "KARMA!!! HEY!! Where are you??" the cybunny asked, looking around, clutching something large and obnoxiously pink to his chest. "Figures she'd disappear..." he grumbled at Chomby who seemed to be focused on something else.
"Uhh, Yahoo?" the chomby began.
"I mean, we're out all day busting our butts to find this stupid thing and---"
"Yahoo...!!"
"What??" the blue cybunny asked irritably. Chomby took Yahoo's head in his paws and turned it slowly toward the living room where Karma and Dr. Death were standing close to one another, staring dumbfounded at them. Judging by the expression on their faces, the two neopets had just interrupted something between them. "Oh...! Umm...." Yahoo faltered.
"Yahoo, Chomby, where have you two been?" Karma asked, relucantly pulling away from the doctor to approach them.
"Oh...we were...umm....we....." Chomby whimpered, looking to the cybunny for help.
"Umm...we got this for you, but we're really tired and we gotta go to bed now so nite!" Yahoo said hurriedly, tossing the pink thing on the table, grabbing Chomby and the two of them scampered hurriedly out of the room and into the den, out of sight of their owner and the techo. Karma looked after them in puzzlement, making a mental note to have a talk with them later. For now, she'd let them go as she looked at what Yahoo had dropped on the table.
"What's that?" Glitz questioned, coming up behind her as she picked the pink object up, turning it over in her hands. A slightly overstuffed bruce plushie winked up at her through shiny glass eyes, a pastel satin bow tied around its neck. Karma smirked and showed him the valentines plushie. "Wonder how they pulled that off." he remarked. "Last I saw, those things were disappearing faster than Chuffer Bob's lunch."
"Dunno." Karma smiled, laying the plushie down. "I guess now I can't turn into an ogre on them." she turned back to him. "Thank you for coming back and I guess you know you didn't have to."
"I know." he nodded, rubbing awkwardly at his upper arm and looking at the floor. He cleared his throat. "I should....I should probably go now, Karma. I just needed to see you."
"I'm glad you did." she smiled, sensing that the moment from before was gone and that they were both left feeling awkward again.
"Just out of curiousity, what exactly does this make us?" he asked, feeling ridiculous for asking such a question.
"Strangers with benefits?" she shrugged and then laughed. "I don't know. We can cross that bridge when we come to it." He smiled and shook his head.
"I guess you're right." He paused a minute. "I'll see you when I see you, then?" She nodded in the affirmative.
"Have a good night." she called after him as he turned and left, letting himself out of her apartment and closing the door gently behind himself. Well, that hadn't been so bad, he decided. He, actually, felt rather good about how things had gone....and felt that nothing, not even the fact that he was going to return home to yet another demolished couch, could put a damper on the relief and warmth he felt as he ventured down the hallway and began his walk home.
TBC.......
(yes there's more. LOL....it never ends!! o.o;;)
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The painting had gone off without a hitch and Snap was restored to his original brown color. Glitz had set him loose to run around on his own for a bit while the paint dried as he and Karma sat down at the puddleside in the evening's darkness to wait. She grinned as the doglefox sniffed at the water's edge, experimentally putting a paw into the water and whining in confusion when it came back wet.
"Goofball." she remarked. Snap looked up at her, wagging his tail a moment before bounding off into a clump of nearby grass. "Aren't you afraid somebody's going to run off with him again?" she asked.
"I'm keeping an eye on him." the techo informed her grumpily, trailing the doglefox's movements out of the corner of his eye.
"Alright." she said quietly, holding up her hands in a sign of peace. As they sat, he reached into his pocket and fumbled out a cigarette, poking it into his mouth and searching for his lighter. "Ugh, please..." she moaned, scooting away from him.
"What?" he asked around the cigarette in his lips.
"I just....I don't like the smoke very much." she told him, sounding embarrassed. He hesitated a moment and then plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and took out the box, putting the object of her loathing away. "Sorry, it just makes me gag."
"Feh..." he muttered disinterestedly. There was suddenly a great commotion in the grass where Snap had disappeared to, making both of their heads whip in that direction. "Not even back for a day and he's already in trouble again..." the techo groaned as he stumbled to his feet and hurried toward the commotion's source. "Snap, what're you...." he trailed off as the petpet bounded out of the grass, something perched on his nose.
"What's wrong?" Karma asked, having not stood but not liking the way he had stopped in mid-sentence.
"Look at this." The techo called over his shoulder, sounding bemused. She approached, peering down at Snap through the darkening night as the creature on the bridge of his muzzle flittered to the top of his head, alighting between his ears.
"What is it?" Karma asked, unable to get a good look at the small creature through the blinding crimson aura it was giving off.
"Fire faerie." he replied quietly. The tiny evanescent being took to the air again, flittering in a small circle around Snap as he happily watched, making a playful snatch at her once in awhile with his teeth.
"He won't hurt her, will he?" Karma asked. He shook his head.
"She can heal herself even if he does. They're not as delicate as everyone thinks." The frog nodded, and they watched as the faerie zipped dangerously close to Snap's mouth and, as best as she could gather from the blinding glow around it, planted a small kiss on the petpet's nose. Snap momentarily glowed a soft pink before it faded again and sat, dazed a moment before sneezing, accidentally blowing the small being backward and into the grass. She gave a high-pitched cry and, unable to stop himself, Glitz snickered.
"Always the gentleman, Snap." he remarked. Karma, however, was concerned, as she knelt and scooped the faerie into her cupped palms, examining her. The tiny creature sat up, goggling up at her through smouldering eyes.
"You alright?" she asked. The faerie hesitated and then gave what looked to be a small nod before carefully standing, walking to the edge of Karma's fingers and launching herself into the sky again, executing a lazy backflip in midflight as she blitzed across the sky, leaving a fading trail of red light behind.
"Well that worked out well." he muttered, walking a short distance away and settling back onto the grass. Karma followed suit and seated herself nearby him Nearby, neighboring the rainbow pool and petpet puddle was a small park that was usually packed during the day, but was mostly deserted after sunset. The blues and grays of evening gave everything a stoic quality, and overhead the stars slowly began to wink on as the first few crickets called out their tentative notes, joined by others as their nightly symphony began.
"Pretty, isn't it?" she asked.
"What is?" he looked confused.
"Just the nighttime." she explained. "I've never actually sat and looked."
"Hmm." he muttered, petting Snap absently as the doglefox rested its head on its front paws and drifted off to sleep. After a moment, he lifted Snap carefully off of his lap and set him down in the grass as he napped so that he could shift his position to something more comfortable.
"What do they make you think of?" Karma inquired.
"Are we on the same plane here?" Glitz asked, growing annoyed with Karma's ambigioity. "What does *what* make me think of?"
"Sorry....faeries. I was just thinking of the one we let go....was woolgathering, I guess." There was a long pause and she cleared her throat, ready to try something else. Before she could, however, he answered her.
"I don't know. They make me think of freedom until you consider that most of them spend more of their lives in a glass bottle than actually out flying."
"That's kind of a pessimistic view to take." she replied.
"Its true though." he told her. "Neopia made a regular business out of capturing faeries and selling them to people who want to re-release them and fanagle a blessing out of them....and then two weeks later they're caught again. That one you just released has probably been captured and let go more times than she can count."
"Yeah, but she'll spend tonight free, at least. You're only as captive as you make yourself."
"Your subtle symbolism astounds me." he said with flat sarcasm as he stretched out a bit on the grass.
"Oh shush." she chided. "I'm just saying you can't be a slave to something if you don't let yourself. I wasn't even applying it to you." she paused a bit. "But now that you mention it, that advice might help you too, you know? Get out of the pound and get a real life."
"I have a life." he argued.
"No you don't. You get crabby at work and then you bring it home with you and Snap is the only one who can get within a mile of you." He struggled for a rebuttal to this and, not finding one, decided to change the subject as his eyes skated the scenery around them, falling at last on a pair of shoyrus giggling and necking on a bench partially shrouded by bushes.
"Hmph, look at those two." he grumbled, pointing at them. "Don't they know people can see them?"
"So?" Karma shrugged. "They're not hurting anybody." The shoyress, thin and striped, nuzzled her mate's neck and whispered something to him, making them both laugh.
"Its sickening." he told her, plucking up a large piece of grass and busying himself by slowly tearing it into strings. "They have no consideration for other people."
"So don't look at them." Karma suggested. "We're being watched too, ya know." she informed him, pointing coyly at a chubby green bruce, red aisha and yellow wocky that were sitting beneath a nearby tree and had been staring at them on and off for the past few minutes, breaking to talk amongst themselves, sounding as though their remarks were being made in mingled jest and disgust.
"Lovely." he sighed. "Don't they have a home to go to?"
"Its a free country....at least, I assume it is." It occurred to her that she knew very little about Neopia's history. She found herself amused by his bitterness of the other couple and fought the smile forming on her lips as she looked at him out of the tail of her eye. He finished with the first piece of grass and picked up another, beginning to tear it apart as well. As much as she had promised herself that as of today, she would nix any and all warm feelings she had felt for him, suddenly they flared back stronger than ever. The pity, the intrigue, the fondness and even the anger at him from before melded together into one emotion that she couldn't shake and barely control.
"They're just upset that I'm here and wondering why you're not running and screaming from me." he added. "Its not like they have anything to look at." She bit her lip, trying to resist one final time as she told herself that it wasn't right and wouldn't do her or him any good to let on the way she felt. Despite this, the frog knew it was a losing battle.
"Care to change that?" Karma asked, hearing the words come out of her mouth before her mind registered that she had said them. It was very rarely that she found herself acting purely on impulse. He turned his head in her direction, cocking a brow.
"What're you talking a---mmph." the last word was muffled as he suddenly found her mouth upon his. His mind locked in mid-decision of whether to be terrified or outraged by this intrusion of his person. He had never been kissed before....hell, he'd never been close to a female before out of sheer lack of interest in any sort of romance. And now, he didn't know what to think, really. He couldn't pull back OR give in....and just remained rigid and blank. When she finally broke the kiss and drew away, he simply stared at her, the evening accentuating the utter confusion in his amber eyes. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice a bit hoarse.
"I'm pulling you out of your shell." she answered simply, smiling faintly and reaching up to touch his cheek gently with her fingertips. "Or trying to." She waited, inwardly cringing and worrying that he would be seized by a sudden outburst of anger. At length, he simply looked away again. "Glitz...."
"Don't, alright? Just...don't" he told her sullenly, crossing his arms over his chest. He took a deep breath. "I'm a bad person, Karma. You don't want to get involved with me."
"What if I do?" she asked, persisting, and placing a hand on his shoulder. He didn't shrug it off, but remained rigid, letting her know that it wasn't welcome.
"No." he said decisively. He looked slowly back up at her, a single strand of gray hair hanging in his eyes. He shook his head and sighed, gathering up Snap. "I need to go."
"But..." she began, and then relented, sulking as he walked away. "Goodbye, Glitz..." she sniffled, sitting alone for a long moment and ignoring the outburst of laughter from the group sitting beneath the tree behind her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You idiot!" the techo cursed himself, pacing restlessly through the living room. Snap was seated on the sofa, watching him placidly as he ranted and raved aloud to no one. He had been doing it since he had gotten home and had reviewed over and over again what had happened in the park with Karma. "Son of a....Nrrghh!!!" he clenched his fists and trembled. "Alright....calm down." he told himself, since no one was there to do it for him. "Just calm the hell down." He said again, storming into the kitchen and yanking open a cupboard from which he yanked an unopened box of juppie cocoa mix and fumbled it uselessly between his hands for a moment before losing his already-shot patience and tearing it open recklessly, spilling the small white packets inside all over the floor.
Rather than clean up the mess, he simply, grabbed one up and tore the top off, dumping the powder inside into a mug sitting on the sink that had been washed but not yet put away. As he twisted on the hot water faucet and filled the mug, he chided himself again for behaving the way he had. Things had been fine up until the last few moments when she had clearly overstepped her bounds, but rather than be civil about it, he had gotten up and left like a tantrumy child. And now she had her feelings hurt, likely was very upset, and he realized that the entire evening and his plan to extend the offer of a distant friendship was shot utterly to hell.
Why did he care so much what she felt anyway? He'd sent hundreds of people home crying in his time employed at the pound and never flinched. Yet for some reason, the idea of the tree frog sitting alone somewhere and sobbing struck a very sour note with him. He took a long drink from the mug, not bothering to stir the cocoa beforehand as he pondered this. It occurred to him that the fact she had kissed him hadn't made him angry, really....nor had it hurt him. Well, what then? Why had he felt a sudden need to get as far away from her as he possibly could?
He paused, as the answer washed over him tauntingly. He had been scared, that was what. He growled something under his breath, growing digusted with himself. Scared of WHAT? He didn't know, and frankly didn't want to pursue it any further. He drank off the rest of what was in the mug and put it in the sink, returning to the living room to pace some more. Snap hadn't moved from his spot and thumped his tail once in greeting, as though knowing getting excited would be useless right now with his owner's current state of mind.
"I could go over and apologize..." he muttered, instinctively heading for the hook his coat was on and then shied away from it. "No, I can't." he corrected himself instantly. "What would you do?" he asked Snap, knowing he wouldn't get an answer.
"Whurf?" the doglefox asked.
"Nevermind." he grumbled, deciding that he'd go to bed. There was nothing else, really, that he could do that wouldn't involve bothering or hurting someone besides that as he stripped off his shirt and plodded toward the bedroom in resignation, not bothering to turn off the rest of the houselights. Snap pricked his ears and galloped after him, trotting into the bedroom and leaping onto the bed ahead of his master. The yellow techo took no notice as he finished undressing for the night, clicked off the bedside lamp, and climbed between the bedsheets, situating himself into a comfortable position. Try as he might, however, sleep eluded him.
At length, he sat up again in frustration in his tangle of sheets and turned the lamp back on, staring into space for a moment. The clock reported that it was just shy of seven-thirty...and far too early to go to bed by his standards. He grunted and got out of bed again, retrieving his clothes and putting them back on before patting the mattress to attract his petpet. "What do you say to some fetch, kid?" he asked as he picked Snap up and nestled him against his neck as he left the room and headed for the back yard.
He opened the back door and stepped into the evening air, breathing deeply of it as he set the doglefox into the grass and knelt to scoop up a small blue rubber ball he had gotten as part of a petpet care kit. Snap eyed it eagerly as he wheeled back and threw it into the far corner of the yard, making the doglefox chase off after it. No sooner had the ball left his hand then he heard someone sidling up to the fence and watched disinterestedly as a pudgy blue face peered at him and his petpet.
"Got your mutt back, I see." Jespie remarked, smirking as Snap trotted back with the ball in his jaws, proudly plopping it at his owner's feet.
"Shut the hell up." the techo grumbled, not in the mood to spar with his neighbor as he knelt to pick up the ball again.
"Woah-oh! Don't WE have a case of the uglies today!" the tuskaninny remarked. He hefted some more of his bulk against the fence, apparently intent on staying for awhile. As Dr. Death looked, he noted with some degree of disgust that Jespie was clutching a large bowl of tropical pudding in the crook of one arm. "So tell me. Did he run away? God knows *I* would if you were my owner."
"I think I'd pay to see YOU run anywhere." the doctor muttered, cocking his arm back and throwing the ball again, watching Snap chase after it. His patience was dangling by a single red thread....why had Jespie chosen that moment to heave himself outside? And as long as he was going to stuff his face, why couldn't he do it over on his back porch instead of inflicting himself upon him and Snap's time?
"You wound me. I bleed." the tuskaninny assured him sarcastically, picking up the spoon that had been swimming in the citrusy green swill and shoveled a large spoonful into his mouth with a disgusting slurp. Snap returned once again, offering the techo the ball. "Tell ya what you need to make you stop being such a jackass, is a nice tumble in the sheets with some willing chickie, Doc." He threw the ball again, blatantly ignoring what the tuskaninny had just proposed. "C'mon, don't make me spell it out for you. You're a big boy now, aren'tcha?" Jespie pressed.
"And tell me. How many of these 'chickies' have you had lately?" he inquired acidly. "And how many have run screaming into the night at the idea of you taking off your shirt?" The smug smile that had been on the tuskaninny's face slipped away.
"You wanna watch it, you bastard." he said threateningly. Glitz, deciding he had hit his neighbor where he lived, pressed the issue a bit further.
"And how many of them have you lost a date with because she had to stay home and 'wash her hair'?" he asked, chuckling a little. Jespie fumbled for an answer a moment before growing rosy in the cheeks with anger as the techo idly threw the ball again. Snap, however, didn't chase after it this time, as though sensing the tension between the two men, and instead sat down and watched the exchange.
"You better thank your damn lucky stars that there's a fence between you and me right now...or else I'd come over there and---"
"Sit on me? That DOES scare me. Who has the uglies *now*?" the doctor interrupted. Seeing that the conversation was quickly about to escalate itself from a mud-slinging match to actual blows, Glitz decided to be the bigger man about it as he knelt, scooping Snap up into his arms. "Sorry to cut this short, but I'm beginning to worry that I'll inhale some of the obesity fumes you're giving off and choke." he said flatly, turning and heading abruptly for the house. As his hand closed around the doorhandle, something wet and cold struck the back of his neck. He cried out and reached for it, pulling a mass of slippery green goo away from his hair and skin that smelled faintly of pineapples. The bastard had thrown a handful of pudding at him.
"Oops. Slipped." the tuskaninny remarked, glaring at his neighbor. Glitz paused for a long moment, forcing himself to calm down before wiping away as much more of the pudding from his neck as he could and casting a single look over his shoulder at the tuskaninny.
"Goodnight, Jespie." he said curtly, and slipped inside, closing the door behind himself. He set Snap down, wiping irately at the back of his neck to try and get rid of the rest of the pudding. The hair at the nape of his neck was still sticky and had begun to tangle itself as he sighed in disgust, heading down the hallway and pausing at the linen closet to select a washcloth before continuing into the bathroom and wetting it beneath the sink faucet, mopping at his neck with it. When he was satisfied that he had been cleaned to the best of his ability, he tossed the washcloth into the hamper, ventured back into the living room, sinking into his chair and sighing.
The silence was stifling and made him feel irritable. Snap crept up from behind and gently nosed his hand, making him jolt a bit before distractedly scratching the doglefox's head. Maybe some music would help, he decided, getting up out of the chair and crossing the room to where he kept his stereo, a small model that shared the space on the third shelf of his bookcase with some of his other novels. He switched the radio on, instantly breaking the silence with a raucous voice that filtered out of the speakers.
"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey-ey-ey-ey!!! Its the LIGHTNING ROUND!!!!" the speaker paused to ring a cowbell loudly and blather on for a moment in complete gibberish. "I'm ya host, Ace Rockola, and with me in the sidecar is the *LOVE* doctor, Dr. Drew. Lemme stop a minute to take a look at the time here...its....THREE MINUTES TILL THE TOP OF THE HOUR!!! BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH!!!! Theeeeeeeeeeee witching hour!! YEAH, BABY!!"
"Adam, you moron...." the techo sighed, shaking his head as he rotated the radio dial a bit. Now and then he was known to listen to the show in question in the evenings, but it irritated him badly when the co-host's high horse seemed to get out of its barn and resulted in...what else? The lightning round....an excuse for said co-host to make absolutely no sense for the remainder of the show. Several bursts of static and snatches of voices burst from the speakers as he sought a solid station, pausing at last as the final chords of what sounded to have been a lilting saxophone and base ensemble ended.
"That was Jazzmosis's latest hit, 'Brokenneck Blues'." a female DJ with a smooth, soothing voice declared. "Coming up later, we'll have the latest from Two Gallon Hatz and also coming up, an interview with M*ynci's lead singer. For now, we'd like to close this hour with an Earther-song, brought in by one of our listeners. This one's for all you hopefuls out there. Saying so, a haunting piano melody began. As a rule, Glitz didn't care much for brooding songs, which this was judging by the key it was being played in...but on the other hand, he enjoyed piano music. His hand paused on the dial and then dropped away as the singer, a throaty-voiced woman, came in.
~*Some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and You its only seed.*~
A love song...great. Just what he needed right now, he thought to himself as he crossed the room and slumped back into his chair. What was the big deal anyway? Love, frankly, made him feel sick. People were far too occupied with it and why? It made them act stupidly and do ridiculous things in the name of some intangible emotion. The thought occurred to him to simply get up and change the station, but he frankly didn't feel like it. With any luck, this wouldn't be one of those songs that dragged on for five minutes and then reprised itself.
~*It's the heart, afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance.
It's the dream, afraid of waking, that never takes a chance.
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give.
And the soul, afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes
The Rose.......*~
The song came to an end, the final piano chord resounding through the room and holding in the air for a long moment. The same female DJ spoke again, but this time the yellow techo didn't hear her. Something in the lyrics, despite the fact he had been rebuking the song earlier, had struck something in him that seemed to open an inner well in his being somewhere. He was lonely....very lonely, he realized.
As he shifted his position in the chair slightly, something trickled down his nose and pattered softly onto his shirt front. Tears? He reached up, touching beneath one eye gently and looking numbly back at his moist fingertips. Apparently, the lyrics had moved him and he hadn't even been aware of it. At the same time, something clicked into place in his head with startling clarity.
He didn't love Karma. That much was true....but he found that, despite his best denials, something in him DID care about her well-being. That explained why he felt so low for walking out on her at the park, he decided....but it was too late to do anything to fix it by now. He imagined that she was home by now and likely planning to stay away from him.
The lonliness closed in around him like a velvet glove, making him squirm a bit in his seat. It had never bothered him before....but of course, he had never really noticed before either. One thought occurred to him as he brooded silently...and that was that he needed to do something about the current standing with the tree frog. Apologize, talk to her, do SOMETHING other than just sit there and leave things as they were.
At length, he pulled himself to his feet and headed for the front door, yanking his jacket off of the hook. Snap trotted after him, looking at him in puzzlement.
"Not this time." he told the doglefox gently. "Just behave yourself for an hour or so, can you do that?" he asked, knowing he wouldn't get an answer. Snap sat down and cocked his head, looking cluelessly at his owner as he shouldered on his jacket. "I'll be back soon." And with that, the techo disappeared out the door, locking it behind him. Snap sat still a minute, contemplating why his owner had rushed out again after only just getting home not an hour ago. Staring at the closed door, he whimpered a moment, and then turned and walked back to the couch, leaping onto a cushion and curling up upon it. It seemed his owner had left him to his own devices for a bit.
Oh well...a shame to waste the time....the doglefox began to gnaw idly on the corner of the nearest couch arm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karma sat alone at the table, absently stirring a bowl of neocrunch with the tip of her spoon. She didn't know why she had poured it....she hadn't felt like eating. In fact, the idea of summoning the strength to put a spoonful of the cold cereal and milk into her mouth made her feel ill. The apartment was eerily silent and dark except for the light in the kitchen. Half of her worried for the safety of Yahoo and Chomby and the other half was devastated by what had transpired that evening.
She supposed it was her own fault for having been so forward. But she somehow hadn't been able to help it. Well, no matter. She didn't hold high hopes of him ever speaking to her again after tonight. In fact, she decided she'd feel lucky if he wasn't insanely angry with her. She could just see needing to go to the pound at a future date for something and being accosted at the door.
The frog spooned up a bit of the cereal and slowly dumped it, listening to it spatter against what was already in the bowl. It occurred to her that she was being utterly pathetic...just like those women in the movies she used to watch who moped around like discorporated wraiths when the men they loved left their lives. She recalled laughing at them and swearing that she'd never let herself get that worked up over something or someone. Yet, here she was.
Another bout of tears stung her eyes and she hastily wiped at them. Her cheeks were chapped from the tears that had been spilling down them since she had gotten home and she didn't want to make them worse. She pushed the cereal away and stood, deciding she would give her cybunny and chomby another hour before she put in a call to the police station to keep an eye out for them.
From where she stood, she could see the last traces of daylight vanishing into utter darkness as she passed silently out of the kitchen and into the living room, pausing at the sofa and then slowly seating herself upon it. She had nothing especially in mind to do except sit there and count the minutes. Another pathetic idea. Glitz wasn't the be-all and end-all of her world....why was she acting like he was? She looked beside her and picked up a blue fuzzle that belonged to Chomby that had been stuffed between the cushions, turning it over in her hands. Its black eyes winked up at her from the dim light of the room and its small stitched smile seemed to mock her sadness. At length she tossed it aside and laid down, propping her head up on the arm of the couch and staring blankly at the paint blisters on the ceiling.
Maybe she just wasn't cut out for life in Neopia, she decided. It was going to be awkward trying to live down what had happened earlier in the park of the onlookers had decided to spread rumors. She could just see people having a field day with it as a potential Neopian Times headline flared in her head. "OWNER HAS ILLICIT AFFAIR WITH LOCAL NEOPET"
Just what she needed right now.
She supposed she could go home, back to where she had nothing in particular. Go back to college, ask for her old job at the local R-Mart back, and give up everything she had worked for. She shook her head, shooing the grim, yet tempting fantasy away. No. She had worked too hard for all she had now...and what about Yahoo and Chomby? What would happen to them if she just left them on their own?
Maybe she would just stick close to the house for the next few days and avoid everyone and everything. It sounded like a reasonable enough plan. And maybe once the rumors, if any had started, had died down then she could----
Her thoughts were interrupted by a tentative knock at the door. She remained on the couch, loathe to leave the position she had sprawled in.
"Its open, you guys, and you'd better have a good reason for being out this late." she called at the door, sure it was Chomby and Yahoo, knocking to see if she had gone to bed yet or not in hopes that they could creep in and fib about when they had gotten in tomorrow when she got up. There was an achingly long pause and then the sound of the doorknob turning and someone entering the apartment. She didn't look up to see who it was as she continued to lay across the couch, eyes focused on the ceiling. "Yahoo? Chomby? I promise it'll be a lot better if you just face the music about this..." she said. She had no intention of punishing them, really, but had learned early on with Yahoo that if she didn't exert some molecule of authority once in awhile, her pets would walk all over her.
The footsteps approached and paused at the side of the couch. "Alright...just tell me where you guys were and we'll leave it at that as long as you didn't blow anything up. Sound fair?"
"Karma..." Her subconscious recognized and placed the voice before the rest of her brain caught up and caused a knee-jerk reaction to it. She whipped herself onto her belly and goggled up at the shadowed form of Dr. Death standing over her, his posture awkward.
"You...!" she managed in a choked voice, scrambling off of the couch to confront him. "What are you doing here?" she asked. And then, all at once, her emotions exploded forth. "Why don't you make up your mind, for gods sake, instead of jerking me around like this??" she cried, making him flinch. "Either go or stay, but stop playing this like you/hate you game with me!! I mean, I can't deal with--"
He reached out, placing his hand over her mouth and muffling the last of her words as she glared at him, her eyes smouldering. Seeing that she wasn't going to fight with him for the floor to speak, he took his palm away from her lips and inhaled, ready to say his piece on the matter...but instead of words, he found himself tilting his head a bit, covering her mouth with his own, in the same way she had done to him earlier. He half-expected her to pull away and protest his sudden change of mood...but she didn't. Instead, she simply surrendered against him, abandoning the rest of the world for the moment.
The same rush of fear and inability to think straight washed over him again, but he steeled himself against it, determined he wasn't going to have a replay of what had transpired earlier. The kiss deepened a bit, and then, before it could go too much further, broke. The two of them stared at one another for a long moment, both of them looking equally bewildered by what had just transpired. At last, he spoke, the strength sounding robbed from his voice.
"I'll give this a try...." he hoarsely whispered, keeping his eyes levelly focused on hers. "That's all I can promise, Karma, I'll give it a try." He found that, despite the effort he had made, he still couldn't bring himself so far as to say he loved her, though there was most certainly something there that hadn't been before. A deep-seated fondness and patience that surely hadn't existed earlier that day, he was sure.
Karma found herself unable to piece her words together and only nodded faintly. A smile ghosted about his mouth for a moment as they brushed noses, leaning in again....
"SURPRISE!!" Yahoo cried, leaping in through the door with Chomby trailing close behind. "KARMA!!! HEY!! Where are you??" the cybunny asked, looking around, clutching something large and obnoxiously pink to his chest. "Figures she'd disappear..." he grumbled at Chomby who seemed to be focused on something else.
"Uhh, Yahoo?" the chomby began.
"I mean, we're out all day busting our butts to find this stupid thing and---"
"Yahoo...!!"
"What??" the blue cybunny asked irritably. Chomby took Yahoo's head in his paws and turned it slowly toward the living room where Karma and Dr. Death were standing close to one another, staring dumbfounded at them. Judging by the expression on their faces, the two neopets had just interrupted something between them. "Oh...! Umm...." Yahoo faltered.
"Yahoo, Chomby, where have you two been?" Karma asked, relucantly pulling away from the doctor to approach them.
"Oh...we were...umm....we....." Chomby whimpered, looking to the cybunny for help.
"Umm...we got this for you, but we're really tired and we gotta go to bed now so nite!" Yahoo said hurriedly, tossing the pink thing on the table, grabbing Chomby and the two of them scampered hurriedly out of the room and into the den, out of sight of their owner and the techo. Karma looked after them in puzzlement, making a mental note to have a talk with them later. For now, she'd let them go as she looked at what Yahoo had dropped on the table.
"What's that?" Glitz questioned, coming up behind her as she picked the pink object up, turning it over in her hands. A slightly overstuffed bruce plushie winked up at her through shiny glass eyes, a pastel satin bow tied around its neck. Karma smirked and showed him the valentines plushie. "Wonder how they pulled that off." he remarked. "Last I saw, those things were disappearing faster than Chuffer Bob's lunch."
"Dunno." Karma smiled, laying the plushie down. "I guess now I can't turn into an ogre on them." she turned back to him. "Thank you for coming back and I guess you know you didn't have to."
"I know." he nodded, rubbing awkwardly at his upper arm and looking at the floor. He cleared his throat. "I should....I should probably go now, Karma. I just needed to see you."
"I'm glad you did." she smiled, sensing that the moment from before was gone and that they were both left feeling awkward again.
"Just out of curiousity, what exactly does this make us?" he asked, feeling ridiculous for asking such a question.
"Strangers with benefits?" she shrugged and then laughed. "I don't know. We can cross that bridge when we come to it." He smiled and shook his head.
"I guess you're right." He paused a minute. "I'll see you when I see you, then?" She nodded in the affirmative.
"Have a good night." she called after him as he turned and left, letting himself out of her apartment and closing the door gently behind himself. Well, that hadn't been so bad, he decided. He, actually, felt rather good about how things had gone....and felt that nothing, not even the fact that he was going to return home to yet another demolished couch, could put a damper on the relief and warmth he felt as he ventured down the hallway and began his walk home.
TBC.......
(yes there's more. LOL....it never ends!! o.o;;)