Chapter 4: The Package Arrives, Time To Check Out!
Part One: The First Day, The First Friend Or Foe?

Conkenu hauled a light sheet over his face to cover
the sun that dropped through the window and into his
room. Gneiss opened the door to the room, and
walked over to his bed. "Conkenu, wake up, we are
going to have breakfast in the lobby diner in an hour,
and you haven't yet stirred." She said and added in
a single hand prod. She had a knack for waking up
people, but it didn't help in waking Conkenu, who did
not recently had a fluency to wake up near people,
because he never suffered these rules. He reacted
to the nudge in a way neither of them anticipated;
he rolled to the opposite side of the bed, until he
fell off the bed, then he rolled under the bed with the
blanket shuffling underneath also. She got on all
fours on the sterile waxed wood floor, and
inspected under the bed to see he buried himself in
the sheet. "Conkenu, precious, you cannot stay in
bed any longer. You need to get ready for
breakfast. Warriors don't sleep in on the journey."

"You're no warrior, why are you up then?"
Conkenu injected as he crested his eyes pass
the blanket. He saw Gneiss, and he saw her
hand closest to the bed presenting an egg. He
got the wrong message. "Toss it under here."

"It's not cooked." She said. "I think we should
come to a compromise."

"Haven't we?" Conkenu asked as he freed his
hand from the cocoon and reached for the egg.
She held the egg under-hand and directed it
closer to him. When he touched the egg, he
could feel that she would try something nasty
to pull him out of the bed, so he jolted back. The
action came too late because Conkenu was
sliding on the floor on his way out from the bed.
Instead of what he thought would have happened,
she pushed against the egg that pushed against
his whole body with the force he used to get away
from her, and was gliding along the floor to the
other side of the bed. He tied to stop it, but his
movement was caught by his cocoon again, and
the floor was very well waxed. Gneiss followed
over the bed, and bounced off the bed to a low
feet first slide heading off Conkenu as he started
to hopelessly slip across the room. She twisted
her body towards Conkenu and stopped with
her back inclining on the wall. He followed, and
she caught him. Gneiss scooped him up and
sat him on her leg. The egg also came rolling
intact, and she picked it up with her right hand
to show Conkenu who rested on her left leg.
"I'm ready to bargain. How did you not break
the egg? "

"You can say," she informed to Conkenu as
she shook the egg at him, "that I wake up very,
very early. All of your family trains this way, but
only your father and I have mastered the training
with eggs. He taught me once I was hired so
that I could teach you how to train with eggs. It's
the art of flow, elegance, and focus. What we
have to bargain, is if you can get the egg from
me, you can continue sleeping. But, if you can't
get it, then you will have breakfast with me. Do
you agree? Great."

Gneiss threw the egg into her mouth before
Conkenu could jump. He jumped for where it
used to be in her right hand, but all he could do
on the trip was look as Gneiss gulped the egg
whole. Conkenu slid for a while, and looked at
her with a blank face. Gneiss got up and looked
back at Conkenu.

"I expect for you to be ready to go down stairs
in five minutes," she said.

Conkenu walked out of his room after ten
minutes, and he was not later than Gneiss
sincerely meant for him to be ready. She even
left enough time to dispatch him back into the
room with clothes she would have picked out for
him, but in a fluke, Conkenu didn't clash the
clothes that she packed for him. His own clothes
that he packed was still at home, sitting in his
room leaking out marmalade onto his clothes. He
never remembered packing any of the clothes
in his luggage, and never thought he would have
put arrangements of clothes into plastic bags
before packing them. Nevertheless, he stood
outside his door as she straightened his clothes.
She tucked his yellow button shirt into his pink
pants, and fixed the collar. She sat back on her
feet, and looked at Conkenu. "I wish that you
would have let me once try to do something
with your hair."

They walked out of the elevator and greeted
by personnel, and the administrator in the
company blue suit escorted Conkenu and
Gneiss to their table in the diner and to get
a word in with the guests. "My name is
Virg Veramon, the owner of the hotel. May
I bring you to your table."

"Would you be joining us, Mr. Veramon?"
Gneiss offered implying educated manners
to be careful with handling uninvited guest
from accepting. Only a few people could
master or rarely best her execution of this
social interaction to offer something but
playing with the prose to limit the response
of the latent recipient.

"Thank you, but I have work to do. But, will
you be good enough to take my niece and
eat with her?" He said, inverting the social
skill shown by Gneiss to her own disadvantage.
She glanced over at Conkenu who remained
obscured to the adults until he caught her
fleeting look and shook his head. Though
she had just been scorched by this, she
hands facing up and spread them. Conkenu
responded by looking away and flicking down
both hands at her.

"Oh, that will be great." She forcefully said,
and looked at Conkenu who made an 'M' with
his two hands leaving them shoulder height,
bending his elbows, and dropped them down.
She flung down both hands at him and
eased her arms to her sides. They walked
up a few wooden stairs, and came upon the
enclosed dining area with a large window at
the end of the rectangle showing the scene
outside, where the hotel was built, to a lower
forest and to distant misty mountain tops.
Conkenu got wide eyed when looking at
the sun top the mountains filling the dinning
area with a natural dim light. In the excitement
of the quest, he ran towards the window. He
ran under a table obstructing the closing path
to the window, and causing the couple at the
table to jump off of their chairs. Then, he jumped
on a table partly enclosed by a three side chair
arrangement against the window serving a party
of four business women. They removed the
plates before he landed, and he jumped again
in between two women sitting against the window.
Gneiss walked and rubbed her left elbow with
her hand. He looked at Gneiss, and pointed
to the mountains.

"Is this where we are going?" He spoke
pausing between every second word. She
pointed north.

"I know that many epic adventure travel
east, and sometimes west," she said
with a quite voice not to make it easy on
the eavesdroppers, "but we are heading
north."

Conkenu dropped feet first under the
table, and came out from the table holding
the white table sheet and dragging it behind
him wiping his tears with it. Conkenu hardly
made it out from the table, when the sheet
was no longer moving with him, so he gave
it a tug, and the sheet when underneath the
plates and glasses without disturbing them and
continued with him as he blew his noise. He
walked to Gneiss. "I wanta go east."

Virg got Conkenu and Gneiss settled at
an empty booth, and had Conkenu's back
towards the window to not upset him. A girl in
a pink old western dress, and white cowboy hat
walked up to her uncle. Her hat spilt out plump
long thread of brown coiled hair, and she took
it off once Virg put his hand on her back and
she liberated the rest of her splendidly ordered
hair. "This is my seven year old niece, Kita
Kallie. And these are Gneiss and Conkenu.
Well, I have to be leaving now, good day."

Kita sat next to Conkenu, and put her hat
on the empty row. She looked out off the
window, and turned back to the table. "I just
hate those mountains, they're not just as
risky as they used to be. Hey, I saw what you
did with the table cloth, can I try it on this table?
No wait, you do it."

"Kita, we have to remember our manners
at the table. There is a certain etiquette with,"
she hiccupped and put her hands to her mouth.
The egg she had swallowed regurgitated and
she held it in her hand as she tried not to look
at the egg with her eyes on the kids who were
standing on the seat cushion slanting forward
to look at the egg. Kita poked it with her finger.

"So what are you going to name the baby?"
Kita asked as she sat back and rested her
head on her hands and let out a sigh of
happiness. "Pregnancy doesn't seem that
painful as my mother told me."

"What are you saying?" Gneiss asked
putting the egg away in her front shirt pocket.
Kita reached over and removed the egg from
the pocket, and looked down at Gneiss.

"What are you doing? What type of mother
are you? You need to sit on the egg so it
can hatch to become a baby!" She yelled,
and had the egg taken away from her by
Conkenu. He showed it to Gneiss who
caught on by now, not by her own accord.

"You wanted me to eat this!" Conkenu said,
and put the egg underneath him, but turned back
standing on the cushion to say more. "Well, if you
can't be a good mother, then I'll be the mother."

Conkenu sat on it, and a crunch was heard then
the screams of two children.

It took an hour, and a dozen chickens to coach
Conkenu and Kita from under his bed. Kita came
first, and left with her parents who were staying
at the hotel, and Conkenu needed something more.
"It could have been a human egg!" Conkenu said.

"I'm going to tell you were babies come from."
Gneiss started and started again once Conkenu
came from under the bed.

"Ok, so pelicans deliver babies. That's why
people like fish so much, because pelicans have
fish breath." Conkenu concluded. He looked down
and got off the bed and started to run to catch up
to Kita to show what he learnt. He turned around
for one last question. "How are babies made."

"Magic." Gneiss answered, and Conkenu
nodded.

--------------------

Conkenu entered the garden inside of the
second story of the building, right over the
dinning area. By an synthetic water fall,
Kita looked out the window on the mountains
to the east. Clouds dimmed the sunlight. She
turned around to catch him walking up from
behind her. She pointed to him. "Watch your
step, I saw what you did to that baby."

"Baby come from magic, and they aren't
thrown up by woman. They come from
pelicans. So there, you don't have to fear
me." Conkenu explained holding his waist,
nodding his head as if he could explain it, and
dropping his eyelids a few times to show how
smug he was in his findings. Conkenu took
one step forward intimidating Kita to remove
her hat and put up her fists. "What's this all
about?"

"I've never seen this happen." Kita stated,
and stuck her tongue at him. He raised his
fist at her, even though she was bigger, he
could not have took that insult. "I see, you
have come to finish off any witnesses."

The clouds spoiled the sun, dipped drops,
then poured heavy rain. At the moment, the
most prevalent sound drummed on the down
slanted glass. Gneiss walked in the garden
and halted when seeing the conflict. She
held her red umbrella upside down, with
her two hands against her chest. Gneiss
started to run towards Conkenu, who stood
at the end of the room with Kita approaching
him. Before Kita's kick connected, Gneiss
lunged at Conkenu with the handle of the
umbrella. The handle hit him in the leg
causing him to go down on his right knee
and dodging the kick. Gneiss lied on the
floor, with her arm reached out with the
umbrella. She assisted him again with a
dive towards his left leg making him do the
forward splits and eluding lower round
house kick from Kita. Gneiss stood up
and aimed the umbrella at Kita. Conkenu
rolled backwards and looked at Gneiss
with her subtle face without blinking looking
at Kita who arose from her stance. "I have
never experienced having a child, but when
you hear from a woman that a baby is magic,
then you better believe it."

She looked at Conkenu. "Play nice with
Kita. I'll be back in an hour, the hotel isn't
going to deliver any food here that I
requested in this weather."

Gneiss walked away, and out of the
garden. Kita looked out of the window,
"I'm sorry Conkenu. I would like for us to
be friends.

"Me too," Conkenu said turning his head
to the left and down. An object caught his
eyes from the bottom left corner of the glass
and flew not so close to the building. He
pointed at the object, and both of them
watched as the pelican flew in the waning
rain carrying a white cloth bag in its mouth.
A few more pelicans flew by and carried
the same thing. "Do you know what I'm
thinking?"

"If we can catch that bird," she expanded,
"then we can give the baby to Gneiss!"

--------------------

Gneiss opened the door from the hotel
kitchen to a small deck going over the
cliff with a glass down slope roof. A man
in a chef outfit sat down on a chair and
watched the river.
"I was wondering if you could make an
exception to my request for a special delivery
of salmon?" Gneiss asked.
"I'm sorry," the chef replied, "but in this
weather, I can't send the pelicans off on any
more runs to the market across the river. It's
too dangerous to lose one of them to fatigue
considering how hard it is to train them."

Gneiss walked out of the hotel, and left
Conkenu alone, something that she did not
want to do. She walked down the stairs to
the sidewalk where her car was parked. She
got into the driver's seat, and buckled her
seat belt, before turning on the engine and
driving to the market.