"Hey Rick, I'm sorry I'm late. You would not believe the traffic. Apparently, there was some sort of accident," Mimi said, putting down her leopard print gym bag with her stage name The Golden Phoenix etched across it.
"That's okay. I went ahead and put down the rig for you! My contact is really itchy, so I am just taking the damn thing out," a tall woman peeks her head around the bathroom door.
Pulling out her right contact, Rick's eyes shift into one large eye in the middle of her forehead.
"Hey, no one here but us spirits, right?" Mimi jokes, wiggling her tails playfully.
Pulling her short black hair up into a messy little ponytail, Mimi begins stretching. Raising her hands above her head and down to her feet. Her tails paralleling the movements easily.
"Having trouble in paradise?"
Rolling her eyes, Mimi begins her fifty jumping jacks, jumping in a circle to avoid answering Rick directly.
"She wants to meet my family," Mimi grunts. She starts running around the gym, vehemently kicking towards her butt. Her tails doing scissor kicks, jiving back and forth furiously.
"You could always say your relatives moved to Florida, and you never saw them again. Shits always going down in Florida. That's what I did," Rick says helpfully, soon running beside her.
"No offense Rick but you're divorced," Mimi starts doing high knee running, her tails doing circles.
Shrugging, Rick begins doing the jumping jacks as Mimi begins her fifteen burpees.
"So, what are you going to do?" Rick grunts standing in front of Mimi, her feet hitting the floor with a solid thud every time.
Mimi looks at the far wall, hating making eye contact with Rick every time she pops up from the plank.
"Umm, be honest? I don't have family that I talk to," Mimi snaps her fingers up and down as if they were coated with peanut butter.
"Well, you do, but they are in the clouds somewhere above Burma too busy pretending to be heavenly deities," Rick smirks.
Wincing, Mimi thinks of her parents. Her statuesque mother, whose genetics were as strong as her right fist, never bothered with her. She had not talked to the harridan since she was maybe six. If that. Her father had ascended to the heavenly realm almost three years after that. Leaving her in the care of instructors and coaches. Teaching her how to use her magic while handicapped with her golden claws.
Crawling around on her hands and knees like a bear, Mimi wheezes, "I am never drinking with you again."
"You're a delightfully talkative drunk."
Mimi watches as Rick skillfully pulls herself up into a lyra and dangles from it upside down by her knees.
"You look like a little skunk," Rick teases, amused at the way the fox spirit deliberately held her tails aloft, keeping the fur off the floor.
"Fuck you," Mimi grunts.
"In all honesty, though," Rick assumes a side-saddle position on the lyra, "you shot yourself in the foot, or paw, I should say. You married a professor! She is going to figure your naughty ass out."
After a moment of comfortable silence between the two aerialists, Mimi decides to just spill it,
"She was complaining about my tails," Mimi sulks, her tails folding around her like a security blanket.
"Why?"
Instead of answering right away, Mimi leans her forehead into her aerial silks, breathing in the unique scent. She sits in the hammock and leans back, enjoying the feeling of being weightless.
"Earth calling to Major Tom?"
Shaking her head, Mimi stands in the hammock and gracefully leans back into an L-sit on one side of the hammock. She flips her left leg over and turns so that the silk is pressed between her breasts.
"She thinks they are embarrassing," Mimi finally said, "But she apologized! She said she was stressed from work! And then there is the baby."
"Your wife is a huge sweetheart, but I bet that hurt your pride like nothing else. Damn fox spirits and their tails," Rick says. Mimi looks over at her as she elegantly flips over, slowly climbing up the silks.
Her tails gently caress her cheeks and then resume floating airily behind her.
"She is, and it did," Mimi smiles dopily, "I am surprised she has stuck with me this long."
"Me too," Rick agrees, "you never dated before her!"
"I don't like people generally, especially nosy extroverts," Mimi glares at Rick. She swings her legs free of the silks and hangs midair for a moment before turning her hip around and locking the silk within it.
"You don't fuck people generally," Rick laughs as Mimi barks at her.
"But look, you seriously need to be careful. Do you remember Lindsey?"
Mimi leans back, displaying both her long white arms as she slowly inverses. But she nods at Rick, showing that she wasn't ignoring her quite yet.
"Lindsey's head would leave her body at night. She could never control the damn habit. But she married that one dude from Santa Fe. He butchers her after seeing her float back to their cabin!"
Shuddering, Mimi remembers the petite little blonde teen girl who took lessons from Rick. Always pleasant and polite. Quick with a joke.
"I know. She was such a sweet kid. Really talented too," Mimi sighs. The world was not kind to yokai.
They stare into space, silently contemplating.
"But I mean, I think Sara is really nice. Maybe she would be cool with it," Rick adds after a moment as Mimi slowly descends to earth and stretches her arms.
"I can't lie to her forever," Mimi stretches her tails over her head.
"Well, you have forever," Rick points out, still inside the lyra, layering her feet on top of the other.
"Yeah," Mimi sits back in the hammock, "Maybe she would be cool with it."
Mimi tugs the baseball cap over her short hair and wanders into the music building. Keeping an eye out for pesky meddlesome bosses and avoiding the curious stares of college students staring at her tails, Mimi counts the doors.
"304, 305, 306, here we go," Mimi is about to open the door when she realizes there is a class going on.
Putting the bag of food on the wooden bench right next to her, Mimi pats her hands awkwardly on her lap.
"Yo, Inuyasha bitch, Halloween is in October!"
Mimi looks up to see a skeevy dude bro, holds up her ring finger and mouths the word, "Married," followed by her holding up the middle finger.
Not wanting to deal with addled brain testosterone-filled morons, Mimi gazes at him with her emerald eyes.
Her tails sway hypnotically from side to side, "I will respect women and my peers from now on. I will not call people names and be a respectful member of society," Mimi says so softly that the dude bro's friends did not hear.
She looks away as the door to her wife's classroom opens. The dudebro staggers away, muttering something about Habitat for Humanity. Slipping into the classroom, Mimi waits patiently until the last student has left before holding out the large take out bag like an offering.
"Did you have some trouble out there?" Sara asks in concern.
"Nah, just a little misunderstanding," Mimi sets the food on the desk and eyes the guqin in her wife's hands.
"Oh sweetheart, can you play "My Heart Will Go On?"
Sara puts the guqin in its case, "Do I look like Spotify?"
Pouting, Mimi once again holds up the bag of food, "Would you like to picnic with me?"
"I suppose. I have two hours before my next class," Sara awkwardly gets to her feet, waving away Mimi's assistance.
"What timing, couldn't have planned it better myself," Mimi holds her hand out for her wife to take.
"How were your morning classes?" Mimi asks, leading her wife on to a grassy patch under a tree.
"I think I have a convert," Sara says happily, spooning lo mein into her mouth at a voracious speed as Mimi takes the second container and scoots it over, half afraid of getting her hand bitten.
"He or she, and how much are they able to pay for private lessons?" Mimi asks, stuffing a little sweet and sour pork into her mouth.
"Can I have some of that too, babe?"
Mimi dutifully shovels half the container into her wife's dish of lo mein.
"Thank you," Sara grins as Mimi watches the dribble of sweet and sour sauce etch down her wife's chin with interest. It compliments her wife's light blue sundress, so she didn't say anything, simply waits for her to continue.
"His name is Finigan, and he wants to learn how to play the guqin. We haven't talked money yet. He seems really in love with the instrument!"
"Or he knows a girl who is really into anime," Mimi says cheekily, opening a container of General Tso's chicken.
"Or that," Sara says offhandedly.
"Well, ladies, you are looking quite cozy."
Hair prickling on her neck, Mimi glances over to see her wife's boss approaching from a couple of feet away.
"Hey, babe, can I get a kiss?"
Sarah looks up at her in confusion before Mimi swipes the sweet and sour sauce off her chin with a napkin. She shows her the napkin and points with her eyes at the bald man.
"How long has that been there?" Sara whispers before the boss is now directly in front of them.
"Hello Mr. Avery, it's nice to see you again. How is your wife?" Mimi beams politely at her wife's boss, all the while peeking out of her peripheral vision at Sara for approval.
"Mr. Avery is my father! Please call me, Dave!"
Mimi tries not to look disgusted as she glances down at the preferred hand and raises her grease-covered one.
"Sorry, Dave, wouldn't want to ruin your suit. Raincheck."
"Uh, huh, and how are you doing, Ms. I mean Mrs. Rei," Dave asks Sara, who was looking like she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
"Is that a frisbee coming your way, Dave?!" Mimi calls, as a white frisbee appears from nowhere and strikes him in the head.
Dave turns around, furious, and with a wave over his shoulder at the women stomps off in search of whatever "miscreant" threw the frisbee.
"Wow, poor Dave, hope he's alright," Mimi says, digging once more into her chicken. Her emerald eyes flash as Dave trips over a cobblestone half-buried in the grass and falls on his stomach.
"Don't hurt yourself, love, that was an awful lot of sarcasm," Sara says, watching the skies for any other identified flying objects.