Tales a sip from a can of Sparkling Thirst Killer

Capitalism!

The Michigander in me wants you to know those are rookie numbers and you need to bump them up.

Brings her to pond:

S: This must one of your lakes.

OC: Nope. Pond.

Brings her to small forest stream

S: Ahh yes a River.

OC: No this is a stream.

Brings her to Lake Michigan

S: Ocean?

OC: Wrong again!

Thank you.

Sophia’s voice was scathing, even over the recording.

I watched her her turn to face me slowly, as if almost unable to pull her gaze away from the endless expanse of blue beneath us.

“Is that what I sounded like?”

Her eyes were wide and I was surprised to see tears in them. Crying was something her people tended to reserve for very specific, or intense, moments. The expenditure of one’s bodily reserves of water was not something done lightly.

She was crying now, tears streaming down her face as she buried her head in my chest. I pulled her close, patting her back.

“It’s okay.” I said. “I forgive you. It must have sounded too good to be true.”

I had planned on teasing her a little about her lack of faith, not making her cry. In hindsight I should have realized how raw her emotions would be so soon after the loss of her home. It was a mistake I would have to be careful not to repeat in the following days.

We stood like that for a long moment, my home planet growing larger outside the viewport, before she finally dried her eyes and turned to stare out the window.

“You have an ocean.” She said, her voices filled with awe.

“Technically we have five.” I said. “And then there’s the lakes.”

Her ears shot up and she turned towards me, her eyes searching my face for some sign that this was a prank.

“In fact my home state is known as the land of a thousand lakes.” I said.

“A thousand…?”

I could almost see the smoke rising from her ears as she, the most imaginative Veril I knew, tried and failed to picture it.

“Eleven thousand to be specific.” I said. “But that doesn’t roll of the tongue as easily.”

She turned to stare out the window again, her body swaying. I caught her just before she struck her head on the glass, and winced as her claws dig into my arm.

I looked down to see her staring up at me with a hungry expression.

“We are going to visit all of them.” She said. “And then the oceans, and then whatever else this world has to offer.”

I smiled down at her.

“That may take a while.”

It was a bright and sunny morning as we laid Grandma to rest in the bed of her favorite pickup truck.

Johnson carries a .45.

It’s not a bad neighborhood. My parents let me stay out after dark and I’ll do the same if the good lord ever blessed me and the missus with the latter of little feet.

No, Johnson’s old hole puncher only ever sees use in the winter. That’s when the ice forms, nice and thick, over the lake. When we go fishing.

Ice has been getting thinner recently. Older days you had to bring a five foot drill, now we just bring a hammer. A big hammer, the kind used for breaking concrete. The neighbors always laugh, make jokes about “compensating”.

The neighbors haven’t seen what’s under the ice. You can hear it at night sometimes, the scrabble of bony fingers just below the surface. Or you could, back when the ice was thicker.

Johnson carries a .45.

I think it’s about time I do the same.