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 Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2006 12:16 pm
Karma laid her pen on the desk and yawned, blearily examining the desk's clock. 2:06 AM, it reported in its glaring green digits. One of these days, she promised herself, she would learn to stop saying she would be home at a reasonable hour from doing this stuff because it almost never happened. At least she'd had the sense to go home for awhile earlier that evening to get the kids fed and put to bed before venturing out again, so that wasn't exactly a worry.
January had been a hectic month all around. More children finding their way through the rift meant more paperwork to deal with and more records to update. If that wasn't bad enough, Arkie still wasn't home from Scotland yet with Dawna (she hoped they were all right...), and now she had a child, presumeably her own ancestor, to look after in -another world-. She'd, in all honesty, been all too happy when January was behind her and she now had February to look forward to.
If nothing else, she could at least pretend it was a clean slate.
And it was on this thought that a high frequency whine suddenly filled her head, making her wince. She knew that noise and turned her head just in time to watch the air beside her almost inperceptively ripple as something small and white crowned its way into existance out of thin air. The baby, once it had passed through the rift, went tumbling to the pile of pillows and blankets below and remained silent, not giving the usual squawks of disorientation and upset most of Fourth Wall's children gave upon their arrival into Gaia.
Sighing, Karma rubbed at her eyes wearily and rose to investigate. As the center's noteriety had begun to spread by word-of-mouth from her other keepers, her waiting list of hopeful adopters had been much easier to flesh out, so she doubted finding a home for this little one would be terribly difficult. That is, provided she could find someone who was willing to take whatever the rift had deposited. The people who had provided a specific preference to an animal they wanted ended up remaining on the list much longer than the others as she had no control over what came through the rift and when.
There was a small snuffle and wail that floated up from the pillowpile as she grabbed for a clean blanket and hurried to retrieve the infant. "I'm coming, its all right." she assured it as she carefully waded toward the alabaster ball of fluff and scooped it into the blanket. "Shhh....there now, its all right." she crooned, despite the fact the child had ceased its noise almost as soon as she'd picked it up. "What have we got here, then...?" she murmured, pulling back the blanket a bit to investigate the baby's features. "A little bunny boy? Or are you a--" she trailed off, immediately puzzled as she peered into the child's face.
Large blue eyes peered up at her from behind a small horned beak, the odd face framed on either side by long lagomorphic ears.
"What the hell...?" she murmured, taken slightly aback. As though he found this question offensive, the baby burst into tears suddenly, beaked mouth opening to show rows of tiny flat teeth. "Oh, honey...." she sighed, cuddling the child closer and rocking him. "I didn't mean to upset you...shhshhshh..." Little by little, as she continued to babble at him and rock him, the baby quieted again, blinking up at her blearily through a shimmer of tears. "Its just....now I have to look for you in my books."
And what a pain in the a** that was going to be, she thought with chagrin, since she had no idea where to even start on this one. Usually the other kids were pretty cut-and-dry. If she didn't know them right off the bat, she could at least identify what their base-family was. Even then, it sometimes took her hours of leafing through pages to find the proper species to put down for her records. It was much easier to find an animal when you knew to search through "cats" or "birds" than it was to deal with...well....something like this.
He had fur, so she assumed he was mammilian, but the beaked mouth led her to believe he was reptillian or avian in part. The teeth were obviously herbivorous. And what about the ears? And the horn? A quick check beneath him also revealed a tail that was short and stubby like a rabbit's, though a little longer. What WAS he?
Nestling closer to her warmth and clinging to her with tiny hands as though he was afraid she might be taken away, the child dropped into an exhausted slumber, leaving Karma to look down at him uncomfortably.
She couldn't very well assign him a home if she didn't know what he was or how to care for him. That would be great, wouldn't it? "Here, have a baby. Don't ask me what he is, what he eats, or whether to expect him to shed his skin or not cuz I have no clue. ENJOY!"
Wrapping him a bit better in the blanket, Karma carried the baby gingerly from the office to the nursery where she placed him in a crib near to the door so that she would hear him if he began crying. Good thing she'd gotten used to having a touch-and-go relationship with sleep, because it was something she got little of these days, she thought with chagrin as she headed back to the office to dig out her handbooks, manuals, and references.
Oh what 'fun' this would be...
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:41 am
Nothing.
Not one damn match.
Karma sighed as she reached the last few pages of the final book and then tossed it aside in frustration. There hadn't even been anything CLOSE. A furry animal with a horned beak, large ears, and a short tail just didn't seem to exist in nature. Or for that matter, it didn't seem to even exist in the chapters about extinct animals either. Ronen, the little stegosaurus boy, had been proof that currently-thriving animals weren't, apparantly, the only things to exist beyond the Fourth Wall.
Even so, she didn't like being left clueless this way. It was aggravating and made her heave a full-chested sigh that blew her bangs haphazardly all over her forehead.
No match meant no information. No information meant no dietary or environmental suggestions. No dietary and environmental suggestions meant that she couldn't, in good conscience, home him with anyone on her waiting list. Splendid.
BRINNNNG!
The foxcoon jumped a bit and immediately scrambled off of the floor to grab for the ringing phone on her desk.
"H'lo?"
"Mom? When're you coming home?" Kendall's sleepy voice inquired.
"Soon." she replied immediately. "Why? What time is it?" She couldn't have been going through books longer than an hour or so, she assured herself.
"Its almost five in the morning. I've been watching Dae all night." he grumped. "I'm gonna have to call off work."
"s**t...Ken, I'm sorry..." she groaned. "I'll make it up to you, I just...I had another baby come through the rift and for the life of me, I have no idea what the hell he is..."
"Its cool." her son muttered, yawning into the phone. "But I've really gotta crash soon..."
"I'm on my way. Hang in there, okay?" she said, already grabbing for her jacket off of the back of her chair, a solid string of profanities going through her head.
"Yup. Bye."
"Love you." she said, even as the phone went dead in her ear. Rrghh....when she'd taken on this job, she hadn't counted on the occasional curve balls it would be tossing her.
Shrugging into her jacket, she swatted at the office's light and headed for the door.
Wait...no....DAMMIT. She couldn't leave the baby here by himself. And she had nobody to call at this hour to take him in for her for a bit.
Which meant he had to come home with her. Sighing in utter dejection, she flicked the light back on and strode back to her desk to check the roster one last time for potential adopters.
She never made it that far, however, as a brief pulse of energy passed through the room, making her stop dead and look immediately in the direction of the rift. noNoNO not another one...!!
As she watched, however, it was not a baby or an egg that crowned into view. It was a small roll of paper which, once it had passed through fully, unfurled itself and fluttered to the floor of the cushion pit.
The foxcoon's tail flicked with interest as she moved forward without hesitation to retrieve the paper. She didn't often get letters via the rift...not aside from notes that occasionally accompanied the infants, and the initial cry for help she'd recieved.
It had been written hastily from the look of it, but the penmanship was still careful and legible
I know what you are thinking was the way the note began. No 'Dear John' or 'To whom it may concern'. You are thinking that I am a terrible man to have done this. You may not know it, but there are some on this side that think YOU are the terrible one. We've no way of knowing that your intentions with our younglings are truly good and we can only put our trust in the unknown because its all we have left. It is a terrible position we're all in...to awaken every day and see that death has come that much closer as we slept.
Its a constant and terrible strain on all of us, and as such, we avoid additional strain whenever possible. There are some in this world that will happily pair with whomever they see fit and are some who stick staunchly to their own. I come from a family of the latter. This is why my marriage was looked upon with much scorn...I had muddied our lineage with a different sort and we were soon to have a baby.
I vowed that my daughter would be brought up not to make the same mistake that I had made and to stay within her own species to salvage what was left of my family ties.
She did not tell us that she was with child. She furthermore did not tell us that this child's father was clearly not of my family's species, despite the fact that it became quite apparant once he had been born. I do not know the father -- I somehow think its better that way.
Regardless, I cannot keep him. WE cannot keep him. My family does not need to be disgraced further at a time such as this. I will tell my daughter that he simply passed away in the night. I do not expect you to understand where I am coming from, but I ask you to try before you decide I am a bad man. If I were, truly, then I would not have gone to the trouble of giving him this chance. There are other, less-pleasant, alternatives in this world for unwanted children.
I am not a bad man. And I am not a bad father.
The letter was unsigned and Karma found that her hands were shaking slightly as she folded the paper over, not wanting to see the words printed there any longer.
"Oh, kiddo..." she murmured aloud, feeling a strong pang of sympathy for the little hybrid sleeping in the room next door.
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Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 11:56 pm
Dear Diary,
Ordinarily, this would be the part where I express extreme exasperation with my current position. It would seem that another child has found its way home with me, but unlike the other ones, this wasn't any sort of an intended meeting.
I was not bonded, I was not chosen, there was really no obligation whatsoever other than me wanting to. This child has no one...not even the comfort of parents who loved him and will miss him.
So I guess I'll be that parent for him. At least for now. I've tentatively named him Hector...simply because it sounds better than calling him "kid".
--Karma
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