[Feint]

90 (this is a relaxed day out and about for Saru. yes, he does usually spend those thinking about himself.)

Ho hum. Saru wandered aimlessly around the park, kicking at weeds here and there as he did so. He had gotten house fever again, so his master had booted him out of the house. He grumbled. That lovely little witch was fine, but she was so... strict sometimes.

Having reached the playground, he perched his little rear on the center of one of the swings and used his tail to rock himself to and fro. Had his legs been any longer, he would have been able to use the toy properly. Alas! He was resigned to limp swinging.


It was still fun, though. A breeze filtered through his fur, and he tilted his head skyward to cloud watch.

[Feint]

A cloud passed by with a particularly naughty shape, and Saru snickered. He loved cloud watching, and people watching, and star gazing... so many silly things often passed by. he often wondered why some people claimed to despise the outdoors. Perhaps they lacked the patience.

Patience! What an odd thing to say. Saru was far from what one would define as patient. His name and the word 'patience' rarely graced the same sentence at the same time, much less in description of one another. He ogled the thought.

As he sat, swinging slowly, watching the clouds, he began to reconsider. He had been seated for about an hour now--would that not be considered patient? He knew very few people who would have the patience for that, but perhaps they simply lost the patience when they had company to entertain. He knew he felt distracted with company.

Perhaps, then, friendship was overrated? Should more people spend more time alone, outside? Was this the lesson his master had been trying to teach him?

[Feint]

92

After a bout of long, deep thought, Saru decided that it, perhaps, was not the lesson she had intended him to learn. He spent all day alone, indoors, letting house fever claim him without so much as a twitch of resistance. It was needless; he had friends and could make them easily. Why not spend a day or two with them?

It was so hard, though. They bored him terribly, and he always wound up getting physically injured in some way.

Perhaps it had been her lesson after all. If his friends were no good, it was fine to spend less time with them, but it was a poor choice to instead spend that time inside, rotting away. Spend it outdoors with mother nature. He did love her dearly, and he doubted his mistress would not have noticed.

On a hot day, Saru thought to himself firmly, I'm staying put! But on a cooler day, I'd be happy to sit outside.

He was starting to feel nauseated from the swinging, so he hopped off and trotted over to the rest of the playground equipment. Odd that no children were on it today, with it being summer and all. Perhaps families were wealthier these days, and found more time to spend with their children on the beach. Or--and he felt that this was much more likely--parents were of a lower quality than those of his parents' generation, and did not see it as a value to make their children play outside... or see the value in paying much attention to them at all, preferring to instead leave the youngsters to their own devices while they focused all of their attention on themselves.

He sniffed loftily. No wonder kids are such brats these days; their parents are just as self-absorbed as they are. What a terrible shame.

[Feint]

Normally, one would find it unfair to judge--was Saru not, in fact, a self-centered, spoiled brat himself? However, this situation was different--Saru could not think of that because, quite simply, he was a self-centered, spoiled brat himself. He was not capable of flaws, nor did he have any, so how could he wonder if he himself were a certain way? He was a capable, unique, intelligent (ha) individual; it was not possible that he might be the same beast.

He paused by the slides. He had used to fear the slides, as tall as they were--frightening, it was--but they were nothing to him now. Normally, one would scoff at their shallowness and doubt they could even fit, but Saru was a tiny individual who could easily have climbed the equipment's stairs and had himself a grand old time. The slide was still deep for him, and it was still a little intimidating, but Saru knew their structure was sound, and he no longer feared that he might fall off of it. And if he did, he knew that he would not be injured.

He would have been tempted to try if they were not metal on such a hot day. He felt tempted by the see-saw instead.

[Feint]

It pleased him that he could fit. It displeased him that he lacked the strength to push it on his own.

He had never been a horribly athletic person, but--as he wheezed and huffed and strained against the iron--it never occurred to him that he was that out of shape! He had been obese when he was younger, and he'd massively improved. Still, he couldn't swing the seesaw.

With a burst of effort - unwilling to let the toy win - Saru heaved with all his might. The seesaw lifted a good foot off the ground, seemed to hover, then slammed down with the full force of gravity onto Saru's tail. His bloodcurdling scream echoed off the bark of the trees in the distance, and he flopped onto the ground, belly-side-up, flailing.

[Feint]

95

A frustrated growl lifted from his throat as he lay, panting and sore. It didn't matter whether he was alone or with company--every single day, he managed to somehow hurt himself with his fantastic dumb luck.

A montage flicked across his mind. Screaming and running for his life from a horde of turkeyzillas, dressed as a turkeyzilla chick--trying to climb the stairs at Lya Pointa, slipping on a step, and rolling most of the way back down--attempting to pass through an invisible door at the labyrinth mansion and slamming his face into it at the exact second it rematerialized--being startled in a crowd and leaping so high off the ground he managed to toss himself away quite nicely into the nearest trash can--attempting to bring his lovely mistress tea and falling through the ONE hole in the floor, getting himself lost in Whisper Forest for a week--it never ended, did it? There were so many more, not including the ones he was forgetting.

He picked himself up and dusted off his fur. That was the thing, though--all of those things had happened to him, and he somehow managed to keep going. Chin up, dust off, walk forward. Through thick and thin. He felt a twinge of courage--Saru, the klutz, yes--but--Saru, the unbreakable. He was cowed by his embarrassing mistakes, but through it all, he still managed to be vain.

His fur fluffed up a bit in pride. That was one thing no mean trickster god of fate or mortal bully could ever take from him--he loved himself more than any one being loved anything they could love combined. His sense of self-worth was unshakeable.

[Feint]

96

Having said that, he took one step forward and smashed his limb against the corner of the seesaw handle. Limping, he made his way to the teeter-totter animals. That was something he had absolute faith in the thought that they could not hurt him.

Gingerly, he set himself down on one that had caught his eye. It was a chubby frightmare with a stupid grin, brightly colored an eye-melting mixture of red and yellow. Aren't frightmares usually brown and orange...? he wondered to himself, gently rocking with the aid of his strong tail. It wasn't so different a ride from the swings (if a bit more uncomfortable), but he needed the opportunity to let his leg rest.

[Feint]

97

Sitting here injured and feeling sorry for himself brought back memories, memories he found himself oddly fond of. On his very first time locked outdoors for house fever, he had gone to Lya Pointa. He had heard it was a haunted mansion, hence the attraction, but had not managed to enjoy himself for one minute while there. There were no ghosts, but there was a magical bookcase with an eye and a locked, metal cover. The case had contained one book--or was one all they managed to salvage? He couldn't remember.

Saru smiled to himself. He missed Constance sometimes. He had been awful to her, and she had been nothing but patient with him. The book they recovered had been important to her studies, but he had never bothered to ask what she had learned from it. The curiosity still bothered him. They had been through fire and fury getting to that book, and the cathedral had even been angry enough to try and kill them when they came back two years later. What was so important to an inanimate bookcase that it would wait two years for revenge?

He picked his nose as he contemplated.