Chapter 7
The next few days were weird. Thanksgiving was nearing, right around the corner. I had my T day feast all planned out. I waffled on inviting Cy over for Thanksgiving, namely because I hadn’t heard a peep from him since he was thrown from my house.
Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Not a word from any being at the Tree household.
Once more I found myself feeling summarily dismissed from their lives.
Maybe they weren’t wrong. I had just had sex with Elm and shortly after embarked in a sex-athon with Cy through a snow storm, the latter partially motivated from a need, initially, if only acknowledged in the tiny recesses of my petty brain, to piss Elm off for the way he’d treated me post crazy sex romp that nearly destroyed me for all other men, though the other ninety-nine percent of my motivations were that insane draw I felt towards Cy.
Aside from large furniture items, I had the living room, my parents’ room, most of my room, the bathroom but for enough towels and toiletries to get me through, all packed up, labeled, and sorted.
Wherever Cy had stashed my clothes, it was not anywhere I’d uncovered yet.
I was left the clothes he’d left here, what might be in his duffel bag— I didn’t know because I hadn’t touched it yet— nor his envelope or Elm’s box— Dad’s comfy shirts, mom’s yoga pants that were stretchy enough I could squeeze into them, and Dad’s thermal socks.
That left Dad’s office and the kitchen.
Struggling to decide, both filled with so many memories this was going to be a two rolls of toilet paper to catch the snot and tears kinda situation, my gaze drifted towards Elm’s box and Cy’s envelope.
No. I needed to finish this stuff. I could peek around with the box and note later, after. Yet… my feet carried me across the room and I found myself nabbing up the box and envelope atop it to plop down in the exact spot Cy had been in earlier.
Glancing towards my phone, I wondered if I should call him but then recalled for the millionth time that I didn’t actually have Cy’s number.
It would have been nice if someone had come by to help me fix my back door. The new latch I’d scrounged from the junk container under the sink was holding up well but it was merely holding it closed.
When I would have opened the box or the envelope, I hesitated.
Glancing from the movie I had on for background noise on the TV to the boxes, I groaned.
Turning the TV off, I grabbed up the box and envelope and walked them into Dad’s office, to set them square in the middle of his insanely clean, organized desk.
Plopping down into his office chair, I debated on where to start.
The shelves, maybe? Or the documents, probably?
Unearthing a couple empty filing boxes, I put them together and opened up his large file drawer.
Dad was fond of ancient languages, so much so he taught me the less exhausting ones when I’d shown interest. There was no surprise when I found several different keys along with symbols he’d worked out.
He was the brainiac of the family. I was lucky if I could keep up.
I did share his love of languages— I knew just enough French, Spanish, German, and Klingon to know I didn’t have the brain to remember much of any of them.
If I didn’t use it, after a while I lost it.
Frowning, I stared at a file folder thick with weird symbols with no key to decipher it. The first letter, the writing was different, the next more masculine. Pulling out Dad’s other files from the box I’d just placed them in, I compared them. The latter was definitely done by the old man.
Studying them, I couldn’t recall ever having seen them before, and Dad was quite fond of letting me in on whatever he was working on.
With a frown, I spread the strange symbols scribbled across the papers out.
The same symbols started off and ended, same as the other paper.
A greeting, a name? For the top ones, maybe the last ones too.
Huh.
I got so engrossed trying to puzzle it out, I lost track of the time.
Right when I would have called it quits, moving onto the next folder, there it was again, the same looking writing styles, Dad and this other author, but this was more script than symbols mixed.
Again, there was a fat file folder full of them.
A search online yielded zip for either language. It’s not recognized anywhere.
I’d been at this for hours. I was afraid to look at the time. I really should be finishing packing all of this up but I was stumped, intrigued. Why had Dad not shown me these? Was it a made up language?
I was so engrossed, I yawned, downed the last of my soda, settled back to close my eyes for just a moment as my eyeballs protested, before getting back to it, and drifted off shortly after.
A soft humming woke me up. Wondering if it was the fridge on the fritz again, I popped awake, shooting up with a startled mumble. A paper came with me, flapping about as it clung to my cheek. Peeling it off, I scrubbed at my eyes, blinking owlishly.
The hum stopped, to then start up again.
My sleep addled brain needed a moment before it processed that was not an appliance crapping out noise but a people noise.
“Didn’t mean to startle you, dear! The back door was open. I noticed as I drove by. Came over to make sure you were okay and there you were, passed out in a pile of papers, just like you used to when you were little, helping out your daddy.”
Sunny is in my house? The look on my face must have conveyed my confusion because she smiled sweetly, set a hot cup of black tea down in front of me, and began scooping up the papers I’d accidentally scattered everywhere.
Sunny looked surprised to see what I was reading.
Any hopes that Cy was making another break in were dashed.
“Made a load of casseroles, dropping them off to the snowed in sorts, helping them shovel their drives. My, it’s been a doozy of a storm, hasn’t it,” she chattered on as she left the room. “Brought you a couple casseroles! No broccoli. Cy guy said you hate the green trees,” she tittered.
I did in fact hate broccoli, but I’m the kind of stubborn that knows it’s good for me so I eat it anyway. I must have done something to give away my distaste for the vegetable while he was here. A facial expression as I ate some, maybe?
“Do you know what this is?” I asked as she returned with a bowl of tater tot casserole. It was a shot in the dark but I was desperate.
“Of course I do.” Sunny smiled, realized I wasn’t, and paused. “Don’t you?”
“Uhm… should I?” I frowned, even as I took a huge bite of ground elk, three cheeses, tater tot goodness, and chewed happily.
Sunny sighed. Her hand went to her forehead, glanced at something in the stack of papers that made her frown, and glanced away. “Perhaps we should go sit at the table for this.”
“I’m good where I’m at,” I admitted, then motioned behind her for her to take a seat in the one I used to occupy when in Dad’s office.
“I worried this might happen. For years I urged them to tell you.” Sunny looked just shy of wringing her hands.
Huh?
“Tell me what?” I was not liking the sound of this, not one bit.
“What’s wrong with me not knowing… Dad made up a secret language- languages,” I corrected, holding up the other stack.
Dread filled the pit of my stomach. “He didn’t do anything bad, did he?
” I couldn’t picture it but again I thought it and it popped out of my mouth.
“Oh, no, honey, it’s nothing like that. It’s just- Well, I don’t know where to start,” she murmured, fumbling her words.
“Well, if Dad didn’t do anything wrong, then what’s the problem?”
“Lepyr,” she chirped.
I stared at her stupidly. “Leopard?”
Sunny shook her head. “Those writings, those ones are Lepyr.”
I held up the other ones and she murmured, “Lo denaii.”
Okay, well, they had names. That was a start. I still failed to see how it was messed up Dad hadn’t told me, or why Sunny thought I should need to know.
“Lo denaii, is, uhm, well, technically it’s Foot.”
When I stared at her uncomprehendingly, she went on. “Your daddy left the Lo denaii years ago to live in the human world. He preferred to refer to himself as a Foot. You know, renaming himself.”
A Foot? Was I hearing her right?
“Dad was a Foot and Mom was a… Lepyr?” I just tossed it out there. My tone said what I hadn’t. Malarkey, your table is ready.
“Yes,” she gave a firm nod.
“What does that make me then? Lemme guess, a lizard person?” I laughed.
She didn’t.
Was this payback for the fight between Elm and Cy? I hadn’t wanted them to fight, hadn’t meant to make them fight…
“Foot, or commonly known as a Bigfoot, or their winterized counterparts, a Yeti, technically classified variants of Creeson Nine according to the Galactic Order. Your mother would commonly be considered, uhm, something like what an Easter Bunny is depicted as. She was a Haslepyr, to be exact. Think more hare than fluffy bunny.” She wasn’t smiling, or laughing. She was Cy-being-serious kinda serious.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Like, laughed my butt off, cackling until I was choking on my own spit. Good god, what? Was she mad? High? Drunk?
Sunny’s smile was small, sympathetic. “Your mama worried you might react that way. I think it’s why she put this all off for as long as she did. She always did worry your memory loss was permanent.”
That had my cackle dying dead in its raucous tracks.
My memory loss?
“Great.” I tossed my hands up, incredulous. “So now I not only have an Easter Bunny mom and Bigfoot dad, but now I’m an amnesiac?”
“Your mom was from a planet called Sylvylen Prime.” She looked uncomfortable at the look I gave her at this supposed news but she forged ahead.
“Lepyrs fled their home world as the wars raged, any way they could. Long distance escape pods are not the reliable things they should be. Many were scattered, crash landing across the galaxy. Several found refuge on Earth.”