Let go, take a breath, check your surroundings
I had nothing but my thoughts for company as I returned to the barn, and I quickly found that this glorified errand was utterly inadequate for guiding my mindset anywhere happy.
Sure, I wanted to be excited about the upcoming and hypothetically productive breeding session… but I was more fixated on other things. Deyha’s dismay over metas, Carolyn’s temper over my over-familiarity toward Mazer, and Ellen’s… well, everything. Had I really changed so much to warrant this total misread?
The other two worries were right there to say yes. For the majority of the time I’d known Ellen I hadn’t been on the farm, and I sure as hell hadn’t shown any therian leanings— or if I had, it had been despite my best efforts, not because of…
And without even starting hormones I had been depressed. Sure, I’d always tried to be nice and act cute, but I performed myself differently now, as evidenced by my blossoming into a perfectly immature brat the moment I escaped financial crisis.
It wasn’t even that I’d stalled on my personal development and fallen off course. This behavior, this outward persona, was exactly what I had always wanted to build. And maybe it wasn’t so much like the friend Ellen started with all those years ago.
I nearly bumped into Jake as I walked into the kitchen and he reeled for a second while I caught the door.
“Easy killer,” he chuckled as he shifted his grip on the pot of soup he’d been carrying. “If I splashed either of us with this it would take industrial cleaners to get the turmeric stains out of our clothes.
“Sorry, I had my head in the clouds I guess.”
“Silly Maddie, that saying only made sense when you were— hmm. Nevermind.”
“When I was tall?”
Jake shrugged. “Yeah. But I figure snack-size suits you better.”
“Oh… uh, thanks. Did you want any help?” I held the door wider as he stepped past me to place the pot in its warmer at the end of the salad bar.
When he turned back he was chewing his lip. "Its probably best if I carry these, no offense."
"None taken."
"What brings you to my humble kitchen?"
"I'm on a mission to put together some snacks and refreshments for tonight. Carolyn has some sort of plan in mind after our visitors head home."
"Whats the story on all that, anyways?"
"All… that?"
"I mean, no pressure if you don't want to share. But a big ol family like that is a first in terms of farm visitors, and the way Carolyn looks at the father is… different."
"Oh, yeah he's a doctor. Works in the same field as her. He uh… did all of this." I gestured down and Jake whistled.
"Like gravy, the plot thickens." he grunted and hefted up the other large pot and I skipped ahead of him to hold the door.
"Is everything food puns?”
“Give me a break,” Jake’s voice was tight as he carried the second container of soup past me “I don’t make that many puns.”
“I suppose not…” I was just about to explain the whole plot when he spoke again.
“Of course if you need me to start making food puns to avoid the question—“
“No, that’s quite alright. We consulted with Mazer so that I could have Deyha’s baby, and his methods…” I shrugged and gestured at myself. “This is the real me I guess.”
“Whew.” Jake rolled his shoulders and rubbed his neck. “Lot to unpack there. The doctor's name is Mazer? Like from Ender's Game?”
“I… yeah? I guess?”
“And his method to solve your fertility issues was to turn you the rest of the way into an anthro-cow?”
I folded my arms. “Essentially.”
“Does he do housecalls?”
I snorted at the absurdity of this pivot in the line of questioning. “I mean, that’s sorta what he’s doing right now on account of us all living here.”
“You know what I mean. What snacks were you looking for, by the way?”
I followed Jake to the pantry and stood by as he rifled through the shelves. “We have peanuts… crackers… a random jar of buckwheat…”
“So that’s where she keeps it.”
“Who?”
“Nevermind. I’ll probably just do the peanuts. Could do some sort of trail mix.”
Jake smirked and looked like he was going to say something, but thought better of it. He pulled down a bag of raisins and a can of almonds.
“Did you want to prepare drinks as well or do you already have that sorted?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Something with electrolytes I suppose.”
“Naturally, naturally.” He mused as he shuffled through tea bags and drink mixes. “So Mazer is visiting but not just to check up on you. Business with Carolyn I suppose?”
“Yeah. They’re comparing notes and such. I think she’d like to combine their practices but he lives on the opposite side of Tristate.”
“Never thought I’d see the day that she learned to share. That sounds awesome though. This Mazer guy must be a pretty damn good doctor if he can just apply mods instantly.”
“Wellll that’s mostly on account of him being a demon.”
Jake froze for a moment before continuing on to pull down a decorative bowl from the top of the cabinet. “That’s new…”
“Yeah. It was pretty surprising. You should see what he looks like without the human illusion.”
“Is he hot?”
“What?” I burst out laughing “I mean, I guess in terms of how any tall and well dressed man is considered hot. But you and Thad…”
“Thad and I enjoy a bit of people watching from time to time. I don’t just fuck anyone who catches my fancy unlike—“ he trailed off as he poured the raisins into the bowl.
“Unlike?”
“Look, it’s really hard not to turn every comment into a dig on you. I’m doing my best, okay?”
“Okay, okay.” I held my hands up “I appreciate this unexpected period of mercy.”
“Unexpected?” He poured in the peanuts next. “We agreed that it’s only open season to hunt you for sport when the bell is on, remember?”
I touched my collar where the bell usually hung. I’d left it behind in Ellen’s room.
“Ah. Yeah I kinda forgot about that.”
“Is it open season after all?”
“I… no. Not really, sorry.”
Jake nodded as he tossed the mixture of nuts in the bowl. Just like with the wok it was impressive how much he slung the contents up without spilling anything.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“I dunno…”
Jake sighed. “One of these days someone’s actually going to spill the tea around here. Like, yeah. It’s cool that this is a pretty low drama place but the utter absence of gossip is boooooring.”
“I mean, when you put it like that…”
I suddenly had Jake’s full attention.
"Yes?"
“Don’t come crying to me if this ends up being TMI.”
“Respectfully, that ship sailed.”
“Fine, fine.” I leaned against the prep counter opposite him and thought about what made the best story without violating someone’s privacy. “So Mazer is actually pretty old. He’s been doing this sort of stuff for a long time and Carolyn based her dissertation off of his work.”
Jake whistled but didn’t otherwise interrupt, so I pressed on.
“When we found out he’s just across town Carolyn figured he would be a good resource to make sure my health all looked good for invitro. We quickly determined that there were a bunch of little tweaks that were too dangerous for Carolyn to do with runes, but that were much more safely done via Mazer’s mana. Since there were so many different little areas to address we settled on a method to just pour a bunch of mana and let my body decide what shape it wants to be.”
I folded my arms and frowned at the kitchen door. “And maybe I'm just ungrateful or spoiled, but I’m a little miffed that my subconscious didn’t account for my social comfort whatsoever. I frankly would rather he completely undo all of the bovine mods rather than going nuts like this but… oh well, ya know?”
“Ah, yeah that’s rough. I mean I do think it’s a good look, but I also have a sense of how much you don’t like being the center of attention.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like I was ever much of an extrovert, but it used to be that getting out and doing stuff was something that I really felt I should do, but I was just too tired and depressed. Now I have the energy but it’s terrifying to think of being seen. Like, it would be bad enough to approached at all, but if I met someone who was a customer?” I broke off. My chest felt tight and I took a deep breath to try and reset.
“Maybe soon it won’t be so bad.”
I scoffed, “I doubt it.”
“No, seriously. The AI Carolyn designed is making the turnaround on cosmetic gene mods faster all the time. With Mazer’s help, maybe it could become a widely available service. If a few celebrities came out as therian and did mods like you have, then it wouldn’t take too long for the masses to follow.”
I frowned “and then there would be therian products everywhere and I’d be out of a job.”
Jake chuckled “out of a job? I doubt it. You realize it’s the clinic keeping the lights on, right?”
“Yeah, yeah…” I folded my arms. I was weirdly determined to be sour about this. “The milk isn’t all that profitable. I know.”
“It could be if Deyha was a capitalist.” Jake mumbled and turned back to the pantry. “Is mixed berry okay for the drink?”
“Yeah, what do you mean about Deyha being a capitalist?”
“Just that. She’s not pricing the milk for profit or growth. It’s literally just sold at the cost of materials and labor. Sorta. I mean, she really does calculate the price as the monthly expenses divided by bottles sold per month. We can’t compete with cows milk on price but we also don't have a profit margin.”
“Weird. Carolyn told me that this would make us so much money… Does she know how Deyha prices the milk?”
“Now there is some tea.”
Dread welled up in my chest. The idea that Carolyn wasn’t aware of how Deyha managed finances, or even that the farm at large was incorrect instead felt like a familiar bad disconnect.
“Goddamn it.” I muttered.
“What’s up?” Jake pulled down a pitcher and began to fill it with water.
“It feels like just yesterday Deyha and Carolyn were at odds about mods, and they thought that Deyha might have even more secrets, particularly financial secrets is a little terrifying.”
Jake hummed sympathetically. “Maybe I'm wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Ugh. Maybe but I doubt it. It honestly kinda just makes sense that Deyha would lie about how much money the milk sales make… and now you’ve done the entire task that I came here to do.”
“Was I not supposed to?”
“I didn’t want to make work for you.”
Jake shrugged. “It sounds like you have plenty on your plate as it is.”
“Still—“
“Don’t worry about it.” Jake insisted. “Just take it easy and trust that things will work out.”
“You make it sound so effortless…” I hugged the little bowl of trail mix to my chest and accepted the pitcher.
“Hmmm… cups… should I hang them on your horns?”
“Don’t you dare.”
Jake chuckled and held the door for me as I headed for the stairs. “I’ll put a few on the little motorized lift thing.”
“Thanks, Jake.”
“You’re welcome. Just remember to name your first born after me.”
“Careful,” I warned. “I might make you the godfather as well.”
“As if. It’s all fun and games until it’s a girl and then all the other kids make fun of the girl named Jacob.”
“If it’s a girl then we’ll just force fem you. Problem solved.”
Jake squinted but didn’t comment further. I’d just gotten up the top of the stairs when the dumb-waiter kicked in and I peeked over the balcony to see a cluster of cups hanging on the hook— mismatched as always.
It felt like it took no time at all to once again be done with tasks and trapped with my thoughts. And worst of all, I didn’t have anything better to do than just let the thoughts swim.
I wanted to be excited to finally get pregnant, but that thought brought a moving van full of baggage. Would I be a good mom? Would this be a good place to raise a kid, let alone a good world?
On top of that, how was Deyha’s anatomy going to work out? I couldn’t shake the comment about not being a penis-haver on top of how damned difficult it was to pry her interests and desires out of her.
Had I given up on understanding her better? Or was I just respecting boundaries? She hadn’t been that surprised when I came back from Mazer’s clinic like this, but how surprised would I be by her results?
I had to hope that she and Carolyn had just had a really good heart to heart and her latest mods were even more accurate than mine were… but…
I groaned and rubbed my eyes. This wasn’t helping, and there was no telling how late Mazer would stay for this brainstorming session. If I hadn't acted out so much I wouldn’t be in the dark right now, but it was hard to imagine doing things differently. It wasn’t fair! I could have waited to think through a more measured approach to my own mods but I had just passively let others dictate the pace as always. Now I had a ten year debt while Ellen and Carolyn got to try out little glamours and take their time.
I tugged my quilt out from the crevice between the mattress and the headboard and rolled toward the center of the bed, pulling it to cover my shoulders in a practiced movement. For years if I wanted to completely cover up then I had to curl up and still probably compromise somehow. Now it was no trouble to cover from my shoulders to my fetlocks, even if I stretched out. However, It still didn’t overlap by much if I tried to fully wrap it around myself.
I kicked at the blankets to make a little space to cover my hooves and dug out my phone. I didn’t even bother opening in-snare this time. Either it wouldn’t reach the servers on wifi or it would buffer for a minute per video on cell data. I kept meaning to ask Carolyn or Deyha about if there was something misconfigured on the farm's network, but I kept forgetting to ask.
There was no way tonight would be the night to ask about it.
I settled for marking my emails as read. There had been an uptick in the “we found your resume” emails lately and that led me to wonder where I’d be if I wasn’t here… or whether I could even do the sort of work I studied for years ago. If the milk wasn’t making money, should I be trying to find remote work?
Soon enough every notification I could find was either deleted or dismissed and light still streamed in the blinds to remind me how much time it could take before my owners returned.
Bugging Ellen for an estimate only got me a shrug emoji, and Rose said the wives and kids left without Mazer a while ago. I wasn’t sure I was ready to know what sort of travel arrangements a demon could make. So, with all other avenues exhausted, I resigned myself to the quiet time.