20 Thunderbird Lane, MHC #6, Monday Morning

[arboreal_priestess]

"Priestess." The mouse's voice was very soft and right in her ear. "Priestess."

"Mmmwha--?" Verity mumbled, barely conscious. She was exhausted after a weekend of running around with a child's seemingly inexhaustible fount of energy, followed by an evening of sugar and cartoons and--

Something about that scenario nagged at her, but she wasn't quite up to figuring out what it was. And, honestly, she didn't really want to. Because if she figured it out, she'd have to deal with it and these sheets were so nice and soft.

"PRIESTESS!" the mouse shouted, just as Verity drifted off again.

"What?" Verity snapped, cranky and aggravated. "Oh god, is it a holiday I need to be involved in?" And there was no Antimony to foist this off on, either. "Can't it wait until later?" She was whining, she knew. She wasn't proud of that.

"You are not needed," the mouse said calmly, tucking her arms back into her voluminous sleeves. "But the Parade Route goes through your bedroom."

"So?" Verity did not see why this required her to be awake. "Just try to be quiet when you go through."

"Then you do not wish to invoke the rite of Food For Privacy?" the mouse asked. "Very well. I just wished to ascertain that before we began."

"No," Verity said, her brain trying harder to pinpoint that thing that she was forgetting. "Why would I care about that now?"

Cartoons. Candy. And laughing with her new friend--

"We were not certain if your new friend should know of our existence or not." The mouse pointed to the other side of the bed, where another person still lay sleeping.

"Right," Verity said. "Fuck."

[For the one currently there and so much SP!]

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[arboreal_priestess]

"They're...complicated," Verity said, setting up the coffee with a little more force than needed. This was really not how she'd thought she'd be spending her Monday morning.

On the plus side, he lived on the island and talked about aliens, so Liam was probably open-minded? And not a secret Covenant plant?

"So, before I tell you anything, let me ask you a question--how do you feel about extinction, xenocide, and the supremacy of the human race?"

[firstofitskind]

Liam visibly flinched.

"Not, uh. Not great."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well, at least my instincts as a kid weren't completely terrible," she muttered, more to herself as she rinsed out a pair of mugs. She gestured at him to take a seat at her kitchen table, a rickety card table with two aluminum folding chairs.

Yeah, she lived the high life.

"...So," she said, taking a seat of her own. "In my version of reality, there's way more in heaven and earth than that is dreamed of in most people's philosophies. Whole races of different species that most of mankind doesn't know exist--or, at least don't believe in. Some of those are just different strains of animals, like jackalopes and frickens and basilisks. Others are sapient creatures with their own languages, cultures, and societies. And most of them are just trying to get by without attracting the notice of the number one threat to their safety and habitat: mankind."

[firstofitskind]

Hey, the only reason Liam lived anywhere remotely furnished is because he lived in the same house as Magnus, who had a whole thing with woodworking. So he took the offered seat with no judgement.

"And you- protect these other species?"

[arboreal_priestess]

A roommate wasn't something Verity could seriously consider, for reasons Liam would see shortly.

Verity nodded. "Well, we try. It's complicated. And we try to learn about them, as much as we can. We also try to keep the peace. Most cities have a decent sized cryptid population, both sapient and non- and we kind of act as guards, maybe? Police? Most of the sapient cryptids are good at keeping their heads down, but the animal ones can sometimes draw the wrong kind of attention. So, a cryptozoologist tries to help the cryptids from drawing human attention and keep the humans from realizing anything's amiss."

[firstofitskind]

"Oh," Liam realized as something else suddenly made sense. "Cryptozooologist."

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity laughed at that as the coffeepot dinged. "Yeah," she said, getting up to pour them both a mugful. "Took me forever to learn to say it right. We're talking double digits. My brother Alex used to laugh at me about it."

She handed over Liam's mug and took a sip of her own coffee, silently regarding him. Like she was deciding something.

[firstofitskind]

"What is it?" Liam asked, curious about what that look meant.

[arboreal_priestess]

"You asked about the mice," she said, coming to a decision. "Follow me."

Still holding her coffee, Verity led Liam down the hallway to the spare room, knocked once, and then opened it. The room was dominated by a huge Barbie playhouse and the whole room was full of mice. Mice that were dressed and adorned with accessories made from feathers, cloth, beads, and even some bones. As soon as the door swung open, the mice gave a mighty cheer.

"HAIL!" they cried. "Hail the Arboreal Priestess!"

[firstofitskind]

Okay, so he'd caught a quick glimpse of some of the mice already, but that hadn't quite prepared him for, well. Just how many there were. And the little outfits.

"... Wow." Liam blinked, and then took a long sip of his own coffee.

[arboreal_priestess]

"These are Aeslin mice," Verity explained, sounding a little sad. "An off-shoot colony of the ones that live in my parents' house. To the best of our knowledge, these may be the last known colony of Aeslin mice in the whole world. The Covenant of St. Thomas drove them almost to extinction. Unicorns and dragons are extinct, too. They take their mandate to eradicate anything that wasn't present on Noah's arc very seriously."

Aeslin mice were pretty much as innocent as their non-cryptid fieldmouse cousins, just a species of overly-religious mice with eidetic memories for dates and the like. And the Covenant considered them unholy anyway.

Verity thought it made for a really good object lesson for exactly the kind of people the Covenant were.

[firstofitskind]

Well, hey. Liam was the last living representative of the Kimera species, so he maybe took things like genocide a little personally.

"Well, that's bullshit," he managed finally.

[arboreal_priestess]

"That's the Covenant," Verity said with a sigh. "Walking piles of bullshit, armed with the best weapons that generations of wealth and paranoia can buy."

One of the mice ran over to Verity's feet. "Hail, Priestess!" she called, whispers vibrating with excitement. "And Hail, Stranger! Have you come to Bear Witness to today's most Holy Rites?"

"Which holiday are we celebrating now?" Verity asked, sounding fondly aggrieved.

A chorus of voices swelled up to answer that question. "HAIL THE CELEBRATION OF SHE'S YOUR DAUGHTER TOO, IT'S YOUR TURN TO WASH THE ICHOR OUT OF HER HAIR!"

Verity sighed again. "Yeah, I'm not taking part in today's ritual, whatever it is, thanks."

[firstofitskind]

"You know, I can't say I've heard of that one?" Liam managed.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity sighed again. "Aeslin mice are pathologically religious," she explained, shaking her head. "My family discovered this colony a couple of generations back, worshipping my something-great-grandmother's chickens. Now they live with us and, uhh, sorta worship the family."

"Hail the Arboreal Priestess!" came a scattered cry.

"They have the ability to remember pretty much anything perfectly," she continued once the cheering had ceased. "And certain things will end up becoming holy writ and become liturgical celebrations." She shrugged at Liam, baffled. "We don't understand it either."

[firstofitskind]

"What's an 'Arboreal Priestess'" was going to be my next question," Liam admitted.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity raised a hand. "Uhh, me," she said, looking sheepish. "That's how they refer to me. My little sister is the Precise Priestess and my brother is the God of Snakes and Silences."

[firstofitskind]

"Good to know," Liam said with a nod, absorbing all this. And now it was his turn to look as if he was trying to decide whether to tell her something. "Listen," he managed finally. "Turnabout being fair play and all, I suppose I should tell you that all the things I said as a- child-" and there was a weird hesitation there, "weren't the product of imagination either."

[arboreal_priestess]

"I was wondering," Verity admitted. She led Liam out of the spare room, leaving the mice to their holiday, and headed back to the kitchen where they could sit and chat. "Aliens and the Liberation, huh?"

[firstofitskind]

And that wasn't even the weirdest part of it!

"I don't even know where to start," Liam admitted. "I mean, the Taelons first came to Earth- publicly- around nine years ago, but they- and others- had been manipulating our evolution even longer than that. When they 'arrived', it was with a message of peace, and while most of humanity accepted this at face value, the Liberation formed from those who figured there was maybe something more sinister at work." Verity could probably see the issue with the timeline Liam presented, here, given his apparent age versus the age he'd appeared to be over the weekend.

[arboreal_priestess]

"But you..." Verity tried to figure out a polite way to ask her question. "Ahh, is that why they made your mother forget having you? So no one from Earth would know they've been poking around for years?"

She was assuming the Taelons were responsible for him in some kind of weird 'Mars Needs Women' kind of way.

[firstofitskind]

Well, if they'd never come to Earth he would never have been born, so they were responsible in a weird roundabout sort of way!

"Not- exactly?" Liam winced. "My father was actually the last of a different alien race called the Kimera," he explained. "Five years ago he escaped stasis on the Taelon Mothership, came to Earth, and used a human host and my mother to create, well. Me." He smiled, a little bitterly. "I grew into the body you're looking at in a matter of hours."

[arboreal_priestess]

And here, Verity thought her capacity to be surprised was exhausted. More fool her.

"That's--wow, okay, that's a lot to take in," Verity said slowly. "How'd they choose your mom to, uhh, be your mom?"

He'd said they'd erased all her memories.

[firstofitskind]

"Mostly right place, right time," Liam explained. "She worked for the Taelons, actually, which is why the Liberation felt they needed to erase her memory." He was still a little bitter about that, yes. Or maybe a lot bitter.

[arboreal_priestess]

"I, err...was she...did she volunteer?" Verity looked uncomfortable with asking, but it was a valid question. And she hadn't realized that she'd leaned over and reached for his hand in sympathy when she asked.

Spending the day together as little kids had kind of skipped over some the 'we're strangers' awkwardness.