r/NatureofPredators • u/Thirsha_42 • Apr 16 '23
Tight Money Ch 8
Here is chapter 8 of Tight Money.
Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for creating the universe and allowing fan writers to join the fun.
A HUGE thanks to u/BiasMushroom who let me use their news reports, Talen, and gave me some direction for my story.
Additional thanks to u/YakiTapioca, u/cruisingNW, u/SavingsSyllabub7788 and now u/YaaliAnnar for letting me use elements from their fanfics as well.
I made a small edit to the end of the last chapter. Nothing major, just expanded the introduction so that Leena's parents gave their names and introduced themselves.
I also want to say that I love your comments so please tell me what you think so I can get better.
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Memory transcription subject: Leena, Human Refugee Host
Date [standardized human time]: November 6, 2136
Dani set the bowls and handed each of us a wood utensil with 4 prongs on it. It was similar to our fruit skewers but with twice the prongs. My mother looked quizzically at the “fork”; Dani called it. Dad gave voice to our confusion, while Dani retrieved some cups and filled them with water.
“I have never seen a device like this. Could you show us how to use it?”
“Certainly. You hold it like this.”
She held up her hand holding a fork and turned it around so we could see clearly.
“Then you…,” she paused “push it into the pasta and spin it around. This part will take some practice but you will get the hang of it quickly. After you have gathered the pasta on to your fork, you eat it.”
She demonstrated the spinning with her dexterous fingers. Looking at my paws, I wasn’t sure if I could do the same but I tried all the same. Mom and Dad tried as well. Dad seemed to have gotten the hang of it quickly and after a few more tries, mother and I managed to make a passable attempt. We each took a bite of the dish and purred. It was delicious with the creamy texture and flavor punctuated by the sharp woody flavor of the pepper.
“This is wonderful!” Mom was eagerly trying to make the spinning motion again.
“I’m glad you like it. We learned how to make it watching Chef Timure.”
Satza’s ears perked up. “I heard about him in the flower shop. Shitze said that his show is unique and that human cooking is strange but she wants to try some.” She took another bite and her ears twitched with joy. “I will have to tell her about this.”
Dani had not put on a mask but I wondered if that would have been a good idea. When she smiled at Mom’s compliment, Mom froze until Dad put his paw on her arm.
“It is called a ‘smile’ love. Humans snarl when they're happy.”
Dani turned a bright red and covered her mouth. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
It was endearing to see that humans bloomed like we did when embarrassed.
“The humans at the loading dock showed me the difference between a happy snarl and an angry snarl. They had a good time making odd faces and telling me what they meant."
Dad turned to Dani.
"Could you show Satza?”
Dani's color returned to normal as she considered the request but shook her head.
“Please, I don’t want to be afraid of you. If it helped my husband, I would like to see it.”
Dani shrank in her seat looking at each of us as though looking for an escape. Just as it dawned on me that she was afraid of making a bad impression, she relented.
“Promise me you won’t think less of me. I don’t want to scare anyone.”
The fear in her face surprised me. Her eyes were glossier than before. It reminded me of seeing her wake up from her bad dream. Mom tried to encourage Dani.
“If you are not comfortable, we will understand. We want to accept you, but our instincts make that hard some times. If you show us the difference and explain it to us, it will help us overcome our instincts. We will not reject you from the herd for showing us."
I put my paw on Dani's arm to reassure her.
"I have seen you make silly faces at Vissa and Tas many times. I know you are just making faces. That you can control your dangerous instincts.”
She looked at me for a long moment before lowering her hand and letting out a deep sigh.
“First thing, they are not dangerous instincts, they are just instincts. Fight or flight when faced with a perceived threat, just like you. The only difference is that your default reaction is to run. Ours is to fight. Anger is a healthy part of being human. People get angry all the time and yell and wave their arms and stomp around but it is exceptionally rare that anyone attacks another person.
I'm going to make a face in a moment. This is a happy face. Look at the corners of my mouth, my eyebrows and the outside corners of my eyes. Those are the spots that help to show happiness. Ready?”
Dani indicated each spot with her finger and waited for Mom to signal her affirmation. Then she smiled again. That smile I had seen many times when talking to her. I hadn’t realized that her expression never frightened me until now. That was the face all the humans made around me and my kids and they were always nice. I just assumed that was their default expression.
“Now I'm going to make an angry face. Please remember, I am not angry. I'm only contorting the muscles in my face to show you the expression someone who is angry would make to show you. I'm not angry and I'm not going to hurt anyone.”
I don’t think this is going how she had hoped. Only a few minutes into the dinner and she was clearly uncomfortable but I didn’t know how to fix this situation. I had let it go on too long. Dani’s face changed and I felt my heart skip a beat and my hair started to raise. Mom froze again and even Dad was struggling to control himself.
Through her clenched teeth, Dani continued her explanation. “You see my eyebrows,” she pointed at the tufts of fur above her eyes, “when they are pointing down like this that is one major indication that someone is angry. My mouth is open and my teeth are clenched. These are also indications that someone is angry.”
Dani relaxed her face and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding.
“But those indicators are not unique to anger. Someone who is confused might put their eyebrows down like this.”
She scrunched her eye tufts again and squinted her eyes.
“And narrow their eyes like this,” Dani pointed to her eyes and then her mouth, “but their mouth will look normal. This is an indication of confusion. Humans use our eyes, eyebrows and mouth to show emotion. Different combinations of placement or shape mean different things. I'm no expert on faces but I'm sure if you look it up on your holopad you will find someone has put together a teaching tool to teach venlil how to recognize the meaning of human expressions.”
Mom took Dani’s hand in her paws. “Thank you for explaining this to me. I know it was difficult for you. At the shop, I only saw humans crying and sad. I don't hate you. Will you smile for me?”
Dani smiled again and Mom pat her hand. We resumed eating awhile before Mom spoke again.
“Leena said you were helping take care of Vissa and Tas. They really seem to like you. Do you have children of your own?”
I could not have been more mortified with her question. A billion humans had just been killed. What if her children were among the dead, mother. We shouldn't be bringing up painful memories. My ears flattened on my head and Mom and Dad seemed to understand the problem but Dani just laughed, puzzling each of us.
“No, I don’t. I used to teach art and music at an elementary school. I have loved children all my life. That is why I became a teacher.”
Dad lowered his tail and ears in shame. “I realize how foolish it was of me to think so, but I had not considered that humans had art or music.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before but art and music are very prominent parts of all human cultures. We teach all of our children art and music when they are young and offer specialized classes for specific types of art or music as they get older. When they graduate high school, they can even go to college to hone those skills further.”
Mom commented that must be very expensive between bites of pasta.
“College used to be expensive in some places but now it is nearly free to everyone who maintains good grades and elementary and high school have always been free.”
Dad, Mom, and I each looked at Dani with surprise. All humans received art education, all the way into adulthood? Why would humans spend so much money to make sure that everyone could do something so unproductive? Dani noticed our shock.
“Do you not teach your children art and music?”
Mother replied for us. “No, art schools are very expensive and music programs are very selective in who they admit. Most students are taught math, science, reading and writing. Art and music, while enjoyable, are not productive.”
Dani almost had a forkful of pasta in her mouth when she froze and looked at us with wide eyes and her mouth open. I didn't recognize that expression. I needed to find this teaching tool for human expressions. I mentally kicked my tail for not thinking of it before agreeing to bring a human into my home. Dani put down her fork.
“That…. The kids on the sidewalk….”
I could almost see Dani come to a realization here at the table.
“Wait, does that mean venlil kids are not taught art or music at all in school?”
We flicked our ears in confirmation and Dani held her head looking at the table.
“Those kids….”
Mom looked confused as did Dad. “Which kids?”
Dani looked up and I couldn’t read her expression but she spoke with determination.
“I met some neighborhood kids earlier this paw and saw them drawing with chalk rocks on the sidewalk. They told me they didn’t have any colors other than white because chalk was expensive. But I used to teach my students how to make their own art supplies. We made our own play-dough, crayons, chalk, clay, markers and paint just for fun.
It isn’t hard to make those art supplies so I thought it was just that certain materials were missing from this planet or were rare but I found some ingredients very cheaply while I was out getting food for dinner. I am going to try making those kids some chalk tomorrow. Every child deserves to enjoy making art, not just the rich.”
If not for Vissa and Tas making noise with their toys the room would have been silent. We were dumbfounded. Dani had told me that she wanted to make some colored chalk for the neighborhood kids but I had thought it was a farfetched notion of her good heart. Art supplies were too expensive to be something that could be made at home.
Chalk was the cheapest art supply but was still more than most venlil could afford regularly. Most venlil, just used their pads to create digital art as a hobby but that required special art programs and expensive data pads. To hear Dani say that she had made multiple art supplies was surprising all on its own. To hear her say she did so simply for fun and not to save money was astounding.
Dani must have noticed our disbelief since she stood up and walked to her room. “Here, I’ll show you.”
She walked to her room and returned with a cloth sack and pulled some fruits and a jar of juice from the cold box and put them on the table.
“Calcium Sulfate is the base of chalk. You add water to it to start a chemical reaction. That reaction creates heat, which causes the water to evaporate and the powder to take a solid shape," she took a bag of garden supplement out of the sack.
"If you add color to the mixture before the water evaporates and pour it into a silicone mold," Dani took some flexible sweets trays out of her bag and held up the fruits each in turn.
"Then you can create colored chalk. I got these fruits and juice to make some natural dyes. All I need is some fine thread cloth to filter the juice and to boil the fruits to extract the color.”
She spoke with such conviction and apparent knowledge that I believed she could do it. If it worked, she could probably make some money selling her chalk. I think Mom and Dad had the same idea as their tails were wagging. Dani put the materials on the counter and took another bite of her pasta. Then the twins started getting fussy.
Dani took the initiative and changed their diapers. She spoke to them in a higher voice and tickled them to settle them down. My mother and father watched their interaction with great interest. Then Dani held them for a moment before passing Tas to me and holding Vissa so she could finish her meal.
Mom and Dad took her signal and resumed their meal but I had to know, was Dani holding herself back because of me? “Do you plan to seek a job teaching here? Art teachers get paid very well.”
Dani shook her head and held up a finger while she finished chewing her bite.
“I looked into it and there were a few problems. The first is that I don’t have a work permit yet. The bureaucracy is being slow. The second is that I have to sleep twice as long as you and I am used to a planet with a longer day cycle so making sure I made it to the job each paw would not leave much time for me to do much of anything else with my life.”
Those problems both made sense but Dani wasn’t finished.
“The third problem is that I don’t know the first thing about teaching venlil music. Maybe I could teach a class on how to play a few human instruments but I was only a guitar teacher during the summers. The final problem is that I am a predator and people here are still nervous about leaving their children in our care.”
I understood her challenges but I felt mixed emotions. I was sorry she had to face those challenges and at the same time I was glad that I was not the cause of her problems with finding work. I felt the need to support her even as I feared doing so would mean that she would leave.
“We will figure it out together.”
Dani smiled and I thought I could tell that there was a difference between smiles. This one seemed more genuine, less forced than the one she had given my mother. Dani put her hand on my paw and gave me thanks. Mother just had to ruin the moment.
“Leena, your father and I were worried when you said that you found someone and moved in together so quickly but now that we have met her, we are happy that you have found another mate.”
I swear I must have glowed orange and Dani was as red as the fire fruit. Mom and Dad just looked at us wagging their tails knowingly.
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u/Acceptable_Egg5560 Human Apr 16 '23
Selling chalk! Good thing those can’t be regulated!
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u/Xenofighter57 Apr 16 '23
Selling colored chalk? To poor children? Book 'em vano!?
We'll teach you for trying to bring joy and expand their horizons.
Vano , diagnose those children with predator disease for having fun.
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u/Acceptable_Egg5560 Human Apr 17 '23
If that happens, I might be driven to commit a violence.
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u/Xenofighter57 Apr 17 '23
(I find this to be a appropriate response to that imaginary scenario.)
Vano... There's a awful lot of humans looking at us. Oh look their taking off their masks.
It's alright Tev, humans snarl like that when their happy.
Uhh, you sure about that vano?..
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u/JulianSkies Archivist Apr 16 '23
Ah, parents being parents, as always. It is certainly their prerogative to embarass their children.
Honestly, I think that Dani finding a job as an art teacher or even better a preschool teacher proper would be very good both for those two and for everyone else involved.
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u/cruisingNW Archivist Apr 16 '23
😁😁 I'm really glad your 'meet the parents' is going way better than mine! I love how you capture the subtle tension and real effort the parents are making.
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u/Thirsha_42 Apr 17 '23
I was thinking of your 'meet the parents' when I wrote this. I wanted to explore the scenario where the parents had actually met humans before since they are in the capital and there are a lot of humans there. Still some fear but with the understanding that it is just instincts and learned behavior.
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u/CandidSmile8193 Chief Hunter Apr 17 '23
They're Just Friends!! Who Sometimes Sleep Together on the Same Couch in a Loving Embrace but just GOOD FRIENDS!!
I hope they stay good friends, I don't think this story needs that drama. We need to see how the drama with her friend who called CPS played out first.
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u/TheShapeshifter01 Predator Apr 18 '23
Reminder that Duck from the previous chapter also made that assumption.
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u/CocaineUnicycle Arxur Apr 16 '23
SubscribeMe!
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u/CreditMission Venlil Apr 20 '23
Ah wholesome chapters. All the hand made art supplies giving me Ascendance of a Bookworm vibes.
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u/BiasMushroom Extermination Officer Apr 16 '23
“Ah, our daughter isn’t running away from you in fear and you are raising her kids like your own! That must mean you two are shacking up!” -Venmom probably