Growing Up Kitty

Typical Saturday

  The next morning I rise with the sun and head outside to the gardens to check my herb plots. I had started them after the year the Dragons had flown through town as I wanted to start my own business. Mom had said how she had started writing books at an early age, and that due to it she made a decent amount of money. So much that she has never touched the money her parents have left her. Sometimes human have issues with shifters and magic users since we tend to be wealthy. It's not like we go out and endeavor to be so. Shifters have a tendency to be industrious and magic users have skills no one else has. All shifter parents also have a strong urge to set aside some of their monies for their children.

Mom has used some of the money from her parents but only recently. She made use of some to expand our homes here. All of our homes had been simple tiny house sheds until after mom and dad were married then she had some company come out and pour a few geodesic dome homes made from concrete.she had four poured for us kids and she had another four poured. One for her and dad, then one for gradad and two guest homes. They were grouped in fours with a concrete wall connecting each of the four with a courtyard in the middle for flower beds.

She then turned the old main tiny house into kitchen and dinning room and made one of he old guest houses into her office space and converted another for dad's brewery. Granddad had a personal office as well, but most of us avoid going in it due to how disorganized and filled up it is.

After we all have breakfast dad and the twins were going to help me work on the green house. I had custom ordered one and it arrived on three semi trucks as a giant puzzle that needed putting together. Mom only agreed on the expenditure if I promised to gorw some citrus trees in it.

Mom had a deadline for her new space shifter story she was working on. Oddly when she had approached her publisher with the idea he was very willing to let her have a go at it. We're five books into the series, and it' as popular as her teen romance novels.

Locklan needed to spend today in meditation, his powers were at a very unstable point nd he needed to spend as much time as possible working on the control side of his own abilities. Dr Peter reassured me that for a young sorcerer it was quite normal. I caught a glimpse of one of the times he was in meditation, I won't dot hat again it made my stomach turn. He needs to meditate while using his magic to do things to himself that are extremely difficult, the example I had seen was him levitating upside down while still sitting cross legged while occasionally spinning himself in every direction while maintaining a fire without fuel. The amount of calculating he must have had to do to maintain that was beyond my understanding of magic.

Zipper attempted to explain how it all worked and it had given me a headache. Zipper thinks I'll get it some day but apparently my mind can't grasp the concepts as yet. As I head to my herb plots I look them over noting that it might be time to start processing the American ginseng. Mr Lee is looking forward to when I have the greenhouse running as I have put into for a black pepper permit. As it is a pest species when it can take root somewhere, it is best to wait till I have a green house for it otherwise the government regulators will be coming by monthly to make sure the plants have not gone wild.

As I pick out things that need harvesting I notice mom was in her vegetable gardens with a large basket. I head over to help her, It's always best to harvest anything first thing in the morning as that's when the fruits and vegetables are the sweetest. My mom was pulling up about half the carrots from the earliest sowing she had done. They were of a size that she was willing to start eating, she points to the tomatoes, "a number of those are ready as well as some of the peppers." I start in on a row of tomatoes foreseeing that mom will most likely scooping the insides out and peeling them then setting them to dry out so she can grind them into a powder that she can then turn into paste when she needs it.

I ask mom, "so have you heard from Mrs Brenda this morning?" Mom chuckles, "yes the young lady didn't have any issues going to sleep as a human; however. The girl wanted to sleep without the clothes on and shredded them to task them off. This morning Brenda had to calmly reexplain how to eat to her and even showed her some fun foods that she would have never tried before." I chuckle imagining how hard that must have been as I see dad walk towards mom while talking on the phone. "Sure, well tell the Dr I wish him luck getting a blood draw on the child." Dad looks up at me and waves me over to hand me his phone and I hear Simon. "Ah Greg, I have a message from Sammy. He says he'll be returning in about two months with Sasha. He convinced her parents to allow the Mating because he challenged her father and soundly thrashed him." I could hear the disgust in his voice.

From what I knew of the gargoyles they find using fights to prove your worth for a future partner to be beneath them. Then again Simon did now have a partner, him and Starillite we together and everyone was wondering if the pairing would produce any children in the next century. As it takes a very long time for a female gargoyle to be able to have children. At least Sammy will be back soon and we'll have a new wolf in the area. I wonder if she'll be joining Lobo's Pack. I agreed with dad, I wish that poor Dr luck in attempting to draw some blood from the girl.

"Now Greg, due to your connection to Gale I thought I should warn you about what her sister is heading into." I could feel Zipper's ears perk up at that. I sigh and say, "alright. I guess there is something important otherwise you would not be bringing it up to me right now." I could hear an affirmative in his voice in the next statement. "She is partially going to check on a couple that your grandfather knows. We have not heard anything from them in over a year and with the bit of warfare going on out there we are afraid they might be dead." I felt my blood grow cold, I knew who he was talking about. Some time in the past Maahes had spent time with a pair of giant ground sloths from the western portion of the country. The mega fauna shifters are rare, and to think two might be dead because some very foolish humans who don't know what they're doing is a sobering thought.

Dad takes the phone from me, "yeah I'll let Maahes know. He will be upset about it as they're the only pair he has ever seen." Mom pauses in her harvesting of the vegetables, "I wish people didn't fear things they didn't personally understand. I'll let you in on a secret, a lot of the humans who moved out of town went to the cities to attempt to spread good information about shifters." I blink and stare at mom, "why would they disrupt their lives just to do that? What do they gain from it?" Mom smiles at me, "why nothing hon. They are merely attempting to make people understand a portion of the world others might not grasp totally. Locally they are doing well. So well that last week two of Brenda's daughter's went to Springfield do hang out with their friends that moved away. These two are two young to shift and instead answered questions of the people who they ran into."

She points at dad, "most humans think of shifters being like your dad there. They do not understand that shifters have two forms and that only those cursed with that form have half animal forms." Mom gets a far away look, "there is word that a new type of shifter has appeared. One that has a bite that can turn humans into shifters and it spreads like rabies." I give my mom a shocked look, "will Divante be safe?" Mom nods her head, "it seems only pure humans are affected by it. Heather thinks that it might have been caused by a rogue magic user." I feel my hands clench and Zipper mentally perks up again. Mom nods at me, "I am guessing Zipper didn't know that yet." I nod my head, and I know that sometime today I'll have to swap out with Zipper so he can get more info on this. Just because it won't effect Gale directly there might be some backwards way it could effect her.

I turn to go back to finishing the harvesting when mom says, "go on Greg. I know you need to get info on this new information, hopefully someone can give you the information you need to help you." I nod and rush back to my space so I can shift in private, especially since Zipper doesn't want mom to get a sense as to where we go to meet the other familiars. He's a tad bit paranoid about the meeting location, my other granddad told me that the familiars 'carved out' a dimension not quiet on this plane and not quiet in the demon one either. Interestingly it looked like a heavily forested forest and a grand castle stood on a cliff side overlooking an ocean. Considering the only thing in the plane aside from the vegetation were the familiars. It was eerily quiet. There was talk among the familiars about importing lesser animals to inhabit the forest. I see Locklan as I reach my door, "let me know what you find out." I nod my head ignoring that he knew before I could tell him, but then again I still didn't have much knowledge on sorcerer magic yet.