Young Writers Society

Harry turned to look at the outline of pictures, masking tape and sticky notes on the floor.  They did manage to get all of the ideas out onto the floor in the time Harry was gone but there needed to be a better filing system.  Her boot slipped back to get caught on a piece of the masking tape, lifting up a string of cat pictures during the motion to get coffee.

Jud pulled one of the pictures out of the bunch while remarking, “Ah, there’s the picture of ‘Mr. H R Fizzle Butt.”

Harry couldn’t help but ask, “Jud, why are you actually calling these cats by such outrageous names?  Why can’t we just refer to them as perps in numerical order.”

Her reaction was generally more of an eye roll, but she kept her lids shut so it wouldn’t be discernable.  It was one thing to specifically refer to more humanoid suspects, but most of these cherished house creatures probably were involved in the smuggling ring.  They might not have been able to report anything.  And there was probably no way to find someone who could communicate on the feline level with this species, but they were still criminals.

Even if there was no prison to put them into, Harry would find a way to make every person, cat, and plant-based life form pay for their crimes.

“Ehri, I sincerely hope that you aren’t considering gutting the cats to find the diamonds.”

“How else do you expect to find the missing cargo?”

“By putting the cats in a cage and waiting.  You’re just looking for an excuse to get rid of as many of these pesky rats in one go as you possibly can.”

These pesky rats.

That was a phrase that Harry would have used to describe an ornamental cat sitting on someone’s leather couch.  Or the phrase that a normal person might use for sewage rats that won’t move out of their trashcan.  Or perhaps even something that a sports caster would use to describe a failing player in a high stakes game.

But it was not a phrase Jud would use to describe a cat.

“Are you feeling your best, Jud?  Or is more of Ria rubbing off on you than we had previously realized?”

She almost laughed as she used the word “rubbing”.  Almost laughing at her own joke while trying to play it off as completely innocent wording.  Harry had not been trying to move that direction in this particular answer but there was no way to avoid any of these opportunities.

Jud leaned back across the coffee table, holding a pen to her leg, asking, “Do you ever turn that little bit of your mind off?  Or does it just keep going all night long, just like my dear husband?”

“Jud, sweetheart, it’s those kinds of behaviors that got you to my dirty jokes in the first place.”

The pen clicked against her thigh, a reminder of methods used by the Federation to scare their young recruits.  That talk about how this pen is actually a knife or a gun, held to your leg as a force of reason.  And if you flinch against the point, you’re dead.  If you let them stab you, you are being a good soldier.

Harry was not a good soldier.

Her hand easily slipped down to her leg, flipping the pen away so that the sound of its impact was not heard until many moments later.  Even without the violent aspect and the intimidation that came with Jud’s movement, Harry began thinking about how this was one of her favorite pairs of pants.

“Jud, don’t you think that’s just a bit immature?  Just a little bit cheap on your part?”

“No, I do not.”

They went back to relaxing in the silence, finishing off another pot of coffee and filling the room with more cigarette smoke.  It seemed that every conversation with Jud would take Harry back to the old days across all the versions of their friendship.

The old days where Harry was just some punk princess trying to become a king and a timely old priest that tried to save her from eternal damnation.  Jud’s personal interest in Harry’s salvation was a reminder that people did happen do give some sort of fuck about her.

“Ehri, don’t do that to me.”

“And what might I be doing, Jud?”

“You know what I mean.  You’re going to disappear into the back of your brain and angst your way through this conversation.”

While this was not Harry’s original plan of action, it did give her an idea on how to retreat during the next argument with Will.  She had planned on slipping to the back of her mind, but it was for the purpose of finding a memory to affirm her trust in Jud.  Some sliver of something to make sure that this friend would maintain being her friend, not turning in the way of so many others.  The pen going into her thigh was the first sign of distrust, the first stabbing she might have experienced from a traitor to the veil.

Harry knew that she could trust Jud and she needed to trust him for this case.  The odds of Jud being a sell out to a galaxy wide smuggling ring resulting in trillions of dollars of damage to the galactical economy and the destruction of countless lives…

Well at least she could think of fifty people who would betray her before Jud would even give a hint of it.

“That’s not what I’m doing.  And you can stop your snide comments about me, Jud.  I really am not that much of a child.”

His position didn’t change in the chair, even as Harry heard her voice rising with the anger she had unfortunately found.  This is why every conversation was a flashback – people treating her like a child never had a good survival rate.

Jud smirked as he said, “But you are, my dear child. Perhaps not when compared to myself but certainly where the universe is concerned.”

Either by comparison to the universe or to Cati or to Macabre, she could be considered a young life form.  Someone with little experience compared to the old elders, no matter how many wars she had fought through and how much blood stained her hands.  Those people were old enough to be considered “gods” by the citizens of Earth, while Harry was barely older than the new Federation Alliance.

A thought came to Harry as she answered Jud with a grin.

“Or even really Glenn is old enough to refer to me as a ‘child’.”

“Glenn does not count.  The man has been frozen for most of the past two thousand years.  If anything, you should be the one calling him the ‘child’.”

Jud mimicked her motion of air quotes around child before settling back into his chair and taking another drink of coffee.  Harry went to kick at him under the table and brought up another string of crime photographs.  The ones pertaining to the case they were supposed to be working, rather than sitting in the silence of slowly angsting at each other telepathically.

It was all fun and games until someone brought up the memory of a sex scene, which briefly flashed across Harry’s plan of attack.  She looked out to the gloomy weather conditions and settled back again in her chair.  Jud made similar movements of shifting while the possibilities of being uncomfortable became apparent in the shared memory search.

Harry lit a new cigarette while asking, “Well Jud, where would you like to start?”

“Perhaps it’s my old age talking but I think we should break into their house while Will and Leo interview the Lucreskis within the office.  We did find their cat, after all.  It is our duty to notify them of the poor thing’s death.”

Breaking and entering.

Such a lovely way to start the day off.