Same day Liah meets Amy’s parents

Things weren’t all “parental acceptance” and all that when taking Liah to meet my family. No, there was work to do. Important work. Even on my day off, I was still being forced to spend my time in a dusty room, full of odd, arcane documents and long-forgotten artifacts.

“Kind of odd of them, making you go through all your childhood stuff when you come to visit them.” Liah said. I had roped her into helping me. Yes, we were in my childhood room. Despite moving out twice, it still was chock full with the odds and ends of several decades of life. 

“They both retired recently. It only makes sense they’d want things cleaned up a bit. I imagine they might want to turn it into a guest bedroom, or maybe some sort of hobby room.” I picked through a box on the floor, filled with tangled power adapters and fishing lures. 

“It’s going to take a lot of cleaning. How’d you even let it get this messy?” Liah, rather than helping, had a hand on her chin as she perused a bookshelf. 

“You know how it goes. Sometimes you just don’t feel like cleaning. Things just pile up, and you keep putting it off, then next thing you know you have a layer of dirty clothes piled up on the floor.”

“I’m not seeing any clothes, just fabric, books, papers… are those empty beer bottles? Damn, bitch, you live like this?”

“I really liked the labels on them. They’re pretty. Look, see?” Some craft breweries really put in effort into the label design. I’ve always thought it was neat. 

“And yet somehow, our house is relatively organized.” Liah pursed her lips, gazing off into the distance.

“Of course, I payed for it, I’m not going to let it go to the dogs.”

“Tell that to your poor parents! This looks like a hoarders room. How far back does this stuff go?”

“Probably to birth if I’m completely honest.”

“Naturally. You still have picture books on this shelf.”

“Something about throwing away or giving away books just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s like losing the actual knowledge itself. Doesn’t the acquisition of knowledge excite you?” 

“What deep, esoteric knowledge can you acquire from Hop on Pop?”

“Cherry-picking! The Lorax right next to it is by the same author, and full of the importance of environmentalism. I’ll be honest, I don’t really remember the plot to Hop on Pop that well but I’m sure it’s just as deep. And don’t even get me started on the symbolism of Yertle the Turtle. Right up there with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” 

“Well excuse me for not having a healthy family that’d sit around reading Dr. Seuss. And what’s with these Animorphs books? The covers always creeped me out.”

“Says the shapeshifter. I remember liking them, though looking back at it they were pretty dark for a kids series. It goes from ‘kids get the power to change into animals’ to ‘PTSD, suffering and complex moral problems”’ pretty fast. Hmmm.” I had an idea.

“I don’t like where this is going.”

<When you’re in your cat form, you should totally talk like this.>

What? Why? Why the “<>”?

“Eh, nevermind. 

Not really a niche joke but I can see why it wouldn’t land. 

Liah seemed tired of looking through my old books, and moved on to the closet. I understand there really isn’t much in the way of secrets between us, but looking through my childhood closet is still embarrassing. She reached down, pushed a fallen high school graduation robe aside, and picked up a bulky plastic boot.

“Roller blades?” 

“It was a different time! You had to be there. That kind of thing was cool back then. Sure, it seems corny now, but it fit in with like the, the spirit of the time. Everything was optimistic, people were excited for the future, there wasn’t any of this growing malaise. The Internet was new and exciting, like an undiscovered frontier. They even called it ‘Cyberspace.’I know it sounds stupid now, but that’s really what they thought about it.” I was desperately trying not to think of the real reason I had bought roller blades at that young age.

“Hackers?  You had a crush on Angelina Jolie?” Unfortunately the “dont think about it” plan backfired drastically. 

“I was young and she seemed really cool in that movie. Don’t judge. There are far worse first crushes to have. Plus I was too young to grasp how shlocky of a movie it was. It kind of made me want to be a hacker. I was always kind of influenced by movies back then, come to think of it. For a while I wanted to be a storm chaser because my parents let me watch Twister. Then there was Back to the Future. It probably wasn’t a good idea to allow me to watch that at a young age, for the longest time I was afraid of Libyan terrorists getting revenge on me but inventing cool stuff seemed fun even with the risks. And then watching Apollo 13 kicked off my aerospace engineering phase… What is it?”

I couldn’t even describe the expression she was giving me. It almost looked like she was pitying me. 

“Goddess above, you are such a nerd! I knew you were before, but this is just excessive.”

“The glasses didn’t tip you off?” 

“You know it’s rude to stereotype like that, even if it is directed at yourself.”

“I know. Really though, all the signs were there.”

“It’s just being blindsided by the severity of it. Just look at this… what is this?”

“A slide rule. Isn’t it neat? You can do all sorts of cool things with this. Multiplication, division, powers, roots, logs. The learning curve is high, much higher than a calculator, but the way it conditions you to do it in your head is super neat. And it gets you used to the idea of significant figures. So many people are used to having machines spit out long strings of decimals that they don’t really seem to know when to just round. My parents got it for me a while ago.”

“...”

“What?”

“I’m actually kind of amazed you took to witchcraft so well.”

“I never really liked math. I just liked the concept of it. I was a bit better at it when there was an actual practical application behind it, like in the Marines. Maybe I was easily influenced. Maybe it’s Maybeline. Actually, I’m just going to blame my parents.”

“You can’t just blame them for your problems, they’re nice people. They really don’t seem like bad parents.”

“You don’t understand, they’re engineers. I’m sure that’s the issue. Their influence must have warped my psyche in immense, unknowable ways!”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Irrelevant! It’s morally wrong to turn down free homebrew beer. But irrelevant. I’m sure my parents being so engineer-y had some sort of weird effect. Wyrd effect? Anyways, the influence of people so rationally-minded must have had some sort of odd effect.”

“Still, they sure do love you.” Liah smiled softly. And, well, what else could I do? I grabbed her hand, pulling her closer. I ran a hand through her hair. Even if she’s in her human form she seems to like it when I do that.

“I’m glad they like you.”

“I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous meeting them.”

“Understandable. I was nervous too. For different reasons, but I was nervous.”

“I know that. You were a complete bundle of nerves!” She giggled. “I’ll confess, I was a bit grateful, as callous as that sounds.”

“Grateful?”

“As weird as it sounds, you acting all nervous over how they might react just felt so goofy. I had a slight idea of what they were like based on your thoughts, so I felt it reasonably likely things would go well. Maybe talking with you about worrying too much helped me feel less nervous as well. As you know, with my parents…”

“Absolute mother of the year award there.” Purposefully spirited away by fairies has to be one of the weirder ways of parental abandonment. I wonder how we’ll explain her family situation to my mom and dad?

“I know plenty of people have it much worse.”

“That doesn’t make your problems any less important to you.” Yes, I know it’s kinda a platitude, but it’s one for a good reason. 

We sat for a while on the bed, Liah leaning against me as I slowly stroked her hair. The distant noise of my parents down in the kitchen could faintly be heard, but it wasn’t enough to overwhelm the soft sound of Liah’s breathing. Lulled by the tempo, my thoughts seemed to project themselves onto the motes of dust flickering in the rays of sunlight from the window. 

Sure, things weren’t anything close to how I had imagined them growing up. I could see the memories as if through the static of an old CRT, the grainy film of the past me expecting a typical future in a typica- er, comparatively mundane job in STEM. It felt I could practically see how that path would have went. 

And then there’s this path. Frankly it came at me like a run-away semi-truck. Unexpected events following extreme oddities, with me barely having any time to rest. I know that the past me all those years ago would not have seen anything close to this coming with all the crystal balls and cards in the world. Okay, she might have, but she would likely have disregarded it as fantasy. 

“I know we met in an unconventional way…”

Liah laughed. “‘Unconventional’ barely covers it. Forgive me for taking a peak, but I know what you want to say. And if you don’t know my response then you’d be as thick-headed as that friend from the Marines you mentioned.”

“Li-”

“Me too.” She didn’t even give me the chance to say it out loud! That smug grin just makes it even worse. Maybe we’re both bad with speaking about emotions? Still, beating me to it like that is just mean. 

Let me just seethe for a bit.