Virtual Quill

I'm back at school after the Thanksgiving holidays. As usual, Fenton and I had two Thanksgiving meals, twelve hours apart, one with my family and one with his. The major thing to report about the Fuscus meal is that this was the first extended visit I've had with them since I agreed to set the wedding date. Mrs. Fuscus was inordinately pleased, looking like the cat that ate the canary. (Do you humans have an expression like that?)
Over at my family's tree the main event was the presence of Kell's identical cousin Sheila and her date, Kell's office rival Frank Mangle. After a few catty comments on his part (to be expected, I guess), he settled down and was on his best behavior. Sheila was nervous at first, but she was relieved when it was all over. All told it went as well as one could hope. I'm sure it won't be the last time we see them together.
I took the opportunity to compare the DNA between Kell and Sheila. I'd suspected that they were actually twins that were raised apart, but I couldn't imagine why Elanor would hide something like that. It turned out she didn't. Sheila is as advertised, the daughter of Elanor's late sister, while Kell is indeed the offspring of Franklin and Elanor. So, no big revelation there.
The "identical" business really isn't accurate. Their markings are the same, and their scent is close enough to throw off anyone who doesn't know them well, but once you see them together for a while you can observe the differences. I'm pretty sure Mr. Mangle has observed them already. Wink. Wink.
Today's question (for those who celebrated Thanksgiving): How many relations were at your Thanksgiving meal?

By mutual agreement, we’ve all decided to step back and take a deep breath regarding wedding plans. I’ve got my gown and we’ve reserved the Unitarian church for June 5, so for now we’re not going to think about anything more until the holidays are over.
As usual, nothing ever stands still around here. Kell’s identical cousin Sheila has attracted the attention of one of Kell’s co-workers, a lion named Frank Mangle. He’s the father of Leona, part of Rudy’s hunting foursome. They met when Sheila came to a hunting competition to watch Rudy.
Mr. Mangle is on the same level as Kell in the Herd Thinners hierarchy, which means they’re in direct competition. R.L. has engineered his organization as a zero-sum game, which discourages cooperation. Thus, whenever Kell wins, he loses, and vice versa. It’s to Kell’s credit that she doesn’t let that affect her relationships with the rest of the employees. (Of course, it helps that she’s one of the best!)
I won’t even begin to speculate on the inner workings of Mr. Mangle’s emotions that draw him to a lookalike of his workplace rival. Kell, ever agreeable, has invited both of them over for Thanksgiving under the instruction that no one discusses Herd Thinners.
Mr. Mangle has an interesting background. I’ll repeat this part of my blog of 9/30/07 when I reported on Leona’s joining the hunting team: “He’s a single father who (in the eyes of his species) works in the traditionally female role of a hunter. Kell told me the backstory: When Leona was eight, her mother died after a lengthy illness. While she’d been sick she’d been unable to hunt, so her husband Frank secretly learned to take down prey to feed his family and so that people would think his wife was still healthy and active as a predator. It was supposed to be just a temporary arrangement until she recovered, but fate had other ideas.
“Mr. Mangle had become quite good at hunting, so after his wife’s death he applied to Herd Thinners and was hired. This, of course, meant that he was ostracized from his lion pride. Kell has faced similar pressures, but in Mr. Mangle’s case it caused him to develop a rather large chip on his shoulder. He’s surly toward Kell and to pretty much everyone else...except for his daughter.”
And now, an additional exception: Sheila Dewclaw.
This week: What are you thankful for?

When I walked into my advisor’s office on Monday I had no idea that less than a week later I’d be here at home looking at my wedding dress hanging in my closet. It’ll stay there until June 5, the day I’ll become Lindesfarne Fuscus.
What happened is that during my first three years of high school I was a herbivore, during which I’d taken a large number of Advanced Placement classes in foraging Then, just before my senior year I switched to my natural hedgehog insectivore diet. (Long story) Things may work differently on the human side (since you’re all one species), but here a college degree involves instruction in both your field of study and your diet. I thought I was still looking at two years of insectivore courses after I’d finished my genetics studies, but that all changed due to recent reforms in species classification. Suddenly I was cleared to graduate in May.
This knocked me on my quills. While I’ve never doubted my love for Fenton, I wasn’t prepared for a wedding so soon. My initial instinct was to rebel against Fenton’s mother who would surely hold me to my vow to marry immediately after graduation. It took my roommate Rachel to direct my view to what was really important, which was Fenton himself. (This also means that next fall Rachel will be available to room with her girlfriend Joan Hoof when Joan enrolls at Beige.)
I gave Fenton the news in flight, which meant that I’m still finding pieces of billboard in my quills. We flew back to Domain for the weekend to give the word to my parents, his parents and Tree, and on Saturday we visited the dressmaker. I’d actually picked out the gown a while ago, so the silkworms were able to complete the job by the end of the day.
We’ll be back at school by nightfall, and of course we’ll return next week for Thanksgiving. I’ll be trying to keep Fenton involved in the wedding preparations, but he’s not shown any great interest in the details. It’ll probably end up being an estrogen thing, planned by me, the two mothers and my posse of Rhonda, Rachel and (via long distance) Tammy. With my bridesmaids being a tiger, a rhino, a moth, a fennec fox (Fiona) and a sheep (Corrie), it’ll be a challenge finding a gown that’ll look good on all of them.
Any suggestions? (today's question)

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with comments last week! Danielle has been taking your advice, and she’s found she can fashion infant-safety devices by adapting products made for keeping predators out.
Life in Domain has calmed down, according to Dad. This does tend to follow a pattern. People get riled up, go out yelling and ranting over something, and just as suddenly it dies down and life goes on as people adapt to the thing that they once thought of as intolerable.
We’ve gone back to our usual routine. Every morning Danielle, George and Francis come over to the treehouse and head down to the Hare-Link office. George spends the morning tending Francis, and around 1:00 the preschool bus drops off Coney. Coney then spends the afternoon with Francis as George takes care of them both. Dad, Ralph and Danielle keep the ISP running, and send any tech problems to me and Fenton. Customer service is still handled by Candace down in New Zealand.
Here at Beige I’ve finally begun writing papers for possible publication in peer-reviewed research journals. Meanwhile, tomorrow (Monday) I have an appointment with my academic advisor. This is unusual; she said it was something she had to tell me in person.
The weekly question is for those of you with preschoolers. What childcare options do you have?

I heard all about last night’s Halloween back home, how Francis dressed up as a rabbit while Coney and all of the neighborhood kids went as humans. (They used the characters from Rudy’s webcomic as models.)
In light of Francis’s metamorphosis, Rudy is now even more reluctant to return to his human-themed webcomic “Rondo and Viola.” He put it on hiatus to focus on the hunting team, which led to his becoming co-captain so the move seems to have worked out. Still, he probably needs a creative outlet of some sort. He did get a lot of positive attention from “R&V,” which was really important to building his confidence in general. He was a Guest of Honor at Manthrocon in Pennsylvania and got e-mails from all over the world. Heady stuff.
Meanwhile, the main change in Francis’s behavior is an increase in his curiosity, which first became evident during the incident where he was going over to the Fennec boarding house and stealing food from traps. That was before his transformation, and he was climbing and swinging like the primates that normally reside in this world. Now that he’s fully human he’s ceased climbing, but his urge to explore has gone off the scale.
Danielle told me this was normal for human babies, but she’s frustrated because she had so little experience with them during her life on the other side of the portal. She was the youngest of her family, and she left her world before becoming a mom, so she only has the vaguest idea on how to human-proof a home. So, today's question is for Danielle: how does she keep Francis from getting into everything he's not supposed to?