Those Who Do Not Move: Cara's Pack

Those Who Do Not Move:  Cara's Pack

Today's been too long.
Another one of my sisters has effectively propositioned me for marriage, and all I really feel is tired.  I'm used to this now.  This is my life.  Vinata, Evette, Lythalia, and Safiya are all out there, in their rooms not thirty feet away.  All wondering why I'm refusing them.

To me, they're my sisters.
To them, I'm just a guy in their house.

I'm too tired to worry about this.  I won't make any progress, I'll just make myself more annoyed.  My bed is pleasantly warm in comparison to the chill outside.  Everything's going to be better after I get some sleep.

Or it will be, but someone is holding my shoulders and shaking them.  "Hey, wake up," I hear Cara half-whisper.
My eyes are so sore that I can barely open them in spite of the random shock.  "Oh for- not now, Cara, 'm tryin'a sleep."
"Come on," she whines, "it's already morning and I've been sleeping for, like, days and we still have a game and it's morning already and I wanna go!"
I manage to peel one of my eyes open to look at her.  "Wha'd'you mean it's morning?

She reaches over and pulls open the curtains, revealing the slightest bluish tinge to the sky.
It's morning.
Like, 5 A.M. morning.
I got six hours of sleep.
She woke me up after six hours of sleep.
"So come on, let's go.  I got way too much sleep and I wanna run!"
"Hate."
"What was that?"
"I said 'out.'  Get out so I can put on some clothes."

Before she can get out the fog clears enough from my mind to allow a question to form.  "Cara, how did you get in here?"
Her ears flatten against her head.  "Oh, uh- I was really excited, and the thing wouldn't-"
"No, that's fine."  I tilt my head and look at the doorknob.  I can't make out anything, but I guess she just turned it too hard.  "Nothing I haven't fixed before."

It takes a minute to lift myself from the warm comfort of my bed.  It takes two to realize that I'm already holding my pants and that I don't need to continue the search for them.

I open the door to a hiss of "What took you?"
"Deep philosophical introspection."
"You're always doing that.  We only play," she thinks on that for a moment, "not enough!"
I hush her and point down the hallway.

We file down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the front door before she pipes up with "What happened to your cheek?  It's all bruised and ugly."
"I tripped."
"You wouldn't get that from tripping."
"Sure I would.  The ground is a lot farther down from up here."
She laughs at that.  "You're just too big."
"Nonsense.  I'm perfectly normal.  Everyone else is too small."

It's nice seeing her like this, even if the wake up still makes me want to ask Safiya if I could borrow some of her silver jewellery.  It's nice seeing her bounce along, tail going, talking about nothing.  I'm tired of seeing everyone around me upset.

The bouncing continues all the way to the park.  Once she walks onto trimmed grass her smile starts to turn sharper, her steps more efficient and her tail stops moving entirely.  This is still play to her, but it's not the same as usual.  It's more like a challenge.

The field is still wet with dew, with the ball sitting squarely in the center.  I smile when I see it; if she's already been out here then she probably woke up earlier, played for a while, and waited until the crack of dawn to wake me up.  She won't be tired, but she won't have the same energy that she'd have if she just woke up.  There's a single dilapidated bleacher that's as damp as the grass where I stick the bag holding our stuff.

Wow, do I not want to do this.  My entire body is still limp from the three-quarter night's rest.  It already feels like I'm just dragging myself around.  I stop at the edge of the field and start stretching out my back to get it out of the weird, simultaneously stiff and limp funk that it's in.  Cara lets out a loud whine of complaint when she turns and spots me.  "Oh come on, do you really have to do that?  Trust me, it's best to just hop right into the action!"
"Hate."
"Say what?"
"I said 'I'm not gonna tempt fate."

The stretches for the back, legs, arms, and neck have all become routine by now.  I go through them about six times a week, so now I can just use the time to think.  Of course, the problem with that is that I'm still too tired to think about much of anything.  The only thing that my mind manages to dredge up is the tired, recycled amusement that I get everytime I think about the amount of practice I've put into a sport that I can never seriously play.

Cara is half watching me, half watching everything as she bounces from the ball of one foot to the other.  It's a useful trait that she walks as easily on just the balls of her feet as she does on her heels.  It slightly makes up for my height advantage and, of course, it makes her move even faster.

Like she needs that.

Something's been bothering me since I woke up, and my sleep-deprived mind just managed to piece it together.  "Hey."  Cara spins around to look at me and immediately looks disappointed that I'm not ready yet.  I ignore that, "Don't just walk into my room.  Knock next time."
Her previous annoyance compounds with this new one to draw out a long, low whine of frustration.  "Oh come on, you let Tera in whenever she wants."
"Tera's young enough that it isn't a problem."

She stops and stares at me for a moment for an idea strikes her.  She smiles mischievously, "Oh, so it's that I'm getting older?  Was it too much to be woken up by such a beauty?"  She turns to her side and holds her hands over her chest while giving me a look that I'm forced to assume she thinks is sultry.
I respond with the flattest stare I can manage.  "I'm gonna forget you said that."
She immediately bursts into laughter, "Aww, you're no fun!"
Who even says "a beauty" anymore?  I hope she hasn't started watching sappy mamono-flicks.  Those things are just weird.

I stopped needing to stretch a little while back, but I'm still half-asleep and I really just want to put this game off until later.  I know she won't let that fly for long, but I'm grateful for however much free time I can get.
"Come on, you're fine now, right?"
Yeah.  "I guess I can manage."  I lift myself back up and begin the slow, painful march into the field.  Now begins two hours of constant exhaustion that'll leave me passed out in the shower again.  I can't be mad, though.  Not when she's bouncing up and down and giggling like that.  I just don't have it in me.

We move to opposite sides of the ball, facing each other.  I take one last, deep breath of the sweet morning air, knowing that I won't have nearly enough of it soon.  Cara smiles, showing all of her gleaming canines as she asks "Ready?"
"Count of three."

We both start bracing ourselves to set out at a sprint as our counting nears to the fateful number.  When we get there, she kicks off and I take two long steps forward, coming to a stop right behind the ball.  She barely registers something's off, but it's too late now; once you're off the ground you're ballistic.  It doesn't matter how strong she is when I weigh three times as much and she has nothing to push against.  There's a small squeak of surprise as she braces and thumps into my chest.  I don't wait for her to recover.  I nab the ball as her butt hits the ground and shout out a supremely unapologetic "Sorry" as I bolt down the field.

A man needs every win he can get.

---

"Hey, time out!"  I hold up my hands in the T-shape and wait for her to slow to a walk.  We're both panting, which is weird.  "You all right?  You seem distracted and- I dunno, exhausted."
She comes to a stop, wiping the sweat from her brow.  "Yeah, I don't know, I've just been out of it all game."
"Yeah, I guessed that when I took the ball and you didn't notice."
She looks away and frowns, "That wasn't funny."
"Not saying it was.  Hey, you're probably just messed up from sleeping sixteen hours straight.  Did you even eat when you got up?"

There's a long pause before her ears and tail both slowly fall.  "Hey," I pipe up, "let's throw the score out, go have some juice and a nutty bar, conk out for a half hour, and make the second half the one that counts.  How about it?"
And she's bouncing again.  I have achieved victory in all things.

It's only when we're walking up to it that I realize that, however different it looks in the daylight, this is the exact same spot I took Rina the first time we went out.  Hells, it feels like that was months ago.  We were talking about mamono-human relations.  Because a couple kids out on a date can work out the issue that experts on both sides have been debating since the Conciliation.
"What'cha thinkin' about?"  I turn to see Cara smiling up at me.
"History."
She immediately looks away and groans.  "Why do you have to bring school into this?  Can't you just have fun?"
I put on a fake look of hurt and begin in my best impression of my middle school history teacher "History is fun.  It's full of facts and figures that have shaped modern-day life."
She playfully covers her ears and shouts for me to stop.

I collapse into the first bench I get to.  "Here," I say as I fish out a couple coins, "get me somethin' fruity."  I could use something thin and acidic.  If she's going to be more awake in the second half, I gotta be, too.  Normally the first half is when I pull out slightly ahead, and then I try desperately to hold my own in the second half when I'm getting tired and she isn't.
She returns in a moment with a black can of "S-ENERGY".  The bold letters on the front inform me that it's "Pineapple-Pygeum Punch" while a little heart beneath informs me that "IT'S A SLOW ERUPTION OF FLAVOR!"
"That was the only thing that was fruity in there.  Do you like it?"  I turn away from the thing in my hand toward Cara, who is looking hopefully up at me.
"Oh yeah.  Loads."  I can't help it; I don't usually have the opportunity to crack puns like that.

It's actually not bad.

She tucks herself next to me while she rips open one of the little nut bars.  "Hey, you might not want to do that.  I've been sweating way more than you'd think I'd need in this cold."
"Don't care," she answers with her mouth full.  "'sides, you just smell more like you now.  I like it.  None of that weird chemical-y smell."
I'm too tired to worry about that.

---

Someone's tugging on my arm.
My neck feels like someone wedged something into my spine.
My back hurts.
My legs are sore.
Someone's still tugging on my arm.
"Hey, wake up!  We've still got the second half.  We gotta go now if we still wanna have breakfast."
My throat forms what sounds vaguely like words in response.  I don't know what they were.  It's probably fine though.  The pulling sensation redoubles and I'm lifted bodily from the bench, producing a dozen loud pops from my spine in response.
"Whoa, hey, are you all right?"
I look down at her worried face.
"Never better."

I manage to slowly straighten out my back on the walk back to the field, but something tells me that I'm gonna need to stretch out again.  Every muscle in my body feels like it's been wound up and condensed, and simultaneously feels limp and sore.  Even walking feels slightly awkward and unnatural.  Like I'm not moving how I'm supposed to.
I wonder when it was that I stopped getting sleep.

When I finally walk back onto the field, it's with only one thought.  "This is gonna be embarrassing."

---

The chirping of my phone from the bleachers informs me that I can stop running, so I do.
"Hey!"
I lift an arm and shout into the grass, "I'm fine, don't worry about it!"
I still hear the thumping sound of footfalls as she gets closer.  "Hey, you know what you need?"
"Sleep."
"No."
"Shower."
"No!  Breakfast."
I groan.

"Come on," she shouts, and I'm once again dragged up out of a perfectly terrible position to go back to sleep.  "You gotta at least walk back home now.  Otherwise you'll get a cramp."
I groan.
We walk back over to the one soggy, wooden bleacher where we left all of our stuff, and then we head home.

"You don't get to complain, not after winning."  She's still out of breath and sweating.
"That was hardly a win; you're still off the ball today."
"It wasn't like that this morning," she pouts.
"I believe you."
She repeats that a few more times on the way home, just in case.

---

We walk into the kitchen right as mom's laying out everything for everyone.  She claps her hands and beams at us as we get in.  "Ah, just in time!"
I'm about to take my seat when Cara lets out an "Oh, right!"  I turn to look at her, fiddling with the plastic bag she was still holding.  "I forgot our stuff!  Here."  She reaches out and hands me my phone and a few coins back.  "Oh, and you didn't finish this-"
Safiya and Lythalia both walk in from the living room, moving around me and Cara.  They both stop and look, though.

There's a moment of hesitation before I snatch the can and stick it under the table.  Only a moment.

Safiya slowly takes her seat to my right.  She's very pointedly looking away from me.
There's another pause before Lythalia pipes up, "I need to go pray to my God.  I'll be back in, oh, about fifteen."

It's a very quiet breakfast.