Nocturne

HAPPY 10 YEARS OF STORMPILOT

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

"you didn't tell us you had a cat!" said the trainers, both very upset (because they hadn't trained quincy to live with a cat).

"i don't have a cat," i said. "I don't know who this is."

the cat never went away. i named him poe dameron and he lived with me and quincy. they got along fine, in their own way.

we had our quiet adventures. poe was very cuddly but sometimes he just took off for a day or two. once he got into some paint.

after a while, i found out that poe dameron really lived across the alleyway, and belonged to my neighbor elizabeth's teenaged son, and his real name was PUMPKIN. but poe apparently didn't like the teenaged son (probably not least because he named him PUMPKIN), so he had come to live with us instead. elizabeth was fine with it.

the years went by and one day poe dameron crossed the rainbow bridge too soon. i took his ashes to elizabeth. we were very sad.

a few weeks later, she asked me to come over to see something.

it turned out that poe dameron had also lived with a THIRD lady, a few streets over. this lady, whom neither of us knew, was a painter, and she had made this painting of poe dameron. i don't know what she called him, but she painted him like one of your french girls.

"i think you should have it," elizabeth said, tactfully. "after all, he spent the most time with you." i was quite sure she just didn't want this hideous painting in her gabillion-dollar house, but i agreed.