#fogtooth

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Gus was just standing in the corner enjoying the show.  So far his mother had thrown six pieces of Tupperware and a frying pan at Dorghu (everyone a direct hit, he was pleased to notice) and now she was randomly beating gang members with her shoe.

“Why are you whoring my son?” she demanded.

Wack, wack went the slipper.”

“Why are you whoring MY SON!!” Wack!

“Imani!  Wait!  Just listen!”

The elderly female orc did hesitate for a moment.  Dorghu had completely lost track of all the excellent arguments he had prepared.  The moment of silence was equally unnerving.  “Uh….  Look!  She mixed and so is he and you will have instant grandbabies-”

Imani shrieked at that, and attacked with renewed vigor.  “You racist, RACIST ASSHOLE!” She screamed.  Then she looked at Gus and said, “Just ‘cause Mama says those words, doesn’t mean you get to, baby.”

Rrollo snickered.  Imani grabbed the salt shaker off the table and nailed him in the face with it.  He went down screamed as the cap flew off and the salt got into his eyes.  Frank who had been frozen in white faced terror up to then, grabbed his friend and fled.

Imani watched them go in silence.  “Poor lamb,” she said. Then she saw Dorghu trying to inch toward the door.  She screamed again and hurled the pepper shaker at him.

“Get OUT!”

Dorghu left in a flood of sneezes.

Then she turned to her son and pulled out the cruelest weapon in her arsonal.  “Why?” she said simply and started to cry.

Gus hugged his Mama and kissed the top of her head.  “It will be OK, mama.  I only agreed because I love her.”

Imani sighed.  “When did this happen?  Why didn’t you tell me?  I had a nice girl all lined up to meet  you!  She is going to be so disappointed!”

Gus chuckled softly, “Mama, if she is a nice girl, she will find a nice boy without nightmares hunting him at night.”

Imani narrowed her eyes, “What about this girl you’re marrying?”

“She is sweet and kind and tough as nails.  We will be ok.”

“So why’d Dorghu tell me it was an arranged marriage?”

Gus sighed.  “That’s where it gets complicated.  I love her, Mama, I do… but”

“Argh!  There shouldn’t be any buts in love!”  Gus’s brain stalled for a moment, then he took a slipper to the ear, “Get your mind out of the gutter!  You know what I mean!” Imani finished.

“She doesn’t want to get married.  I don’t know that she loves me like that.  But she needs this to be safe.  And I can take care of her Mama.  It worked out for you and Pop, right?”

“The world was different then.  We were in a war.”

Gus sighed and rubbed her back, “Mama you watch the news.  You know how many of us are being hunted down and killed by the cops.  We are still at war.”

----

Fred didn’t have Gerard take her home.  Instead she kept him as her chauffer all afternoon.  She made a quick call to her lawyers.  Then she had him take her to buy a purple sparkle dress for Mac.  That wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been.  Four stores later, Mac looked like a little girl in a purple sparkle dress.  As compared to the first two where she looked like a drag queen or the third where she looked like a pint sized call girl.

Gerard watched as Mac bounced excitedly into the car, babbling about her new dress.

“Ok! Ok!  Easy there little one.  So, now we go get one for your Mama, yes?”

“No.” Fred said firmly.

Gerard looked at her in the rear view mirror.  “But you are getting married tomorrow.  You need a new dress.”

Fred closed her eyes.  She wanted to explain that this wasn’t a real wedding and it didn’t really count and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be doing this.  But now Mac was all excited and begging, “Please Mummum!  You need a princess dress too!”  And Fred had no idea how to explain a marriage of convenience to a five year old.

She grudgingly agreed and tried very hard not to do it with bad grace.

The next dress store they stopped at Gerard came in.  The three off them threw the saleswoman for a loop.  She kept trying to get Fred to try on fluffy, sexy and expensive.  Fred kept trying to shop in the mother of the bride section.  Gerard kept trying not to laugh.

Eventually, he caught Fred’s arm and stuffed her into a change room with this a cream coloured dress.  Fred grunted and cursed and had to readjust her boobs to make it fit. It was supposed to be mid calf but was closer to ankle length on her.  The empire waist sitting about where it was supposed to be.  There was fussy looking beading where the spagetti straps connected to the neckline the dipped a little lower than she would have picked out.  It hugged her curves to her hips, then fell in an attractive a-line.  The back was almost backless.

“How is it?” the sales woman called.

“I feel ridiculous!” Fred replied.  She took off the dress and took off her bra straps then put the dress back on.  That was a little better.

“Can we see, cher?” Gerard asked.

Fred considered this, “Yes.  I’m pretty sure you can see everything in this dress.”

“Mummum, come out!” Mac insisted.

Fred stepped awkwardly out of the change room.

They all stared at her.  She blushed.  “Yeah.  I know.  This is why I never go shopping for dresses.  They just don’t fit right and they don’t go with my chucks and-”

Gerard cleared his throat.  “I will buy you that dress and take you shopping for fancy shoes.”

Mac came up and took her hand, “You look beautiful!” she whispered.

Fred snorted.  A five year old who thought bunny slippers and Elsa jammies were the height of fashion was not the best person to take dress shopping.  But…. the look on Gerard’s face suggested it might be worth spending some money on.

“I’ll buy it. And the shoes.  But I am not going to even try on heels.”  

In the end, she found a pair of flat sandals with ballet slipper like laces to go around her ankles.  On one hand, she felt ridiculous.  On the other, working in medicine had cured her of the ability to feel shame years ago.

She decided that if they were going to do this, putting a little effort in would likely be helpful in INS came around.

When they got home that night, Gerard helped her carry her things up to her apartment.  

Upon opening the door, she found that almost everything she owned had been packed.

She stood in the doorway for a moment, before offering Gerard a huge tip.  He tried to refuse.  She insisted.  “You could have gotten a lot of fares if you weren’t stuck with us all day.”

Gerard frowned.  “I will take it and buy you a wedding present, how about that?”

She just shook her head.  “It isn’t that kind of a wedding.”

Gerard shook his head.  This was not how the bride was supposed to look the night before the wedding.  Where she should be excited, she seemed just resigned.  “It will be OK.” He assured her.  “You just have to trust that these things happen for a reason.”

Fred shook her head.  “He doesn’t want this either. No one asked either of us.  He didn’t ask me.  We are both just following orders from Dorghu.  There is no way to explain how much that worries me.”

Gerard frowned.  “If it goes bad, I promise my family will take you in and protect you.  No one is getting past my son.”

Fred nodded.  “Will you an Imani be there?  It would be nice to see some friendly faces in the crowd.”

Gerard beamed at her.  “We would be honnored!”

“Thank you for all your help today.”

Gerard pulled her into a tight hug.  “You are very VERY welcome, Doctor Underhill.”

----

It was after dark by the time Gerard got home.  His wife was very upset.

She turned on him immediately and said, “You will never guess what your idiot son has gone and done!”

Even before she finished explaining, Gerard laughed and laughed.

The community where Fred had gone to university was fifty per cent ogre, forty per cent human, three per cent elf and seven per cent other.  Which didn’t mean that racism wasn’t a thing back home too, it was just more subtle.  Her current neighbourhood was mostly orc with a few humes mixed in for flavour.  No elves and that suited Fred just fine.  She didn’t have a lot of experience with orcs, but physiologically, they were very similar to ogres.  Blue and pink instead of green or brown.  Bald instead of black hair.  But same teeth, same night vision and hearing, same amazing sense of smell.  Internally, orcs and ogres were so similar that the medical establishment saw the divide as a false one.  It was basically based on which side of the great war their ancestors had been on.  Of course, a couple of thousand years of separation had led to a certain about of diversion of physical appearance, but not as much as you would expect.  Not like, say, the subspeciation that had happened between a Mastiff and a Chihuahua.

The point was, Fred was not intimidated by Orcs.

Or at least she hadn’t been.  She had only been here a week and the noticeable racial tensions were already getting to her.  Mackenzie was attending the local school.  It has a level of diversity that would be desirable back home.  Here, her colleagues had strongly suggested she enroll her daughter in a private school.

Fred wasn’t entirely sold on that idea.  Which lead them to this point.  Mac in a pair of jeans, pink chucks and a pink t-shirt with a picture of a bunny on it.  Waiting in the kindergarten classroom waiting for the bell to ring and her classmates to join her.  The first pair of kids to run in and throw themselves at the teacher were a pair of orc pups (god, Fred hated that description).  The boy and girl were clearly siblings.  The teacher introduced MacKenzie who promptly wanted to talk Spiderman movies with the boy after recognizing his t-shirt.

Fred left to the sound of Mac explaining that her “mum” won’t buy her clothes with logos.

Fred and Mac’s last name was Underhill.  The last trace of an elven grandfather.  Fred hated it.  Hated the man.  It didn’t help that her grandfather had attended her graduations and flirted with her classmates.  Among other things she didn’t like to talk about.  But it was a name that came with privileges.  She likely wouldn’t have gotten into med school as a Smith or a Jones and she certainly wouldn’t have gotten a green card.  They both had pale skin that sunburned burned almost instantly, pale blue eyes and would have a light purple tint to their hair if Fred didn’t keep it dyed brown.  It was easier to blend in with brown hair.

The problem with Elves, if you were able to get Fred drunk enough to actually talk about it, was the difference in life expectancy.  They lived for hundreds of years.  Where humans were eighty generations from the great war, elves were only twelve generations removed.  Elvish females were only capable of reproducing once every ten years, once they reached the age of sexual maturity at a hundred.  This meant that male elves could knock up a hume, play house until the kid was school aged and dump the woman before his wife was ready to try again.

Which is exactly what her grandfather had done.  The problem was it happened in 1920’s and the human family had been shamed ever since.  In the meantime, the elvish child he had with his wife was barely an adult himself.

To be fair, everyone’s reproductive cycle was long compared to humans.  Orc and ogres where fertile on an annual basis.  Centaurs: semi annually.  Reptilians: biannually.

Then there were human females, ready to go at anytime.  Fred spent a lot of time in sex ed classes explaining how that wasn’t actually true.  But the science of human female sexuality wasn’t nearly as exciting as the mythology.

In the meantime, she and Mac were settling in away from all of her complicated family problems.  The nice thing about this neighbourhood was that everything was within walking distance and when she couldn’t walk, public transport was excellent here.

Plus, it almost never rained.  It was worth nearly having to bathe in sunscreen for that.

The hospital where Fred now worked was an easy five minute stroll from Mackenzie’s school.  It was her first day too.  Her office had a plaque already out.  Dr Fredilyn Underhill: General Family Medicine.  Fred glared at it for a moment.  She had specifically ask for it to either say Dr Fred or Dr F.  Just because the world was full of racists didn’t mean it wasn’t also full of misogynists.

She would have to get that changed.

She sighed as she walked into her office.  The receptionist was a reptilian who flicked her tongue at Fred.  

“Ma’am?” The receptionist said, “Are you sure you are in the right place?  This is general family medicine.  That means the doctor will see any species.  It would be much faster if you went to see one of the doctors that specialize in human medicine.”

Fred narrowed her eyes and sighed.  “Yeah.  I bet it would be.”  She held out her hand, “Dr. Fred Underhill.  You can call me Fred.  Or Doc.”

The reptilian hesitated.  Most humans didn’t shake hands with other races.  Not without flinching anyway.

Fred didn’t flinch.

After a moment the receptionist said, “Pleased to meet you, Doc.  I’m Kate.  I was expecting… well.  Um.  I’ll be your receptionist until you choose one you like from the secretarial pool.”

Fred frowned.  “Are you already spoken for then?”

Kate ducked her head.  “Uh… we were expecting an Elf and they generally want human receptionists and nurses.”

Fred shrugged,  “If you can do the job, it’s yours.  I generally prefer staff that live in the area, rather than sorting by species, but we can figure that out as we go.”

Kate nodded, “Of course, doctor.  Your office is right over here.  These are your exam rooms.  Let me know when you are ready to start.”

Fred pulled a white coat out of her bag and announced, “I’m ready to go if you are.”

---

It had been interesting.  The hospital administrators were startled by her appearance and very reluctant to change the plaque.  Female elven doctors were impossible to get.  Technically, Fred counted.  She just wasn’t happy about it.  She dreamed about changing her last name to the much more human sounding Hill.  But she had a daughter.  The sad truth was Mac would have an easier go of life as an Underhill than she would as a Hill.

Hell, life as a single mom was easier with an Elvish last name.

Fred didn’t like it, but it was the world she lived in.  And even more so now that she was living in LA.

Her shift at the hospital ended in time for her to hobble down to the school to pick Mac up from the after school program.  The twins from that morning were there too.  They and Mac were the last kids to be picked up.  Their mom was heavily pregnant.  Fred smiled at the woman, then at her belly.  

She got a frown in return.

OK.  Not the friendliest greeting Fred had ever received, but not the worst either.

Mac was pulling on her sleeve.  “Mum!  Can Brayden and Briella come over and watch cartoons on Saturday?”

Fred shrugged, “Sure!  If it’s OK with their mom.”

The twins immediately turned to their mom and whined, “Please!”  

She was clearly taken aback.  “Um…”

The girl piped up with, “Mac lived next door to Miss.  So Uncle Frank can take us when he goes to visit.”

The mom was still looking nervously at Fred.  So, Fred held out her hand and said, “Hi!  I’m Fred, Mackenzie’s mom.  I work at the hospital.”

The woman coughed, but shook Fred’s hand.  “I’m Tianda.”

“Please to meet you, Tianda.  I really don’t mind having the kids over if it isn’t too much trouble for you.”

Tianda nodded.  “We’ll pop in for a little visit.”

“Great!’ Fred replied.  “We are in apartment 5B in the Winchester Arms.”

Tianda raised an eyebrow, “You’re on the fifth floor?”

Fred felt uncomfortable.  “For now.  We are on the waitlist at a couple of local buildings for an apartment on ground level.  Or someplace with an elevator.  But they are hard to come by around here.”

Tianda gave Fred another look., but all she said was, “Huh.”

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