Page 42 of A Queen and Her Knight

He took another breath, closing his eyes to listen to the land for another moment before opening them again to meet Zarrin’s intent stare. “Martin will be home soon. He’s making potato soup, if you’d like some.”

Zarrin practically wriggled with excitement as he stepped over a line only the two of them could feel.

The End

Unexpected Hero in the Bagging Area

First posted in 2024

Set sometime afterHis Mossy Boy

Summary: Deputy Kyle just wants to go home after work, but gets stuck in line at the grocery store. Gen.

Tags: toxic parents, transphobia, homophobia, beings phobia, I guess?

Note: This is set like, 2017-18, so weed is legal in California but Kyle (and Ian) are still pissy about it and Martin being so high all the time, lol. Sorry but Zarrin does seem like someone who would chat in the bathroom.

The grocery store—the regular grocery store, and not the smaller organic, independent one where Schmitty did most of his shopping—had been called Big Tom’s when Kyle had been a kid. Then it had been bought out by a chain, as if a corporation had thought the area around Everlasting was going to blow up into a boomtown again the way it had in the timber and fishing days. And for some fucking reason, that chain had recently invested in one lane of two self-checkout machines. Of those two machines, one seemed to always haveOut-of-Serviceflashing across the screen, and the other currently had Deborah O’Hare standing in front of it with a bewildered expression and a cart full of unchecked groceries.

Kyle personally kind of thought self-checkouts were meant to be more like the Express Lane, for quick in-and-out purchases, but nothing said a person couldn’t bring a fully loaded cart to one. But if Deborah had been trying to save herself time, it hadn’t worked, since the machine was robotically complaining about unexpected items in the bagging area.

There was nothing in the bagging area. Nothing but air anyway. But that was not a problem Kyle could fix no matter what kind of big eyes Deborah gave him. She needed a store manager or something. At least an employee who gave a shit.

It was the kind of thing Kyle considered bringing up the next time Schmitty started talking about how automation was supposed to be benefitting humans, not replacing them in a world which didn’t offer a laid-off store employee any sort of income to make up for the machine now doing their job. To be fair to Schmitty, though he did read too much, Everlasting was not the kind of town where plenty of jobs were available. A grocery clerk might expect to work in this store their whole lives, and be more or less okay with it if the cost of living in Everlasting didn’t go up.

But since they still needed an employee to help out people at self-checkout, Kyle didn’t think that job was in trouble. At least not yet.

Maybe Kyle was thinking about it because he wasn’t at all sure what was going on within the Sheriff’s Department. He didn’t think most of the other deputies knew either. The old sheriff left, there was no acting replacement, the town council wasn’t saying anything, and some of the old guard deputies who had been fans of the sheriff had left too, or were planning on it. The entire Department might get the axe, leaving the town in the hands of the Highway Patrol, or be downsized and defunded. Maybe Kyle would end up working here too, or moving out of Everlasting like so many did.

All because the last sheriff was scared of a dragon. Because all of them were—a tiny little fruit of a dragon at that. Not that it was Kyle’s business. But he supposed that was what happened when the council had appointed some out-of-towner to the job, who had then hired his friends.

Schmitty liked that they were scared. But Schmitty was a weird guy, always had been, even back in elementary school when he had been just Ellis who liked Ninja Turtles, and comics, and making friendship bracelets with the girls.

Had gotten him some girlfriends in middle and high school though, those bracelets. And his taste in comics had been pretty good, Kyle could admit that now. Kyle’s ma still thought Schmitty was weird but also brought in cookies for him and the others when she brought some in for Kyle.

Yeah, so Schmitty was okay, and probably right that self-checkout might be meant to help people but it wasn’t helping anyone as things were, because the way things were was shit. Kyle just didn’t see what they were supposed to do about.

Like how Kyle was in uniform because he’d gotten off work and hadn’t wanted to linger at the station to change, so Deborah wanted him to help, but what he was supposed to do? He didn’t work here.

There was only one employee he could even see. And yeah, it was after the pre-dinner hour grocery store rush time, and hardly the height of tourist season where more employees would be needed, but still, there should have been somebody else in the store. For safety reasons if nothing else, and maybe Schmitty was right on another point and the big chain had started cutting back on employee hours because of the self-checkout, and it really fucking sucked that Kyle couldn’t even stop in the store after work without worrying about the politics of the working class now. Damn it, Schmitty.

The store’s single employee did not seem to give a shit about politics, or the waiting customer at the self-checkout lane, or Kyle standing there looking around with a basket full of groceries. Although Kyle would bet she could hear the machine complaining even from two checkout lanes over. Or maybe she would have if she and the customer in front of her would stop talking for a few seconds.

Thinking that made Kyle take another look toward the only open checkout lane and the employee and customer in question.Then he said, “Ah, shit,” out loud—but under his breath—because he knew why Deborah had tried her luck at self-checkout.

He reconsidered the items in his basket: oranges, apples, yogurt, blueberries, bananas, and peanut butter for his various morning smoothies—and fuck Forrester for thinking it was funny that Kyle liked smoothies anyway—and then a frozen pizza Kyle could never tell his ma about, but he was not in the mood to cook right now. He reconsidered the organic store too, even if he thought half the employees were high or actively selling weed on the job and it took a lot of effort to pretend he didn’t know that, but the organic place was probably closed by now.

Then he sighed and took his basket and got into the line, hoping that his presence would at least prod the cashier and chatty customer to finish up their conversation and then everyone in the store could get back to their lives and the shit they had to do.

The two talkers didn’t so much as twitch in his direction, even though Kyle had to reach near them to get the little divider to put between his stuff and what the bitch—whatthe ladywas buying. Not to pry, but he felt like instant coffee, paper towels, and a bottle of wine should have been rung up by now.

“Terri Bonét had the same thing happen to her,” the cashier said, holding the customer’s package of toothpaste without scanning it or putting it into a bag or anything. Annalee Wadowski had been working there for about a decade. Her sister was still a teacher at the high school. Her brother ran the gas station in Stapleton. She knew Kyle’s mom. She knew everybody. Everlasting was a small town and everyone had to get groceries.

“She said she came home one day and Kevin was gone. He’d packed up and left for the city, and not even for college, canyou imagine? Terri says there was no way his grades were good enough for that, though she has no idea what he’s even doing there. Won’t take her calls, has her blocked all over the internet—her husband too, although what that man could have done to upset him is a mystery to me. He’s only known Kevin for a handful of years, honestly.”

“They get ideas from TV and social media,” her friend remarked with her nose in the air. “Suddenly their parents are the cause of everything wrong in their lives. There’s no reasoning with them once that happens. It should be banned, I tell you.”

“Social media?” Annalee wondered, finally scanning the toothpaste. She didn’t pick up another item. “I see my cousin’s kids on there. Well, I did until my cousin took the pictures down. Said she didn’t want her kids’ images being shared with strangers. Strangers! As if I don’t know every one of my friends.”

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