Page 13 of Right Next Door
Yeah. She made the best choice.
Dropping her head, she glared at The General. Her black cat had fought The Anti-General to their fated draw and moved on. He was now scratching at the door. Meowing. Demanding to be let out. Because he didn’t give a damn what the experts said was the ‘right’ way to introduce him to a new environment safely. He wanted out. He wanted to explore.
Grinning, Misty slapped her thighs before standing, walking over to him. The General looked at her and meowed again, an obvious demand in the sound.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “You’re right. That’s really the only good plan here.”
He meowed again and she hit the button on the console to open the door back into her suite. The General immediately bounded out, scouting this new territory as she grinned, looking around with hands on her hips.
Okay, so the soulmate thing was a bust.
Well, fuck that guy then!
Striding forward, she began looking around her room with new eyes. It was beautiful. Like the Palace of Versailles, opulent and regal and completely not her style. This kind of place, all done up in gold and white with hints of red, was meant for a princess. The kind who would wear silky embroidered robes and sip delicately at tea with her elegant, furry hands.
“But I gave up my princess dreams a long time ago,” she declared to The General who had jumped up onto one of the pretty sofas – a settee, for sure, with its lovely, small, heavily embroidered pillows and delicate woodwork.
The General stood on the arm, leaning over to begin batting at the statuette of one of the fellbud trees that gave this place its name. As she watched, he did what he did best and knocked it to the ground, staring at it like he was amazed that gravity did, indeed, still work.
Misty grinned. She never had stuff out in her house, just sitting around, because The General would do that. It just seemed to prove that this place wasn’t meant for her. It wasn’t made with her in mind. It was made for the delicate, sweet charina to compliment her char.
“Nah,” she said, tossing her head and the very idea as she walked past The General’s conquered statuette foe.
She didn’t belong here.
No friends. No job. No direction. Not even a single choice of hers had gone into making this place. And her mate clearly didn’t care. Give her shiny stuff, a lot of money, and she can sit in her pretty palace waiting on his call. That was good enough.
In that case, she’d just have tomakeit her place.
She had a direction. She was going to gut this manor. Make this suite fit her own tastes. Probably sage it a bit – did they have sage here? She’d find the equivalent and burn that. Burn away all the negative vibes she’d dragged in here with her disappointed expectations.
Because she wasn’t some wilting little fellbud flower that would wait, delicate and forgotten, for the char to decide she was worth paying attention to.
She’d spend all that money on redecorating. On making The General a nice little command station HQ for him to claim as his own.
And as she was doing that, she was going to figure out her place here.
She was a hairdresser for crying out loud! On a planet full of people who were covered head to toe in fur! There wasdefinitelysome kind of grooming profession here – though she honestly didn’t know if that word would be offensive or not. She’d figure it out. She’d figure out how to do hair here too, because that’s what she liked doing. Besides, she’d need to learn their products and tools if she wanted to keep up her own hair as well. Did they have hair dye here? Fur dye? Wigs? Hot irons? She didn’t know anything, but she was going to learn.
It was like she was going back to beauty school! Only, this time, she was doing it with all the experience and techniques she’d learned on Earth, melding them with whatever she could pick up here and creating a whole new style!
Misty grabbed the drapes over the large window and yanked them apart, letting in a lot of sunlight. It gleamed off the shiny roof of the Glass Manor that she could see perfectly from here. She smirked at it, crossing her arms, as The General jumped up onto the windowsill so he could look out over the fellbud trees that formed a dusky blue ocean of leaves before her. It was beautiful and alien and, now, it was all hers.
“We’ll be alright, General,” she said to her cat as he bobbed his head – no doubt trying to see past The Anti-General in the glass. “We’re going to live our lives the way we always have. Proud and unbothered by everyone else. Right?”
The General began batting at the window, like he was trying to dig through, his cute little pink beans sliding smoothly on the glass, leaving streaks behind.
Misty could only laugh.
Matehood? That was a bust.
Fine. She was going to take full advantage of whatever he wanted to give her. She’d use this as an opportunity to make new skills, new friends, and establish herself on this planet. That way, if he ever decided he wanted her out, she’d have herself to fall back on.
Even if she had to do it alone.
Chapter 6
Tsok
