//------------------------------// // Chapter 22: Do Better // Story: There's a Monster Pony Outside My Window // by Halira //------------------------------// "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." Charles woke up to the sound of the television and turned his head to see Wendy still fast asleep beside him. He rolled over and looked at the clock. It was eleven in the morning. Crap, he hadn't meant to sleep in late.  He sat up and looked around. All three girls were sitting on the bed and were just now starting to push and shove at each other now that the movie they were watching was over. He was relieved to see Kristin back as a human and no worse for wear.  Miss Newman, in her human form, was curled up in a fetal position on the room's one padded armchair. It was kind of impressive that she had managed to compress herself down enough to fit on it like that, although he was sure she was going to have a backache whenever she woke up.  "Don't fight," he instructed the girls in a loud whisper. "Your mother and Miss Newman are still sleeping." "Are you going to get Cinnamon and Pretty out of the car, Daddy?" Charlotte asked.  Add another crap to his list. He had forgotten entirely that the animals were even in the car. Cinnamon had probably used the cage for a litter box by now. Pretty had plenty of food in his cage, but did they have anything at all to feed the cat? His stomach growled at that moment. They'd all missed dinner and breakfast, and the late-night snacks at the rest stop didn't really count. Food for everyone was going to be an immediate priority.  "Have either of them been up?" he asked the girls. "No," the three of them chorused, shaking their heads. "Mom and Miss Newman went outside last night and were out there a long time," Kristin informed him. And neither of them remembered the pets either. They had probably been discussing Kristin. Kristin seemed fine, but that didn't mean everything was okay with her. He carefully slid out of bed and walked over to where the girls were. "Kristin, are you feeling okay after last night? Anything feel weird or sore?" Kristin shook her head. "Uh-uh. I feel good, just tired." Her expression then shifted to excitement. "Mom says I get to have my own special day where everyone does what I want when we get back home!" "That's not fair!" Andrea shouted in protest. "You shouldn't get a special day for being stupid!" "It's too fair! I never get anything!" Kristin hollered back, then shoved her sister. The two got into a shoving match, and Charlotte got caught in the crossfire.  "Aahhh! Don't hit me! I didn't do nothing!" Charlotte complained.  "Yes, you did! This is all your fault!" Andrea said, changing targets to her baby sister.  "Yeah! It's all about you! That's why I'm getting a day!" Kristin yelled. Andrea turned back to shoving Kristin. "I should get a day too!" "Girls! Stop fighting, or no one is getting anything other than grounded!" he said, raising his voice.  Wendy groaned and rolled over to face them all. "Girls, can you please be nice to one another? You were so good on the way here." "Kristin hit me, and I didn't do nothing wrong!" Charlotte said as she pointed a finger accusingly at her sister.  Wendy sat up slowly. "Well, your son in the future scares Kristin half-to-death, so we'll call it even for right now. Kristin, don't hit your sister." Charles raised an eyebrow at his wife. "Guessing you had an enlightening conversation with pain-in-the-ass last night?" Wendy looked at him blankly and then broke down laughing.  "I'll take that as a yes...I guess," Charles said slowly, feeling a little worried.  "Definitely a yes," Wendy confirmed, then flopped back on her pillow.  He sat down on the bed beside her and whispered in her ear. "Is Kristin going to be okay?" Wendy looked over at the girls, who were now distracted by another movie coming on, and then turned and met his eyes. "We need to talk about that, out of earshot of the girls. There's going to be issues." "We forgot the cat and bird in the car if you want to walk out with me and get them," Charles suggested. "We need to figure out what we're doing for lunch too." His wife groaned as she sat back up. "That cat is going to shred us for leaving him in the carrier that long." "I vote we let Charlotte be the one to release him from his cage. She has the best chance of surviving," he suggested with a chuckle, trying to lighten the mood. He had a feeling that he was going to need all the lightheartedness he could get.  "Her or Miss Newman," Wendy said as she got out of bed and started putting on her shoes that she had apparently just kicked off as she was getting in it last night.  Charles found his own. At least they didn't have to go through getting dressed. He waited while Wendy went to the bathroom.  He looked at his daughters. "Your mom and I are going to step outside for a few minutes. We'll be right by the car. Try to keep your voices down. Miss Newman is still sleeping. Andrea, I want you to take a shower first while we're outside." "But Kristin broke the tub when she was a pony!" Andrea protested as she pointed at the bathroom.  "I didn't break it! I just cracked it a little," Kristin countered defensively.  "It's a big crack," Charlotte added in.  "The tub is safe to take a shower in," Wendy called out from the bathroom. "Just keep your feet away from the crack. If you were being asked to take a bath, that wouldn't work, but showering is fine." He was tempted to go look at how bad a crack this was, but decided he didn't want to get stressed about room damages at the moment. How had Kristin even cracked it when she was so small? Miss Newman said Kristin had been strong, but he had thought she was exaggerating how much. Ants were absurdly strong for their size. How much could a pony that weighed less than twenty pounds do? Wendy came out of the bathroom, and the two of them headed to the door, pausing just long enough to make sure Andrea went to take a shower.  Outside it was grey, with a heavy overcast, and it was a tiny bit chilly. It was cool enough that no one seemed to want to hang around in the parking lot, which was fine by him. Charles rushed the keys out of his pocket and went to the rear of the car to open it. His wife came up beside him and spoke quietly. "Kristin is fine for right now. The problems will come later. Miss Newman said it could be a few months at the earliest, but was leaning more towards when Kristin hits her early teens." "What kind of problems?" he asked, envisioning a host of possible health problems.  "We don't know," Wendy said in a bitter voice. "She's got magic, Charles, actual magic, and Miss Newman said there's no way to predict what form that magic will take until it matures enough to do something. She did seem to indicate that it would start doing things without Kristin being able to control it at first. We just don't know what things, and there's nothing we can do to stop or contain it. Miss Newman said, just hope it isn't anything big that can't be hidden and prepare for something that everyone can't help noticing." He pulled the cat carrier with the hissing cat out of the car and set it on the ground. Pretty had a cover over his cage, but the activity was enough to get him singing. Charles didn't much care at the moment about either.  "How do we prepare? How do we know when it's coming?" he asked. Wendy shook her head. "I don't know, and Miss Newman was no help. She said there wouldn't be a warning; it would just happen. She said it could be something like her human magic. Miss Newman just sees energy all the time that the rest of us can't. Something like that we can hide the fact Kristin can do it; she just has to get used to it, but there's other examples she gave that would have the feds pounding on our door the same day— sound going berserk, sapping all the heat out of the room, all kinds of crazy shit." "Sucks to be whoever got stuck with the heat thing. All of those would scare everyone half-to-death," Charles replied dryly.  She gave a sad nod. "Yes." He wasn't sure where to go with that. "So… Kristin is getting superpowers. Maybe we should brush up on reading some comic books." "This isn't a joke," Wendy snapped.  He looked at her. "I'm not joking. That's the closest thing we can compare this kind of thing to. It's not perfect, but it could give us ideas on how to keep her stuff secret and her safe. I mean, people who write those have spent years dreaming up how to handle these scenarios; it's worth looking into. Do you have any better ideas?" She looked down, defeated. "No, and I hate that the best idea we have at the moment is to go read some comic books." "Me too," he admitted. "Anything else of import that was talked about last night? The girls said you were out late, and you said the conversation was enlightening." Wendy sighed. "Plenty of things were said last night. I suppose the next big bombshell the girls already figured out, and we were too stupid to see it. Miss Newman is Charlotte, or at least, who Charlotte would have been before all this stuff happened. Kristin told me, and Miss Newman confirmed it." He had to sit down after that to try to absorb it and made a seat for himself where he had just pulled the cat carrier out. "Are you sure?" "I'm sure." He shook his head. "Why didn't she say anything?" Wendy gave a dry laugh. "I don't blame her. How do you even start that conversation? What would you do if you could go back as an adult to when you were six years old?" He gritted his teeth. "I probably would go punch my dad in the face for all the things he did." "That's fair," Wendy said quietly.  He refused to think any more about what he would do in the same situation. His past was in the past, and he had escaped it. "So… does she want to punch us in the face?" "No… the stuff she said went wrong she blames herself for, but things went wrong," Wendy said mournfully. "She doesn't put any blame on us, but when I listened to what happened… well, once I had time to think about what she told me… I felt like we did a bad job helping our daughter when she was dealing with some serious self-image problems. It's our job as parents to make sure our kids never feel ashamed of who they are, and we failed." "We'll have to do better this time," he replied. It was the easy answer; he just hoped it would be as easy to do as it was to say. "She doesn't seem to have self-image problems now. I'm the whatever number greatest mage living." He caught himself and shook his head. "Sorry, I shouldn't mock her, especially if she's Charlotte." "It's probably for the best if we didn't think of her as Charlotte," Wendy replied. "Our baby girl is never going to be Miss Newman. Miss Newman stressed that, and I think she's right to stress it. We should just continue to think of her as Miss Newman. It makes it easier for all of us. She's the one who instructed me to do so, so it won't hurt her feelings." "Kind of hard to deal with your kid if your kid is twice your age. She likely thinks of us as children," Charles mused.  Wendy started fishing in her jacket pocket for her cigarettes, then suddenly stopped and seemed to force her hand down to her side. "She showed me some home movies. I got to see her versions of Andrea, Kristin, and us. We end up having a fourth kid in our late sixties in her timeline. That was almost as shocking as seeing me as a pony. Actually, I think it was more shocking. It seems stupid that should be a bigger deal than seeing myself as a wizened old talking horse planting tulip bulbs in a garden, but it was to me." "Kind of throws out the hopes of spending our retirement sitting around on porch swings without having to be responsible for anything," he said, not as upset as his wife about the last bit of news. "But hey, there's some other good news in there not related to a fourth bundle of joy." "What is that?" Wendy asked curiously.  He gave her a big smile. "You always wanted a tulip garden." Wendy chuckled in earnest at that. "You have me there. Oh! And I only need to have a gun on hand when Andrea and Kristin bring home boys." He balled up his fist. "What? Do they have abusive—" "No! Nothing like that!" Wendy corrected. "You know how they are always saying we're going to make our girls gay with their toys?" He blinked. "Charlotte?"  She nodded. "I don't think it has anything to do with toys or anything. I think it's just the way she is." "Does this feed into that whole self-image thing?" he asked.  She deliberately looked away and nodded.  He took a deep breath. "We'll do better." Cinnamon started to loudly hiss and spit within his cage, finally having enough.  "Starting with the cat."