"Oswald?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you think my parents are up to?"
"I have no idea."
"I'm going to go check. I'll be back soon."
I opened the closet door and stepped out to my relatively roomy bedroom. The door shut behind me. I headed to the living room. It seemed like a living room kind of time right now. The hallway there was long and straight and I soon saw them sitting on the couch. I snuck up behind them and climbed over the couch.
"Hey, what's on the TV?"
"PRINCESS TAPDANCING LUNA!"
"What?" I looked at the TV. It was a documentary on dolphins, not the moon princess dancing about. "That's not right dad." Mom shuffled away and went down the hall to the kitchen. "Those are dolphins."
"Yes. I'm sorry. You just scared me."
Dad's kind of jumpy. So is mom. Maybe that's why they love each other. "Sorry."
We watched the dolphin documentary together. The dolphins were playing together with a ball, striped red and white. It felt much like a less extreme game of tennis or volleyball, one neither side of dolphins seemed to be winning. A breeze blew in through the window and blew my hair into my face.
I was slumped to one side, propping my head up with a hoof. "How long have they been doing this?"
"About an hour. The documentary guys said they ran out of money so most of the movie's been this. I'm having fun. Kind of."
"Me too." We kept watching the hypnotic bouncing of the ball from one side of the screen to the other. Footsteps came from down the hall. It was my mom followed by my little sister, Banana Bread. Our whole familed is named like that, a combination of the parents' names, except for me. I'm just Lisbon, a titilur link to my father. and about the only link we shared.
"NACHOS! NACHOS!" Banana Bread bounced behind my mom, who was, in fact, carrying a huge plate of nachos. The melted cheese, the diced veggies looked phenomenal. Banana Bread was still bouncing when she and mom reached the table. Then she bounced up on the couch next to me. "HI!"
"Hi." I was.. strange to some people for sure, but Banana Bread seemed like she was always bouncing off the walls.
"Guess what else we got? CATAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN!"
I cringed and covered my ears. Loud noises were bad, and Banana Bread was very fond of them.
Catan was okay. All four of us were used to bigger games, but Banana Bread liked it so our board still got a lot of use. Dad was doing horribly. His army was weak, his towns were weak, and his road was weak. The robber practically lived on his tiles.
"Dad, you're throwing the game." I stuffed a ball of nacho into my mouth.
"I'll make up the slack soon. The dice have been mean to me all game, and that ends with this roll." He tossed the dice and they stopped on tile numbers he didn't even own.
"You're doing this on purpose."
"What? No. Why do you think that?"
"You're better with numbers than this."
Mom had resorted to staring at her resource cards. Dad looked from me to Banana Bread and back to me. For a moment I was stuck between continuing or not.
"You're letting me and Banana Bread win, aren't you?" Banana Bread looked up from the board, holding a mouthful of nachos mid-bite.
"Yes. Look, it was Wacky's idea!" Everyone looked to mom; me expectant, dad despondent, Banana Bread confused.
Mom slumped back into her seat. "I thought it was a good idea. I didn't want him beating you two, at least not by a lot."
"That kind of ruins the whole idea of a game, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. Sorry."
"These nachos are great!" Banana Bread's face was covered with cheese.
"Were great," I said. "You ate them all."
"Finally dad spoke. "We're not done the game, are we?"
"No, but I'd like a more legitimate rematch."
"Okay."
The second game went a lot better. Dad won. I headed back to my bedroom to hang out with Oswald. I opened the closet door. He was sitting on the box I left in there for him. He was playing solitaire. Golf.
"Hi Lisbon."
"Hey Oswald." I sat up against a wall. "Are you sure you like it in here?"
"Yes. It's cozy. It's like a little room. I can make it bigger."
Oswald knew how to do a lot of things I didn't. "You can?"
Oswald nodded and clapped two of his tentacles together. The closet's walls faded away to miles of ocean. The floor turned to sand.
"
You can!"
"Yes." Oswald floated around. "You can also breathe in here. I don't get it either. It just works."
I hyperventilated to try it out. It definitely worked. I mean I could talk and stuff so I figured breathing would work, right? And it did!
"Come! There is a place I wish to show you." Oswald said, floating over a hill spotted with coral reefs. Reeves?
I doggy paddled after him. Swimming in this magical water came effortlessly. I swam over the hill and looked down into a canyon, with a large city at the bottom.
"This is my home, Lisbon. My friends and family all live here, in the squid city."
"It's beautiful!" It was so beautiful I couldn't even describe how beautiful it was here. Sorry!
Oswald floated down and I followed him. Soon we were at street level.
"It's a bit bigger than Ponyville, isn't it? I don't get lost, though. If you ever don't know where you are, you can swim up to get your bearings. Follow me. I want to introduce you to my family."
We passed many different types of squid on our way to Oswald's house. One was cooking hot dogs on a street corner and giving them to the squid children. Another was breakdancing, which was even more impressive than the usual pony breakdancing because of all of his legs. One was dressed like a pirate. Another was dressed like a pretzel!
Oswald led me to a small, cozy home near the edge of the city. He floated in front of it and looked up to the second floor and smiled. "This is my other home, away from the closet. I grew up here and come back often. Things haven't changed much. Let's enter." He zipped over to the front door and gently knocked. A squid, red just like Oswald but female, opened the door. "Hi mom!"
"Oswald!" She tossed the mop behind her and hugged him. She opened her eyes and saw me. "Is this Lisbon?"
"Yep!"
"Hello, Oswald's mom!"
"Hi, Lisbon! Come inside, both of you."
We entered! The inside walls were curved and concave. The furniture seemed spongey, like it would bounce if I dropped it or threw it against the wall.
"You like my house, Lisbon?"
I nodded.
Oswald picked up a chair and tossed it against a wall. It bounced off and floated around the room, bouncing off the walls, ceiling and floor like a rubber ball. "All squid architecture is like this. Nobody ever gets hurt."
We sat down and watched squid television while Oswald's mom made us waffles. It turns out squids have documentaries on ponies.
"This is weird."
"I suppose it is for you, isn't it?" Oswald looked to the television and then back to me. "Have you ever seen a documentary on squid?"
"Nope."
"Oh."
"Just dolphins. The budget's been cut to the channel my family gets. They don't have much else to show."
Oswald's face scrunched a little. He did that when he was confused. "What's a budget?"
"It's... a thing that you're given that lets you do stuff you're supposed to. Like an amount of money. You spend the money to do different things. If you don't have a lot of budget to do things then sometimes you have to settle for less, like dolphin documentaries." I frowned. "Really bad ones."
"Ohhhh."
He paused. then spoke again.
"I don't get it."
I giggled. For once I knew something that Oswald didn't!
The rest of the evening with Oswald's family was uneventful, which suited me fine. I needed a break from my little sister.
