from the very beginning, ever since her father had adopted her, he had begun making his stupid decisions that seemed so very improper, even from his standpoint. All of the things he did was to try and keep her happy, but she'd forgotten how to be happy and the only thing she'd found comfort in for days was the money she'd received for the work her father had done to get her a secret for the market. It didn't matter though, nothing did anymore now that she didn't have anyone to watch over her. She looked over at the cleaning robot who was straightening an old picture on the wall behind the couch. The robot could help me, she thought. She stood and approached the robot, wiping her runny nose on the sleeve of her home knit sweater.
"Can I call you Marcus?" She asked.
The robot paused and slowly retracted it's arms into the matching grooves on it's body.
"I don't have a name." He sounded sad to her.
"Did you have one once?"
The robot looked at the ground, avoiding eye contact. "I was called Shiny. I love to clean."
Yin patted him on what she assumed to be his back, "I think that is a good name. Do you still want it?"
Shiny looked afraid and shook his head.
"Alright," Yin said, "Let's call you Marcus until you know what you want to be called."
He nodded his head and went back to straightening the picture on the wall. Yin had been hoping to ask him for advice now that her father was gone, but she felt it would only make him anxious. She went back upstairs to her room and curled up on the mattress her father had pushed into the corner, stretching on all fours before climbing under the covers. Her fingers curled around her tail and she held it tight against her chest, seeking some comfort in this mess of her life. She hadn't come up to bed to sleep just yet, she'd come to counsel with herself on what to do, now that she had a better idea of what might have happened.
I could find him, she thought to herself, but he wouldn't have me, he wouldn't have left if that were true. Maybe this is a good thing like he said. Yin shifted onto her side. I could start a new life, it would be hard, but I might be able to manage.
She had heard stories about the Meregal colonies, whole cities of her kind who devoted themselves entirely to their own race, but she knew she could never fit in, even there. She had too much exposure to the human culture to know how to reconnect with her people's customs and she didn't know if she wanted to try. Here eyes flew open as something occurred to her, what if there was a colony somewhere out there that was dedicated to human and Meregal collaboration instead of racial segregation? She knew the humans had done it before, mixing the races of their own kind, but what if every city has become like the one she knew now? Just a bunch of humans hiding down in their great city, loathe to accept their Meregal counterparts except by city legislature. She ignored this possible revelation and threw the covers from over her, running down to the living room where her father had last put the micro computer she'd given him just a few months ago. She pressed the button at the center of the small, round holo-projector, and seethed inwardly as a password verification screen popped up in the air in front of her. Her father had been doing some naughty things on the connection while she had been gone, otherwise he wouldn't have had the nerve to try keeping her out of it.
She flipped it over and read the four digit combination scratched onto the underside of the disk.
"23-14"
"Welcome back, mister Flynn." Yin sighed inwardly and covered her eyes, just encase anything strange came up.
"Is there anything questionable on the screen?" She asked. It wasn't so much a moral dilemma for her as it was a distraction to be exposed to so much human filth.
"Clearing all questionable content from the connection. There is a new message for you mister Flynn."
Yin had opened her eyes and felt a tinge of sadness when she noticed the picture of them sitting outside the synthetic zoo. This had only been a few months ago and she had been wearing the silver bracelet her father had given her, she grimaced, she had stopped wearing it when the humans at her school had made fun of her for trying to look fashionable. It was hard for her to think that no one would accept her for her race, it seemed like a human would have thought of it as a plus, but her life had been filled with mockery anyway. She drew her paw around her wrist before responding.
"Open message please." She ran back upstairs on all fours and found the bracelet among a pile of dirty clothes before coming down to read the message.
"Yin, I'm sending this to you in the hopes that you find it. I left a ticket under my bed for the three o'clock train to Jasper. Maybe you will find a new life there among your own kind."
Yin sat still on the table in front of the projector. It was suicide to return to her own kind, they would curse her for ever talking to a human. The train station was even set about a mile outside of the city radius and humans had been given a death sentence if they left their car. She wiped some hair off of her dress absentmindedly while she thought. It could be worse, I could be stuck here for the rest of my life, thrown into the streets and treated with a questionable tolerance until she died at the hands of some Anti-Assimilation group. She had always been called a cat behind her back by the other humans and she knew it was true. A giant, talking, civil cat that would find refuge in the home of an old lady who was too old to take care of herself, or the pet of some human family who wanted nothing more than a hybrid caretaker to watch over their children. I could do that, she thought, I could make a good caretaker if I could find someone who would take me.
She opened a job site on the connection, and scrolled through several listings for Meregal employment until she found one about a position as a full-time maid. If only I didn't have to go out and find my friends. I'm pretty, she thought, I'm prettier than most Meregals and I should have made a few friends by now. She blushed to herself, I wish I had a boyfriend, even just some human boy who could love me for who I was. Her blush deepened before she wrote down the address in the listing.
"Marcus?" She called, "I'm going down to the city before it gets dark, do you want to come with me?"
She heard wheels turning on the wood floor in her fathers room down the hall. Yin picked herself up off the table where she was sitting and went into the room. She had expected him to be looking dejectedly at the floor but he was looking at a picture of her and her father on the bedside table. Yin could hear the thoughts churning in his head. It was the same picture from the microcomputer in the other room, the one with the zoo behind them, the one picture she had ever seen her father smile in when he was with her. Was he trying to hold on to his love for me? Had he simply stopped caring and moved one? He'd become moody and tired near the end, maybe he only knew how to take care of himself when I wasn't around? Was he appalled that I was a Meregal? I know I'm not attractive by human standards, but I know I'm not ugly. Humans fall in love with uglier humans all the time. I guess my body shape isn't what the humans want, I'm just a round ball of fur, devoid of any human characteristics. Maybe I can change that? Yin shook her head, Even if she chose to change the way she was, she couldn't match the expectations of the humans.
Her body was thin, and she was shaped like a cat standing on two legs, her back leg joints pointing backward instead of front like the humans. Her paws were small and set on thin arms that ended at a round, well shaped, feline torso, her neck blending into her body, unlike the human's, ugly neck that hardly looked thick enough to breath through.
With triangle ears on the top of her head and a flat, black nose with whiskers remarkably similar to the human cat, she was, a very attractive female by her race's standards, and she took great care to keep her light brown fur in top shape.
She knew other Meregals she saw on the streets looked at her with great enthusiasm, but she didn't want them to. She had always avoided those who only saw her on the outside and she'd decided to find someone who would love her for who she was on the inside, distasteful personality and all.
She thought of herself as unwelcoming but she
knew it was all in her head, her father had often told her how remarkably kind she was to others, but she only remembered the things she'd regretted saying. A vision of the lady at the zip line came to her thoughts and she quickly shook it away. She needed to leave before she started musing on all the bad things she'd done.
"Well," She said, "Marcus, I'm leaving now. I hope you can find a place to call your own here in the house while I'm gone." She paused, "Be careful."
Marcus blinked and nodded his head as Yin turned to leave, pushing the front door open with her paw. It had gotten colder since she'd been out about an hour ago and the wind had begun to pick up, whipping the edge of her skirt around her ankles. She ran inside and grabbed her coat, threading her arms through the thick, puffy sleeves on the jacket her father had neglected to buy her last year. She kept a jacket fund for almost a month until she'd made enough to buy something that would keep her warm during the winter months, and now that she was finally back on the verge of winter again, she was overjoyed to look in the closet just to see something she'd bought to keep herself warm, just for herself.
She ran back outside and down the street, intent on getting out of the wind as soon as possible. The sky was already darkening and she needed to