The Journal

As soon as I saw the Espeon there, she saw me and beckoned me over.

There was no backing out now.

It was as if I was seeing a miracle, as I was not the only one there. There were a few other ones like me quadrupedal, red, pink, black, blue.

They were all about the same size and shape as me, but no two of us were exactly alike. As soon as I stepped on the house’s grass, everyone broke away from their circle and rushed over to greet me.

Elizabeth said her name, and then the next guy said his name, and then the next, and then the next, and the next thing I knew, it was my turn to speak.

I threw out “Steve!” And hastily tried to make them move along to the other person. I tried my best to remember what it was that they were saying, so I could write it down later.

After everybody said their names, Elizabeth greeted us again, but after that, I started to falter and partially lost her. I strained my head to remember everything she was saying and I just prayed that it wasn’t any critical information. She was speaking so fast that I could barely keep up until she finished.

As if the miracle with everybody else being there before wasn’t enough, Elizabeth told me this in my head:

“And you Steve, you’re here because while your ‘house’ was literally crumbling, they prioritized you because of your dependence on the food bank. I’m telling you privately because why would I put you on blast like that in public? Your room is the first on the right, on the second floor.”

Now, that was quite honestly the best thing that could possibly have happened to me. It felt shameful to hear, but that didn’t matter because she basically just told me everything she just said through an understandable medium! The only way it could be better would be if I was magically given a biblical tongue of fire by a god that feels pity.

Haha, I wish.

Everybody else walked into the house and I followed. The temperature became a bit more moderate, and the ground turned from grass to hardwood. I could tell the main room, which I was in, was the kitchen which had a  firepit that had clearly recently burned out. Adjacent to it was an open hall with one door in each corner.

I needed to find the stairs, so I looked through each of the doors. Not being a human with human hands, the door knobs became a lot harder to grab. I’m certain they had a good reason to use door knobs instead of handles, but it didn’t seem like one right now.

The first one was a bathroom. I took a mental note of it for later use and closed the door.

The second one was the closet, which after a moment of staring, I only identified some basic cleaning and cooking supplies. I closed it and moved on to the next door.

The third door led to the staircase, so I went up.

I did not look into the fourth door.

I passed Elizabeth on my way up, and I remembered what she said.

“Your room is the first on the right, on the second floor.”

I walked in and looked around before I shut the door behind me. It was a much smaller space than the house from before, as I expected, with only a few square meters to walk around in. It was bare, but not as bare as the house I was in. There was only a mattress and a desk. A mattress. A MATTRESS!

I ogled at it and started laughing like a madman out of sheer excitement. AND a REAL desk too! I could not overstate my joy. So simple, yet so great. ‘A sight for sore eyes,’ as some would say. I had to reject the overwhelming urge to leap onto the mattress and go to sleep right then and there, as my memory of the speech was dwindling, so I needed to write it down immediately.

After I wrote down those ever-important names, I continued writing down what little words I remembered from the speech and made an effort to translate them. Every once in a while, I would glance at the mattress directly to my left, and the temptation to just feel it would grow stronger.

It was inevitable that the urge would win; the law of ‘sleep is a basic need’ commanded it.

I gave up and curled on the bed as what felt like the softest material in the world caressed me to sleep.

I rose to the sound of everyone else leaving the house, and the fact that this might be where I live now was finally starting to dawn on me.

It was comforting but also stressful at the same time.

The worry about not waking up in the morning due to the roof falling on my head was no more, but I also now had to be careful living with these people, not being able to fully understand and talk to them. I would need to get better at communicating, and fast. I couldn’t just hope that miracles would keep lining up for me.

There were only two people in the kitchen once I got down there. I remembered their names as Diana and Toz. They were the Sylveon and Umbreon, respectively. I strategically greeted them both by name so that they would correct me if I was wrong. Diana stopped what she was doing, and turned around to face me. She then pointed at my notebook and gasped at it, and said something I didn’t quite catch.

Not understanding was bad, but what was worse was that Diana was now trying to rip the journal out of my paws. She leaped at me and grabbed it.

I loosened her grip and moved the journal away, reprimanding her with a simple “no!” which I had learned a long time ago.

Seemingly unphased by this, Diana reached for it again.

As I was playing keep away from all of her various appendages, Toz grabbed her and all of her extra extremities from behind and whispered something into her ear. Whatever it was, it caused her to stop and angrily storm out of the room.

What a bitch…

Toz and I ate breakfast in peace afterward, and we both silently agreed to not talk to each other until after we ate. I walked back into my room and set down my notebook.

That’s when I got a brilliant idea:

I would use the library to get books!

They wouldn’t remember me stealing that book, right? If I could pull it off, this could be one of the greatest advancements in not sucking at language for me yet.

How hard could it be?