On rainy days in mystical families...

Sunny California is being soaked by El Niño. Now this can cause a hint of cabin fever in any family, but in a homeschooling family of mystical creatures, it can get dangerous. Now consider, you are aware that I am kitsune. I married, however, an oni, and thanks to him I gave birth to a kyuuketsuki and a tengu. Now I realize some of you may not even know what those are, so I shall put them in the English context. A kitsune is a forest spirit in the form of a fox, but who can also take the form of a girl. An oni is more like an ogre, although better looking than the European version, as well as more intelligent and civilized. A kyuuketsuki would be better known to you as a vampire, and a tengu would fit the mold of a faerie. Anyway, back to the rain.

Homeschooling works well for our family, as you can imagine that no school is set up to deal with the special needs and odd hours of mysticals. Our oldest, in particular, is practically a mental zombie until dusk. Our youngest has difficulty avoiding boys trying to yank on her wings. For these and other reasons we switched a couple of years ago to Julian Charter and quite enjoy the arrangement. The only snag is when rain keeps us from heading out to stretch our legs. Add to this our colony of rescued nekos, our pet growlithe, the gay chinchilla couple, the dragon, and the cross-dressing terrapins and you have too many legs confined in one space for comfort.

I'm most worried about my youngest, the tengu. She's energetic all year round, as Japanese fae don't hibernate like their European cousins, but without the ability to blast around the neighborhood playing football-soccer-basketball-dodgeball-hockey (a complicated game I have never mastered the rules for) with her human friends, I fear for her very sanity. I have just watched her suffer a meltdown over running out of egg yolk in her sunny-side ups before running out of toast. In a non-mystical family they'd probably put it down to adolescent hormones, but I know the truth here. She needs to flit through the flowers. The eldest, our lovely kyuuketsuki, is not much for sunshine at any time, but even she is suffering. This is mostly due to my mate, who is suffering an oni manic bout of cleanliness due to not being able to go out and chew on demons. He's vacuuming. In her general vicinity. She has just informed him that if he continues she will love him less.

Our growlithe, who usually hangs out in the backyard, and the neko herd, who usually hang out in the front yard, have all been forced to share space under the roof with us at the same time due to general flood conditions outside. Being natural enemies of the dog-and-cat variety, this has led to an absolute fog of animal tension hanging about the living room, with the growlithe setting up camp under the coffee table and the felines taking over all positions of altitude advantage. The gay chinchilla couple are highly edgy about this situation, being peaceful and defenseless creatures. In particular the two kittens, Zaazaa and Garfield, are causing them grief, poking paws through the bars of their cage to tweak their tails. It is hard to judge the effect on the dragon as he only has one expression for all occasions, a baleful glare. The terrapins are the only ones who seem contented by the increased level of humidity, although Heila, the Russian tortoise who had fooled us into originally naming him Sheila, has been annoying our Malaysian box turtle with a higher than usual frequency of sexual advances.

As you can see, we are in desperate need of a sunny afternoon to escape these four walls and get our jitters out before claws and fangs are used in a moment of trapped desperation. Maybe we'll go walk the mall and scare the straights at Hot Topic. Yeah.