Master! Master! – Chapter 7.2

Latest fiction & first time story: Master! Master! – Chapter 7.2

by Sage_of_the_Forlorn_Path

Soon, the mountain lions were the main focus, and Momo had a proud smirk on her face, overjoyed by size and strength of her fellow felines. After they took down an animal, whiteness took over the screen. It was an avalanche. Seeing the snow rushing down the mountain, Sonja again wagged her tail.

“I wanna ride it with my sled!”

“That might be a little much for you.”

She immediately forgot about snow when the bears appeared on the screen. It seemed she had found her new favorite animal. The documentary continued, the girls’ reactions varying. As expected, Momo smiled when she saw snow leopards and Sonja cheered when she saw bears or monkeys, and Chloe simply admired the scenery.

Once it was done, I shut my laptop. “That’s enough for now. I’m going to go turn off the generator.”

“But then won’t it be dark? Momo doesn’t want to go back to bed yet.”

“Don’t worry, I was actually thinking we could play some board games.”

The girls looked at each other in confusion. “Board games?” Chloe asked.

“I’ll show you in a minute.”

I lit some candles and went outside to turn off the generator. As always, the wind was howling and the snow was endless. Jesus, I couldn’t remember the last time it had been this bad. I came back inside and grabbed the candles and a large paper bag from under the kitchen table where I had stashed all of our supplies. I sat us all down on the bed and pulled out several board games I had gotten from GoodWill.

“This is how people used to spend their time before computers. I’ll start us off with something easy: Candy Land. This was the first game I learned how to play. Man, this takes me back.”

I set out the board between the four of us. It was an older version, much older, probably close to my age. I preferred it that way, it was exactly like the one I had as a kid. I assigned us player pieces and explained the rules. The girls didn’t seem to understand the point of the game, but they would soon. I drew the first card and moved my piece to the corresponding color square.

“Chloe, your turn.”

She tensed up, nervous from being put on the spot. “O-ok.” She picked the next card and it put her piece one square ahead of mine. “S-sorry, Master!”

“It’s ok, that’s the whole point of the game. You’re trying to win. Momo, you’re next.”

Momo didn’t seem very interested, but she picked up a card and moved her piece. Her turn landed her ahead of Chloe, and the moment her piece touched the board, I could see a glimmer in her eye. The fact that she was ahead of someone in the game was stirring up her predatory instincts. Oh crap, had I just created a monster? Sonja ended up winning the game, with Momo of course demanding a do-over. We played two more times before I decided to switch it up. We moved on to the next game, ‘Trouble’, and after playing it twice, tried ‘Sorry!’. The more we played, the more the girls had fun and got into it, and I was enjoying it as well. We munched on crackers and dry cereal as we played, as I didn’t keep junk food in the house.

I wasn’t sure what time it was when we started playing ‘Monopoly’, it felt kind of late. I knew that even playing this game was a huge gamble. Monopoly had torn apart more families than alcoholism, but it was a fun game and I loved being able to play it again, plus it taught the girls the value of money.

“Rowr!”

Naturally, the cry came from Momo, but while normally it would be made in ecstasy, it was now done in frustration. She had just landed on one of Chloe’s hotels and she was already running low on cash.

“Momo doesn’t like this game,” she pouted.

I reached over and rubbed her ears. “You’re just saying that because you’re losing. Relax, it’s just a game. I’m really loving this, I haven’t had fun like this in a long time.”

Sonja’s ears drooped. “Don’t you have fun with us?”

“Of course I do, but there are different kinds of fun. I love playing with you girls, wrestling with you girls, throwing frisbees with you girls, but I also love sitting here, nice and cozy on our bed with the stove right next to us, playing board games by candlelight. A long time ago, I was having a sleepover at my friend’s house. We were both maybe… nine? I have no idea. But it was late at night and we were playing this game on his family’s foldout couch. It was maybe two in the morning, perhaps the latest I had ever stayed up, and we were watching late-night TV. It was a whole lot of fun.”

“How old is Master?” Sonja asked.

“I’m 26.”

“26 what?” Chloe asked.

“Years. I’m guessing you’ve lived about half a year. Momo is five, and Sonja is…?”

It took her a few seconds of counting on her fingers and remembering the winters. “I’m six!”

“Master is old!” Chloe squeaked.

“No, I’m still rather young. I won’t be “old” until I’m at least forty.” The girls were awestruck, unable to imagine living that long. “It’s weird, but you three let me feel like a kid again.”

We all took our turns and it went back to Momo. She rolled the dice and ended up landing one of Sonja’s properties. She threw a temper tantrum and flipped the board.

It was around eight in the morning when we woke up. Despite all the sleep we had gotten the previous day, the dark of the night left us sleepy and yawning by the end of our Monopoly game. At least now our circadian rhythms would be back to normal. It was still blowing out there, but I didn’t know if it was the same storm or a whole new storm. Even I was starting to get a bit restless, sick of being cooped up inside.

After breakfast, I turned to Sonja. “You want to go play out in the snow?”

Her smile lit up the house better than any generator could. “REALLY? YOU WANT TO PLAY IN THE SNOW?!”

“Sure, I kind of want to see how deep it is out there anyway. Momo? Chloe? Do either of you want to come out with us?”

Momo was snoozing and Chloe was reading a picture book. “No, thank you,” they both said.

Sonja and I got dressed in our full winter gear. I love wearing snow pants. When you put on snow pants, you’re guaranteed to have a good time. We stepped out of the house with Sonja carrying a frisbee in her mouth. It was utterly freezing out, feeling less like Maine and more like Siberia, and the wind wasn’t helping. We might not be able to stay out here very long. Then there was the snow, leaving my car completely invisible. The wind had cleared out some areas, giving the house a small membrane of open space, but the rest of the yard was buried beneath a good five feet of snow. The porch was completely surrounded by steep banks, like the trenches in WWI.

“Are you sure you want me to throw it?”

Sonja’s answer came in the form of her doing her happy dance and shaking her butt. I took the frisbee and tossed it out into the middle of the yard, hopefully not too far. Cheering in happiness, Sonja ran and jumped into the snow… and disappeared. She dove into the white ocean and the powder completely enveloped her in a mini avalanche. For a second, I couldn’t see anything, as if she had vanished from the universe. Then the snow began to move and I saw her climb out. She scrambled up to the surface, every movement she made sending her sinking into the snow.

Already, she was panting like she had just run a marathon, and I couldn’t blame her. She got on top of the snow and tried to move across it, but she would simply be swallowed up again as if by quicksand. It looked like a hellish trap, a nightmare to be stuck in, but that just made me want to jump in after her. I decided I would give her a hand in reaching the frisbee and leaped off the porch. I didn’t feel solid ground beneath me, more like I had jumped into a swimming pool full of cotton balls, all compressing until I could sink no deeper. I had fallen forward, face-planting into the snow. That was unpleasant. I came up spluttering, and every time I tried to stand, my feet would just sink into the snow up to my waist. Sonja was in the same condition, sort of jogging in place but on all fours.

She and I began crawling towards the frisbee, the game now turning into a race. I’ll say one thing about this: except for the snow in our face and in the gaps of our clothes, we certainly didn’t feel cold.

“Got it!” I was panting so hard that I thought I was going to throw up and it felt like all of my muscles were going to come undone, but I managed to beat Sonja to the punch and grabbed the frisbee.

“Ruff!” Sonja pounced on me, sending the two of us rolling through the snow.

She and I wrestled for the frisbee, burying ourselves deeper and deeper. In the bottom of a crater formed by our bodies, I was holding the disk far out of her reach. I struck the sides of the pit, causing it to cave in. With that distraction, I managed to crawl back out, laughing like I had been turned into a kid. The race began again, the two of us worming our way through the snow, me trying to keep out of Sonja’s reach. Every time she could get to her feet, she would jump on me with that big grin and we would roll around for a bit.

We at last made it back to the shelter of the porch, out of the snow and out of the wind. My lungs were absolutely killing me from panting so hard and my face was really stinging from the cold, not to mention my wrists from the snow getting under my gloves. Sonja was in the same state, her canine energy reserves depleted. We stepped inside and stripped down, our bodies feeling weightless.

It was another lazy day. After lunch, we spent the afternoon with our various hobbies. I was reading on the couch, Momo was doodling, and Sonja and Chloe were playing checkers. More than once, I laid my book on my chest and drifted to sleep, only to be woken up minutes later by one of the girls saying “king me!”. For dinner that night, we had raviolis and meat sauce.

With the generator humming outside, I was doing the dishes and wondering how we might spend our time. “Hey girls, do you want to watch more of that documentary?”

“Yeah!” they all cheered.

“Ok, you get set up on the couch and I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As the girls got ready, I reached into one of the cabinets and pulled out a container of hot cocoa mix. I had gotten it before the storm and forgotten about it. I got four mugs and let it heat up in the microwave.