Res awoke slowly, a faint headache still whispering from the back of her skull, imagining that the vertebrae connecting to her head were rusting. She briefly pondered a yoga routine to stretch out and loosen up but decided against it and made coffee instead. While the percolator started to boil up, she had a seat at the kitchen table and looked at the papers carefully left there days before. The napkin with Dec’s number and the origami fox, pulled at the bottom edges a little so it was standing. She had a habit of sniffing things for no apparent reason, sense memory she guessed, and smelled the napkin. Nothing special, a faint smell of some kind of liquor and recycled paper. She set it back down and pondered the fox. It had been on the floor, and anyone that’s ever been to a dive bar knows the floor there is always worse than anywhere else. Still, it looked clean enough, but the percolator was whistling steam, indicating coffee was ready.
Grabbing an FBI mug cleverly designed to read FIB but match otherwise, she filled the cup and added just a splash of creamer. Something was missing. She felt like she needed a little background noise; it was too quiet, even at this early hour, so she spoke up. “Iris, play songs from the Rolling Stones, B sides and rarities”. Her home assistant perked up and some of the less famous tunes of the Stones streamed from invisible, built-in speakers around the house. Now that she had a soundtrack, back to the fox. It was carefully crafted by someone with great dexterity, standing no more than 2 inches tall yet still detailed enough to include all the legs, flat feet so it would stand up, the tail, the face and of course, fox ears. She placed it in her left hand and tried to estimate how many folds it had, examining it closely for seams, because it had to be multiple pieces of paper attached. No seams were visible. Holding it up to the light, she looked through the paper to see any kind of message inside. It looked like blank paper. She was hoping it would contain something, anything interesting, although it was interesting enough in its own right. As she was appreciating the skill and the form, she suddenly heard the percolator boiling over. “Didn’t I turn it off?”, she thought as she closed her hand around the fox and dashed to the stove.
The gas was still on, and the percolator was too hot to handle. She shut off the gas and grabbed a kitchen mitt to handle the percolator and move it to another burner. While the gas flames retreated, as if in slow motion, the fox drifted gently out of her hand and onto the burner. “NoooooOOO!”, she yelled instinctively, in one of those moments where she was surprised at what came out of her mouth. She grabbed it off the still-hot burner with the mitt and took it back to the table.
Somehow, it had changed.
Res seemed to smell a faint odor of lemon, but with the steaming coffee nearby, she couldn’t get a strong read on it. Once again, she stood the fox on her palm and lifted it to the morning light streaming through the window. There were brown streaks here and there which seemed to be on the inside. Lots of thermal receipt paper would do this when exposed to heat. She spent another 5 seconds thinking about unfolding it and finally gave in. Carefully tugging at the ears first, she saw the muzzle begin to split and expand to the left and right. Flipping it over, she followed the seams around and managed to keep it mostly intact while dissecting it. As she flattened out the intricate folds, she could clearly see small handwriting in a brownish ink, but it was incomplete. Big white stripes prevented her from reading whatever was there, then it dawned on her.
to be continued