NOVEL NEXT 44) Now we learn our ABCs
44) Now we learn our ABCs
There had been three Dungeons in the area normally considered to be part of my city, plus another two out in the boonies but close enough to show up on the same map.
Two of these, counting the evil monkey place, had been shut down, as well as one of the other ones that had been nearby.
The other one outside the city had walking bushes with mouths on the bottom. An unknown number of them had drifted out of the Dungeon before it had been found and locked down by the local fire department until some national guardsmen got there.
Two teams of senior citizens were “Farming” it with plans to shut it down in another week after another two trips inside for both groups to get as strong as they could.
“Fighting a bunch of plants, some people have all the luck.”
Talking to myself got Blue to glance up at me from where she had settled in on my lap, “Time to move pup, my leg is falling asleep.” She sighed but hopped down.
The last dungeon left in the city was more of a problem, it had bats, or something close enough to them that what people were calling them. Lizard faced bats with pitch black fur and a pair of razor sharp wire like tails dangling along behind them as they swooped down at people.
The old people they managed to convince to go in had come out all cut up with long slashes that had sliced through their skin and clothes. The cuts were shallow, but they had gone right through what had looked like some pretty thick clothing.
“That don’t sound like much fun.”
Even worse the place the dungeon had popped up in was what was left of an old insane asylum. Specifically the gutted out old power building.
Since the bus’s website showed the routes near the had all shut down, and I doubted ride shares or cabs would go in there, I guessed it was going to need to call the army guys once again for transportation.
Tomorrow that is. They had just finished standing guard outside one hellhole. I wanted to at least have one day off before I made them go right back into it.
Instead, I pushed my rolly chair back from my desk, and took the coyotes for a walk around the neighborhood, along with my new assistant.
The entire block turned out to be well within Heaps's range to wander off my land. The pile of sticks looked a little less put together after about ten minutes off my land but within sight of it, which meant at the very least it could take care of dealing with the old house next door to me once it became my land.
A tube of defrosted ground turkey meat, three eggs, two cups of quick oats, a diced up small onion, a fistful of spinach all cut up and a lot of spices went in the oven to become a meatloaf for dinner with a can of corn opened up and microwaved in a plastic dish for a side.
That night I relaxed a little with dinner, a pirated movie that I fast forwarded through for half the film, and a few hours of aimless time wasting made for a quiet evening.
Just before I crashed for the night, I checked on Acey once more time.
She still wasn’t in need of Life Essence or responding.
The land was up to 92 percent when I went to sleep, and at 97 when I woke up.
And Acey was waiting out by her tree for me when I came out.
When she had last gone into her tree, she had looked to be around seven or eight years old, and so tiny that she had been slipping out of her only clothing, one of my son’s old tee shirts.
Now, she looked to only be a year or two short of being a teenager. And she was wearing something that looked like a deep green sun dress with an over sized deep hood on it hanging down over her back as she stood there with her hands behind her looking over at me nervously.
The dress had large patches in a barely lighter green or a slightly darker green. Almost like the camouflage uniforms of the army guys, but with the colored blotches done up large.
Blue barked at the Dryad and raced up to begin shiffing and circled around the girl who looked down with a slight smile before looking back up at me shyly.
“At least you’re wearing clothes now.”
I began hobbling over to her leaning heavily on my putter as a cane, feeling all of my seventy five years. Kids grow up so fast.
The Dryad didn’t weigh all that much more than she did before, but I still nearly went over backwards as she threw herself into me. Tall enough now that she was hugging me her arms wrapped around my ribs rather than my hips.
“Can you talk now?”
I felt her turn her head side to side from where she had buried into my chest.
“Is that a choice, or something imposed on you?”
Her shoulder lifted up in my arms for a moment.
“It didn’t make my list, but we’re going over the Alphabet today.”
She leaned back and tilted her head to the side with a questioning look, which I ignored as I looked around as the five eyes surrounded by fur stared at me. “That includes you three as well.”
At least I didn’t have to teach the wandering pile of magically bound sticks how to read.
Typing ‘Learn to read’ into the computer got me a series of videos with some creepy animated kids, one had something alive on his head, with some simple brightly colored shapes, and some tinkly music to go along with their singing.
All of which drove me, and fairly quickly, Wylina out of my office. But it kept all the youngster’s apt attention. Although from the occasional whine and pained yips. I don’t think Blue was giving her brother much choice in the matter.
I gave Wylina a stern look and pointed back at the office. “You need to learn this too ‘Mom’, you brought Chubby into the world of being people, so you got to suffer along with him.”
She chuffed at me and turned her head.
“I’ll split the rest of the meatloaf with you.”
She slinked her way back into the office, although she did look back with a “Do I have to?” look. To which I just pointed back to the sound of children singing about upper and lowercase letters.
The mother Coyote shuddered but joined her children.
A short while later, I got a call from Realtor guy Tom something.
“Good morning Mr. Bright, I got some very good news, and some… opportunistic news?”
I grunted and then spoke up as I remembered that Tom was talking about something I had asked him to do. “Go on.”
“Well, the city has offered to sell you the land next door for a dollar, as long as you clear out the wreckage within thirty days. The other thing is an opportunity, they are offering several other properties in the area for the same price. One dollar. Including some land that to the best of my knowledge should not be offered up for sale to the public.”
“…I’m going to want to hear about that Tom, but give me a second to get a notepad.” And get my mind in gear to deal with this.
I averted my eyes from the computer screen and tried not to listen as I grabbed a steno notebook and a mechanical pencil with a nice hard lead that my eyes could make out pretty well. Then I circled back around to the kitchen to put the living room between me and the sound from my office.
“Ready.”
So it turned out that Tom didn’t actually know what was going on, or rather why, but our mayor had a talk with the gal in charge of Planning and Development and gave her instructions to sell me any land in my area for the lowest amount possible.
“And it turns out to be quite a lot of it, including portions of the alleyway behind your house that were never bought up by the adjacent properties when they were offered up. Some of those properties are available to you as well.”
“Huh…”
I had drawn a rectangle with a line running down the middle of it a long way and then began tapping the tip of the pencil on the paper.
“Buy it all.” Heck, at a dollar a lot, I could afford it.
“Excuse me, Mr. Bright?”
“It’s all a dollar a lot right? What are we talking about, a hundred or so lots and dollars? Buy them all, if I can’t clear them or do anything with them, they just revert to the city right?”
“Ah…” I could hear Tom doing something with his computer. “Yes? I mean to the best of my knowledge, that is correct. You would just lose your dollar, but you might still be on the hook for the property tax for the year. I would like to consult with a real estate lawyer before I can say for sure. But it looks like we are talking about several eight pieces of property. Mostly small lots, some with older but move in ready houses, others are municipal lands like drainage ponds, a creek, and even a small park. This is really weird…”
I nodded, to myself, “It’s a weird world Tom. How much of that land is on my block, and more importantly, how much of it is adjacent to each other? Shoot, that isn’t clear is it?”
Tapping at my notepad again, I tried to explain what it was that I wanted. “How much of the land for sale is connected to my land in a chain of lots touching each other all the way back to my property?”
“Let me see…” He hummed for a moment. “It looks like, five houses... and a commercial building right next door. All of them either connected by touching each other or by the portions of the alley that are up for sale.”
“Buy them. Buy them all today, right now before someone messes things up. Then figure out if anything else on this block is up for sale cheap, even if it’s more than a dollar. Then get back to me about the other land around here being something I can afford to buy even if I lose it later on.”
There was the sound of him whispering something to someone. “I will email you the papers to sign and the bill, we can have this done in an hour.”
I winced. “Old guy here. I want this done, but it’s going to take more than an hour and a lot of patience for you to talk me through how to do all this online.”
He murmered. “I’ll pay for the land out of my pocket, and I can be at your house in an hour with the papers.”
We said our goodbyes and ended the call.
I leaned back in my chair. “I guess this happening.”
[ Awakening of the land at 97 percent ]