3A tabby cat yowled angrily as he ran full tilt through the grass, chasing after a collie mix with an uncanny similarity to, well, a barking dog.
"Wiley, play nice!" Livi shouted as she continued the procession, chasing after the mangy orange-striped cat while carrying an equally mangy plush cat in her hands. "And don't forget to include Wiley Junior! He feels left out!"
Wiley the cat skidded to a stop and turned around so he could regard the plush cat in Livi's hands. He licked his paw. Meanwhile, the black and white dog didn't stop running, as if he hadn't noticed he wasn't being chased anymore.
"Deus Ex Machina, come over here!" Mistral clapped her hands, and the dog suddenly, almost violently, turned its head, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, before he bounded over to Mistral and rolled over onto his back. She kneeled next to him and rubbed his belly.
After petting him for a bit, Mistral took a tennis ball out of their backpack and Dewie suddenly sprung to attention, bounding back and forth in front of her as she waved the bright yellow ball. "Dewie, fetch!"
As she made a throwing gesture, the collie sprinted off in the direction she was pointing. Even if in reality, the ball had never left Mistral's hand.
"Whew, thanks for that." Livi had finally made it back to Mistral, out of breath and minus one Wiley Junior. The plush cat was in the possession of the original Wiley, who was grooming it with his tongue like it was an old friend.
"That trick works every time." Dewie was still running across the lawn, racing a ball that would never come.
The two of them sat down on a park bench, relishing in the peace they could have now that both of their pets were finally occupied.
Livi giggled and swung her legs. "We can pretend we're two old ladies, like this…" She gave an exaggerated sigh as she looked over at the playground, where a young father was chasing his two kids on the jungle gym. "Don't you wish you were that age again?"
Mistral got lost in a memory. Being a kid meant the grown-ups could insist that they knew better. It meant being expected to cooperate while you were shuttled from place to place.
"Not really," they said finally. "When I was a kid, I didn't have my Papa, and I didn't have my own room. Now we have our own place."
"Maybe this isn't worse than when we could play on the jungle gym," Livi conceded. "It just… feels very different."
"Do you ever think people will look at us like this?" Mistral asked. "See a young couple and think that these are the good old days that we're living in?"
Livi hesitated. "Well, I don't know, we're not really…"
What even were they? Two adult friends that lived together? There was no shortage of questions that they were asked, about where they were planning to take their lives. They shouldn't stay like this forever, they should move on, start a family.
Mistral looked away from the kids who were playing with their parents on the playground, and back to the dog, cat, and plushie. Dewie had finally returned to them, inexplicably carrying a different tennis ball, and he was now asleep with Wiley and Wiley Junior in a pile on the grass. That was better than enough for Mistral.
"My Papa told me that there are lots of different kinds of families."
Prompt: Pets
Song: "Kids Again" by Artist vs Poet
Bet you weren't expecting to see this again. I just finished a hefty chapter of my big project, so I needed a palate cleanser in the world of cute short character studies. Adult Livi and Mistral feels like such an oxymoron, but it's super interesting to think about these characters from a very different perspective.