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“Crystal” by Metassus
8th June 2020 • The Voice of Dog • Rob MacWolf and guests
00:00:00 00:13:38

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When she decided to clean her anniversary gift properly—for once—a mother has a flashback to her own childhood, and links the good times of the past to the good times of the present, and to her own mate and cubs. A tender tale of family and delicate glassware.

Today’s story is “Crystal” by friend of the fireplace Metassus. Based in the wild west of Ireland, Metassus started writing some time back as part of the "Thursday Prompt" group on Fur Affinity. His work has appeared in the Anthrocon magazine, in Fang Vol. 4, and occasionally on his printer by mistake. He is particularly keen on word-limited micro-fiction, calling them "365 Word Tales". At some point he'll have 365 of them and consider his work on earth done. You can read his writings and view his photography on furaffinity.net, or on metassus.com.

Read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.

Transcripts

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

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I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and today’s story is

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“Crystal” by friend of the fireplace Metassus.

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Based in the wild west of Ireland, Metassus started writing some time back

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as part of the "Thursday Prompt" group on Fur Affinity.

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His work has appeared

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in the Anthrocon magazine, in Fang Vol. 4,

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and occasionally on his printer by mistake.

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He is particularly keen on word-limited micro-fiction,

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calling them "365 Word Tales".

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At some point he'll have 365 of them

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and consider his work on earth done.

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You can read his writings

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and view his photography on furaffinity.net,

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or on metassus.com.

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“Crystal”

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by Metassus This evening just after dinner,

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I was in the kitchen with my mate Rex, and our cubs.

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We were laughing about something or other,

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and I was badgering them into clearing the table properly.

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I tell you, it’s never easy

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—but they love my cooking,

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and I’m more than happy to stop cooking

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if they don’t want to tidy up.

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They jump to it whenever I threaten them with starvation!

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Now if only I could figure a way to teach them to clean the bathroom after themselves,

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or how to use a vacuum cleaner...

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When I thought I could leave them alone for more than a minute without a disaster,

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argument or major breakage,

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I took my big yellow duster into the living room.

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Sneakers, sweaters, socks, shed fur

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—it can be a real challenge, having two full-grown and three small wolves in a average-sized home,

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but we’re a happy pack, and I love them to bits.

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Bits being the operative word

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—there was Lego strewn everywhere!

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They can really hurt if you walk on them. I’m well used

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to that by now.

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My favourite glassware was arranged on its shelf over the fireplace and,

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as every alpha female can guarantee,

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they were coated with dust and fluff

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—even though I had carefully cleaned everything just the day before.

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Jonas, our youngest, has recently discovered the joys of mud

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and whenever he comes in from outside I have to give his arms and legs a thorough brushing or there’s dust everywhere when he dries off and shakes himself.

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The party never ends in our home!

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We had a pet dog once, just after we married, before the cubs came along.

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He loved rolling in mud too.

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Sometimes when Jonas puffs his fur and fills the room with half of the garden,

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I felt like yelling at him in the same way I yelled at Oscar

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(that was our dog).

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Back then, my lazy good-for-nothing-worthless-ball-of-fur husband’s answer?

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“Oscar’s a dog. They do that.

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There’s no point in cleaning up,

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because he’s just going to do it again.”

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Aha. Right. “Fine,”

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I told him, with my sweetest smile,

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“you can live in the pigsty!”

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and off I went to stay with my mother for a full week.

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When I went back home

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(after ten or twenty phone calls each and every day from him),

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I found the dog living happily in his brand-new kennel out in the yard, and a house

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that wasn’t too terrible

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—although I did notice he left his washing by the machine for me, and the kitchen sink was full of dishes.

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So why did he evict Oscar?

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The dust coated his precious TV screen

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and he couldn’t watch the football.

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Lesson learned. Me 1, Rex 0.

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Sadly, there’s probably a law someplace about putting your youngest cub outside in a kennel, though I’m not sure if there’s any such laws about the cub’s father...

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Anyway, back to this evening.

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I had to climb up on the fireside chair

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to reach for the glass pieces.

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I’m not all that tall, as you can see, and I’m not great with heights.

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Still, I polished the trinkets and the small things,

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then started on my candle holder.

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My father gave it to us for our first anniversary.

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It’s a beautiful piece of Waterford Crystal:

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my little treasure.

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It has a lovely crystal chimney that sits on a crystal base.

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The glass catches the light

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beautifully, especially on those warm summer evenings

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when the setting sun splashes orange around our living room,

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leaving bright rainbows of colour

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over the white walls.

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I often wondered why daddy chose something so

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I was certain he would buy another power-tool for my hubbie,

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like he did for our wedding.

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It was a strange change of heart for him,

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buying something pretty instead of something useful.

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Mother had passed away some five months after Rex and I wed,

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and I had assumed—mistakenly, as it happened

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—that dad would continue to be his usual stubborn, ever-so-masculine self.

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I burst into tears when he presented it to us,

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and dad shook his grey head,

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looked right at Rex

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and told him that he married me, so he can sort it out.

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Later on that evening, as he sat on the porch with his pipe,

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I quizzed him. (I’m his only daughter. I’m allowed to do that!)

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He just grinned in that gruff way of his,

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hugged me tight, kissed my forehead softly

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and said I’d know some day.

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I’m tearing up now, remembering that lovely day

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—even the stench of the barbecue daddy and Rex cremated in the backyard.

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Luckily, I knew my men

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and had prepared something in the oven just in case.

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When they stopped swearing,

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everything was fine

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—though it took the birth of a cute cub or two to charm our neighbours into forgiving us for the clouds of acrid black smoke that covered their lovely homes in smuts of soot.

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It’s hard to believe

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that we’ll probably never again have a day like that.

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The doctors said that daddy’s Alzheimers has progressed very fast,

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maybe from how hard Mother’s passing hit him.

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My mate said one night that

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he thinks daddy really wants nothing more than to be where she is.

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Though it made me cry into my pillow,

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I think he was right.

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Rex, lovely man that he is,

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he hugged me close until I fell asleep.

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Sometimes he can be very caring.

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I think we conceived Matt, our middle-cub,

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the very next night.

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Daddy sometimes recognises Rex,

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but he doesn’t seem to know who I am anymore.

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Most of the time he thinks I’m his nurse.

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That’s hard to take.

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I smile as best I can,

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pretending to be the nurse or the doctor or whatever he calls me,

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and ask him if he’s eating well.

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When we go, I give him a kiss

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and he grins, thinking I want to date him.

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Dirty old devil, Mother used to call him, but with all his talk

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he never had an interest in anyone but her.

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When I give him a good-bye hug he smells of musk,

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rubbing tobacco, and all the chilly winter nights when he would sit at the end of the bed

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and tell my brothers and me about all the lands he visited when he was in the Navy.

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I get really emotional each time we leave the home.

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But Rex knows, and hugs me close when we get into the car.

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His scent soothes me,

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reminding me of busy lives and sunshine, sunflowers and

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our little barrel-shaped cubs.

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Then we go home. All these thoughts ran through my brain as I polished the glass chimney,

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thinking of what has been and what’s to come, and then I decided to give the base a wipe down.

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That part is a single heavy piece of cut glass,

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about six inches across,

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with a dimple in the centre into which you set a candle.

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We never use it for candles,

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certainly not with our wild cubs screaming around.

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I don’t want them getting ideas and setting the place alight when I’m not watching them.

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You have you to be like a hawk where those little brats are concerned!

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I’m embarrassed to admit this, but as I’m too short to reach it without help I rarely bother to clean it.

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(Let she who is without sin cast the first duster!)

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No-one can see it under the chimney anyway, so I usually give myself a guilty look in the mirror and get some chocolate to console myself.

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However, as I stood on tip-toes on my chair,

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I sensed it was filthy with dust.

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I can’t leave a thing like that when I know about it.

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It would just eat into me and I’d end up nagging Rex about it.

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I knew that it would come back to haunt me.

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We’d have a really tall someone over for drinks or something, and they would look right at it

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and I would be mortified.

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So I put the chimney aside carefully,

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just about to call my ball-and-chain to come help me, when I realised what he was telling our little dynamos in the kitchen.

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He was carefully instructing the cubs

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on how to wash plates

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and put them away without having to dry them by …

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ahem … letting off wind at them.

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I gave him a cursory “Rex! Don’t say things like that!”

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(you have to do that,

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otherwise heaven only knows what he’ll think up next),

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knowing they were howling their little tails off.

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In my temper, I reached for the base,

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grabbed it and lifted it down.

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Suddenly, dishwashing and farts all seemed very far away.

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I held the heavy glass in my hand.

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It felt strangely familiar.

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A tingle of memory—you know,

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the kind that you can’t recall in words,

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but it makes you puff up like a frightened cat

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—caused all the hackles on my back to jerk up and out as I tried to drag it from the depth of my mind.

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I knew there was something there, something

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I had forgotten. And then,

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all at once, it came back to me.

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I was very small,

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maybe two or three, and we were at Nana’s house.

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Nana was daddy’s mom,

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a stern and lively widow, who lived in a very neat and frilly little apartment on the ground floor of her retirement complex.

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Her home was my wonderland,

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full of pretty diadems,

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dolls from faraway places that daddy sent her when he was travelling,

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crisp white lace,

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cream slices and almond fingers. She always

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sat in her usual

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straight-backed high chair

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and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t prefer the lovely soft couch,

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filled with crocheted cushions.

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Her quaintly pointed glasses always reminded me of a cat’s eyes.

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She died away when I was four,

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but I recall everything about her as clear as if it was yesterday.

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This one particular day,

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there was a beautiful little dolly sitting on a lace-covered table in the living room.

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Daddy and Mother were in the kitchen with Nana.

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I had escaped and sneaked away, because I wanted to hug the dolly.

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I thought it must have been lonely and cold sitting there, all on its own, in the quiet room.

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If I could just reach it, she could be my sister and we could play together.

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I remember I slinked over to the table

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and started to climb up the beautiful starched lace tablecloth.

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I didn’t rise off the ground, but the dolly started to get closer and closer.

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She would be my dolly and we could have tea with my tea-set!

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Of course, lost inside my tiny little world,

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I never thought Nana might have more things on the table than just a frilly-knickered dolly,

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but I found out soon enough. I tugged

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everything far enough and,

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with an enormous crash,

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a Niagara of snuff-boxes, photo frames, glassware and other shiny things poured over the edge of the table —

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to the left, the right

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and over me. I did the only thing any cub of that age would:

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I sat down in the middle of the shards and howled like a banshee in an blender.

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It felt like I was sitting on the floor for an eternity,

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bawling my little eyes out and watching the room blur and distort through my tears,

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but it’s more likely that only a few seconds passed before Nana and Mother dashed in.

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Mother was terribly upset

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(and if one of my own little brats did something like this in my mother-in-law’s house, I’d have him stuffed and mounted on the wall)

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but Nana was more relaxed.

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The room seemed over-bright and glittery,

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and much larger than before as

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she picked me up and petted me. There there, love.

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There there.

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The dolly’s china-head was smashed in pieces,

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as was a large Something-Else made of glass.

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Mother bustled about, trying to make amends and tidy it all up,

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no doubt apologising with every breath.

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Nana’s face was soft and her cats-eyes were smiling at me.

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She held me to her

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until my wails subsided into hiccups,

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and then sat down on the couch and hugged me close to her lacy bosom.

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I no longer know where Mother or Daddy were.

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In my childlike memories there was now just Nana and me.

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She picked up a piece of glassware that had not broken from the end of the couch

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and handed it to me.

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I took it and held it tight.

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Nana explained that I had learned something important

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as she smoothed the fur between my ears and smoothed down my puffed-out fur.

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Would I ever pull at tablecloths again?

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No, Nana. Would I be Nana’s good girl?

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Yes, Nana. She stroked the damp fur of my cheek with a golden smile,

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her perfume rich in my nose.

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Don’t worry, she said.

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That was a gift your daddy got your granddad and me for our fiftieth anniversary gift,

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and he won’t mind it’s broken.

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Men don’t understand what matters, love.

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What’s most important is that you’re alright, my little sweetheart.

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I felt the glass in my hand.

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It was a large, round, solid piece of crystal,

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with a single dimple in the centre

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where a candle could fit.

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Daddy, you hopeless old romantic.

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I couldn’t recall seeing him in my memory of the day, but I realised he was there,

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relieved his only girl was unhurt,

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annoyed that the gift of something pretty he had chosen for his mother and his late father was ruined,

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and touched by Nana’s tenderness,

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realising that objects really don’t matter.

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Children matter, love matters,

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and tenderness will mean more to a frightened little cub than all the pretty things

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in the entire world.

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Rex came into the living room,

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suds on his shirt and his paws, a grin on his face.

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It changed to look of concern

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as he was treated to the sight of his silly mate,

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standing on a chair, duster in one hand,

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the base of a crystal candle holder in the other,

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blubbing her eyes out like no tomorrow.

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Our wonderful, beautiful cubs clustered around the kitchen door,

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their little faces lined with worry.

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My wonderful, tender, lovely mate

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helped me down from the chair,

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hugged me for another eternity, then,

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hand in hand, we went back into the kitchen to see what mess my men had left for me to clean up.

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This was “Crystal”

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by Metassus, read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.

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For more stories

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you can find us wherever you get your podcasts,

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or on the web at thevoice.dog.

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Thank you for listening

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to The Voice of Dog

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