Excerpt: Confessions of a Coffee Jocky

Lily returned to her apartment over the toy store. It was amazing that a simple change of location was enough to improve her mood vastly. Once she fought her way past the ancinet door and up the stairs to the tiny landing, Lily opened up her door, stepped inside, and too a few moments to just breathe.
“Food. Food for me?”
Lily’s first reaction was to start drawing her foot back, but then she remembered that the giant orange tabby who now circled around her feet was hers and she had, indeed, forgotten to feed him this morning when she rushed out the door to work. Tetsu circled expectantly, tail waving back and forth like a war banner. It was his decleration that he would make her day miserable if his demands for a full belly were not met.
“Food? Food now food? Food for me? Food for me now?” Tetsu purred up at her, stretching his blubbery body up so he was leaning against something? His paws reached up to her apron pockets and knocked the little thing within, and his ears perked when it made some sort of squeaky noise.
“Oh no you don’t, cat,” Lily said. “That’s not for you, that’s for me.” She pushed him off of her leg with the same and shed clothing as she went to the kitchen. In a few moments she was down to bra and panties and was fishing that little sprite out of her apron pocket as she pranced about, chanting, “Cold, cold, cold, cold…”
You see, Lily was a really weird freak who didn’t believe in heating her apartment. It kept her electricity bill down and though she was cold, Tetsu made the best foot warmer in the world when he wasn’t marching around her bed demanding food. In this moment, she regretted sheding her clothing as she met Tetsu’s demands for food in a dish that was better suited to a large canine. The tabby dove into it, sticking his front paws into the mixture of canned food, dry food, and leftover chicken from the night before.
“I need to put you on a diet, cat,” She said, taking a few moments to contemplate Tetsu’s food consumption gusto.
“Diets bad,” he replied through a mouthful.
Lily shook her head and quickly scampered to her bedroom, which was equally as cold but held her big sweaters and thick sweat pants. Soon enough, clothing was procured and she returned to the kitchen to contemplate the naked child thing she’d been carrying around like a rag doll.
The first thing she noted was that, thankfully, it was female. It also had white hair and a cherubish-like face, which Lily thought was a little annoying but it worked. She looked it over for any injuries and, finding only a tiny bleeding crack in her skull, she appeared to be whole and unharmed.
“Wait a mintue… well, that can’t be good,” Lily muttered. She dug out a dish towel, wrapped up the little thing, and went to dump her apron in the washer with the rest of her clothes. Blood was hard to get out of clothing once it set.
Lily fished under Tetsu’s fat belly, which had decided to settle on top of her phone, his war banner tail again waving with curiosity for the bleeding intruder. There was a time she had to worry about tetsu, when he was thin and not as lazy, hunting down anything that bled even a small drop. Now though he shifted for her to get the phone and leaned closer to watch the cherub-sprite-thing breath and bleed. She dialed the store.
“Thank you for calling--”
“Can it, Marcus,” Lily said, “It’s me. I have a question.”
“Shoot, Lil,” he said, starting to steam some milk which sounding rather much like Tetsu snoring.
“If you were a bleeding sprite thing with a cracked skull, where would you go to have your skull repaired?”
“…Is this theoretical or is that sprite thing that dropped on your head a bleeding sprite with a cracked skull in dire need of repair?”
“Both, I suppose,” Lily replied, pushing the sprite out of the way of Tetsu’s probing paw.
“WAAAAAAAAAANT!” Tetsu started to wail. “WANT! WANT! WANT!”
“What the FUCK is that,” Marcus asked.
“Tetsu, ignore the wailing,” Lily said, flicking Tetsu’s ears. He growled at her and darted off the counter to attempt to reach around his fat body with his short back legs and scratch the offending ear.
“I would take it to a vet,” Marcus said, “But considering that the vet won’t even see your cat since you taught it to curse, next best bet is, uh… maybe the Patient First up the road a few blocks. Need a car?”
“No, I’ll stuff the thing in my pocket and ride my bike,” Lily said. “Thanks Marcus.”
She hung up the phone and retrieved her coat, hat, purse, and bike. After careful application of sprite to pocket and bike to hall, Lily proceeded to drop her bike and watch it roll down stairs with a spectacular crash. After a few moments of staring at it, bike wheel spinning, Lily raised her arms.
“Ten points!”
She then proceeded to collect it from the bottom of the stairs and leave, locking up afterwards, mounting, and riding on down the sidewalk, whistling as she did so. It wasn’t too long of a ride, though Lily then had to wait outside for about twenty minutes, waiting for the people to open up. She supposed that, perhaps, wearing shoes and socks would have been a very good and smart idea. By the time the nurse opened the door, Lily was pretty sure that she was going to have to see someone about frost bite.
The older woman, a black lady that Lily was pretty sure had been at Patient First since the dawn of time, looked over her glasses at Lily.
“We don’t serve your kind here,” She said.
“I’m not here with a burn, scald, or even for me, I promise.” She fished into her purse for her ultimate form of bribery--Caffine. “And if you let me in and tolerate me, you can have this twelve pack of VIA.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Colombia or Italian?”
“Your choice.”
The woman broke into a grin and started to chuckle. “I’m playing with you, honey, get on in here. Why are you in your bare feet?”
“I forgot to put on shoes,” She replied, handing over two twelve packs of via. “Like I said, I’m not here for me?”
“It’s not that cat again, is it? Because if it is, I need to warn the girls not to let anyone else in.”
“No, Tetsu’s just fat right now, something I can fix on my own if I can get a pad lock for the fridge.” She shifted for her pocket. “Need someone who can fix skulls and be really gentle about it.”
“That better not be no rat,” the nurse said, leaning back.
“You know better than that,” Lily said, pulling her hand out and unwrapping part of the sprite-cherub-thing to reveal the bleeding cracked skull.
The nurse raised her eyebrows and leaned close. “What the hell is that?”
“I dunno, I just know it’s a girl. It fell on my head then took an involuntary dive onto the bar this morning. Think you guys can help me out?”
“…It’s human shaped, right?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, good. That makes my life at least three times easier than it would have been otherwise.” The nurse moved towards the counter. “I’ll go get big George.”
Lily didn’t even sit down. Big George was actually a man who was three feet tall, but otherwise was a perfectly shaped human being.
“It’s nice to have a patient who’s smaller than me and not a kid… I think it’s not a kid?” George said, waving Lily back. “Thank god it’s not that cat.”
“Hey, if I can get Tetsu to lose some weight I’m sure he’ll be a lot more pleasant,” Lily said. “Everyone just keeps reminding me of how much I’ve taught that cat to say, most people would be thrilled to hear a talking cat.”
“It’s great until he sounds like a broken record singing the most explicit music known to man kind,” George said. “Alright, lemme see this…” he paused as he looked at her hands and the towel-wrapped little thing, then asked, “Lily, has anyone ever told you that you attract the weirdest things?”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” she replied as she unwrapped the small patient. “That let’s make sure it’s alive,” she said.
George, despite having stubby fingers, was fairly gentle with the patient, doing the poking and prodding that was required of a doctor to do, finally, he leaned away.
“HEY GLINDA!” He yelled. This was where George got his nickname--when he yelled, he could yell. He had the biggest voice that she had ever heard come from a man or woman. However, she remained convinced that every child in that came into her store and Tetsu both had larger voices that scored into the absolutely epic in volume.
“Hey what, George,” the nurse asked, looking around the corner.
“Find me my super glue!” He looked back up to Lily. “It’s a lot of blood but it’s just a cut. A nasty cut, but besides some rattled brains should be okay.”
“No stitches?”
“Are you nuts? I’m a doctor, not a tailor,” he replied. “I can’t make stitches small enough to keep that closed.”
“Point taken,” she replied. “Alright, what the hell do I owe you this time?”
“You owe me the biggest damn coffee drink you can make me,” He replied. “Seriously, though, nothing. I just miss the days where I could have a person walk in and not have to charge them for something as small as a scald.”
“Miss the free clinc days, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” the man replied with a sigh. “Don’t miss the druggies but I miss being able to give people the help they need.”
Glinda returned with the tiny body of glue, and with a few moments patience and a toothpick, George got the creature all cleaned up and her skin bonded together to keep her from bleeding everywhere. He finally wrapped her back up.
“Alright, standard small creature proceedure that you’d get from a vet. Have plenty of fluids near by, soft but secure place to sleep, and keep your foul mouthed cat away from it. I’m sure it’s carrying more than the F-Bomb.”
“Nope, Tetsu’s clean,” Lily said, tucking the sprite away. “Thanks, man.”
“Any time, kid,” he replied. “Let me know when it wakes up, okay? And bring me a coffee. A really big one.”
“You got it, George,” she replied.
**
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Kona.
According to science Kona doesn’t actually exist. She is four inches tall, weighs a few ounces, and is what any fantasy buff or beleiver in the supernatural would call a sprite. Usually, sprites are child-like creatures with rather annoying habits, such as pulling pranks, being annoying, and every once in a while eating enough sugar to send a elephant into a diabetic coma.
Kona is an unusal specimen of her speices simply because of the fact she doesn’t do any of this. In fact, from the group that she comes from, it’s quite rare to find the prankster sprite. In fact, not only is a prankster quite rare it’s also highly looked down upon. That’s the biggest reason a sprite leaves the group, because they don’t want to act like adults and are thrown out when they throw temper tantrums. There are, of course, bigger reasons that get one tossed out, but at the moment, we won’t go into those.
So, therefore, Kona is an adult sprite with mature tastes and is, for some reason we’re not going to discuss quite yet, separated from her group. Somehow, she ended up in Lily’s Starbucks, on top of her head, and then finally sprawled out on the counter with no clothing on. And no, that isn’t even the least bit suspicious at all!
Since she arrived, and stayed unconscious, one can therefore imagine the confusion that prompted her, upon waking up and finding herself rather snugly wrapped with a giant feline face staring down at her, to scream bloody murder. Or, rather, Fucking murder, as Kona is not and refuses to be British.
Of course, the cat started screaming back, which made Kona scream again with greater volume.
“Toy screams!” The cat yowled and darted off of the table, which made Kona’s mouth snap shut and made her stare after the beast.
“…The death machine talks!”
Of course, that is when Kona realized the great mistake she made in not only screaming, but in talking as well. This mistake made her have to roll over to her side and vomit because of the splitting headache that now threatened to make her regret waking up.
“Ugh….”
“Toy vomits… is not toy,” she heard the cat say and another stab of pain went through her head. She popped open an eye and found that the cat was studying her with intensity.
“Oh great, not only is it talking, it has reasoning skills. What did I do to deserve this…?” She groaned in a very harsh croak.
“Think… is food?”
“NO!” Kona winced as another voice screamed and made her poor head throb. “No, don’t poke it, Tetsu. Stop that, it’s not food, I said STOP!”
Kona just sighed and closed her eyes as the cocoon she was wrapped in was prodded repeatedly by a gigantic orange paw. Such was always Kona’s life. Her mother always told her that one day, she would end up as a burrito for a kitty, but no, she didn’t listen.
“Tetsu, you lard bucket, get off the counter! Stupid mother fucking cat.” The cat was shoved away by a rather large hand and a new face appeared before Kona as she opened them.
Holy shit, it was a human.
Normally, a sprite was supposed to panic and throw all sorts of things the human’s way when it caught them, but that was the old days and traditions like that are what had gotten her people, along with anything else under the height of half a foot, hunted to just about extermination or extinction or whatever term the current generation of humans had decided was suitable for calling the massive genocide of another species. Kona, for her part, just sighed again.
“Look, I can’t give you wishes, or money, or whatever the hell you want so it might just be best if you let me go and we both part ways.”
“…Uh, I wasn’t going to ask,” the human said. Kona thought it was a female, but it was hard to see when one couldn’t look at the rest of the body. “You got sick.”
“Yes, I realize this,” she replied. The human’s hand moved to wipe up her mostly watery vomit with a cloth and Kona could see the skin was ashy and dry. If only her brain was working to try to put together what the human did as an occupation.
“How’s your head feeling?”
“It feels like someone’s been hammering on it with a bag of rocks,” Kona replied, squinting her eyes shut. “Please don’t talk so loud.”
“Sorry, I only have one volume. Working at Starbucks is making me deaf.” The girl did, however, lower her voice just a bit. “You fell on my head, then did a rather impressive three point somersault and landed head first on the counter. I took you to a doctor, said you’re going to be fine. We, uh, had to glue your skin back together with some super glue, though.”
It is a common misconception that sprites do not know what human inventions are, much less about concepts such as electricity, running water, and high-speed internet. However, not only is Kona and others of her very fine species perfectly aware of what these things are, they often make use of them themselves. Though it must be said that the methods of procuring these things are much more environmentally friendly than the human counterparts as it proved back in the nineteen forties that plastic production was rather hazardous to the health of most Sprites. It is very rare to find a sprite settlement that does not have any of these things unless some freak natural event happened, such as rain storms or feline attacks.
“…You couldn’t put stitches in.”
“Hey, the doctor is a little over half my size and he’s not a tailor. Besides, those needles are longer than you are, you don’t want one of those in your head.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she replied. “…Have you got something that I can take to kill this headache.”
“Not unless you want it suppository style,” the woman replied. “You’re going to have to ride it out, I’m afraid.”
“Ugh,” was all Kona could reply.
“Uh… I gotta ask. What the hell were you doing in a starbucks?”
“I don’t know,” she replied with a groan. “What’s a starbucks?”
No, despite having all of the modern things that make life supposidly more tollerable for a human being, Sprites do not have Starbucks. They have coffee, but starbucks has not yet figured out how to capitalize on the fact that Sprites love their coffee and consume it with more gusto than their human counterparts. So, for the time being, Sprites have people who half-assedly make really bad coffee for them. They are called baristas, but most sprites don’t see the point in becoming a professional in the world of Coffee.
“Uh… coffee?”
However, Kona did.
See, Sprites choose where they want their magic to go or their parents choose for them. Kona is one of the very few of an old guard called Coffee Sprites. There are very few young sprites who decide to go into the field, as it requires concentration on the part of the sprite that most just can’t muster. Kona, being herself, found great pleasure in dealing in something that was decidely more refined, elegant, and relativly child free.
“Oh…” Kona opened an eye. “…My parents must be really unhappy with me.”
Kona also happens to be a warrior princess who is not the best person to be in that role. She isn’t cut throat, or even ruthless. Shamefully, she’s just too nice for her own good. Her father wasn’t happy that she didn’t major in the art of ruling with an iron fist, though he did appreciate that she developed a sarcastic tongue. Indeed, while most of Kona’s clan is mature, they also tended to make their lives ruling over other sprites and vying to be next in line for the crown of the very old and very sickly Queen. And, to be honest, there is no one in the world, sprite, human, or otherwise, who respects a person who makes coffee for a living.
“We can talk about that later. What exactly are you?”
“I’m a sprite,” she replied. “You’re a human. What’s your name.”
“I’m Lily,” she replied.
“Kona.”
“Nice to meet you, little lady,” Lily said. “…Want some coffee?”