Pairs of Pumpkins, Episode 11: The Teleporting Tours of a Top-Heavy Teenager Ch. 01/13

Pairs of Pumpkins, Episode 11:

The Teleporting Tours of a Top-Heavy Teenager

by Jess Faulks

Chapter 1

Silverware clattered against fine porcelain plates in a contest of who could disrupt the oppressive silence the least. The long dinner table in a spartan dining room had space for twenty but seats for only six and tonight for the first time in what must have been years, they were all filled. Three guests dined there for the first time, familiar in appearance but complete strangers.

Eldest daughter Evangeline sat at the far end of the table and paid them no mind, no curiosity nor conversation for these sisters she had never before met. The vixen's icey glare was unrelenting toward their older patron, seated opposite her.

Zarron the Life Wizard. Head of the household. Twisted father figure. Estranged fiancé. Seller of children.

Early that afternoon, he unexpectedly appeared in the house after what must have been months away, arriving by the usual means of magical teleportation. The steward of the house, younger brother Duayne excitedly announced his arrival and Evangeline rushed in to find him.

Usually he would be with his stallion bodyguard but this time he brought three visitors instead: all teenage vixens. Their similar appearances and their impractically-abundant bosoms confirmed they were sisters of Evangeline and products of Zarron's two decade long operation of selling Portia Vasiljev's vitro children.

"Nice to see you Eva. You look well." Zarron greeted her coldly. "Meet Branka, Zentalia and Tabitha. They are family."

Family was a word seldom said in the house. Every resident outside the wizard and his bodyguard were related by blood as were the countless foxes sold off as products for profit over the years. Some shared the same donor for a father but the dinner gathering was just another reminder that blood alone did not make for a family.

The few like Evangeline who had grown up with Zarron had in common that they were outliers. The rest of their legion of biological sisters and brothers existed at the whims of wealthy customers, ordered as designer children for high end adoptions or other property and bred and altered for fates like service and slavery.

Those he kept in his home had their roles too: security and maintenance for the boys. Two houseboys and twelve identical, half-wolf brothers for security. The two eldest daughters were the closest to what might resemble a family. Sisters who grew up in one another's company, both with destinies to stand beside and behind Zarron as grown women: second daughter Anastasia was made to be his magical apprentice while Evangeline's upon adulthood, was to be his wife.

In all of their cases, raising was handled by nannies and training came from hired tutors. Only Anastasia was tutored by Zarron himself and she'd gotten the most of his time over the years, perhaps to the neglect of the rest of them.

"We'll all be eating here tonight so cook us something nice."

Eva stood dumbfounded. "You had the best chefs in the land to train me. I don't know how to make anything that isn't 'nice.'"

"Something extra special then," he patted her shoulder and led the three visiting sisters to his laboratory.

"No tour?" one of the young vixen asked while looking around the room, an oddly-pink furred vixen.

"No time," Zarron replied. "We need to get to work."

Now at the shared dinner table, Evangeline had dressed for the occasion in an elegant gown she made herself, that covered her shoulders to her knees in a slender, flattering form. She was as skilled a seamstress as a cook, though the roasted game hen with a side of potatoes and rare broccolini on her plate remained untouched.

Zarron eventually broke the tense silence, finally acknowledging Evangeline's glare.

"This is very good. Thank you, Evangeline."

Of course it was good. Eva had spent hours in the kitchen, making a mess cursing their patron as she made his favorite meal.

She said nothing in return but averted her eyes to the small, weighty corpse of the bird on her plate. Her knuckles tensed around her knife as her attention returned to him.

The robed raccoon appeared more worn-down than a year ago. His fur was older and drier, and the flesh beneath it betrayed further neglect. Previously unkempt, now it was saggy and fat. His age exceeded his appearance as long as any of the rest of them had been alive but now, his body looked to have caught up ten years in the past one.

To Evangeline's left sat Duayne, a brother made for the sole purpose of cleaning and maintaining the house. The rest of the seats were occupied by the new vixen arrivals. Two of them looked to be wizards from the fanciful, silk robes they wore, just like Anastasia had.

All three wore towel-sized napkins tied around their collars, the same as the sisters had been made to eat since developing as teenagers. The tremendous size of their chests were burdensome to civilized eating, filling the gap to the dinner table where normal-proportioned people might be able to lean in. Zarron insisted the plates and bowls stayed set down as a matter of manners, which meant the napkins rarely remained clean by the end of a meal.

After the racoon barely introduced them when they first arrived, Duayne suggested they look them up in his ledger. Zarron logged every child he ever bred and sold including to whom and for what purpose, so they would be in the records.

The pink-furred vixen sat the closest in the raccoon's orbit. Near Evangeline's age, her name was Branka. She was noisy with her silverware as she ate, unaware or uncaring of the tension in the room. A half-red fox, her fur was bright and unusually pink, with sharp, blue eyes and thick, wavy and wild, auburn hair to her waist. The brilliant purple robe on her matched what Anastasia often wore, almost exactly. It could have been one of hers except it fit her and nothing tailored for Ana would fit anyone else properly.

It was not all she had in common with her. From the ledger, Eva and Duayne learned Branka was commissioned by a married couple of Evoker Wizards, a boar and an otter in the eastern country of Sternfallreich. They requested a child with remarkable intelligence to be their apprentice and had almost certainly raised her as a wizard as well.

Branka was the least bothered of the three to be there, not shy at all and even flirtatious with the much older raccoon. She had the boldness and charisma of someone raised outside isolation which made her all the more of a threat, although Zarron remained cold in his responses to her. Did he bother to tell her he was engaged to Evangeline? Were they still engaged?

Eva glared at the pink vixen but if she noticed, she didn't acknowledge.

The second robed sister was named Zentalia, a bit younger than the other two. Aloof and not particularly interested in any of them, she showed a few flashes of irritation with Zarron herself.

The ledger confirmed she was born and bred to be a Life Wizard, not a commission but one of Zarron's own projects, just like Eva and Duayne. She'd been sent off as an infant and raised at the Magic Academy in the Central Islands, with her school of specialty assigned at birth.

She was in the middle of a block of siblings with similar entries and fated to specialize in one school of magic. Most of them, including Zentalia shared "Donor Number One: Anonymous Arctic Fox" as a biological father just like Anastasia and Evangeline, making them full sisters.

The third vixen hadn't said a word at all, keeping her head and eyes low. Tabitha was crossbred with a rabbit and her sleek, vulpine face was capped with lapine ears that hung back along her thick, walnut hair. Her clothes were plain, a skirt and an ill-fitted blouse that struggled to contain a chest even larger than the already obscene family average.

The other two bore over endowed chests like Evangeline and their mother did but Tabitha could almost fill out one of Anastasia's robes. She carried her breasts awkwardly and they filled her lap as she sat upright and crushed against the table.

The ledger entry for Tabitha was similar to Zentalia's, with no buyer but Zarron.

Remarkably, the book noted her as an "omni-breeder" but did not elaborate on what that meant, leaving them to speculate she might be biologically able to breed with different species. Even raccoons like Zarron.

After some time scowling at her, it seemed Evangeline found the rabbit-eared vixen too pitiful for her ire. If she wasn't completely broken as a person, she had no interest in speaking in their presence.

And so Evangeline refocused on the raccoon across the table: her maker and estranged fiance.

She didn't notice Duayne watching her hand, knuckles bulging as she clenched the knife. His attention darted from her to their master, as if calculating if she might somehow manage to stab him from so far away.

With the nudge of his foot, she cleared her throat and remembered to breathe. She set the knife down.

"So Zarron! We were starting to wonder if you'd ever come back," she said, trying to keep her voice polite. "To what do we owe the honor of this rare family reunion?"

Only Branka and Zentalia looked up as she spoke.

Zarron huffed, his frustration immediate. "I told you. We're working." With a huff, he cut an oversized bite with a loud scrape of his knife and stuffed it into his mouth.

He'd led the vixens went straight to the breeding lab after their arrival and Eva followed them until he closed and locked the door behind him. The spells of silence ensured no hint that their activities would escape.

"Did you? You haven't told me much of anything." She forced her tone to be genial. He didn't reply, his mouth full of food.

"Tabitha, was it?" Evangeline turned her attention to the half-rabbit who jumped in her seat, terrified to be acknowledged at all. The half-rabbit said nothing, only looking between them with wide eyes.

"The ledger says you're an omni-breeder," Eva continued. "What does that mean?"

Tabitha's eyes sprung wider still and she looked to Zarron.

"It was an experiment," Zarron grumbled, his bite not entirely finished. "I wanted to see if I could make a womb and eggs compatible with a broader variety of father species. Perhaps only canines, perhaps all carnivores. Perhaps any mammal. I'm certain it worked to some degree but it's an extremely complicated and silly endeavor and one without any real, practical purpose to a buyer. Magic must be interwoven through her own eggs as her zygote developed, which is a lot more complicated than flipping a few switches after fertilization like most of the hybrids. Even if she birthed twenty different cubs of twenty different species in her lifetime, it wouldn't be worth the effort it took to make her. Making hybrids to breed with just one or two species is much, much more sensible in almost every case."

Eva nodded slowly.

"Odd of you to take an interest in my work. It's usually above your head."

"You forget that I was present for a lifetime of conversations about magic and your whole fox breeding business. I may not be gifted enough to perform it myself but it's long been a topic of discussion between you and..."

Zarron's eyes cocked with a fire behind them.

Evangeline bit her mouth and paused, holding his gaze. She forced a smile. After a long, silent standoff she looked over the half-rabbit, appraising her again before speaking.

"So... you have two apprentices now. Or is it three? Tabitha is also here to help?"

"Yes," his glare held on a moment longer before returning his attention to his plate.

Tabitha's skittish eyes followed Eva then away to her plate the moment she returned eye contact. She took a quick bite of her dinner, eating around the hen.

"It must get crowded in the lab. Where's Darren? You don't need a bodyguard anymore?"

"It's a quick trip. The teleportation spells don't agree with his stomach."

Eva leaned in, resting her chin on her folded hands as her chest bulged against the table. "What are you working on now?"

"Same thing we're always working on: breeding, studying and selling our own siblings," Zentalia said, meeting Eva's eyes. She filled her mouth with a small bite, oblivious to Zarron's glare. "Surely he's made enough foxes to disrupt a local population or two by now. And when they start pushing out babies..."

"None of this is Evangeline's business to know or for you to share," the raccoon growled.

"There are still things to study after all these years?" Evangeline sighed. "This is the important work that's kept you away from home for so long? The same thing you've been doing in our basement for almost twenty years? Did you move the whole lab somewhere else?"

Zentalia glanced sideways to Zarron, her mouth full of a fresh bite. He was also chewing, looking down at his plate again.

"The lab is right where I left it. There are eggs in the incubator."

Eva tensed her fists. "This is the third time you've been back in the last year. You used to have people picking up every week!"

"I improved the process," he grumbled. "The eggs we make here include delivery now. I give the buyer a dedicated seal scroll when they order and the egg teleports to their destination when the timer is done. Nobody has to come here anymore and I don't have to go back." He roughly cut a slice of hen and jammed it in his mouth.

"I think it's a bit reckless," Zentalia said right after he couldn't. "Fetuses are sensitive to magic and most people are too stupid to be trusted with a big egg appearing in their house."

Zarron scowled at her but Branka replied. "They know the exact date and time of delivery. All they have to do is lay the scroll with the seal on it perfectly flat and keep the space around it clear. If people are too stupid to do that, they're too stupid to raise a child."

"Exact time? As if most people have a clock in their home?" Zentalia planted her elbows on the table.

Branka turned up her muzzle. "I imagine most people paying a hundred thousand and up for a designer baby do, yes,"

Zentalia did not relent. "If it's so safe, why did he wait nineteen years to start doing it?"

"I waited far too long," Zarron cleared his throat then drank from his wine glass. "It's true teleportation is dangerous. Traditional transport is too. About fourteen years ago, a party transporting six infants disappeared just a few days after leaving the house in The Pale Lands. Nobody knows what happened but I assume bandits or cannibals got them. It's happened a few other times. Not all buyers are fit to make the journey." He dabbed the corners of his mouth and continued.

"The first girl I ever sold was on her way home when pirates sank the ship. At least Lord Truxton went down with it and he couldn't ask for his money back. It's a wonder more hasn't gone wrong.

"We haven't had any issues with the new system and it saves everyone a lot of time."

Eva set her knife down loudly on her plate. "So the eggs deliver themselves now. Wonderful. What about making them? How are you making new babies when you're never here?"

Zarron kept his hands on the table, utensils in hand but paused his eating. He looked over to Zentalia, who bit her lip.

"Where do you go?!" Evangeline finally burst. "Is there a third house you don't take us to? Did you get bored of playing with mother's eggs? Or did you finally use up the last of them?" Eva sat back and folded her arms over her bust. "Or maybe you just found something else to drown yourself in to not have to think about Anastasia running off."

Zarron froze, quaking. His glare burned into her.

"Don't say that name in my house."

Evangeline took a grip on the edge of the table and pulled herself back in."Why not? She was your apprentice. I was supposed to be your WIFE. I was the one you were supposed to give a big family of kits to."

That got the attention of all three vixens. Branka managed to smirk again. Did she have any other expressions?

Zentalia covered her mouth before she spoke with a chuckle. "How many did you want?"

Eva ignored her, fixated on Zarron. "Is it them you're drowning yourself in? Did it take two apprentices to fill Anastasia's shoes? And why this bimbo, if you're not trying to put a baby inside her?" she jabbed a finger to Tabitha. "She can't possibly be helpful in the lab with those enormous breasts."

Tabitha's eyes grew again, glossy in an instant.

"Are you going to marry one of them instead of me?"

Branka shifted in her seat, reeling in a hand that had been near the raccoon. Eva's eyes followed it as it retreated, her nostrils fuming.

Zarron kept control. He set down his cutlery and pushed his plate away.

"You nag and you nag and you wonder why we're not married yet."

Eva's fists pounded on the table. "Don't you blame me for any of this. You're a broken man. We're not married because you loved Anastasia and you never loved me!"

Forks clattered on plates. The three vixens and Duayne darted their attention back and forth between them while the room itself seemed to hold its freeze.

Zarron breathed deep and deliberately, holding his silence and regaining his composure. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin before speaking again.

"What is it you want, Evangeline?"

Eva blinked, stunned for a moment. "You didn't raise us to want. You raised us to do as we were told."

"And clearly that didn't work for either of you," he sighed. "Do you want to leave here? Go look for a husband?"

She gave a long exhale. "I'm sure the world outside is the oyster of uneducated girls who look like we do, isn't it? I didn't get to learn magic like... my sister did. They'll eat me right up out there, won't they?"

A long silence followed, their eyes locked. In the periphery, Branka gave a solemn, shallow nod.

Evangeline spoke first. "You don't need me anymore. Maybe you never did. Maybe you don't need this place at all."

"I still need this place." Zarron closed his eyes and sighed. "There is demand for these children. Branka and Zentalia are my assistants now. Tabitha is helping."

"Oh, she helps? Is she as good at carrying eggs around as Anastasia?"

"I told you not to say that name." The anger snapped back in a moment then the raccoon pushed back from the table.

"It's time for us to go now. We've got work to do. Elsewhere." He threw down his napkin. "You can thank your bitch sister for all of this. She had everything here. I'm surprised it wasn't you who ran away."

Eva gasped. Zarron winced and paused.

"That was too much," he said, eyes clenched, exhaling deeply. "Think about what you want to do, Evangeline. I can't change the past and I can't undo the harm your sister caused us but our old life is over. She ruined it for everyone. You should spend some time thinking about what you want. If you want to leave here, I'll allow it."

The room stood still for a long moment as they all waited. Eva sat with her eyes wide and wet, trembling to keep her composure. Her mouth moved as if trying to form words. If she was capable of speaking, she didn't.

"Fine," he said. "We can talk next time."

Two of the other vixens watched her in silent pity. Branka gave a huff, rolling her eyes as she pushed out of her seat.

"We're leaving," Zarron's gaze darted over the other sisters for acknowledgement. The half-rabbit hurried to her feet, the fear obvious where Zentalia took her time, meeting Zarron's glare as she righted herself and removed the napkin tied around the back of her neck.

"You're lucky, Evangeline," the wizard said, glancing back. "I'd have been a terrible husband."

With that, he turned on a heel and walked out of the dining room, towards the house's main teleport seal. The three vixens followed but only Branka with any eagerness. The last two turned back to Eva as they left, Zentalia with a shrug then Tabitha with a frown.

The double doors swung closed behind the four of them, leaving Evangeline and Duayne alone in the stunned silence of the room.