Evy & Stella #213 (Alix Corinani)

I tend to roll with the punches. From my experience life changes quickly, so it's usually better to just go with it than question things too deeply. For example, I could wonder how hanging out with Pippi and Kitty for brunch turned into us hanging out with the other Kilanders to us going to a theme park to Kitty and I babysitting Pippi's friend Stella's younger sister Zeta while Pippi chatted with Stella alone. It was simply easier to just accept that that was the way things were. I supposed Stella was my friend too, we were coworkers and had gone on a vacation and all, but she still felt like she was more Pippi's friend than mine.

Still, that didn't mean I could just ignore my duties here. Zeta was one of my students too, so this was just kind of like a new work shift.

The three of us had gone to an arcade at ColaBLU World, the various beeps, bloops, and blorps from the machines chirping all around us.

"Were you one of the kids I had help find some arcade machines from Snowball?" I asked.

Zeta looked like I just offered her stale, moldy bread. "I don't...huh?"

"OK, that was probably some other group," I said, trying to remember the names of all the students that got roped into that one.

"If Corinani bugs you too much, just say so and I'll banish her to play Dinosaur Escape Vehicle for the rest of the day," Kitty said.

"Well, that's a fun game, so sure, let's do that," I said.

"Maybe we should ask little Zeta what she wants to do," Kitty said.

"Little Zeta...?" Zeta said.

I didn't take Kitty to be the type to pay attention to many of her students, but she did do some mentor-like stuff at Wildfire Hearts to a few, so maybe that carried over with the jump to Rising Shards?

"So you two get along pretty well?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, me and Zeta go way back," Kitty said, trying to pat Zeta on the back, but she just dodged it by flinching out of the way.

"We don't really?" Zeta said. "I mean, you're my principal now, I guess. And you did rescue me that one time. But you also messed with us in the void that other time."

"I do lots of stuff, it's hard to keep track," Kitty said.

"I'm also dating your niece, so that's...I guess you're kinda family?" Zeta didn't look too enthused to say that out loud, but Kitty didn't seem to notice or care.

I wondered if this Kitty and Pippi thing went anywhere, would Zeta and Stella be kinda like family to me too? All the Kilanders would too, I guess. Would that be something worth dealing with, or would it be kind of cool?

Wait, we haven't even met Pippi's family. I smacked my cheeks to focus. Don't go twelve steps ahead when we've done like one step!

"That's chapter thirteen of Corinani-Nomics for Cani," I said, only realizing I said that out loud once it had already been spoken.

"Uh..." Zeta said. "Keeping track of things?"

"Just ignore her, let's pick a game already or she'll start reading excerpts from her dumb book," Kitty said.