Perspective: Part Two

     ~~~~~

     "I guess we won't need our plan anymore," Sarah whispered as Tess carried Nick into his room.

     "Girls, I'm going shopping for some furniture for Nick's room. While I'm gone, watch him and take all of his stuff out of his room and put it somewhere else for me to sell later. He won't wake up for at least five more hours." Tess then gave both of them a kiss and hurried out the door. The two girls had a quick snack of Tyrannian cheese and crackers and went to work.

     "Wow, this is like a dream come true!" Rose exclaimed as she hauled a Twisted Roses speaker from the room.

     "Shhhh, we don't want to wake up the new and improved Nick, do we?" Sarah whispered, smiling widely.

     The girls managed to drag all of the heavy furniture from the room and, when Tess came home, organized the new furniture in the room, and put Nick into his new bed.

     "Isn't he the cutest?!" Rose squealed, gazing at the furry body.

     "Yeah…" Sarah said dreamily.

     "Now I'm not the youngest anymore!" Rose said loudly.

     "Whisper, you'll wake him! You're still the youngest, because he was created before you. But we will get to teach him everything all over again! Won't that be fun?" Sarah wanted to be a teacher when she grew up.

     ~~~~~

     Nick opened his eyes and blinked a few times to get everything in focus. He recognized his ceiling, so he must be in his own room.

     'Something isn't right,' he thought, turning over. His bed felt softer than usual. 'Must be the aftereffects of that stinking potion that Shoyru forced me to drink.' With that thought, he sat up straight in bed. The battle! How could he ever live it down? Losing to a weak, little, unpainted Shoyru! He just sighed and lay back down again; his head was aching.

     'Wait a minute…' He sat up again. Since when did his bed have bars on it? He leapt to his feet, but faced only wooden bars. Peeking through them, he saw pastel furniture. Where were his iron desk, rug, mirror, drawer, sofa, and table?

     "Tess has finally cracked. She put baby furniture in here!" he yelled silently. He tried to leap over the bars, but only succeeded in hitting his head, making it ache even worse.

     Finally, it was clear to him. He slowly looked down at his body. He saw a white and red spotted bandana, identical to the one Fire2197neo314pet68 had covered his nose with, over a soft tan chest. He let out a high-pitched scream. He was a baby!

     Tess, Sarah, and Rose ran in. "Why, hello there, sleepyhead!" Tess said in a mock baby voice. Nick would normally have tried to leap at her and punish her for calling him that, but under the circumstances, that really wasn't possible.

     "Why am I a baby?" he snarled at them. Or at least he tried to snarl; all he managed was to look cute.

     "Awwwww, you're so adorable!" Rose reached her paw over the bars to cuddle him, but Nick clawed at it, looking even cuter.

     "Awwwww," both of the girls cooed.

     "Girls, stop," Tess said, "he doesn't know how he got to be a baby!" Nick's heart lurched when he heard the word 'baby'.

     "After you fell asleep, the Fire219- something got out a bag labeled 'Baby Powder' and sprinkled it on you. You turned into a baby. He also tied that cute little bandana around your neck. Then he pushed you up against one of the poisonous sword thingies, and you lost all of your healthpoints. Then, this is the weird part, he just left. You would have thought he would have stuck around to acknowledge the cheers and stuff from the audience, but he didn't. Lots of people from the crowd came down to give him roses - " Nick cleared his tiny throat, he didn't want to hear about the praise that filthy Shoyru got.

     "Anyway," Tess continued, "I got you and took you to the Healing Springs on the way home, and the water faerie was nice enough to heal you all the way because 'you're so cute'." Nick was tired of hearing about his newfound cuteness. "Then I brought you here and I got all this lovely furniture for you (I sold your iron junk, iron is so ugly, don't you think?) and the girls rearranged your stuff. But you probably don't even know what I'm saying right now because, being a baby and all, your little brain can't understand these grown-up words." Rose and Sarah nodded, proud that they did understand.

     Nick did understand, though, and wanted to question them further, but his stomach gave a loud growl.

     "Ooooh, somebody's hungry!" Sarah cooed and picked him up, "Let's go get a snacky-wacky!" Nick was disgusted. 'Snacky-wacky' was definitely not in his preferred words list.

     He wanted to bite her, but biting ixi hooves is not very smart. Besides, he didn't have long, sharp fangs anymore.

     They walked into the kitchen, a haven of Tooth Faerie furniture. Tess opened the fridge and took out a bottle of milk - a baby bottle. Nick was set in a highchair and given the bottle to drink. As you might guess, he was not enamored with the food. He pushed it onto the floor.

     "Can I hafe some meat? Wike, a cheesebuwger or somefing?" Nick paused; he talked with a lisp! He felt around his mouth with his tongue. He counted only nine teeth. This could be a problem.

     "No sweetie, your little body can't digest (That's a big word, honey!) meats, so I'll get you the next best thing - Beef and Veg Baby Food! Won't that be yummy?" she asked, while getting out a jar of what looked like brown glue.

     "No! Give me a cheesebuwger this instant or I'll give yoo anofer scar!" Tess's hand flew up to her shoulder, where she had a long, red scar from the time Nick scratched her. She had refused to buy him a Werelupe Claw Necklace, so he had attacked her, that scar being the souvenir.

     Tess was quite calm, however. "No, cutie, you can only eat baby food and milk now! But what am I doing, arguing with a baby? You can't even comprehend the words I'm using!" she chuckled along with Sarah and Rose.

      Nick was fed up with this treatment, "Can I go to the battewdome?" he asked, although he thought he already knew the answer.

      "Of course not! What has gotten into that tiny brain of yours?" She placed the jar of baby food on the table in front of him, but he refused to touch it.

      Tess sighed, "I guess you're not hungry right now," more to the girls than to Nick. She scanned around the room for something, did a double take at the clock and said swiftly, "Oh, the girls and I are late for our Beauty Shop appointment! Nick, I'll drop you at Sunny's…"

      "I can just stay here," Nick interrupted quickly.

      "Oh, no dear, you can't stay home alone!" Tess said, pulling on her coat. "That's why I'm taking you to this babysitting service I heard about. The Kau who runs it lives very close to here and is an expert at watching babies."

     ~~~~~

      "Now, you stay here, while your sisters and I go get our nails done," Tess put him into the paws of a kindly looking yellow Kau and walked out the door.

      "Welcome to my Babysitting service, Nicky! I'll go put you with the other kiddies in the building block area!" she said very fast as she set him down on a cloud rug next to a huge box of wooden building blocks, then she went to untangle two baby Eyries from each other.

      Nick watched the other babies for a while. All they did was play with blocks, drink milk, eat baby food, get in the way, cry, yell, fight, and do something in their diapers. 'These shouldn't be very hard to scare,' he thought maliciously.

     Quite forgetting for a minute that he couldn't fly anymore, he climbed to the top of a bookshelf and hurled himself off of it, trying to flap his (nonexistent) wings. Needless to say, he didn't stay airborne for very long. He crashed down into the almost empty box of blocks, which was more than five times his size.

     Swearing, he got to his feet and tried to climb out, but (as with the crib at home) he couldn't get over the steep sides. He tried to build stairs with the few blocks that were in the box, but there weren't enough. Too proud to cry for help, he gave up.

     Exhausted from everything he'd done that day, he curled into a ball and fell asleep.

To be continued...