Found Property

Everybody on this property put something away in October.

The toads put themselves away under the garden. Anjie put the roses under a bedsheet a full day early. The maple put every leaf it owned onto the porch. And Misfit, sixteen years on the job and the only one keeping an accurate record, put a few things under the porch where nobody with a driver's license has ever thought to look.

She would like it understood that she did not ask for them.

A small tabby with one green eye and one blue keeps coming over the rail with her mouth full and going back with it empty. A blue ribbon. An acorn cap holding exactly one raindrop. A glove. A snakeskin of disputed origin. Misfit has inspected each item, found no marks of ownership, and ruled on the matter. The ruling has been submitted to nobody.

Meanwhile there are corrections to enter. The dog is not a labradoodle. The hawk was a leaf, twice. A young man named Kaza has started sitting on the second step, and the lap is no longer available at noon. And on Fury, under two suns, the sand is keeping a schedule, the grass-drummers have changed the beat without consulting her, and one of them has landed on her torn ear, which she would describe as a navigational error.

Found Property is the October issue of Misfit's Monthly Novel in Stories: six linked stories from the world of the Fury series, told from six inches off the ground by a professional. Dry, exact and funnier than she intends, with more feeling than she will admit to.

Nothing happened. That is the entire report.

Filed under Later. — M