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“I want Peking duck.”
“Peking duck? Do you know how expensive that stuff is?”
“But look at what Wikipedia says: ‘Peking duck is a symbol of gourmet food and one of the representatives of Chinese food culture.’”
“Yeah, but you didn’t read the next line: ‘Buying Peking duck has become one of the essential experiences for many foreign politicians and tourists not only when visiting Beijing.’ We’re not in China, and you’re not a politician.”
The raccoon sitting on my computer chair twitched his black nose. “But I am a tourist.”
I sighed heavily and hung my head. He’d been in my house for forty-eight hours, and he was already driving me crazy.
“We’re still not in China, and it’s still too expensive,” I declared, pushing off from my thighs to stand up straight. “Pick something else.”
“But you just got a new job.”
This creature. This annoying, insistent, frustrating—
He twitched a fuzzy brown ear.
Darn that fuzzy brown ear.
Darn that whole coat of fuzzy brown, black, and white fur. That bushy ringed tail. Those cute little paws.
I heaved another sigh, resisting the urge to yank my gloves off and turn him into an ice sculpture. He was too darn adorable. “I haven’t been paid yet. I haven’t even signed the contract. Boris hasn’t—”
Ding.
The raccoon turned his annoyingly cute black nose to the screen again. “Oh, look. It’s the contract. Sign it and order Peking duck.”
A sound that was part sigh, part groan, part scream tore from my throat as I clenched my hands at my sides. “Move,” I hissed between gritted teeth.
He hopped off the chair and padded away on those unfortunately cute little paws. “Temper, temper.”
“You—”
I made that sound again, a sound I’d never heard myself make in my life until this darn little creature appeared in my bedroom—using my laptop—talking to me—acting like some weird hippy-monk-guru creep—
“What am I even supposed to call you, anyway?” I snapped, clicking the DocuSign button with much more force than was necessary.
“Hm. We haven’t covered that yet?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Have you ordered the—”
“I am not ordering Peking duck!” I exploded, closing my eyes and hitting my forehead repeatedly with the palm of my right hand. “Just because I signed the contract doesn’t mean I’ve been paid yet, because I haven’t, and I don’t even know what I’m getting paid or what I just signed, because I just wanted to sign the stupid thing and get you off my case—”
“Lily, breathe.”
“I am breathing!”
“Slower. Deeper. In, out. In, out.”
I followed his instructions begrudgingly. If there was anything nice I could say about the little pain in the neck, he was a good teacher. When he wasn’t driving me up a wall.
“In, out. In, out.”
My shoulders relaxed gradually, my hands fell loosely to my sides, and I finally lifted my head, opening my eyes to look at the glowing laptop screen. “I am not ordering Peking duck,” I repeated in a calmer voice. “I doubt the little hole-in-the-wall place down the street even serves it. What else do you want?”
“What’s on the menu?”
I typed the restaurant name into the search bar and pulled up the site. “Come look for yourself.”
“It would be easier if you brought the laptop here.”
I grit my teeth, closed my eyes, and took another deep breath. “Easier for who?”
“For me, of course.”
Of course.
But it wasn’t that big of a deal. Laptops were made to be mobile. Carrying a laptop to wherever the raccoon had settled wasn’t a problem. All I had to do was close the laptop, unplug it, pick it up, stand up, turn around—
He was on my bed.
The little stinker was on my bed.
On my pillows, to be precise. Reclining with belly up and legs spread wide, looking more comfortable than any raccoon had a right to be.
And darn it, he looked really cute.
I took another deep breath and trudged toward him. “What are you, anyway?”
“Does it matter?”
“When it comes to who’s using my bed, yes, it does.”
He patted the bed beside him.
“That’s really creepy.”
“No, it’s not. It’s cute. I’m cute. Aren’t I?”
He twitched his nose, flicked an ear, and swished his tail across the pale blue bedspread dotted with snowflakes. The triple threat. Guaranteed to make me want to coo about how adorable he was.
Almost guaranteed.
I looked purposefully away from him and propped up the pillows, then I flopped down on the bed, wriggling my shoulders as I settled back against my makeshift backrest. “Creepy.”
“Well, I’m not a human—”
“Obviously.”
“So you don’t have to worry about me being creepy. Let me see the menu.”
I flipped the laptop open and turned it on my lap so we could both see it, scrolling slowly through the options. “See? No Peking duck.”
“Hm…what do you recommend?”
“I always get something with chicken or shrimp. Pork and beef are fine, but they’re not my favorite. Their vegetarian stuff is good, too. What about shrimp? Raccoons are supposed to like crustaceans, right?”
“Raccoons are supposed to like just about everything.”
I studied him as he studied the menu. Brown, black, and white fur, little hand-like paws without thumbs, whiskers, beady black eyes, black nose. He looked like a raccoon, but other than that, everything else was wrong. His mannerisms, his speech—that was a big one. What kind of raccoon talked?
And then there was his knowledge of magic.
I’d known him forty-eight hours, and he’d already taught me how to tap into my dead magic when it was thousands of miles away from me.
Not dead. Dormant, I reminded myself. And still mine, so I could still control it, if I concentrated.
“Did you eat at this restaurant with your mother?”
My mouth went dry.
How did he know about her? I hadn’t told him about her..
I swallowed to work saliva into my mouth and croaked, “What are you?”
He turned to look at me and flicked an ear. “I can’t tell you.”
That was the most direct answer he’d given me so far.
“Then what am I supposed to call you?”
“Hm.” He looked down at his paws and then looked back up at me. “She called me ‘Mr. Raccoon.’ I guess that’s good enough.”
“She, who?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
Now, he was getting irritating again.
“Then why mention her?” I snapped.
“To bother you. What did your mother order?”
I pressed my lips together and looked away. Breathe. In, out. In, out.
“Moo goo gai pain.”
“What is that?”
“Something with chicken.”
“I’ll take it.”
I scrolled to the chicken section and added it to the cart. “Anything else?”
“You said you couldn’t afford—”
“I can afford crab rangoon or an egg roll or something little like that,” I interrupted.
He didn’t answer immediately. I closed my eyes and took another breath. It wasn’t worth getting this bothered over Chinese food.
“I’m fine with just the moo goo gai pan,” he said.
I scrolled up to the moo shu section and added moo shu shrimp. Then I scrolled up to the appetizers and added crab rangoon, egg rolls, and sweet donuts.
“Isn’t that a lot?” he asked.
“We’re celebrating,” I said flatly.
“Celebrating?”
I sighed and clicked the checkout button. “Yes, celebrating. I got a new job that I don’t hate; I met a snow warlock who’s halfway decent; and I have a new pet, too.”
He huffed. “I am not a pet.”
I gave him a sidelong smirk as I wavered between tip options. “You told me everybody else needs to think you’re just a regular raccoon, right?”
“Raccoons make horrible pets.”
“I make horrible decisions.”
I felt him staring at me while I scanned the order one last time before pressing the order button.
“That was a joke.”
“And?”
“You made a joke.”
I rolled my eyes. “For your information, I happen to be a very funny person when I’m not upset about raccoons in my bed asking me to order Peking duck. Want to watch something while we wait for the food to get here?”
“So, you’ve already solved the problem of how the delivery person is getting through your snow globe?”
“Oh. That’s a good point.” I set the laptop in front of the raccoon and climbed out of bed. “Pick something,” I called over my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
“You think you can handle that on your own?”
I snorted. “Yeah, I think I can handle that on my own.”
Cheeky little creature. Cutting through ice was something any snow witch or warlock child could do. Now, creating the initial snow globe—that was something special. Something I hadn’t needed a raccoon to help me do.
I really liked my snow globe.
It insulated my yard nicely, keeping the temperature sub zero so my breath fogged in the air and each breath brought a crisp chill to my chest. I pulled off my right glove and let the magic trickle from my fingers, ice crystals dropping to the blanket of snow and erasing my tracks as I walked to the solid ice base. The magic hummed in the glistening surface, swirling through every curlicue engraved in the three-foot-thick structure and up to the thinner ice curving out into the perfectly rounded globe. It was a work of art.
And if I made this while I was upset, what could I do when I was calm?
I smiled and traced a door in the ice with smooth lines, following the path Boris’ cut had taken almost two days ago. His magic was rougher. Effective, with clean margins, but more forceful in its approach. Mine was fine. Precise. Taking the dormant threads of blue he’d left behind and coaxing them to wake and twine with my white, just because I could. Just because I wanted the ice to do what I wanted, simply because it wanted to do it, too.
There was no loud crack when the sections came apart. Just the slight hiss of ice saying farewell to ice as it slid back toward me, leaving a perfect rectangle of open air that welcomed the outside in.
The outside was warm.
The snow was melting in the humid July night, rushing down the slight slope toward the street and down the drains in the curb.
I frowned and motioned to the block of ice. A thin section split from the whole, settling neatly into the gap in the snow globe with all the details of a door: hinges, knobs, and a ring-shaped knocker facing the street.
That was better.
I pulled my glove back on and went inside. The sound of cheering and chanting echoed down the ice-covered hallway and told me the raccoon was watching another BTS video.
“You took your time,” he said, looking up from the glowing screen as I entered my bedroom.
“Which one are you watching?”
“Idol, the MMA 2018 performance. Are you sure they’re not using magic?”
“Positive.” I resumed my seat next to the raccoon, shifting the pillows behind me to make them more comfortable. “Back it up so I can see the intro.”
He dragged the progress bar back to the beginning. “I bet they’ve had Peking duck.”
“Shut up and hit play.”9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5MMASqaPRr
Date of creation: 01/21/2025
Word count: 1,901
Author’s note: The prompt was to write a short story based on a Chinese food menu.9Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡC7wDOPSikX
