WE WALKED A MIMIC
One evening, I’d just gotten out of the bath and retired to the dining room for a nice cup of cold water.
“Oof—this almost feels like this is going to give me brain freeze, but that’s nice in its own right,” I said to myself.
Halkara was in the dining room as well, reading a book. It seemed she hadn’t been drinking tonight. The title of her book was The Secret to Keeping Your Company Afloat, and I figured it had to be some sort of business-centric self-help book.
Eventually, Halkara looked up from her book.
“Um, Madame Teacher?” she said. “I have a question for you.”
“Go ahead, as long as it’s not something management related,” I replied.
“Don’t you think we should let the mimic in the vacant room go out on walks sometimes?”
Now that sure wasn’t the question I was expecting… I haven’t considered that at all, actually.
“W-walks…? Is that something mimics do?” I wondered out loud.
Mimics were treasure chest–shaped monsters that attacked anyone unlucky enough to try and open them. The mimic Halkara was talking about, however, was a sort of special one who lived in our house.
A member of the demons’ order of Appraisal Knights named Sorya ran an antique shop called Ten Thousand Dragons, and I’d recently been roped into exploring one of their warehouses with a phantom thief named Canhein. That warehouse was full of mimics, and for some reason one of them had taken a liking to me. I’d decided there’d be no harm in letting it follow me, and in the end, it had accompanied me all the way home and taken up residence in one of our empty rooms.
Taking care of an animal was harder than people gave it credit for, and I knew it wasn’t something I could treat like a game. Mimics, however, lived on a diet of dust, which meant I didn’t have to bother feeding it. Its eating habits kept the empty room nice and clean, actually, which was killing two birds with one stone. Plus, although I knew introducing new, invasive animals to the highlands would be a bad idea, there weren’t any other mimics around for this one to breed with, so I didn’t see any danger of it throwing off the local ecosystem.
So that’s how I ended up with a mimic living in my house…but honestly, its presence hadn’t made much of any impact on our lives since then. This probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but the mimic had spent pretty much all its time since then sitting still in its room. I wasn’t neglecting it, to be clear—I stopped by to peek in on it, and even opened its box every once in a while to make sure it was doing fine. It’s just that I hadn’t really interacted with it much in any other way. To be honest, it wasn’t the most exciting pet to watch.
And now Halkara’s talking about walking it…?
“Why in the world would we take it for a walk? Mimics are supposed to stay still most of the time, right? It’s always sitting in the same spot when I check up on it, anyway.”
I was pretty sure the mimic would be totally fine even if we left it on its own for a couple months straight, but seeing as I’d brought it home with me, I felt an ethical responsibility to keep a slightly closer eye on it than that. My daughters peeked at it on occasion as well. At this point, that empty room was more or less the designated mimic chamber.
“Maybe so, but even mimics move around every once in a while, don’t they?” said Halkara. “It opens up its box on its own when it eats dust, too! I thought it might appreciate getting some fresh air out in the highlands from time to time.”
“Do you really think a dust-eating monster has much interest in fresh air…?” If anything, I get the sense it would like being secluded somewhere nice and quiet.
“Maybe they do! Think about how eager they are to bite anyone who accidentally opens them up. Mimics might be surprisingly active monsters, when all’s said and done!”
Halkara really isn’t backing down on this, is she? I guess they are supposed to be dangerous from a normal person’s perspective, if you’re unlucky enough to open one, so they probably can move quite a bit when the moment calls for it.
“I guess that makes sense,” I admitted. “Come to think of it, you always pay really close attention to animals, don’t you, Halkara…? Do mimics count as animals? You know what I mean.”
Halkara was pretty blasé about taking care of herself, between all the poisonous mushrooms she ate and all the booze she guzzled, but she could actually be very attentive when it came to taking care of something or someone else. That trait was probably a big part of why she could do a good job as her company’s president. It was something I certainly couldn’t hope to imitate, that’s for sure.
“You’re really flattering me today, aren’t you, Madame Teacher? I’ve never thought of myself as an attentive person at all! I just thought since the mimic’s our pet, it would only make sense to take it out on a walk sometimes, that’s all,” Halkara said, tapping her closed book with her hand for emphasis. It seemed she was having a hard time taking my compliment.
“Well, I can’t imagine taking it for a walk could do that much harm. Why not give it a try?” I said. “If it doesn’t want to leave the house, it just won’t follow us outside.”
How the mimic felt about this prospect was, of course, the single most important factor. Taking it for a walk to make ourselves feel like good pet owners would be an awful idea if it didn’t actually want to go. Then again, I had mixed feelings about treating it as a pet in the first place, considering we’d mostly just let it sit in an empty room…
“Understood!” said Halkara. “Okay, then—I’ll go take a look in the mimic’s room!”
Halkara got up and trundled along down the hallway. The mimic’s room, by the way, had a sign hanging on it that read DANGER! DO NOT ENTER! I didn’t think the mimic would instantly jump anyone who stepped inside, but it still seemed best to be a little cautious about opening the door, just in case. A pound of prevention, and all.
Fortunately, my daughters were very good about listening to me and had refrained from opening the mimic up when Laika, Flatorte, or I weren’t around to watch over them. The mimic seemed to be used to me (or I at least assumed so, considering it had followed me home and all), but there was no predicting how it would react to my daughters, and I didn’t want to wait until after they’d been badly bitten to take action.
I also knew that even though the mimic seemed comfortable around me normally, it could very well attack me for no real reason someday. I’d heard too many stories about people being mauled out of the blue by animals they’d kept as pets for years to think it couldn’t happen to me.
I heard Halkara’s voice from down the hallway. It was nighttime, so I could make out her words very clearly.
“Ooh, you really are energetic today, aren’t you! Good mimic, good mimic!”
Sounds like it really does want to move around a little, then. They sit still most of the time, sure, but I guess the main body inside the box must enjoy getting some exercise from time to time.
A moment later, Halkara strolled back into the dining room with a big smile on her face—
“I brought the mimic, Madame Teacher!”
—and the mimic riding on her head, attached with its teeth!
Actually, maybe “riding” isn’t the right word for that… It’s more like it’s gnawing on her?
“Oh, geez, are you okay?! It sure doesn’t look like it! And why are you smiling?!” This isn’t a situation that calls for a smile, no matter how you look at it! I’m witnessing a mauling in real time, for crying out loud!
“Oh, it just has so much pent-up energy it can’t stay still, see? I’m sure that means it’ll enjoy some time to romp around outside!” said Halkara.
“That’s really not the problem here! Doesn’t that hurt?! Are you just bearing the pain, or something?!”
“Ha-ha-ha! Well, sure, it hurts a little, but I’m used to it! My family kept dogs, cats, deer, and even wolves back when I lived with them in the Wellbranch Marquessate in Hrant, and they used to bite me all the time!”
“That’s not the sort of thing you should get used to! Healing, healing!”
I chanted a healing spell as quickly as I could, and Halkara’s injuries vanished. Thankfully, they weren’t very serious, which made sense—even if she was used to getting bitten.
I couldn’t imagine Halkara smiling through anything truly life-threatening.
There was just one little problem.
The mimic was still firmly attached to Halkara’s head.
“Okay, you need to get that thing off you, pronto,” I said. This is making me remember some Halloween costumes I saw back in the day.
“Oh, no, it’s fine! Its teeth aren’t digging into me at all anymore, so I’m totally calm and comfortable,” said Halkara.
“Well, I’m not calm or comfortable just watching you!”
For the time being, I pried the mimic off Halkara and set it on the floor. It opened its lid just enough to stick its tongue out, then started hopping in place. It didn’t seem to care about keeping up its treasure chest disguise when it knew the people around it.
I guess that makes sense. It’s like how a spy wouldn’t bother holding their breath and staying hidden if they knew their location was already compromised. Looking at it now, maybe Halkara’s right—it does seem like it might be surprisingly energetic.
“I know it’s night and all, but we might as well try taking it for a walk right now,” I said. “You have work tomorrow, so by the time you’re back and ready to go, it’ll be dark again anyway.”
“True enough! I’ll go ahead and bring it out,” said Halkara.
Halkara stepped right outside, carrying the mimic in her arms. She could be pretty proactive when she decided to be. I followed along after her and quickly found by the time I got outside, the mimic had already sunk its teeth into her head again.
“Oh my! It really seems to like my head, doesn’t it? I didn’t realize it was this fond of me!”
“Nope! Cut it out! We want it to be fond of you as a person, not as a snack!”
Once again, I yanked the mimic off Halkara’s head. I set it on the ground, and with a hop, a skip, and a bounce, gaining a little height with each jump…it vaulted up and bit onto her all over again!
“Hmm—I wonder if my hair just smells nice, maybe? I’ve heard some women smell naturally citrusy, after all!”
“This is not the time, Halkara!”
This is weird, right? Like, really weird! If anyone happens to be walking around at night and sees this from a distance, they’re liable to mistake her for something way scarier than a mimic!
Anyway, Halkara sure is tough in all the weirdest ways. Is she just really soft when it comes to animals, or something?
“That does it—no more walks until you learn to stop biting Halkara!”
I held the mimic in the air as I scolded it. I was afraid if I let it go, it would go right back to biting her head again.
“All right! I already have an idea for how to deal with this! I think I should be able to manage something tomorrow,” Halkara said in a tone so confident, you’d never think she’d had teeth in her head just moments before. In fact, she seemed so bold about all this that for a moment, I actually wondered if she’d been put under some sort of all-powerful defensive spell.
“Wait, tomorrow?” I said. “Considering how it’s acted so far, don’t you think that’s a little optimistic? I guess it might be possible if you take the day off work…”
“Oh, no, I’ll be going in to work, as usual! The fact I have work tomorrow is convenient for my plan, actually.”
“Not sure what that means, but I’m just gonna let you know now that we’re absolutely not drugging the mimic into submission.”
I didn’t think Halkara would actually do that, considering she was pretty taken with the mimic, but I still wanted to head off that line of thought before it could cause any problems.
“Oh, I’d never! Don’t worry—my plan won’t have any effect on the mimic at all, and it’s sure to keep me absolutely safe!” Halkara declared.
“That sounds perfect, if you can actually pull it off. I’ll leave it up to you, I guess.”
The next day, Halkara got up earlier than usual to head out for Halkara Pharmaceuticals’ factory, returning home later on that evening. We had dinner, as usual, and the moment we finished, she stood up from her seat and left the room. That wasn’t exactly a major event or anything, but it was pretty unusual for her. Normally, she’d take her time sipping a drink, or at least just hanging out in the dining room with the rest of us.
“I wonder if she’s going to bring the mimic out…?” I muttered.
“Is something the matter with it, Lady Azusa?” asked Laika.
I quickly explained everything that had happened the night before.
“I see. So she told you that she had a good idea that would prevent her from being bitten?”
“Yeah, though to be honest, I’m not super convinced it’s going to work. It’s not like she’ll be in any serious danger either way, at least, so I thought I might as well let her give it a try.”
Just as I was wrapping up my explanation…
“All right, everyone! This should do the trick, don’t you think?”
…Halkara returned to the living room with a helmet on her head. The mimic, meanwhile, was perched atop the helmet, gnawing on it.
Oh, so her plan is armored defense!
“All right, I’ll admit it: That won’t harm the mimic at all, and it’ll keep you safe! You were right!”
Now that’s a solution I never would’ve even dreamed of!
The rest of my family looked just as dumbstruck as I felt.
“You should be careful about wearing old helmets! You never know when one of those might have a nasty curse on it,” said Rosalie, who was the one person present with a uniquely skewed perspective on the issue.
Setting any potential curses aside for now… “Looks like it’s not hurting you at all anymore, huh? Although…I can’t really say this is solving the fundamental problem, here…,” I said. The mimic was still just as dedicated to biting her head as ever, after all.
“That’s true,” said Laika, hand pressed to her chin as she considered the problem. “If it ever ends up anywhere in the vicinity of Flatta, then it might try to bite one of the townspeople. It would probably be best not to take it anywhere near populated areas…”
“Yeah. That’s definitely the big problem,” I said. “And even if it doesn’t attack any of the townsfolk, they probably wouldn’t like seeing it biting Halkara, so I’d rather not get anywhere near Flatta with it regardless.”
I can’t have any rumors about the house in the highlands being full of weirdos spreading, after all.
“By the way, Big Sis Halkara, where did you get that helmet?” asked Falfa. She seemed keenly interested in the armor itself, and now that she’d pointed it out, I noticed it was rather finely crafted. It didn’t strike me as the sort of cheap helmet you’d find lying around just anywhere.
“Oh, this? It was in the museum! I remembered seeing a convenient helmet just lying around in there, and it ended up being a perfect fit! I stopped by during my break today to pick it up.”
So that’s why having work today was convenient for her! “You’re using a relic from your museum’s collection as actual armor?! Is that allowed?!”
“The relics in the museum were technically our private property from the very start, so it’s fine!” said Halkara. “And besides, this is what helmets are for! It’s doing its duty way better like this than it would sitting around in a dusty old museum, so I’m sure it’s happy to be of service.”
That seemed like a pretty flimsy argument to me, but she was the museum’s director, so if anyone had the right to wear that helmet, it was her. As a side note, all my other family members were still present in the dining room to finish their meals, but the mimic didn’t go after any of them for so much as a second. It just kept biting Halkara’s helmet without making any attempt to attack anyone else.
I wasn’t worried at all about myself, the two dragons, or Rosalie getting hurt by the mimic, but my daughters were another story. Sandra had come inside to talk with Falfa and Shalsha that day, so all three of them were present. Maybe the mimic had somehow realized they were off the menu, as far as biting went…? Though if that was the case, it would raise questions about why it was biting Halkara, so I decided to rule it out for the time being.
“I guess this means it only wants to attack you, for some reason…?” I muttered.
“Lady Azusa, I’m certain the mimic is aware the helmet is hard enough to ward off its teeth. Given it continues to bite her anyway, I believe we can conclude…or at least assume it does not intend its actions as an attack, per se,” Laika said, though she sounded a little hesitant about her own analysis.
“You have a point there. If it was really trying to take Halkara down, it could just bite her somewhere other than the head.”
In that case, maybe it really is attached to her, in a certain sense…?
My daughters gathered up around Halkara to observe the mimic up close. The way it was attached to her gave them a very rare chance to observe a mimic from below.
“It really is just like a treasure chest! Falfa’s never seen any other mimics—I wonder if they all look the same? Do you know, Shalsha?”
Shalsha opened up a book with An Illustrated Guide to Monsters written on its cover.
“There are various theories as to how mimics are born,” Shalsha explained. “One theory hypothesizes that they’re monsters that take up residence in, and subsequently assimilate, treasure chests. Another suggests that the chest portion serves as a protective shell, and another still theorizes that they resemble chests as a form of mimicry to deceive other creatures.”
All those sounded plausible enough to me, but proving them seemed like it’d be really hard unless you had some serious scientific chops.
I guess that first theory would mean mimics are sort of like hermit crabs? Though since this one’s chest is definitely part of its body now, I guess it wouldn’t be exactly the same. Then the second theory would make them sort of like shellfish, and the third would make them like those praying mantises that look exactly like twigs.
“All those explanations are so dreamy! Falfa could watch this mimic all day!”
I’m not sure that’s really what “dreamy” is supposed to mean, Falfa.
“Although the truth remains unclear, Shalsha thinks they’re very interesting monsters as well. It’s rare to have the chance to watch them bite something, too.”
Shalsha was certainly right about that. If you got bitten by a mimic in combat, your first priority would be getting it off you, and most mimics would probably choose to bite you somewhere unprotected rather than deliberately going for your helmet and dealing no real damage. As such, we were witnessing a phenomenon most people would never get the chance to see.
Meanwhile, Sandra was watching from a slight distance off to the side. She looked a little exasperated as she spoke up.
“You know that thing’s looking down on you, right, Halkara…?”
Ugh! And here I was, trying my hardest not to point that out…
It was just like how pet dogs tended to only bark loudly at the family members they viewed as being beneath them on the social ladder. Considering the mimic was only biting her, it seemed very possible she was the only one it saw as its inferior…
“What? That’s not true! How’s it supposed to look at me with its mouth wide open to bite me?” said Halkara.
“I didn’t mean it literally!” snapped Sandra. “Actually, I think you know perfectly well what I mean! Aren’t you embarrassed to have a mimic walk all over you?!”
“No, not particularly,” Halkara said as she turned to face Sandra. She genuinely didn’t sound like the idea bothered her at all. “Elves aren’t very capable fighters, generally speaking, so it’s only natural. I don’t think that’s something worth getting upset about, and I’m not embarrassed about it, either. I bet you’re not embarrassed you can’t breathe fire, right, Sandra?”
“I’ve never even considered it, but if I could breathe fire, I bet it’d come in handy for dealing with some of the nastier plants out there.”
Well, you sure took that to a violent place quickly! Sandra did seem to find herself without a counterargument for Halkara’s point, though, and she didn’t press the point further.
“B-but…I do understand what you mean, too,” Sandra meekly admitted.
Right? Most of the time, whether or not a monster saw you as a target was totally dependent on how tough you were in a fight. The less tough races were naturally predisposed to being viewed as easy pickings. That’s why very few monsters or animals were inclined to go out of their way to start fights with dragons, for instance. Considering it was all a matter of your innate nature, it didn’t seem like something worth getting embarrassed about.
Even if you were weak in a fight, you could compensate for that shortcoming in all sorts of ways. Halkara’s helmet was a perfect example of that point, really. The fact she seemed to understand that made me suspect that, just maybe, she had a pretty philosophical view of this whole situation… But on the other hand, watching the mimic gnaw at her helmet was so surreal, it was hard to think about anything else…
“Also, for the record, I’m just saying if it was looking down on me, I wouldn’t be embarrassed about it. I still don’t think it actually is, though!” Halkara declared.
“All right, then. I’ll take your word for it,” I said. She wasn’t drunk at the moment, so her confidence carried some actual weight with me.
“Okay, Madame Teacher! Would you like to go on a nighttime walk now? The moon’s nice and bright tonight, so it’s the perfect time for it!”
“Oh, right. I suppose I did say we could take it for a walk as soon as you’d worked out a solution for the biting problem, didn’t I?”
Her solution had come from pretty far out of left field, but I couldn’t deny it had taken care of the danger I was worried about quite handily. I wasn’t about to walk the mimic around Flatta in the middle of the day and risk it attacking people, but nobody else would be walking around the highlands at nighttime, so taking it out for a stroll now didn’t seem liable to cause any trouble.
“Okay then, sure. Let’s go. Does anyone else want to come along? Not that it’ll be that interesting—we really are just going for a walk, that’s all!”
As I’d more or less predicted, everyone decided to accompany us on our walk in the end. I’ll admit I’d been expecting Sandra, at least, to say something along the lines of Plants don’t go on walks, but even she tagged along. Going out on an evening stroll with the whole family was a rare treat.
The nighttime air in the highlands was refreshingly chilly. Flatorte, who was a fan of cold weather in general, seemed to be particularly enjoying it. Halkara had talked about getting some fresh air the day before, and I had to admit, it really was tempting to just stand still and take a long, deep breath. Or at least, it would’ve been…
…if it weren’t for the distraction of the mimic, which was still latched onto Halkara’s helmet.
“Does this even count as taking it for a walk, at this point?!” It’s literally not even walking!
“Some pet owners take their kittens for walks by carrying them around the neighborhood, Madame Teacher! This is basically the same thing,” said Halkara.
“Okay, but the image here is a lot less heartwarming than that sounds!” This is closer to something out of a horror movie, at least on the surface! There’s no way we could walk around like this if anyone else was here to see us! “Also, wasn’t the whole point of this walk giving the mimic some time running around outside? Considering how it’s acting, I’m starting to think it might not have wanted to go out in the first place…”
Treasure chests belonged in caves or buildings, not out in the middle of wide-open fields. Even if a mimic did end up out in the wild for whatever reason, it would look so out of place that it’d get found out in an instant and nobody would ever open it. Plus, the wind and rain seemed like they’d be really bad for the box itself. Sitting around outside felt like a health hazard, from a mimic’s perspective.
“Okay then, Mistress—I’ll try prying it off her! That should clear things up,” said Flatorte. She stepped over to Halkara and yanked the mimic off her helmet in an instant. For a dragon, apparently, overcoming a mimic’s jaw strength was hardly any different from removing a paperclip from a bundle of papers.
Flatorte set the mimic down on the grassy ground.
“Okay, mimic! If you wanna run around, now’s your chance!”
For a few seconds, the mimic seemed to survey its surroundings. Then, all of a sudden, it started bouncing around the field in huge leaps.
“Huh! That thing can really clear some distance, actually,” I said, a little impressed.
“According to Shalsha’s guidebook, jumping is a mimic’s primary form of locomotion. They jump around until they find a place where a treasure chest would plausibly be located, where they settle.”
That was when I realized Shalsha had brought the guidebook she’d been reading along with her on the walk. It seemed a little bulky to me, but then again, as long as she wasn’t running around with it, it probably wouldn’t be too much of a hassle.
The mimic jumped along happily, occasionally letting its tongue flop out from within its chest. I felt a little grateful toward it, actually—it had given me a rare opportunity to go on a stroll with my whole family.
“Hmm. The way it jumps feels kinda weighty and deliberate, doesn’t it? Slime jumps are a much lighter motion,” I noted. I’d been watching slimes hop around for three hundred years, and I considered myself something of an expert in the field.
“Shalsha believes there’s something spring-like about the mimic’s anatomy within the chest. It compresses that spring-like mechanism, which generates the force to propel itself into the air by releasing it,” Shalsha said, her face practically pressed into her guidebook as she spoke.
“Something spring-like, huh…? I guess it’d have to be something like that, seeing as it doesn’t have legs sticking out of the bottom or anything.” Monster anatomy’s even more complex than animal anatomy, isn’t it?
“Nice, nice! Looks like the mimic’s really enjoying this walk! I knew it’d be a good idea to let it outside every once in a while!” Halkara said with a clap of her hands.
She was acting a little like one of those know-it-all pet owners, and she seemed very pleased to see the mimic looking so happy and energetic. I could understand where she was coming from. I’d brought it all the way back to the house in the highlands, so it’d be a shame if it didn’t enjoy its new life here.
Every once in a while, the mimic seemed to screw up a jump and only get a tiny bit of air compared to its usual leaps. Sometimes, it even ended up moving in the opposite direction it wanted to. Its movements were imprecise in a way that made it oddly fun to watch. In any case, I figured as long as the mimic itself was enjoying the experience, a failed jump or two wasn’t a problem at all.
…Hmm?
……“The mimic itself”? Come to think of it, isn’t there an open question here I probably should’ve addressed a long time ago?
“Hey, Halkara?” I asked.
“Ah, yes, Madame Teacher? I didn’t bring any dust to feed it, if that’s what you were wondering.”
I mean, I’d hope not! Something about the idea of bringing a pocketful of dust along on a walk just feels nasty… Though then again, that’s what it eats, and there’s not really any avoiding that.
“No, that’s not it. I was just thinking we keep calling the mimic ‘it’ or ‘the mimic,’ right? Shouldn’t we come up with a name for it?”
Halkara gave me a blank stare. “Huh? Why? What’s wrong with calling it ‘the mimic’? There aren’t any other mimics around for us to confuse it with, so I can’t see why that would be a problem.”
“Sure, it’s not confusing, but it just feels so cold, doesn’t it?!” Also, it’s weird how inconsistent your attitude is! Why would you care enough to suggest taking it for a walk and not enough to bother giving it a name?! If anything, you’d think the name would be the higher priority!
“A name, huh? Let’s see… It’s a mimic, so why don’t we call it Mimi?”
That’s the most predictable name you could’ve possibly proposed!
“Let’s give it a bit more thought, okay?! Like, at least five minutes’ worth or so!” I insisted.
Oh, but then again, Fighsly named herself that because she was a fighter slime, right? And I named Smarsly and Wizly based on basically the same logic that would justify calling a mimic Mimi. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad name, after all…?
No, no, we really should give it some more thought. There’s no harm in at least considering it, right? Plus, a walk like this is the perfect chance to think up a name! There’s always a chance Halkara will come up with something a little less glaringly obvious!
We spent a few minutes just strolling along through the highlands, letting the mimic set our path by jumping ahead of us. In my last life, I’d lived in a part of the world where just walking outside for a couple minutes could end with you dripping with sweat, so I was very glad to be somewhere a little cooler this time. There was nothing worse than taking a bath, then ending up sweaty and gross again just because you decided to walk over to the nearby convenience store…
“How about this one, Madam Teacher?” said Halkara.
Oh? Sounds like she came up with another idea for a name!
“We could call it ‘Box’! What do you think?”
“I think we’d be better off sticking with ‘the mimic’ at that point!”
Something was very weird about how Halkara went about expressing her love for her pets. Maybe she viewed names from a really utilitarian perspective? You only had to look back a century or so in my old world to see people who put numbers in their kids’ names based on their order of birth, and that was considered totally normal.
At that point, Falfa tugged on my sleeve.
“Falfa thinks Mimi’s a really cute name, Mommy!”
“All right, that settles it! Let’s call it Mimi! That’s the only vote I need to hear, personally!”
If my daughter says it’s cute, then I have no reason to argue about it!
“That’s good enough for me! From now on, our mimic’s name is Mimi!”
Halkara was perfectly happy to see the name she’d proposed get adopted. There was just one little factor that still had me a bit hesitant, though: Mimi was clearly a girl’s name, and I had no clue what sex our mimic was.
Maybe it’d be better to call it…I don’t know, Milo or something? Actually, do mimics even have sexes?
I wasn’t going to get anywhere with that line of inquiry on my own, so I decided to ask Shalsha instead.
“According to Shalsha’s guidebook, ‘Nobody knows.’”
Okay, fair enough. If not even a monster guidebook can help, best to just accept the mystery.
“Okay! I think this is settled. Mimi it is!”
And so that night, our pet mimic gained a name.
A week had passed since we gave our mimic its new name, Mimi. On that day, my family and I had decided to take Mimi out for a walk again, this time while it was still light out.
After the success of our first walk, we’d taken Mimi out again for two days straight. It hadn’t seemed very interested, though, and it had barely moved at all either time. It had been particularly lethargic on the second attempt—if a stranger had happened to catch sight of us, they probably wouldn’t have seen it as anything other than a treasure chest left mysteriously lying around the highlands. In the end, I’d had to carry Mimi home myself.
That’s why we decided to give Mimi a few days off between walks. It seemed like keeping them as an occasional thing would be to its preference—it wasn’t like a pet dog that would happily go out and about every single day.
I guess that makes sense. Of course a mimic would stay indoors most of the time. Walks are probably just a nice change of pace for it.
If you asked a group of people who liked to hike whether they’d spend three hundred days a year up in the mountains if they could, an awful lot of them would probably say no. That’s how it went for a bunch of hobbies, really—they were nice on occasion, but downright inconvenient if they became your primary occupation.
As expected, after having stayed inside for a few days, Mimi was excited to get outside and jump around the highlands. I was starting to think one walk a week or so would probably be just right.
“Yep, yep! There’s nothing like a mid-afternoon walk!” said Halkara, who sounded quite spirited as well. If I had to pick out a single problem that spoiled the image, it’d have to be the helmet. She sure was wearing it again today.
“Hey, don’t you think you can stop wearing that thing? It’s gotta be heavy, right?” I said.
“I would, but Mimi still tries to bite me every once in a while, so I think I should probably keep it on for now,” said Halkara. “I don’t want to over-rely on your healing magic, after all. I might as well defend myself as best I can on my own!”
Just then, before Halkara even finished her sentence, Mimi jumped up to bite her head from behind.
“See?”
“Okay, but do you have to sound happy about it?! You should be scolding it for biting you, if anything!”
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