Questions to Ask

Yo, yo, yo, listen up!
Ask Ragnarok is the greatest guy in town
He'll cheer you up when you're feelin' down
So when nothin' else seems right in your life
just give me a call and... and...

Damn, I suck at this. Even my mom is a better rapper than I am, how's that for embarrassing? But then she's good at everything she does, pretty much. She and Dad set the bar kinda high for us kids, what with her getting the schools back on track, and him fixing the food problem. That's a lot to live up to, you know?



So my twin sister Embla and I, we study pretty much all the time. That's not so bad, really - I like learning new things. It's just that I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. Embla is. She says she wants to fix the phones so we can talk to our friends anytime we want, rather than just when we manage to get through. That's cool, but it just seems like there are so many bigger problems around here, you know?

I thought about becoming a doctor or engineer or something. There's a lot of diseases going around, even if we've been lucky and managed to avoid them, but still. And there's the water problem. Mom and Dad are always going on about how much they miss being able to take "showers" and "baths." I mentioned how maybe I could figure out a way to fix that, but then Mom said she has some friends who are already working on it, so I guess I'll do something else instead.



And Mom even asked one of those friends to move in with us. She says that with us taking care of everything else around the house, this friend of hers can focus that much more on her research, you know? Her name is Felicia Futa, but Mom calls her Fifi. I like that - Fifi. It's cool. She's cool. Not stuck up or anything, just real nice, and she knows how to have fun, too.



Embla doesn't seem to like her, though. I don't know why. But then Embla has been kinda grouchy lately about lots of things. She calls me blind, says I can't see what's right under my nose, but won't tell me what it is I'm not seeing. Like, hello, how does that make any sense? Then she mutters that nobody cares about her. I care! We all care! That doesn't mean she has to be the only friend I have in the world, does it?



I'm not gonna let my sister's moods stop me from being friends with someone I like, though. Mom is glad that Fifi and I are friends, anyway. She's always watching us when we're talking, with this smile on her face. Even when she's supposed to be meditating!



She's good with Tyr, too. Tyr is my baby brother, and he's, well, a little odd. I think he listened too much to Mom's stories when he was little. (Okay, littler.) On his birthday, he spent a lot of time staring at his hands, like he had to make sure they were still there. I figured it out later - the god he's named for lost his right hand to chain that big wolf in Mom's stories. I guess Tyr was worried that was going to happen to him too, or something. He's such a peabrain.



Like this time I found him sleeping on the couch. I woke him up and sent him up to bed, and he mumbled something about wanting to know what the flowers smelled like. I'd explained to him earlier that day that the pattern on the couch was something called "flowers" which used to grow before the snow came, and then he'd asked Mom what they were, and she went on about how wonderful flowers smelled. So Tyr lay down on the couch and tried to smell it! But ended up falling asleep, instead.



I guess I shouldn't make fun of him too much. Lots of the things Mom and Dad talk about sound strange to me, too. Like the sky. I get that there's something behind the overcast, but it's blue? Really? I can sort of imagine stars and stuff - like the walls in our bedroom, dark blue with little white dots - but this whole "sun" thing, that's just too much. A big bright ball in the sky, that lights up and warms up the whole world? Come on! How does that even work? It'd have to be huge!

I wonder if you could make a sun. Not a big one to light up the whole world, but maybe a little one, that we could put in the house? I gotta ask Mom and Dad if anyone's ever made something like that...



Ahhh... So this is what a "shower" feels like.