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This is an on-going series of loose stories.", "count": "25", "submission_left_submission_id": "2236934", "submission_left_file_name": "3252093_Fritti_fangle_farmstead_05.txt", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_huge": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/huge/3252/3252093_Fritti_fangle_farmstead_05.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_large": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/large/3252/3252093_Fritti_fangle_farmstead_05.jpg", "submission_left_thumbnail_url_medium": "https://nl1.ib.metapix.net/thumbnails/medium/3252/3252093_Fritti_fangle_farmstead_05.jpg", "submission_left_thumb_huge_x": "300", "submission_left_thumb_huge_y": "300", "submission_left_thumb_large_x": "200", "submission_left_thumb_large_y": "200", "submission_left_thumb_medium_x": "120", "submission_left_thumb_medium_y": "120" } ], "description": "Okay, so... this needs a bit of explanation and context.\n\nSeveral years ago, I created a new character, on a whim, inspired by the Car Mechanic Simulator games I was playing at the time. I made her a female anthro mouse with light yellow fur, named Michelle Frelang, or Missy for short.\n\nWhenever I create or adopt a new character, as soon as I know what to do with them, I usually write an introduction story for this character to introduce them to my readers and into the timeline of the world I have created. Obviously, I started doing this for my new mouse character Missy as well.\n\nBut Missy turned out to be one headstrong little woman. She did not settle for a short to medium introduction story. Instead, she completely and utterly ran away with me and insisted I document her entire experience of moving the the country of Minnaluna, the reasons why, and her activities once there.\nThis made the initially short-ish introduction story balloon out of all proportions. More and more was added as it turned up; other characters, even a very old character I had never had a use for before, a LOT of in-depth history about the country and much, much more.\n\nAt the time of posting this story, I'm [i]still[/i] working on that story, which by now is a full-blown novel of 1420 pages long and counting as it's still not finished yet. Now, this also means I have not yet been able to introduce Missy in either my IB nor my FA gallery so far.\n\nHowever, during the writing process, something happened.\nAnother new character popped up out of pretty much nowhere. A much younger mouse girl, who wiggled herself into my brainbox and started providing ideas and scenes for stories happening between her and Missy at Missy's new place of business.\nAnd she would [i]not[/i], leave, me, the, hell, alone.\n\nNow, naturally, as I had not yet been able to officially introduce Missy, it was impossible to introduce this new girl as well because her appearance in Missy's life happens only years after the events in the novel that is still not finished.\nBut she just, would, [i]not, leave, me, the, hell, alone[/i]!\n\nEven while still working on the epic long novel, this new girl has been giving me scenes and ideas for at least three different follow-up stories. All of which happen [i]well after[/i] the events in the as yet unfinished novel.\n\nBut I just [i]had[/i] to get her the hell out of my head, so she would stop bothering me all the time.\n\nSo, here we are. I took a small break from the novel to write this introduction story.\n\nThe context here is; this here story takes place a good two years after the events in the as yet unfinished novel. So some things do not entirely make sense, as they are established things reaching back to things that were introduced throughout the novel. I have tried to provide some explanation with those things, but it may look a bit messy and half-assed, so apologies for that.\n\nI just [i]had to get[/i] that pushy teenage mouse girl [i]out of my head[/i] and [i]leave me the hell alone[/i] >~_^<\n\nSo here, you get to meet her, and you'll get a preview of many things that are actually properly introduced and described in the massively long novel I'm still working on.\n\nI have given this a Mature rating, not because anything naughty happens, but there is an amount of talk about nudism and some mild nudity as well. In text. So you have to use your imagination.\n\nMichelle \"Missy\" Frelang is © me\nFanni Schneider is © me\nDittie Bosrandt is © me\nthe Minnaluna world and all characters therein are © me", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Okay, so... this needs a bit of explanation and context.

Several years ago, I created a new character, on a whim, inspired by the Car Mechanic Simulator games I was playing at the time. I made her a female anthro mouse with light yellow fur, named Michelle Frelang, or Missy for short.

Whenever I create or adopt a new character, as soon as I know what to do with them, I usually write an introduction story for this character to introduce them to my readers and into the timeline of the world I have created. Obviously, I started doing this for my new mouse character Missy as well.

But Missy turned out to be one headstrong little woman. She did not settle for a short to medium introduction story. Instead, she completely and utterly ran away with me and insisted I document her entire experience of moving the the country of Minnaluna, the reasons why, and her activities once there.
This made the initially short-ish introduction story balloon out of all proportions. More and more was added as it turned up; other characters, even a very old character I had never had a use for before, a LOT of in-depth history about the country and much, much more.

At the time of posting this story, I'm still working on that story, which by now is a full-blown novel of 1420 pages long and counting as it's still not finished yet. Now, this also means I have not yet been able to introduce Missy in either my IB nor my FA gallery so far.

However, during the writing process, something happened.
Another new character popped up out of pretty much nowhere. A much younger mouse girl, who wiggled herself into my brainbox and started providing ideas and scenes for stories happening between her and Missy at Missy's new place of business.
And she would not, leave, me, the, hell, alone.

Now, naturally, as I had not yet been able to officially introduce Missy, it was impossible to introduce this new girl as well because her appearance in Missy's life happens only years after the events in the novel that is still not finished.
But she just, would, not, leave, me, the, hell, alone!

Even while still working on the epic long novel, this new girl has been giving me scenes and ideas for at least three different follow-up stories. All of which happen well after the events in the as yet unfinished novel.

But I just had to get her the hell out of my head, so she would stop bothering me all the time.

So, here we are. I took a small break from the novel to write this introduction story.

The context here is; this here story takes place a good two years after the events in the as yet unfinished novel. So some things do not entirely make sense, as they are established things reaching back to things that were introduced throughout the novel. I have tried to provide some explanation with those things, but it may look a bit messy and half-assed, so apologies for that.

I just had to get that pushy teenage mouse girl out of my head and leave me the hell alone >~_^<

So here, you get to meet her, and you'll get a preview of many things that are actually properly introduced and described in the massively long novel I'm still working on.

I have given this a Mature rating, not because anything naughty happens, but there is an amount of talk about nudism and some mild nudity as well. In text. So you have to use your imagination.

Michelle "Missy" Frelang is © me
Fanni Schneider is © me
Dittie Bosrandt is © me
the Minnaluna world and all characters therein are © me", "writing": "A calm, sunny, not yet too warm Tuesday morning. Sunlight caressed the Minnaluna land and filtered through the line of trees along the right side of Shelter Valley Way, the old highway between South Plains and Shelter Valley. A silver-dotted Palouse bunny snuffled through the grass in the verge, sniffed at the edge of the asphalt, hesitated, then darted back between the trees and into the field beyond as a light yellow 1975 Mini with a black and white checkered roof drove down the road and pulled into the forecourt of a large garage at the left side of the road.\n\nThe large signs on the roof proudly spelled out the name; Mousie Motorworks. Planters made out of old yellow bricks between the road and the buildings sported abundantly flowering shrubs; the middle planter had a very large Golden Rain tree, the branches of which were being tied to a lattice between the posts holding up the roof over a set of three vintage fuel pumps by a skunk woman with cream-colored and white fur, wearing a pair of green long-sleeved coveralls and a light yellow sun hat sporting the Mousie Motorworks name in dark blue on the band. She looked around at the sound of the car pulling into the forecourt and waved with a smile at the woman behind the wheel.\n\nBeing parked in the shade of the roof over the fuel pumps, the small car let out a mouse woman with pastel yellow fur, dressed in a grey Vice Grip Garage T-shirt, a pair of blue shorts and a similar light yellow Mousie Motorworks sun hat, plus a pair of aviator-style sunglasses with a reflective yellow sheen on the lenses. She smiled back at the skunk woman and leaned against one of the old fuel pumps.\n \"Morning, darling. I didn't know you were going to be here this early to do that work?\"\n \"I'm, uh, I'm not early, you're late,\" the cream-tinted skunkette smiled. \"It's almost, uh, nine-fifteen already.\"\n \"Hey, this is my business, I can come and go at whatever time I please,\" the light yellow mousette retorted with a chortle. \"Besides, I had to make a stop in town on the way. Anything shocking happen before I got here?\"\n \"Not, uh, not so much shocking, but there was a, uh, a mail delivery that needed signing for,\" the cream-tinted skunkette smiled. \"Some kind of, uh, express letter. I took delivery and, uh, put it on the desk in the office. Oh, and, uh, I already fed Salmon, too.\"\n \"Thanks, darling,\" the vanilla-hued mousette smiled, pushing herself off the fuel pump and taking off the sunglasses, hanging them from the collar of her shirt. \"Guess I'll go and see what that letter is all about.\"\n\nShe walked into the garage building through the person-sized door on the left of a set of three garage doors. This was Michelle Frelang, owner and proprietor of the Mousie Motorworks garage. A relatively recent immigrant to the country of Minnaluna from Iola, Wisconsin in the United States, she had only arrived into the country a bit under three years earlier due to the garage and a house being left to her by a family member she had never known she had. It was a long and confusing story, but the end result was that Michelle had accepted the inheritance and decided to run the garage as a restoration garage for classic cars as she was a master bodyworker and a genius painter. Before even opening the garage to the public, she had upgraded and expanded it, and in the couple of years that followed, had made quite an impressive name for herself, both in Minnaluna itself as well as on Youtube with the channel she ran to show the restoration projects she undertook.\n\nThe cream and white skunk woman was Fanni Schneider. She was also an immigrant, from a small town in Tennessee in the United States, but she had already lived in Minnaluna for close to seven years by the time Michelle arrived. A professional gardener and landscaper running her own small company named \"Flower Children\", she had been hired by Michelle to beautify the grounds of the neglected garage after they had met by chance on the ferry to the United States. Shy and almost subservient by nature, she had sought out Michelle for company on the ferry she was very uncomfortable on, and from there a very sweet relationship had blossomed between them. She still regularly came to the Mousie Motorworks garage to do small chores and maintenance on the landscaping - or at least that was the official explanation.\n\nShe looked up from her work again when the vanilla-hued mousette stepped back outside through the door, reading a letter. Her expression changed to one of surprise when the mouse woman burst into a laugh.\n \"Is it, uh, is there something funny, Missy?\"\n \"Pretty darn funny to me, anyway,\" the light yellow mousette sniggered. \"Here, listen to this.\" She started reading the letter out loud. \"Dear miss Frelang. My name is Arthur Blom, I am writing you on behalf of the Board of Educators of the Merian Advancement College. Our college offers a range of courses in practical careers; one of these courses is our Auto Mechanics, Body and Paint course to train young people for a career in the automotive repair field.\" She looked up and grinned. \"Pretty much what I did, except at the college I went to they had separate courses for mechanics and body and paint. But anyway, here's what else this fellow Blom is writing. Over the duration of each course, we offer a work and learn program that entails the students working in an internship at enterprises in and around Merian, or sometimes further afield depending on wishes from the students as they have a choice of which company they would like to work for. These internships usually last three semesters, or a school year and a half, with the option to add a fourth semester. This allows the students to accelerate their school time as they forego on their school breaks in favor of working a steady schedule with the company they receive an internship at, thusly having the opportunity to graduate prematurely.\"\n \"That's, uh, that's very nice, but I still don't see what, uh, what's funny,\" Fanni smiled, climbing down from the planter to join Missy on the bench under the roof over the fuel pumps.\n \"I'm getting to that,\" Missy chortled. \"Listen to what mister Blom has to tell me.\" She looked down at the letter again. \"In the current course for Auto Mechanics, Body and Paint we have a student who is currently up for such an internship. When asked for her preference of which company to work for, she has been very adamant in her wish to work for your company, Mousie Motorworks. As we have never before worked with you or your company for our courses, I am hereby writing you to ask if you are willing to work with us. If you could please get in touch with us at your earliest convenience, we shall be pleased to discuss the details with you and answer any question you may have. Bla bla bla, phone number at which to contact them, yadda yadda, times during which they can be reached, with kind regards and looking forward to hearing from you, Arthur Blom, Provost for Academic Affairs, Merian Advancement College.\"\nFanni canted her head slightly.\n \"So, uh... what's the funny part about that?\"\n \"This whole situation,\" Missy chortled while putting the letter back into the envelope. \"I mean, for one, I've never even heard of that college and apparently they never heard of me either. And then, having a student with a burning desire to work at my place? That just tickles me, darling. I don't see why anyone would want that so bad, I'm not anything special.\"\n \"Oh come on now, Missy,\" Fanni protested with a smile. \"You've been saying that for, uh, the past couple of years now, and you, uh, you [i]know[/i] it's not true. You've, uh, you've proven time and again just how special you are, and you have made this garage into a, uh, a very successful enterprise in only a couple of years while, uh, operating in a niche market, that in itself is special already. And look at the, uh, the quality of the work you do! I can, uh, I can totally imagine a student would be, uh, impressed and wants to work for you.\"\n \"If you say so, darling,\" Missy guffawed. \"I still don't think I'm so very super special, but if you and others want to see it that way, fine by me.\"\n \"Well, uh, good, because you are,\" Fanni smiled. \"So, uh, are you gonna do it?\"\nMissy raised the envelope for a moment.\n \"What, this you mean?\" She shrugged. \"Sure, why the heck not. I do have a number of nifty techniques and stuff I could teach someone, I guess. And I suppose it would be nice having an extra pair of hands around the place, things get a little busy sometimes nowadays.\"\n\nShe got up from the bench and walked back into the garage, while Fanni returned to her work with the planters. In the small office inside the main garage building, Missy sat down behind the desk, took the receiver of the old-fashioned pushbutton telephone, dialed the number mentioned in the letter and set the telephone to the loudspeaker function as she expected it to be a quite long call.\n \"Merian Advancement College, Sheila speaking, good morning. How can I help you?\"\n \"Good morning, this is Michelle Frelang of Mousie Motorworks. I just received a letter from your school, by a mister Arthur Blom, asking me to get in touch with you. Could I speak with mister Blom, please?\"\n \"Of course, miss Frelang, one moment please.\" There was a pause, a blip on the line, a few bars of quiet instrumental music, then another blip followed by a deep but pleasant male voice. \"Arthur Blom.\"\n \"Good morning, mister Blom, this is Michelle Frelang of Mousie Motorworks. I have just received your letter about a student of your school wanting to intern for me?\"\n \"Indeed, indeed. Thank you for your prompt response, miss Frelang. I hope we can reach an agreement. What would you like to know?\"\n \"First off, how does this deal even work? I did a similar course back in Wisconsin, where I'm originally from, and I did have an internship at a garage there too so I do know what the work entails, but I have no clue about any contractual obligations or payment agreements or what, so could you please enlighten me on that?\"\n \"Ah, of course. Well miss Frelang, the way it works with our college is as follows. We have an agreement with a company that they employ a student on an internship contract for the duration of three semesters, or close to a full fiscal year. During that time, the student follows the work hours and schedule of this company, however the contract is between the company and our college, not the student in person. It concerns the standard eight-hour workdays and five-day work weeks, throughout the summer and winter break, therefore the student can finish one and a half school year during this period, or two school years in the case a fourth semester is added to the contract, allowing them to finish their education faster and having a better chance of obtaining a job after graduation. The student shall also receive the proper minimum wage for the position in question, however this is not at cost to the company as it will be compensated to the company by our college. The initial bi-weekly or monthly payment will come from the company's account, but will be reimbursed in two parts, one half at the start of the internship and the other half at the end. Of course, should the company in question deem it fair to pay a higher wage in case the student is doing very good work, that is up to their discretion and that extra amount will be of cost to the company.\"\n \"I see. That sounds a darn lot more fair than the deal I got back in the day, because I sure didn't get paid. Do I need to obtain any form of license or contract or other paperwork from City Hall for the employing of an intern?\"\n \"No, all contractual obligations are taken care of by our college. Upon arrival at the company, the student will have with them copies of the work contract for them and the company to sign and to be sent back to our college. And in the case of a company who is new to our system, such as in your case, our college will also get in touch with the authorities local to the company in question to take care of all legalities.\"\n \"That's good to know. What about my obligations towards the student? I mean, of course I could just put them to work on the work that is done here, but surely there must be some kind of expectation from your end on that the student will actually, you know, learn stuff, and not just be put to work on cleaning up and sweeping the floor.\"\n \"That is correct, miss Frelang. During the time of the internship, our college will be in regular contact with you to discuss the student's work, their improvements or stagnations, any possible problems or concerns, and we will aid you in the process of grading the student's work so it coincides with our standards for the course in question. If you have any specific tools or machinery for the work that is done at your company, it is desirable that the student gets to work with this equipment as well to learn how to operate it. Plus you will have the opportunity to give the student assignments. Such as, for instance in the case of your line of work, you could assign the student a non-operational engine to make operational again, or body panels of a vehicle to repair to a certain standard.\"\n \"Right, okay, that's stuff I understand. Again, it's good to know that your school will give me aid with all this stuff, because this is all totally new to me.\"\n \"Yes, we usually work very closely with any company in our system, and we aim to provide as much information and aid to any new company that is added to our system. It is in both our interests to maintain a healthy relationship, after all, so that we may cooperate on a recurring basis.\"\n \"I can't argue with that, and it will please you to hear that I am certainly willing to have my company added to your system and provide a workplace for this student who is apparently dead set on working here. I must say I find that somewhat amusing, but hey, it'll be a learning experience for both of us, and I'm always open to learn something new.\"\n \"That is indeed most pleasant to hear, miss Frelang. If you can please give us your email address, we shall email you all the documentation about this procedure, and if you have any further questions at the moment, I shall be glad to answer them.\"\n \"By all means. And yes, I do have some more questions, mainly about this student who set this whole ball rolling. As in your letter you made references of 'her' and 'she', I assume we're talking about a girl?\"\n \"That is correct, yes. I shall also email you this student's curriculum and personal details, but in short; it concerns a female student of fieldmouse species. Her name is Dittie Bosrandt, spelled with a DT at the end, and she is, from the information I was given, quite an impressive student.\"\n \"In what way?\"\n \"For starters, her age. The fact she is currently up for internship means that she has completed the first two years of the course, and she is only sixteen years of age at the moment.\"\n \"She started at fourteen, then? Damn, that is indeed quite impressive.\"\n \"Indeed. She has also shown a consistent talent for the work, and has completed several additional shorter side-courses alongside her main course over the past two years.\"\n \"Wow. Sounds like she could take a bunch of work from my hands. When will she arrive here?\"\n \"As you agreed to provide the workplace, we can let her start her internship now. This means that she should be arriving on Monday next week.\"\n \"Next Monday? Wow, you left that a bit short notice, if you don't mind me saying so. What if I had said no?\"\nThere was a short chuckle on the other end of the line.\n \"We have quite an extensive library of companies we work with, miss Frelang. If you had declined this request, we would have been easily able to place her in a different company. It would not have been a large inconvenience, it would merely have been a bit of a disappointment for her.\"\n \"Ah, right, well, we can't have that, can we? I won't be one to break the poor girl's heart, because apparently I'm something special myself as people keep telling me.\"\n \"To be fair, miss Frelang, when she expressed the wish to have her internship at your company, we of course did a bit of research into your company as we had not worked with you before. And you do have quite the curriculum yourself, which is deserving of being called impressive, taking into account the successes you have booked in a relatively short period of time.\"\n \"I don't find that special or impressive, but if anyone else does, fine, I'm not gonna argue. So, if she's arriving next Monday, should I pick her up from the station or something? I know there's plenty public transit around these parts, but there's no bus stops anywhere near my garage, which is a good fifteen minutes outside of town.\"\n \"That will not be necessary, miss Frelang. Miss Bosrandt owns a car and will drive herself to your place of business.\"\n \"And she's only sixteen?!\"\n \"Yes, however she does possess a valid driver's license. That was a surprise to us as well, but she obtained her license at the age of fourteen. Her father is a military mechanic and apparently pulled some strings.\"\n \"Wow, okay, now I'm actually impressed. Oh, but another thing, if this deal takes about a year, where's she supposed to stay for that time? It's not exactly a quick commute from Merian to here, it already takes the better part of two hours to get to Shelter Valley from here, and Merian is on the other side of the mountains, that's even hours and hours away from Shelter Valley. The poor kid would be driving a whole day just to get here.\"\n \"We are aware of that, and it poses no problem. While we aim to work with companies in and around Merian for travel convenience, we do place students all over the country, so we have means available for that. Miss Bosrandt will be staying at the Plainfield Youth Hostel in South Plains, such lodging is also provided by us.\"\n \"Are you for real right now? A youth hostel? Look, I know from experience that even the family-friendly budget hotels and motels in this country are very pleasant to stay at, but youth hostels are a pain no matter where you are in the world. And for a whole year? No, mister Blom, that won't do.\"\n \"If you have a suggestion, I'm willing to consider, miss Frelang.\"\n \"Indeed I have. Look, my company runs a different schedule for one; my weekends are Sunday and Monday and the workweek is from Tuesday to Saturday, and the day's hours can vary significantly depending on circumstances. If this girl is to work steady hours in my garage, she'll be much better off accompanying me to and from work every day. So here is my suggestion. I have a large and very comfortable guestroom in my house, so if you would take half of the cost for a year's stay in a youth hostel and pay that to me to cover additional groceries and such, the girl can stay with me in my house and we can go to work together.\"\n \"That is quite a generous offer, miss Frelang. I do agree that it would simplify several things, as well, such as the working hours you mentioned. While it is somewhat unusual to have a student stay with the proprietor of the company they have their internship at, I am certainly willing to adjust the clause of the student lodging contract to name you as the temporary lodging for the student, with appropriate monetary compensation.\"\n \"Then please do that, mister Blom, I would appreciate that a lot. Should I be expecting visits from your school to see how she's doing?\"\n \"In general, no. Discussions between the company and our college concerning the student's work are usually done via video call. However, with any new company added to our system, a representative from our college will occasionally visit to speak directly with the company owner, at most one time near the start of the internship and one time near the time the internship ends. So in this case, a representative shall indeed visit you at least two times over the course of the coming year, but that should be all. Unless of course there is any reason for additional visits, but such is discussed at the time.\"\n \"Right. Well, it makes sense to me that your people need to see what kind of company your students are put to work at in person, that's just common sense. Just make sure to make note of the fact the place is closed and I am unavailable on Mondays. Uhm... oh, would there be any need for separate bank accounts, in case I would give the girl an assignment with a budget or something?\"\n \"There is no need for that, miss Frelang. The standard wage payments will go directly between the company's bank account and the student's bank account, and partially between the company's account and our dedicated account for the compensation of the wage payments. We also have funds available for assignment budgets, so were you to assign the student a project that requires a specific budget, that can be done in deliberation with us so that we may provide said budget partially or in whole.\"\n \"Right, okay. Well, I can't think of anything else to ask you for the moment, mister Blom. Is there anything else you need from me?\"\n \"Your company's details, such as email address, telephone number and bank account number are the most important. And if you have any additional information, such as a telephone number to reach you when you are not near your company telephone for whichever reason, then I would appreciate those details as well.\"\n \"Of course.\"\n\nMissy provided the required details plus any additional details she felt would be important. After a few last pleasantries, she rang off and put the receiver back on the hook, using both paws to fold her ears forwards against her head and rub them a bit. Even while not holding the phone's receiver to her ear, it had still been such a long call that her ears were aching by the end of it.\n\nStanding up from the desk chair, the vanilla-colored mousette also rubbed her eyes for a moment and stretched before stepping out of the office and taking a bottle of fruit juice from the Mountain Dew display refrigerator to take outside with her. Outside, Fanni was also taking a break, sitting on the bench against the wall in the shade of the roof over the fuel pumps and sipping from a bottle of fruit juice. She looked up when Missy joined her on the bench and smiled.\n \"That, uh, that took some time. How did it go?\"\nMissy uncapped her bottle of juice and took a long drink.\n \"I learned a lot of things I never thought I would learn. All sounded quite interesting and well thought out, though. And the long and short of it is that next Monday, a mouse girl will be arriving here to work as my intern for about a year. She'll be staying with me for that time too, because I wasn't gonna let that college dump her in a youth hostel like they were planning.\"\n \"That's really nice,\" Fanni smiled, shaking her head for a moment and letting go a light chortle. \"But, uh, if you object to being called special all the time, you should really stop doing such, uh, such sweet and considerate things for others, because that is what, uh, makes you so special in the eyes of others.\"\n \"I suppose I have to learn to live with that,\" Missy guffawed. \"But yeah, hey, another new thing for me; I'm gonna have an employee of sorts from next week on. If you want to meet her, you can just come along with me after we've been to the gym and to Patty's because she'll be arriving here on Monday.\"\n \"That'll be nice, too,\" Fanni nodded with a smile. \"Who knows, it might even be, uh, funny. If that girl is so set on working here, she, uh, she must hold you in very high regard, so it could be, uh, quite funny to see how you'll deal with that.\"\n \"Oh sure, go and have a laugh at my expense, why don't you,\" Missy grunted, but with her lips curled into a very cheerful grin.\nFanni chortled softly behind her bottle of juice.\n \"What, uh, me? Laugh at my moustress? I, uh, I wouldn't dare.\"\n \"You better not, otherwise I'm gonna have to pull you over my knee and spank your bare butt, right here on the forecourt,\" Missy sniggered.\n\nThat was part of the relationship they had developed between each other; while Missy was anything but strict or dominant, Fanni's shy and near-subservient nature and the amount of comfort and trust she felt with Missy had made them agree on a sort of mild mistress/pet relationship, even if it was in good nature and partially in jest. And as an additional joke, Fanni had once referred to Missy as 'moustress' instead of mistress, and the joke had stuck. Fanni did blush lightly at Missy's words, but she still chortled softly and shook her head.\n \"Promises, promises. And what a, uh, good example that would set for that girl.\"\n\nThey laughed a bit and sat on the bench together for a while longer, until both bottles of fruit juice were empty. Fanni returned to her work with the planters, and a set of trees forming a canopy over the parking spaces on the side of the frontmost new building, while Missy walked back into the garage building once more. She did put in a call to City Hall, just to get some additional information for her own peace of mind, but again she was assured that any contracts and legalities would be well taken care of without any worry to her, as the city of South Plains did in fact work with the Merian Advancement College on internships with other companies located in South Plains, so they already had the experience and all the procedures in place.\n\nOver the rest of the week, Missy merely went about her business as usual. There was the Peugeot 404 convertible being refreshed for one of the trainers at the female-only nudist gym she and Fanni worked out at. There were two classic cars that needed complete disassembly. There was the Mazda Cosmo project she was working on for herself. And there was footage to be shot of all those projects, to be edited into videos for both her Youtube channel and her company website. Plenty of work to keep her busy throughout the week.\n\nAs had become usual, Fanni stayed at Missy's house for the weekend. It allowed them to spend a lot of relaxed and sometimes intimate quality time together, and it also made it much easier to go to the gym for their weekly workout together on Monday morning. As had also become a habit, after their session at the gym they calmly walked up the street to the wonderful little diner called \"The Patty Place\" where they were such steady patrons they were almost part of the furniture. Stepping inside, they were as always cheerfully hailed by the Pinyon mouse woman behind the glass counter, Patty herself, who owned and ran the place together with her hamster husband Harvey.\n \"Hiya Missy luv and Fanni luv! Getting warm, ain’t it? Ooo, and ain't today the big day?\"\n \"Big day for what?\" Missy chortled, stirring a stick of sugar through the cup of tea that was put in front of her. \"My birthday is in August, we're still months away from that. And I can't think of anything else that would be big.\"\n \"Aw, ya know what I'm talking about, luv!\" Patty chortled. \"What ya mentioned last week! Ain't today the day that girl arrives from Merian? The one who's gonna be working for ya?\"\n \"Oh, you mean that?\" Missy sniggered. \"That's not a big deal, just something new is all.\" She sent Patty a playful smirk. \"Why is everyone more excited about that than me? It's just a business deal with a college, it's not like I'm adopting an orphanage or something.\"\nPatty laughed cheerfully.\n \"But in a way it is, ain't it? Didn't ya say the girl's gonna be staying with ya too, for like a year or so?\"\n \"Yeah, so?\" Missy shrugged with a smile, sipping her tea. \"That's just purely convenience for both of us. Besides, Fanni's been staying with me for months too when I just got here, and nobody made a big deal out of that.\"\n \"Alright, alright,\" Patty chortled, waving a paw. \"Hey, are ya gonna bring her here sometime?\"\n \"Sure,\" Missy smiled. \"Every Monday after we've been to the gym, for one. And no doubt there'll be days we start work late or stop early enough to drop by here for lunch or dinner, too.\"\n \"Oh goodie!\" Patty smiled. \"I'd love to meet her. And speaking of dinner, what'll it be today?\"\n \"I'll have the fried eggs over cheese on full-grain bread. Or should I say, my usual?\" Missy chortled.\n \"Uh, yeah, me too, over ham on brown bread, like, uh, like always, please,\" Fanni smiled.\n \"Of course!\" Patty turned to the hatch in the wall behind her. \"Harv! Two Sunny omelettes, one over cheese on full-grain and one over ham on brown! It's Monday lunch, ya know who!\"\n \"Hi Missy, hello Fanni!\" came the hamster man's voice from behind the hatch. \"Ten minutes!\"\nMissy picked up her cup of tea and thumbed at the small table by the side window with a smile.\n \"You know where we'll be.\"\n\nWithin the first month of living in South Plains, that table had become Missy's steady table in the diner. She and Fanni sat down at it, sipping the rest of their tea while waiting for the meals to arrive. Less than ten minutes later, Patty sashayed over to the tables with two plates holding two slices of bread each, covered in slices of ham and slices of cheese respectively, and covered with five fried eggs, sunny side up and decorated with slivers of carrot, small cubes of pickle and tiny silverskin onions. After setting down the plates and dipping a paw into the front pocket of her apron to take two sets of cutlery rolled into napkins and placing those next to the plates, the Pinyon mousette turned and sashayed back to the counter to refill the teacups. Missy and Fanni calmly started eating, having shards of conversation in between bites and relaxing after their workout session at the gym.\n\nOnce the meals were gone and the teacups were empty again and a bit more than half an hour had passed, both women stood up and walked back to the counter so Missy could pay.\n \"Sorry to eat and run, dear, but I should get to my garage,\" she smiled. \"I have no clue what time that girl will arrive. She's coming all the way from Merian after all, that's a hell of a drive, and for all I know she started yesterday already and spent the night halfway down in a motel in Rainbow Falls or Shelter Valley.\"\n \"Of course, luv, no worries!\" Patty smiled. \"Ya go on now and make sure yer gonna be there to meet the girl!\"\n \"We'll be off then. Bye Patty, see you laters!\"\n\nWith a cheerful wave, Missy and Fanni left the diner and got into Missy's old yellow Mini to drive over to the garage, as Fanni had left her work truck there for the weekend as had become a habit as well. Arriving at the garage almost half an hour later, they went inside to take care of business. First and foremost, Missy took care of the most urgent and important task of feeding and petting Salmon, the fluffy feral Maine Coon cat she had adopted as her shop mascot when they had found her living in one of the warehouse buildings behind the garage.\n\nHaving taken care of that, Missy checked her messages; nothing on the answering machine, a pawful of emails, and several Youtube notifications of comments on her videos that were quickly checked and replied to, plus six orders in the merchandise shop of her company website. Those were handled swiftly as well, the few shirts, hats and stickers soon packed up, as well as a set of 1980 Toyota Starlet taillight units as Missy still also ran a small online store in refurbished car parts. Once the boxes were labeled and set in the bed of the 1978 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck Missy had built for Fanni as payment for the beautification work done at the garage, they took a bottle of fruit juice from the display refrigerator and sat on the bench under the roof over the fuel pumps, as there was nothing more immediately pressing left to do.\n\nCalmly chatting a bit, the two of them sipped their juice and looked at the traffic passing by on Shelter Valley Way - which was sparse as the old two-lane highway was mainly used by agricultural traffic from the farms in the area these days. And every half hour a light green Fiat 410 bus with white roof, purple bumpers and a purple band along the sides from bumper to bumper, which were the buses from the line that connected the bus routes servicing the number of small farming towns between South Plains and Shelter Valley to the transit hubs of South Plains.\n\nOnly by the time three o'clock started approaching, Missy suddenly nudged Fanni and nodded in the direction of the road, indicating a small sun-baked, faded light blue classic panel van with a white band along the sides and smudged with patches of surface rust and primer, that had music blasting from the open windows that Missy recognized as Jackson Browne's \"For a Rocker\".\n \"I have a feeling that's our girl right there.\"\n \"What, uh, what makes you think that?\" Fanni smiled.\n \"For one, that's just the type of vehicle a poor automotive student would be driving, especially with the music playing that loud,\" Missy chortled. \"For another, that reason right there.\"\n\nShe nodded in the direction of the old van again, which now had its right turn signal activated. Indeed, a moment or two later the old blue van turned onto the forecourt of the garage, wiggling this way and that for a moment, then parking with its nose facing one of the three garage doors. The engine was shut off, the loud radio died away, and another moment later the driver door opened to let out the driver of the van.\n\nThe driver was a girl alright, and a mouse girl at that. She was covered in a muted, grey-ish brown, very sleek fur from her large ears to her petite toes, with a smudge of a lighter, grey-ish beige color over the front left part of her left foot and two of her left toes. Her hair was a muted russet color of a tint somewhere in between orange and red, flopping over her forehead in a soupbowl fringe and hanging down her back in a ponytail that was tied off with light blue scrunchies both at the base close to the back of her head and near the end, making a little tuft. She was wearing a pair of long-sleeved, full-body coveralls in a deep pond green color that showed the name of the Merian Advancement College in off-white across the back and just the initials MAC on the front right chest pocket. A pair of deep, clear blue eyes were wide open and sparkling as she looked around, her muted pink, hairless tail continually swaying slowly back and forth behind her almost as if it was wagging happily.\n\nMissy and Fanni had gotten up from the bench, and eventually stepped around the old blue van when it took several moments for the mouse girl to appear from behind it. Catching sight of Missy, the brown-furred mouse girl put both paws over her muzzle and her eyes widened even further and grew even more sparkly.\n \"Oh..! There you are! It's you! It really is you! I can't believe I'm actually here, and... and there you are!\"\nMissy quirked an eyebrow and made the universal 'time-out' gesture with her paws.\n \"Alright, hit the pause button right there, kiddo, and let me get one thing straight right off the bat, okay? I'm not famous, I'm not a celebrity, I'm not someone super special with awesome super powers, so none of that star-struck stuff, okay? Please. Okay, sure, I'm sure a good number of people know me because I make Youtube videos, but I'm still just me, and this here is still just a garage where, aside from nifty projects that are shown on Youtube, a lot of work is done to pay the bills because those don't disappear magically.\" She said it in a definitive tone, but calmly and with a smile. \"So, are we clear on that?\"\nThat dimmed the sparkle in the brown-furred mouse girl's eyes a bit, but the eyes remained wide open and fixated upon Missy. Still with her paws over her muzzle, the mouse girl nodded slowly.\n \"Uh... okay, yes... sorry?\"\nMissy made a dismissive gesture with one of her paws.\n \"It's fine, kiddo, just remember it, please. I don't think I'm anyone special, so anyone constantly treating me like I am is gonna get under my skin, believe it or not.\" She curled her lips into another smile. \"Now, with that out of the way; no doubt you know I'm Missy Frelang. And you are..?\"\nOf course Missy was well aware of the girl's name, but she just had to be prompted to say it herself to help snap her out of her star-struck reverie.\n \"Oh..! Right! I'm Dittie! Dittie Bosrandt, spelled with DT at the end, all fancy-like,\" the mouse girl said, finally lowering her paws and holding one of them out towards Missy. \"It's real nice to meet you, miss Frelang!\"\nMissy gave Dittie's paw a brief shake, then held it and leaned over a bit, widening her smile into a grin and closing one eye in a short, cheerful wink.\n \"Missy. Not miss Frelang, and certainly not ma'am, got it? I'm only just about to hit forty, don't make me feel like I'm in my nineties, please. You can call me Missy, you can even call me boss if you feel so inclined, but that's it. And in that same vein, I'm gonna be calling you Dittie, or likely, kiddo, because that's just something I do to people I like. Okay?\"\nDittie let out a short gasp at Missy's face coming so close to hers, but soon the sparkle returned to her eyes and she smiled wide enough to expose all the teeth to the sides of her large front buckteeth.\n \"Okay, uh, Missy! It's still an honor to meet you, though!\"\n \"Ah ah ah,\" Missy chided with a grin, waggling a finger. \"What have I just said? Not an honor, I'm not special. A pleasure, fine, very nice, okay, but not an honor, there's nothing honorable about meeting me. Let me reiterate; you're coming to work here for your school, so we'll be around each other all day every day. So none of that star-struck stuff, and none of that very polite stuff. We're co-workers, we're on first-name terms, and we can say silly stuff to each other. For instance, I'm pretty sure you must be dying to mention how short I actually am in real life, because dammit girl, it may not be by much but you're taller than I am! Sheesh! Half my age, a mouse like me, and still taller than me, how crazy is that?\"\nDittie let go an involuntary squeaky giggle.\n \"Hee! Uh, well, yes, I did notice that. It don't really show in your videos, but I was kinda surprised that you are so... that you're a bit shorter than me.\"\n \"Yeah well, mouse stuff and all that,\" Missy chortled, making another dismissive gesture with her paw. \"Even if it may not entirely apply to you. Anyway! This here is miss Fanni Schneider, a very good and close friend of mine who will be around here on a somewhat regular basis because she runs a small landscaping company and has done all the greenery around the place here.\"\n \"I know, yes! I've seen your videos of all the work that was done to this garage,\" Dittie nodded with a smile. \"I've seen all your videos! Multiple times!\" She offered Fanni a paw as well. \"It's very nice to meet you too, miss Schneider.\"\n \"Uh, likewise,\" Fanni smiled, briefly shaking Dittie's paw.\n \"Right, now that we're all properly introduced, let's sit down and talk a bit more in-depth,\" Missy smiled, turning to walk to the left-hand door of the garage. \"Drink? I'm guessing you must be parched after all that driving.\"\n \"Uh, yeah, I had drinks with me, but it was a long way from Rainbow Falls, that's where I stayed overnight,\" Dittie nodded.\n \"Yeah, no kidding, that's a five or six hour drive from here,\" Missy nodded, leading the way into the garage and opening the display refrigerator. \"Well, go on and grab what you like, kiddo, you're part of the crew now after all.\"\nShe took a bottle of fruit juice herself, as did Fanni, and Dittie took a bottle of spring water, giggling softly and pointing at the logo on the back of Missy's shirt as she followed the vanilla-hued mousette into the garage.\n \"Hey, VGG, I'm subbed to that one too! That guy is so funny! I have a forehead awning and one of his back rags, the one with all the funny sayings on it, hee!\" she giggled.\n \"Yeah, I love the kind of humor he uses to kind of hide how knowledgeable he actually is and you actually learn stuff from his funny explanations,\" Missy nodded with a smile.\n\nThey took the bottles up to the mezzanine over the toilet and office and sat down on the faux-leather armchairs and sofa that were there. Almost right away, the fluffy feral cat Salmon crawled into Missy's lap and formed herself into a compact and fluffy catloaf. Missy calmly petted the cat and smiled at Dittie.\n \"Now then, if you've seen all my Youtube videos multiple times, I'm pretty sure you already know a whole bunch about me, so let me start by asking you some things about you, okay? For starters, why is a young girl like yourself going to school to learn to become a car mechanic?\"\n \"I like cars! I love cars! Especially old cars, they look so much better. I wanna learn to fix them and make them pretty again and keep them on the road where they belong,\" Dittie smiled brightly. \"And I'm good at it, too! I been around cars all my life! My mom works at a dealership and my dad is a military mechanic and I've been helping him pretty much ever since I could walk.\"\n \"I was told that's also the reason you're so freaking early with getting a driver's license, right?\" Missy remarked.\nDittie nodded again, taking small sips from her bottle of water.\n \"My dad let me steer his car sometimes when I was a little kid, and later sometimes let me drive. I could actually drive a car by myself when I was nine, so he let me take the official course on the army base he works at when I was thirteen and I got my full license when I turned fourteen.\"\n \"Well, good on ya,\" Missy smiled, lightly scritching Salmon's ears. \"You live in Merian, I take it?\"\n \"Yeah, all my life,\" Dittie nodded. \"I suppose I'm lucky, my dad has a steady job at the base so he don't get stationed all over the place and we don't have to move a lot. I only remember we moved once, from the apartment we lived in when I was a little kid to the house we live in now.\"\n \"Tell me about it, moving is a drag,\" Missy agreed. \"So what have you learned in school so far? That fellow from the college who got in touch with me last week said you've already done the first two years of the Auto Mechanics, Body and Paint course and that you've done some additional smaller side-courses.\"\n \"Yeah, I could do the stuff pretty fast,\" Dittie nodded proudly. \"The first year was kinda generic, diagnosing and interpreting engine codes and that kinda stuff, but I said I wanted to specialize in old cars. That's kinda one branch of the course, with modern cars being the other branch, you know.\" She started ticking off on her fingers. \"I've learned all kinds of stuff about older cars. Diagnosing knocking and pinging and stuff like that, diagnosing starting problems and rough running, electrical problems and ignition and timing problems, rebuilding and tuning carburetors and early injection systems, diagnosing fueling and cooling problems, diagnosing braking and tracking and steering problems, rebuilding and bleeding brake systems, rebuilding suspension systems, rebuilding exhaust systems, and that's just the mechanical stuff. I've also already learned a bunch about bodywork, like replacing lights and trim, fixing dents, fixing rust, and some of the side-courses I did had things like panel alignment, fixing scratches and weathered paint, fixing trim pieces, a bit of fabrication, interior work and stuff like that.\"\nMissy drowned a chortle in a sip of juice.\n \"So if we'd go to a farm and grab a pickup from the sixties or seventies that's been sitting in a tree row for twenty years, you can get it running and roadworthy again in a coupla days?\"\n \"That's what I did with my van!\" Dittie nodded with a bright smile.\n \"Alright, let's go have a look at that then,\" Missy chortled.\n\nShe lifted Salmon out of her lap and lay the cat on the backrest of the sofa before standing up. Fanni and Dittie also got up and followed Missy out of the garage again, halting by the faded blue van. Missy gestured at it.\n \"Now, I'm well-versed enough to know exactly what this is, but tell me what we're looking at here so I can hear what you know, and tell me what you've done to it so far.\"\n \"Okay, yeah,\" Dittie smiled brightly again. \"This is my van, it's a nineteen sixty-two Chevrolet Corvair ninety-five van, they called them Corvan for short. It's like the panel van version of the Greenbrier passenger van. I bought it for a few hundred bucks from a farm in Clover Burrow and got it running again so I could drive it to school. Of course I put new tires on it and redid the brakes first thing because that's super important, and I could use it for my classes so that was super nifty.\" She started gesturing at different areas of the vehicle. \"In the past two years, I've done a conversion to disc brakes on all four corners and I put in all new QA-One suspension all around, with adjustable coilover springs in the front and helper coil springs over new leaf springs and single adjustable shocks in the back. She rides so much nicer and smoother that way! There was no air conditioning because there was no room for that in these vans, but my dad found me a completely wrecked sixty-seven Corvair Monza Spyder that I bought as a parts car, and I put the dashboard with the air conditioning of that one into my van so it now has AC, you really really need that around here. Because of that, I also had to put the engine of that Monza Spyder into my van for the AC compressor, but I was gonna do that anyway because it's a much better turbocharged motor with a hundred and fifty horsepower so now my van keeps up with traffic much better, and I completely rebuilt that engine before putting it in my van and put a brand new, slightly larger turbo on it.\"\n \"Okay, alright, very nice, I'm mildly impressed,\" Missy smiled, letting go a short chortle. \"And that brings me to another little thing. If you've seen all my videos a bunch, you know the standard of the work I do here at this garage. I've worked for sixteen years in a specialty garage that did in exotic and supercars, eleven of those years as the chief of the body and paint department, and I'm a perfectionist, so for my whole adult life I've been working to a standard of one thousand percent. Now, you're coming to work here for your school, and I have no doubt you're good and you have talent, but keep in mind that anything you do here is not meant to impress your teachers at school; you have to impress [i]me[/i], and trust me, I'm a lot harder to impress. Now, tell me, what's the rest of your plans for this van? Body's pretty straight and rust-free from what I can tell, so tell me what you're aiming to do with it from here.\"\n \"Uh, okay, yes,\" Dittie said, a little bit taken aback but still with enthusiasm. \"Well, obviously I want to make it look all nice and like new again. I've already done a bit of work on the interior, like that dashboard swap and I also put in the bucket seats from that Monza Spyder, but I want to get them re-covered in the proper color because they're black with red accents right now and that just looks bleh. And of course I want to fix all the body panels and do a complete repaint in the original color to make it look all nice and like new again, because it's gonna be my official revival-rig!\"\n \"Now there's a term that puts a thought in my mind,\" Missy chortled. \"I follow a good number of car revival and restoration channels on Youtube, so that term is not completely alien to me. So that brings me to ask you; what's your plan for once you've finished school?\"\n \"I wanna do a revival channel on Youtube too!\" Dittie smiled brightly. \"I'm subbed to a bunch of them, and I've always wanted to do that too! I wanna go out and rescue old abandoned cars and revive them so they can be put back on the road where they should be and be driven regularly again!\"\n \"More power to you, kiddo,\" Missy said with another chortle, leaning with her back against the side of the old van and thumbing at it across her shoulder. \"Now explain me this. You're a young kid with a big interest in old and classic cars. Okay, I can see that, that's been me as well. You got yourself a classic van to fix up, all good. But why a Corvair? Why not a Volkswagen minibus? They're so much simpler and easier to work on.\"\nDittie shrugged lightly.\n \"Vee-dub vans are cute and cool, yes. But everybody's already doing a Vee-dub. In my class, there's seven of us who got a car of their own to fix as a school project, and four of them got a Vee-dub van. And with everyone wanting one, that makes them [i]stupid[/i] expensive. You see, the school gave those of us with a valid driver's license who wanted a car for a school project a budget of ten thousand bucks to buy and restore a car over the duration of the whole course. Those four of my classmates who bought a Vee-dub van blew almost that whole budget on buying the van alone because they're so stupid expensive even in bad condition. But I like this van, I think it looks cute, it's roomier inside than a Vee-dub van, and it only cost a few hundred bucks. For the amount of money my classmates spent on just buying a junky Vee-dub van, I bought this van, the Monza Spyder for parts, the whole kit for disc brake conversion on all four wheels, the new tires, all the brand new QA-One suspension parts and the new turbo, and in the end I still spent less than my classmates.\"\nMissy hid a wide and cheerful smile behind a paw and put her other paw on Dittie's shoulder.\n \"Well now, see, there you go, you just impressed me, kiddo. That is freaking clever for one, it shows me you're not afraid to go your own way and do your own thing, and it shows me you're mighty budget-minded for a teenager and you can make very good and well thought-through decisions. And to be frank, I find that even more impressive than a stunning talent in bodywork or painting.\" She giggled shortly. \"Also, [i]holy crap[/i] that school of yours is hella generous!\"\nDittie looked up with a bright smile and a sparkle in her eyes again.\n \"Thanks, Missy! Hee, and yeah, it sounds very generous, that budget the school gave us, but it does have to last us all through the whole four-year course, you know, and by the end, at graduation time, our project car has to be fully restored to a such a good condition it could go to a classic car auction and make a profit.\"\n \"Hahahee!\" Missy giggled, shaking her head a bit. \"Okay, well, that's where your choice may have been a bit poor, kiddo. Because I very much doubt a fully restored Corvair van would bring in anything above ten grand at an auction, even a really well-restored and upgraded one. But hey, you never know, and like I said, I still admire your choice and the reason for your choice.\"\nBoth of them giggled lightly again, looking around when Fanni stepped out of the garage and spoke up.\n \"Hey, uh, Missy?\"\n \"Yeah? Sorry we've been talking for so long, darling, but it's been kind of important. Gotta get to know my new intern after all, hee! But what did you want to say?\" Missy smiled.\nFanni also smiled.\n \"It's, uh, it's okay, I understand this is important. But, uh, yeah, I just wanted to let you know I'm, uh, I'm off to town now so I can bring those packages to the post office before it closes. It's, uh, it's almost half past four, you know.\"\n \"Ah, yes, of course! Go right ahead, darling, and thanks for taking care of that for me,\" Missy nodded with a smile. \"Will you be here again tomorrow for those plants and all?\"\n \"I'm, uh, I'm always happy to help you,\" Fanni smiled again, nodding. \"And yes, I have to prune and guide those linden trees over your, uh, parking spots tomorrow.\"\n \"Alright, we'll see you tomorrow then, darling,\" Missy smiled.\nFanni nodded and walked back into the garage, and Missy turned back to Dittie who was checking her phone, then looking up.\n \"I had no idea it was that time already. Uhm, if it's okay, Missy... I would so love to stay longer and talk a bunch more, but I should get to town too and find the youth hostel I'm staying at. Do you maybe know which one it is and where it is? They forgot to tell me that.\"\n \"Sounds like that's not the only thing they forgot to tell you,\" Missy chittered, sending the young mouse girl a small cheerful wink. \"You're not staying in a youth hostel, kiddo, you're staying with me. I wasn't gonna let them put you in a crummy youth hostel for a whole year for one, and for another, with how weird the hours at my garage can be sometimes, it's waaay handier when you can just ride to and from the garage with me. I have a house that's way too large for little old me alone, and there's a very nice guestroom in there, so you're staying with me.\"\n\nDittie stared at Missy with her mouth sinking open, her tail flopped limply down onto the ground behind her and her large round ears drooped almost down along the sides of her head in disbelief.\n \"Wh... uh... fo... for real?!\"\nMissy smothered a quick giggle behind a paw and nodded.\n \"Yup, for real, kiddo. It's just so much more convenient for both of us that way, and I just couldn't bear the thought of you staying in a bunk bed in a tiny room in a youth hostel for all that time.\" She put a paw on Dittie's shoulder again. \"But that does give us a few more important things to talk about right this second, kiddo. For starters, are you a nudist by any chance?\"\nDittie didn't even blink at that question but just gave a light shrug, slowly lifting her ears back up.\n \"Well, yeah. Everyone in Merian is, pretty much, and here is even more south so I'm sure everyone in town here is too. And I know you're one too, I seen your uncensored videos on your website, with that old bus from the nudist resort and all.\"\n \"You got that right,\" Missy nodded. \"Yeah, I'm a nudist too, so that means that right after I've stepped into my house, the first thing I do is lose the clothes. That in turn also means that you can do the same if you want. But I do want to get this straight; Fanni is a nudist too and as I mentioned before, a very close and personal friend of mine. She stays with me during the weekends, and sometimes during the week as well, but while we may fool around with each other at those times, I don't want any funny business from you, got it? You're a cute girl, but you're not cute enough for me to go to jail over.\"\nFanni swiveled her small ears as she passed by on her way to her pickup truck and looked around with a smile for a moment.\n \"That, uh, you don't have to worry about that, Missy. The, uh, age of consent, of, uh, legality, is sixteen in Minnaluna.\"\nMissy blinked at Fanni.\n \"Are you for real right now?\"\nFanni nodded with a smile, and Dittie also nodded.\n \"Yes, that's true, Missy. But, uh, I'll behave myself, I promise.\" She hid a short single giggle behind a paw. \"Hee, I mean, okay, it would be awesome to... uh, no, forget I said that. What I mean is, it's awesome that I at least can be freely naked in your house, Missy. In college, I share a dorm with a girl who is one of the very few people in this country who is not into nudism, and she doesn't like me being naked in our dorm. She's actually kinda prudish and she's always asking me to put on PJs when I'm laying on bed reading or studying or something, and I hate it, it just feels way too restrictive.\"\nMissy quirked an eyebrow with her head a bit canted, but her lips slowly curled back into a small smile.\n \"Hm. Well, okay then. I do know what you mean, I'm from Wisconsin originally and even there I already was a nudist, but I couldn't even be naked around my own house due to the neighborhood so I know how you feel. But another thing, kiddo; I'd appreciate no whining about dinner, okay? I don't mind in the least if you'd fix yourself a snack or a sandwich or a cup of soup or something sometime, but even while my hours can be crazy, in general I'm home in time to cook during the week. I'll be glad to cook things you like, but when I don't, you can eat what I put on the table, agreed?\"\n \"Sure, Missy, that's fine,\" Dittie nodded with a smile. \"You'll find me quite easy where food is concerned, I eat pretty much anything, hee. Oh, yeah, and I don't smoke or drink alcohol, so you don't have to worry about that either.\"\n \"Okay, good,\" Missy smiled. \"I have alcohol in the house and I sometimes have a glass of wine, so I wouldn't mind if you did as well, but yeah, no smoking in my house. One of my best friends, actually, three of my best friends smoke, and two of them live in this country and when they're visiting, they can take their smoking outside.\" She looked around and waved as Fanni drove her pickup truck to the left-side entrance of the forecourt and honked the horn, then suddenly waved even more frantically to motion Fanni to stop for a moment. \"Oh! Hold on for a sec, darling, wait a minute before you go to town!\" Fanni stopped the truck, and Missy turned back to Dittie. \"You've got contracts for me to sign and send back to your school, right?\"\n \"Oh, yes, right!\" Dittie nodded.\n\nShe quickly trotted around to the right side of her Corvair van, opened the passenger door and reached inside to take a binder from the passenger's seat, which she handed to Missy. Not wanting to keep Fanni waiting for too long, Missy quickly scanned through the binder and found the contracts mister Blom had mentioned to her the week before. She also quickly scanned through one of the contracts as they both were the same, borrowed a pen from Fanni to sign the contract and to scribble a mailing address on the back of one of her business cards.\n \"Here, have them put this in a thick envelope and send it to that college while you're at the post office, darling, please,\" she smiled, handing Fanni the pen and the signed contract.\n \"Of course, Missy, I'll do that,\" Fanni nodded with a smile.\n \"Thanks darling, and see you tomorrow,\" Missy smiled.\nShe waved again as Fanni this time did drive off the forecourt and headed towards the city, then turned to smile at Dittie.\n \"Bit frantic. Get used to it, I'm known for forgetting a bunch of things,\" she chortled. \"Is there anything you want to ask?\"\n \"Uh... yeah, kinda,\" Dittie smiled, lightly fiddling with the flap of her coverall's left chest pocket. \"I don't wanna be rude or nothing, but when miss Schneider leaned over like that... I thought I saw... was she, uh, was she wearing a collar?\"\nMissy sent the young mousette a playful smirk.\n \"Told you she is a very close and personal friend of mine, didn't I? Yes, she was wearing a collar, I gave that to her because she wanted me to, and that's all I'll say about that for now.\" She smiled again. \"It's about time to head home, it's nearing dinnertime, but would you want a tour or something? Not that I think I could show you very much you haven't seen already if you've watched all of my videos so often, but heckity.\"\n \"Oh yes, that would be great, Missy, I would love that,\" Dittie nodded with a smile.\n \"Let's go then, we'll make it quick,\" Missy chortled.\n\nThey walked into the garage building once again so Missy could show Dittie around. The toilet and the office under the mezzanine on the left side of the main building, the three bays with a two-post car lift each, the tire mounting machine and wheel balancing machine, the secondary workroom that was built onto the back of the original fuel station building, accessed through a large open doorway from the main garage building. Inside that original building, the stockroom and the personal room that had been built in there to take naps during the hottest hours of the summer days, the engine cleanroom that was built partially inside the stockroom and partially inside the secondary workroom.\n\nOutside, there were actually a few things to show that Dittie had not seen before as Missy had never featured it in any of the videos she had made over the years. The right one of the two large buildings behind the garage, of which one half was used as a stockroom for large car parts like body panels, windows and chassis and suspension parts, and the other half was used as storage for parts cars and project cars. The building on the left, which housed the suspension and brake test path and the large floor dynamometer, as Missy hardly ever used the latter and never thought it was very interesting to show procedures on the former in her videos. On the other side of that building, the huge top tier paint booth of course had often prominently featured in her videos before, but it was still way more impressive to see it in person.\n\nAnd then there were the two massively large and much newer pastel yellow buildings with the dark blue roofs on the right side of the garage, which Missy had gotten built after she had inherited the garage as she needed specialized work spaces for her specific line of work. The building at the front, which was divided in a 60/40 manner, with the car disassembly area and metalwork area in the larger part, and the body filler and sanding area in the smaller part, with their two-post and four-post car lifts respectively, and all the racks and machines and equipment Missy had moved in there and gradually added to over the years. The building behind that, which was designated for powdercoating work but which still only had the media blasting booth and the smaller powdercoating booth and oven as Missy had simply not yet gotten to shop for anything larger.\n\nShe did skip the two very large warehouse buildings, the old red barn, the office unit and the small workshop building on the neighboring farmyard, which were also her property as she'd had to buy that entire plot, but she had never featured any of it in any of her videos, and for the tour she was giving Dittie she did not think it was important enough to spend any time on - plus there were things there that were nobody's business. Besides, it had already crept past five o'clock, and it was still a good half hour of driving to Missy's house. So, having taken the tour past the washing station behind the garage and around the left side of it past the new fire escape and back to the front, Missy went back inside the garage to switch off lights and lock doors after they had gotten everything they needed to have with them from inside.\n\nBoth getting into their cars, Missy led the way in her old yellow Mini and Dittie followed her in the faded blue Corvair van, skirting the north-western suburbs of the city and driving to the north-western outskirts. There were more upscale townhouses sitting on larger plots of land out there, far enough away from each other and the city to be secluded, close enough by to be convenient for shopping. On West Willow Drive, Missy turned into the driveway of number 58 and drove all around the loop it made in front of the house, parking her car in front of the two-car garage attached to the left side of the two-story house and getting out to wait for Dittie to make it to that same spot.\n\nIt took a few moments, as Dittie was driving up the driveway very slowly, looking left and right around her with sparkling eyes again as she followed the loop around the marvelous small teardrop-shaped garden Fanni had planted in the middle of the originally fully gravel driveway. When she finally made it to where Missy was waiting, the young brown-furred mousette just sat in her van, even forgetting to shut off the engine as she gazed at the house through the passenger door window and the beautiful small front garden through the driver door window.\n\nShe only snapped out of it when Missy cheerfully tapped a knuckle against the driver door window.\n \"Knock knock, hello, anybody home in there?\"\n \"Oh!\" Dittie finally shut off the engine of her van and opened the driver door to hop out. \"I'm sorry, Missy. It's just so... beautiful! That garden is gorgeous! And your house is so pretty! And so big! It's bigger than the house we live in! And all the way out here, all private and secluded and everything with no direct neighbors and, and...\"\n \"Yes, the aunt and uncle I never knew I had were very successful and also had very good taste when they bought this plot and had this house built,\" Missy chortled. \"And Fanni couldn't stand how my driveway just ended in a big patch of bare gravel so she did some work there, and she's a professional gardener and landscaper after all so of course that looks great. But let's go inside already, okay? I haven't eaten anything since lunch at about half past eleven and it's half past five now, I'm about ready to devour a cow. Do you have a suitcase or something with you?\"\nDittie giggled squeakily and nodded.\n \"Oh, yes, of course! I'm actually quite hungry too, to be honest. I'll grab my stuff.\"\n\nShe walked to the right side of her van and opened one of the double side doors, reaching inside to take a battered suitcase and a small olive green duffel bag. Missy led the way up the front porch and halted as she unlocked the front door, dipping her large ears with a giggle as behind her, Dittie let out a gleeful squeal upon spotting the string of lights that were shaped like little plastic bunnies who were sitting, standing, laying down or rubbing their snoot with front paws, glued to the top of the porch railing.\n \"Ohmigosh, that's so cuuuuute!\"\nHer voice went up a whole octave over the length of the word cute. Missy pushed open the front door and half-turned, leaning again the jamb and winking at Dittie.\n \"That was exactly my reaction, more or less, when I saw it at the house of one of my best friends, so I totally and immediately stole that idea. But anyway, here we are! I'll show you to the guestroom first so you can put down your stuff, then I'll throw some dinner together, alright?\"\n \"Yeah, okay, that sounds great!\" Dittie nodded brightly.\n\nShe followed Missy into the house and up the stairs. On the landing were several doors; two on the right leading to the front side of the house, one at the back and one on the left leading to the rear side of the house. Missy opened the first door on the right and led the way into the fairly large room that looked out over the driveway. It had a queen-sized bed made with floral sheets and bedside cabinets on either side of the headboard holding a small lamp, a dresser with doors as well as drawers, a comfortable velour armchair, a smaller cabinet with a radio on it and a wicker basket holding three velvet African violets, a small desk with a padded desk chair and a banker-style desk lamp, a ceiling lamp that looked like an upside-down petunia flower and a couple of framed paintings of landscapes on the walls.\n\nAs the heavy velour curtains were drawn, Missy switched on the ceiling lamp and made a sweeping gesture with an arm.\n \"Here you go, this is the guestroom, so this'll be your home for the coming year or so.\"\nDittie let go a squeaky gasp and almost dropped her suitcase and duffel bag as she only just in time managed to stop herself from clasping her paws over her muzzle, looking around with wide and sparkling eyes.\n \"Ohmigosh! It's beautiful! I love it, Missy! This is such a pretty room! I love those flowery sheets! And that lamp is adorable, it's a big flower too! Oh, thank you, thank you so much for letting me stay with you, Missy!\"\n \"You're welcome, kiddo,\" Missy smiled. \"Like I said, it's just so much more convenient for both of us, and no doubt this is a whole lot more comfy and you have a bunch more privacy here than you'd have in a youth hostel.\"\n \"Totally!\" Dittie squeaked. \"Heck, that motel I stayed at in Rainbow Falls didn't even have such pretty and comfy rooms! I love it so much!\"\n \"Like I said, you're very welcome,\" Missy chortled. \"Go on and throw down your stuff, and I'll show you the bathroom, it's right nextdoor.\" She switched off the ceiling lamp after Dittie had put down her suitcase and duffel bag and opened the second right door on the landing. \"Right here. Shower booth and bath tub so you can use either if you want to, and that booth over there is a dryer booth for when you're done showering. Toilet over there and a washer and a dryer so you can do your laundry here too. Well, actually, you can just dump that in that hamper over there and I'll do it along with my own laundry whenever it's time to do the laundry.\"\n \"This is so pretty too!\" Dittie smiled brightly and still in a somewhat high-pitched and squeaky tone. \"There's so much luxury! A shower [i]and[/i] a tub, and a dryer booth! At the dorm we just have a large shower room, and we have to use towels to dry off, so you can always tell when someone has showered because they look like shaggy poofballs. And there's five washing machines in the laundry room of which at least two are always out of order.\"\n \"And the dryers always burn your undies to a crisp because the lint trap is always full and they overheat, no doubt,\" Missy sniggered. \"That's how it was in our dorms when I went to college, so I know exactly what you mean.\"\n \"Hee hee! Yeah!\" Dittie nodded with a giggle. \"I only have panties anyway because I don't even fit into any bras yet, and I just totally stopped bothering with them because they always got ruined by the dryers.\"\n \"Well, this one doesn't have an underwear monster that chews up your clothes, so you can safely use this one. There might have been an underwear monster in it, but it starved to death because I never bother with undies either,\" Missy sniggered, patting the top of the dryer with a paw. \"Just do please clean the lint trap if you use it, okay? And while we're here...\" She emptied the pockets of her shorts onto the dryer and took off her shorts and shirt, revealing her full nudity as she dropped the clothes in the hamper and picked up the stuff she had taken from her pockets. \"You can freshen up and unpack a bit if you want to, I'll be downstairs starting dinner so I'll see you there in a bit, okay? When you come down the stairs, it's the door to your left, that leads into the living room and that connects to the dining room and the kitchen, the door right near the stairs goes to the downstairs toilet.\"\n\nDittie very slowly nodded with wide and still somewhat sparkling eyes and a light squeaky gasp. She clearly had not expected Missy to just casually strip naked like that right in front of her, and for several moments she couldn't keep her eyes off the nude light yellow mousette. Missy gave her head a light, amused shake and just smiled before turning and stepping out of the bathroom to go downstairs and into the kitchen after tossing her three sets of keys, phone and wallet on the coffee table and switching on the radio. Of course, the moment she stepped through the archway into the open kitchen, she halted and turned on her heels to walk back into the living room to take one of the sets of keys back from the coffee table so she could unlock and open the backdoor.\n\nGlancing the retro clock over the counter and seeing the hands forming a perfectly straight vertical line, she decided it was too late in the evening already to do any elaborate cooking. Instead, she took a family-size can of very richly filled, thick creamy tomato soup from the pantry, emptied it into a pan and set the pan on one of the rings of the electric stove. Letting the soup slowly and gradually heat up, the vanilla-colored mousette grabbed a bag of soft buns and several packets of luncheon meats and sliced cheese and prepared a plate with several buns with salami, ham or cheese, every now and then checking the pan and stirring a ladle through the heating soup.\n\nOnly a few minutes later, one of her ears swiveled to the sound of the living room door opening and closing. Looking around with a smile, Missy saw Dittie stepping into the living room, now also naked, holding her phone in one paw and looking around her with wide sparkling eyes and a happy smile. The young brown mousette didn't speak, but she did make involuntary quiet squeaking sounds, her thin hairless tail slowly swaying back and forth in happy arcs behind her as she took in the old-fashioned square corduroy sofa and armchairs, the coffee table with its collection of random items scattered across it, the wood cabinets and breakfront with their doors with small brown glass panes in them, the tall glass display case with a collection of high-end quality model classic cars in it, all the green and flowering plants all over, the vintage rolltop desk with a more modern desk squared to it on which were sitting two computers and three laptops, the small, low entertainment cabinet with a TV, a radio and a record player sitting on it, of course the fireplace against the side wall of the house, the framed pictures on the mantel and on cabinets and the walls and the framed paintings, with one quite large painting showing a small village way in the distance as seen from the edge of a forest prominently above the computer desks.\n\nWith Dittie just standing there to take everything in, and Missy being the highly observant mouse she had always been, she right away noticed that the fine, sleek fur in the young brown mousette's face was damp and a bit mussed up, that she had an irregularly shaped blotch of light grey-ish beige fur over her lower chest, midriff and upper tummy, and that she indeed had only tiny budding breasts that would not even fill out a training bra, but which did have very thick, almost pudgy areolae that were almost just as large as the tiny breasts and were capped with also relatively large and quite puffy nipples. Slowly stirring the soup again, Missy chortled under her breath as she looked at Dittie just standing there looking around with a rapt expression on her face. Eventually, she tapped the metal ladle on the rim of the pan and dropped it on the kitchen counter with a bit of noise to draw the young brown mousette's attention.\n\nIt only helped for a moment, as Dittie did snap out of it and looked around into the kitchen, then immediately was captivated again by the sight of the back garden through the opened backdoor and the window next to it.\n \"Ohmigosh, look at your backyard! It's amazing! It's so totally gorgeous!\" she squealed, trotting over to the backdoor to gaze out at the back garden.\n \"Also all Fanni's work,\" Missy smiled with another light chortle under her breath.\n \"Look at those neat chairs! And that big sunshade! Eee, and that huge candle thing, that's awesome!\" Dittie squeaked happily.\n \"Yeah, those were my contributions,\" Missy chortled, putting the plate of buns on the dining table. \"Ready for some grub yet, kiddo? Go ahead and grab a bun, soup's almost done. What do you like on your sandwiches? There's cheese and salami and ham, so you have a choice.\"\nDittie slowly turned around, tearing her gaze away from the back garden to look at Missy with a bright smile and sparkling eyes.\n \"Oh, yeah! Well, not to sound stereotypical or anything, but I like cheese, Missy, hee!\"\n \"A stereotype I'm in total agreement with, I also like my cheese,\" Missy chortled. She reached into the fridge and took out a small round box. \"Here, you tried this before? Try one of these.\"\nDittie took the box and looked at it with a giggle at the name of Donner's Wetter printed on it.\n \"I heard of these! I never had them though, I don't think, it's very hard to get in Merian. It's like goat cheese, right?\"\n \"That's right,\" Missy nodded, turning her attention back to the soup and stirring it again. \"Mister Donner's farm is somewhere between here and Shelter Valley. I actually met him before, he bought some hay from me a few times.\"\nDittie was about to put one of the small white-ish cubes of cheese from the round box into her mouth, but halted with her paw halfway up to her mouth, looking up at Missy with surprise and her mouth hanging open a bit.\n \"Hay? You sell hay? But you have a garage!\"\nMissy chortled while she turned up the heat under the pan and stirred the soup a bit more, sending Dittie a cheerful wink across her shoulder.\n \"I have a garage, yes. But have you seen all those meadows to the right and behind my garage? Those were all hayfields from a farm that was next to my garage back when it was still a gas station. It's been sitting abandoned since like the seventies, and I needed room to expand so I had to buy that entire tract of land.\" She shrugged cheerfully. \"I'm a city girl, so what was I gonna do with thirty-plus acres of grassland? I only needed a sliver of it for the expansion. But several people had mentioned those fields were super prime hayfields, so I figured to let the farmers of the area between here and Shelter Valley harvest the hay. Be a shame to let all that quality land and grass just go to waste, right?\"\n \"I suppose so,\" Dittie nodded. \"I wouldn't know, I'm a city girl too, hee! But I guess that makes sense why you also sell hay, and it's nice for the farmers around here I guess.\"\n \"Yeah, the fellow who runs the Agricultural Co-Operation in Shelter Valley told me that decision made me pretty much a local hero,\" Missy sniggered. \"I don't feel that way, for me it was just, again, convenience, because all that grass needs occasional mowing anyway and that's way too much work for me. And if the farmers can use the stuff, well hey, let them have at it I say.\" She checked the soup which by now was slowly bubbling and switched off the stove. \"Well, soup's up. Have a seat, kiddo, and like I said, grab a bun if you want. Wanna drink, too? I have Coke, Mountain Dew, cranberry and raspberry juice, pineapple juice and Berry Blast.\"\n \"Oh, Berry Blast, that's real yummy!\" Dittie smiled, taking a seat on one of the dining chairs. \"I'll have some of that please, Missy.\"\n\nMissy nodded with a smile, stirring the soup a last time. From one of the cabinets over the counter, she took two glasses that had a picture of a classic car printed on one side and a picture of a traffic sign printed on the other side, filling them with a deep maroon-ish purple drink from a carton printed with quite flashy graphics. Setting the glasses on the dining table, she also took two soup bowls in opaque white milk glass with a pattern of brown and orange circles on them and filled them with the tomato soup and a spoon and setting them on the dining table as well. For a while, the two mice sat at the table, having bits and pieces of casual conversation while eating the soup and the buns and sipping the juice.\n\nWhen the food was gone, Missy rinsed the soup bowls a bit and put them and the plate and spoons in the dishwasher and refilled the glasses with more of the berry juice. Taking the glasses into the living room, Missy made a gesture around her before sinking down on the large sofa.\n \"Make yourself comfy, kiddo. Did you get a bit settled in upstairs already?\"\nDittie also sat down on the other end of the sofa, holding the glass of juice in both paws and nodding with a smile.\n \"Yeah, I got the most important things from my suitcase already, like my phone charger and stuff. Guess I'll put my clothes in the dresser tonight and get organized a bit.\"\n \"Good, good,\" Missy nodded with a smile. \"If there's anything you need, just let me know, okay? Like a laptop or something, did you bring anything like that with you?\"\n \"Uh, no, I left my laptop at my dorm, because I thought I was gonna be staying in a youth hostel,\" Dittie said, sipping her juice. \"I figured it'd be fine, I can get emails and stuff on my phone and watch videos on there and all.\"\n \"Right,\" Missy nodded. \"That is a bit small and inconvenient though, so you can use one of those laptops over there. One of them is for my video editing, but I of course took my own computer and laptop with me when I moved here and it turned out there was a computer and two laptops in this house already too, so I have extras. And if you maybe want a TV up there, just let me know as well.\" She gestured at the TV on the low entertainment cabinet. \"To be honest, I hardly ever watch TV, only for that late talkshow In the Mix with Mint and Vix, and for the weather programs when the spring and fall storms come around, but that's it. I prefer just having some music playing, but if you'd like a TV, I'm sure we can find a decent one in one of the big secondhand stores in town.\"\n \"Aw, thanks,\" Dittie smiled. \"That's fine though, I don't watch a whole lot of TV either, I mostly watch videos on Youtube.\"\nMissy chortled lightly and sent Dittie a small grin.\n \"Let me guess. Vice Grip Garage, because you already mentioned you’re subscribed to that one. Junkyard Digs. Finnegan's Garage. The David Freiburger Channel. Low-Buck Garage. IronTrap Garage. NoNonsenseKnowHow. Graveyard Carz. Budget Buildz. Pole Barn Garage. Just Junkyard Jill. Chrissy's Classics. And maybe even this obscure and fairly new channel by this mousie woman who recently got a big garage?\"\nDittie giggled cheerfully.\n \"Hee hee hee! Well duh! Of course I'm subscribed to that one! And Chrissy's Classics and Junkyard Digs and Pole Barn Garage too, and Budget Buildz, that's one of my favorites! Because it's a guy working on old cars with his dad, and that's totally just like what me and my dad do all the time too! But you gotta write down those others for me sometime, there's a lot I haven't heard of yet! I did use to follow Roadkill and Motortrend, but I stopped doing that when they went all corporate.\"\n \"Yeah, that was a mess, and a damn shame,\" Missy agreed with a chortle. \"Anyway, before I forget about it again as I'm prone to do; did you have any more stuff from your school for me?\"\nDittie nodded with a smile.\n \"They gave me a bunch of paperwork with all kinds of information and stuff to give to you. It's all in that binder I gave you, that had the contracts in it.\"\n \"A-a-and which I left at the garage, of course,\" Missy smirked with another chortle. \"Ah well, I'll get to that tomorrow then. Did they tell you my work week is different?\"\n \"They told me you don't work on Monday, yes,\" Dittie nodded. \"But they also said you would give me all the necessary information.\"\n \"Right. Well, yes, on Mondays I go to the gym with Fanni, and I only stop by the garage later in the day to check messages and check on my shoptiger; the regular work week is from Tuesday to Saturday. From nine-thirty to five-thirty generally, meaning we get up at about eight-thirty as it's a good half hour's drive from here. But of course, in the summer months I also follow the tropic's schedule, so then work is from seven to eleven in the AM and from three to seven in the PM, but it can vary. Actually, all my shop hours can vary wildly, because I'm not exactly your regular maintenance and repairs garage but I mainly do my own thing with all the restorations and all that, and it's not at all unheard of that I get a phonecall about some kind of project or opportunity that throws the whole workday out of the window.\"\nDittie nodded again, sipping the last juice from her glass.\n \"So, like, I should get up at about half past eight tomorrow, then?\"\nMissy made a dismissive gesture with her free paw.\n \"Tomorrow we'll sleep in a bit, as it's been a long day with a lot going on today. You'll hear it when I get up because the bathroom is right next to the guestroom, and if you don't hear it, I'll pound on the door if need be to drag your sleepy butt out of bed.\"\n \"Hee!\" Dittie giggled shortly again. \"Yeah, I might sleep like a log tonight. It's been [i]such[/i] a long drive, it took me the past two days, and I love driving, but that was a bit much. And, well, and... hee, I may be all bouncy and giddy and full of adrenalin because I actually got to meet you and I actually get to work with you, and it may take a bit before I fall asleep because I'll also be all giddy that I'm actually staying in your house and all, but I'm sure I will sleep like a dead body eventually, hee!\"\n \"Haha, yeah, I get it, kiddo,\" Missy chortled. \"I say again, I'm not a celebrity and I'm not very special, but I can still see how it's a mighty big deal for a young kid like you, especially if you're such a fan.\"\n \"Hee, yeah, I'm a huge fan, you could totally say that,\" Dittie nodded with a soft giggle. She dipped her ears a bit and looked down at her empty glass, fiddling with it slowly. \"Can I... is it okay to give you, like... a physical compliment?\"\nMissy snerked a chortle and made a prompting gesture with a paw.\n \"Let's hear it, kiddo.\"\n \"Well...\" Still looking down at the empty glass in her paws, Dittie slowly turned her head a bit to glance in Missy's direction. \"You're... you're very pretty, Missy. Like, really very pretty. There's...\" She drew in a deep breath and smiled a bit. \"There's something sexy about you that don't really show in your videos, you know.\"\nRunning a paw over her pointy muzzle, Missy hid a mild grin.\n \"In what way?\"\n \"Well...\" Dittie eventually looked up again. \"Like, you're really strong, that shows in your videos when you carry around super heavy things and all. But when actually meeting you, it's only then you can see that... well, like, that your build is quite delicate, that you're, I suppose the right word would be, that you're dainty.\"\nMissy snerked again, licking a pointer finger and drawing a line in the air with it.\n \"Plus one again for the times I've heard that one. That's number... I lost count.\" She sent Dittie a smile. \"But hey, that's not your fault, I can't expect every single person who says that to me to automatically know I met a million persons before who said that to me, now can I?\"\n \"Uh... sorry,\" Dittie said in a low voice. \"It's just... it's maybe not original, but it just really struck me, especially when you suddenly took off your clothes earlier, how delicate and dainty you actually are, despite being obviously super strong.\"\n \"Yes, well, that's why I work out to a very carefully orchestrated routine, kiddo,\" Missy chortled. \"To stay strong, and to stay dainty. It's just really funny to me to see people's expression when they see a petite and dainty mouse like me who suddenly walks off with a transmission on her shoulder or an engine block in her arms.\"\n \"Hee, yes, that is quite funny, actually,\" Dittie nodded with a light giggle. \"Oh, but, like, you mentioned before that you work out at a gym on Mondays, right? With me staying here now and all, what should I do at that time?\"\n \"You can just come along if you want, kiddo,\" Missy shrugged with a smile. \"It's a female-only nudist gym, Fanni and I have a membership so I'm pretty sure I can bring you along as a guest. Heckity, I can probably get you a temp guest membership for a year or something.\"\n \"Oh! Well, yeah, that'd be nice I guess, I'd like that,\" Dittie nodded with a smile.\n \"Settled then, we'll take care of that next Monday,\" Missy smiled, lightly patting Dittie's leg before getting up from the sofa. \"And thanks, kiddo. Like I said before, you're a cute girl too, and very pretty, I like that splotch over your front.\"\n\nShe took the empty glasses into the kitchen to refill them. Returning a few moments later, she handed Dittie one of the full glasses and sat down again, chortling softly under her breath at the expression on the young brown mousette's face. For the rest of the evening, they just sat and relaxed, calmly talking about various topics like school, favorite cars, things to do and see in Merian and South Plains and projects going on at Missy's garage.\n\nAt half past eleven, Missy turned on the TV so they could watch the late-night talkshow that aired on Monday, Wednesday and Friday night from half past eleven to midnight. After the show was over, Missy turned off the TV, closed and locked the backdoor and rinsed out the glasses before leading the way up the stairs.\n\nOn the landing, she halted by the bedroom doors and smiled at Dittie.\n \"Well, goodnight kiddo, sleep well, okay? Like I said, we'll sleep in a bit tomorrow, and you can hear it when I get up so you'll know it's time for you to get up as well. And if you're awake before me, you're free to get up and use the shower and make yourself some breakfast too if you want.\"\nDittie nodded with a smile, twiddling her fingers a bit with her tail slowly swaying back and forth as she hesitated, but then still took Missy into a happy hug - which looked a bit funny because she was indeed a few inches taller than Missy was.\n \"Thanks, Missy, thank you so much for letting me stay with you and all. I already almost screamed with joy when they told me I could do my internship at your garage, and when you told me I could even stay at your house, I about died from happiness.\"\n \"Heh, it's okay, kiddo, really,\" Missy chortled softly, returning the hug for a moment or two, then putting her paws on Dittie's shoulders. \"It may be a totally new thing for me, having an intern, so I have no clue what the protocols are, but I figure just being nice and helpful is a good idea. Ever since I moved to this country, people have been nothing but nice and incredibly helpful to me, and I was raised that way too so naturally I pay all that kindness back in spades.\" She playfully ruffled the young brown mousette's hair with a paw, even while she had to reach up to do it. \"Now, get your butt to bed, kiddo, it's tomorrow already. Goodnight, and see you tomorrow morning.\"\nDittie giggled softly, flicking her ears and her tail and twiddling her fingers a bit again to stop herself from completely cuddling herself up against Missy.\n \"Hee... goodnight Missy, and sleep well.\"\n\nShe stepped into the guestroom and closed the door. Missy gave her head a cheerful amused shake when one of her ears perked to the muffled \"yesssss!\" coming from behind the door. Stepping into her own bedroom, she put her phone on the charger and flopped down onto her bed, stretching out for a moment, then rolling onto her side and closing her eyes.\n\nWell! It had certainly been a long, but most definitely very interesting day. There'd still be a lot to learn and figure out in the time to come, but she was sure everything would work out just fine. A last, muffled giggle escaped her lips as Missy drifted off to sleep. An intern. Imagine that, she had an intern.", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "A calm, sunny, not yet too warm Tuesday morning. Sunlight caressed the Minnaluna land and filtered through the line of trees along the right side of Shelter Valley Way, the old highway between South Plains and Shelter Valley. A silver-dotted Palouse bunny snuffled through the grass in the verge, sniffed at the edge of the asphalt, hesitated, then darted back between the trees and into the field beyond as a light yellow 1975 Mini with a black and white checkered roof drove down the road and pulled into the forecourt of a large garage at the left side of the road.

The large signs on the roof proudly spelled out the name; Mousie Motorworks. Planters made out of old yellow bricks between the road and the buildings sported abundantly flowering shrubs; the middle planter had a very large Golden Rain tree, the branches of which were being tied to a lattice between the posts holding up the roof over a set of three vintage fuel pumps by a skunk woman with cream-colored and white fur, wearing a pair of green long-sleeved coveralls and a light yellow sun hat sporting the Mousie Motorworks name in dark blue on the band. She looked around at the sound of the car pulling into the forecourt and waved with a smile at the woman behind the wheel.

Being parked in the shade of the roof over the fuel pumps, the small car let out a mouse woman with pastel yellow fur, dressed in a grey Vice Grip Garage T-shirt, a pair of blue shorts and a similar light yellow Mousie Motorworks sun hat, plus a pair of aviator-style sunglasses with a reflective yellow sheen on the lenses. She smiled back at the skunk woman and leaned against one of the old fuel pumps.
   "Morning, darling. I didn't know you were going to be here this early to do that work?"
   "I'm, uh, I'm not early, you're late," the cream-tinted skunkette smiled. "It's almost, uh, nine-fifteen already."
   "Hey, this is my business, I can come and go at whatever time I please," the light yellow mousette retorted with a chortle. "Besides, I had to make a stop in town on the way. Anything shocking happen before I got here?"
   "Not, uh, not so much shocking, but there was a, uh, a mail delivery that needed signing for," the cream-tinted skunkette smiled. "Some kind of, uh, express letter. I took delivery and, uh, put it on the desk in the office. Oh, and, uh, I already fed Salmon, too."
   "Thanks, darling," the vanilla-hued mousette smiled, pushing herself off the fuel pump and taking off the sunglasses, hanging them from the collar of her shirt. "Guess I'll go and see what that letter is all about."

She walked into the garage building through the person-sized door on the left of a set of three garage doors. This was Michelle Frelang, owner and proprietor of the Mousie Motorworks garage. A relatively recent immigrant to the country of Minnaluna from Iola, Wisconsin in the United States, she had only arrived into the country a bit under three years earlier due to the garage and a house being left to her by a family member she had never known she had. It was a long and confusing story, but the end result was that Michelle had accepted the inheritance and decided to run the garage as a restoration garage for classic cars as she was a master bodyworker and a genius painter. Before even opening the garage to the public, she had upgraded and expanded it, and in the couple of years that followed, had made quite an impressive name for herself, both in Minnaluna itself as well as on Youtube with the channel she ran to show the restoration projects she undertook.

The cream and white skunk woman was Fanni Schneider. She was also an immigrant, from a small town in Tennessee in the United States, but she had already lived in Minnaluna for close to seven years by the time Michelle arrived. A professional gardener and landscaper running her own small company named "Flower Children", she had been hired by Michelle to beautify the grounds of the neglected garage after they had met by chance on the ferry to the United States. Shy and almost subservient by nature, she had sought out Michelle for company on the ferry she was very uncomfortable on, and from there a very sweet relationship had blossomed between them. She still regularly came to the Mousie Motorworks garage to do small chores and maintenance on the landscaping - or at least that was the official explanation.

She looked up from her work again when the vanilla-hued mousette stepped back outside through the door, reading a letter. Her expression changed to one of surprise when the mouse woman burst into a laugh.
   "Is it, uh, is there something funny, Missy?"
   "Pretty darn funny to me, anyway," the light yellow mousette sniggered. "Here, listen to this." She started reading the letter out loud. "Dear miss Frelang. My name is Arthur Blom, I am writing you on behalf of the Board of Educators of the Merian Advancement College. Our college offers a range of courses in practical careers; one of these courses is our Auto Mechanics, Body and Paint course to train young people for a career in the automotive repair field." She looked up and grinned. "Pretty much what I did, except at the college I went to they had separate courses for mechanics and body and paint. But anyway, here's what else this fellow Blom is writing. Over the duration of each course, we offer a work and learn program that entails the students working in an internship at enterprises in and around Merian, or sometimes further afield depending on wishes from the students as they have a choice of which company they would like to work for. These internships usually last three semesters, or a school year and a half, with the option to add a fourth semester. This allows the students to accelerate their school time as they forego on their school breaks in favor of working a steady schedule with the company they receive an internship at, thusly having the opportunity to graduate prematurely."
   "That's, uh, that's very nice, but I still don't see what, uh, what's funny," Fanni smiled, climbing down from the planter to join Missy on the bench under the roof over the fuel pumps.
   "I'm getting to that," Missy chortled. "Listen to what mister Blom has to tell me." She looked down at the letter again. "In the current course for Auto Mechanics, Body and Paint we have a student who is currently up for such an internship. When asked for her preference of which company to work for, she has been very adamant in her wish to work for your company, Mousie Motorworks. As we have never before worked with you or your company for our courses, I am hereby writing you to ask if you are willing to work with us. If you could please get in touch with us at your earliest convenience, we shall be pleased to discuss the details with you and answer any question you may have. Bla bla bla, phone number at which to contact them, yadda yadda, times during which they can be reached, with kind regards and looking forward to hearing from you, Arthur Blom, Provost for Academic Affairs, Merian Advancement College."
Fanni canted her head slightly.
   "So, uh... what's the funny part about that?"
   "This whole situation," Missy chortled while putting the letter back into the envelope. "I mean, for one, I've never even heard of that college and apparently they never heard of me either. And then, having a student with a burning desire to work at my place? That just tickles me, darling. I don't see why anyone would want that so bad, I'm not anything special."
   "Oh come on now, Missy," Fanni protested with a smile. "You've been saying that for, uh, the past couple of years now, and you, uh, you know it's not true. You've, uh, you've proven time and again just how special you are, and you have made this garage into a, uh, a very successful enterprise in only a couple of years while, uh, operating in a niche market, that in itself is special already. And look at the, uh, the quality of the work you do! I can, uh, I can totally imagine a student would be, uh, impressed and wants to work for you."
   "If you say so, darling," Missy guffawed. "I still don't think I'm so very super special, but if you and others want to see it that way, fine by me."
   "Well, uh, good, because you are," Fanni smiled. "So, uh, are you gonna do it?"
Missy raised the envelope for a moment.
   "What, this you mean?" She shrugged. "Sure, why the heck not. I do have a number of nifty techniques and stuff I could teach someone, I guess. And I suppose it would be nice having an extra pair of hands around the place, things get a little busy sometimes nowadays."

She got up from the bench and walked back into the garage, while Fanni returned to her work with the planters. In the small office inside the main garage building, Missy sat down behind the desk, took the receiver of the old-fashioned pushbutton telephone, dialed the number mentioned in the letter and set the telephone to the loudspeaker function as she expected it to be a quite long call.
   "Merian Advancement College, Sheila speaking, good morning. How can I help you?"
   "Good morning, this is Michelle Frelang of Mousie Motorworks. I just received a letter from your school, by a mister Arthur Blom, asking me to get in touch with you. Could I speak with mister Blom, please?"
   "Of course, miss Frelang, one moment please." There was a pause, a blip on the line, a few bars of quiet instrumental music, then another blip followed by a deep but pleasant male voice. "Arthur Blom."
   "Good morning, mister Blom, this is Michelle Frelang of Mousie Motorworks. I have just received your letter about a student of your school wanting to intern for me?"
   "Indeed, indeed. Thank you for your prompt response, miss Frelang. I hope we can reach an agreement. What would you like to know?"
   "First off, how does this deal even work? I did a similar course back in Wisconsin, where I'm originally from, and I did have an internship at a garage there too so I do know what the work entails, but I have no clue about any contractual obligations or payment agreements or what, so could you please enlighten me on that?"
   "Ah, of course. Well miss Frelang, the way it works with our college is as follows. We have an agreement with a company that they employ a student on an internship contract for the duration of three semesters, or close to a full fiscal year. During that time, the student follows the work hours and schedule of this company, however the contract is between the company and our college, not the student in person. It concerns the standard eight-hour workdays and five-day work weeks, throughout the summer and winter break, therefore the student can finish one and a half school year during this period, or two school years in the case a fourth semester is added to the contract, allowing them to finish their education faster and having a better chance of obtaining a job after graduation. The student shall also receive the proper minimum wage for the position in question, however this is not at cost to the company as it will be compensated to the company by our college. The initial bi-weekly or monthly payment will come from the company's account, but will be reimbursed in two parts, one half at the start of the internship and the other half at the end. Of course, should the company in question deem it fair to pay a higher wage in case the student is doing very good work, that is up to their discretion and that extra amount will be of cost to the company."
   "I see. That sounds a darn lot more fair than the deal I got back in the day, because I sure didn't get paid. Do I need to obtain any form of license or contract or other paperwork from City Hall for the employing of an intern?"
   "No, all contractual obligations are taken care of by our college. Upon arrival at the company, the student will have with them copies of the work contract for them and the company to sign and to be sent back to our college. And in the case of a company who is new to our system, such as in your case, our college will also get in touch with the authorities local to the company in question to take care of all legalities."
   "That's good to know. What about my obligations towards the student? I mean, of course I could just put them to work on the work that is done here, but surely there must be some kind of expectation from your end on that the student will actually, you know, learn stuff, and not just be put to work on cleaning up and sweeping the floor."
   "That is correct, miss Frelang. During the time of the internship, our college will be in regular contact with you to discuss the student's work, their improvements or stagnations, any possible problems or concerns, and we will aid you in the process of grading the student's work so it coincides with our standards for the course in question. If you have any specific tools or machinery for the work that is done at your company, it is desirable that the student gets to work with this equipment as well to learn how to operate it. Plus you will have the opportunity to give the student assignments. Such as, for instance in the case of your line of work, you could assign the student a non-operational engine to make operational again, or body panels of a vehicle to repair to a certain standard."
   "Right, okay, that's stuff I understand. Again, it's good to know that your school will give me aid with all this stuff, because this is all totally new to me."
   "Yes, we usually work very closely with any company in our system, and we aim to provide as much information and aid to any new company that is added to our system. It is in both our interests to maintain a healthy relationship, after all, so that we may cooperate on a recurring basis."
   "I can't argue with that, and it will please you to hear that I am certainly willing to have my company added to your system and provide a workplace for this student who is apparently dead set on working here. I must say I find that somewhat amusing, but hey, it'll be a learning experience for both of us, and I'm always open to learn something new."
   "That is indeed most pleasant to hear, miss Frelang. If you can please give us your email address, we shall email you all the documentation about this procedure, and if you have any further questions at the moment, I shall be glad to answer them."
   "By all means. And yes, I do have some more questions, mainly about this student who set this whole ball rolling. As in your letter you made references of 'her' and 'she', I assume we're talking about a girl?"
   "That is correct, yes. I shall also email you this student's curriculum and personal details, but in short; it concerns a female student of fieldmouse species. Her name is Dittie Bosrandt, spelled with a DT at the end, and she is, from the information I was given, quite an impressive student."
   "In what way?"
   "For starters, her age. The fact she is currently up for internship means that she has completed the first two years of the course, and she is only sixteen years of age at the moment."
   "She started at fourteen, then? Damn, that is indeed quite impressive."
   "Indeed. She has also shown a consistent talent for the work, and has completed several additional shorter side-courses alongside her main course over the past two years."
   "Wow. Sounds like she could take a bunch of work from my hands. When will she arrive here?"
   "As you agreed to provide the workplace, we can let her start her internship now. This means that she should be arriving on Monday next week."
   "Next Monday? Wow, you left that a bit short notice, if you don't mind me saying so. What if I had said no?"
There was a short chuckle on the other end of the line.
   "We have quite an extensive library of companies we work with, miss Frelang. If you had declined this request, we would have been easily able to place her in a different company. It would not have been a large inconvenience, it would merely have been a bit of a disappointment for her."
   "Ah, right, well, we can't have that, can we? I won't be one to break the poor girl's heart, because apparently I'm something special myself as people keep telling me."
   "To be fair, miss Frelang, when she expressed the wish to have her internship at your company, we of course did a bit of research into your company as we had not worked with you before. And you do have quite the curriculum yourself, which is deserving of being called impressive, taking into account the successes you have booked in a relatively short period of time."
   "I don't find that special or impressive, but if anyone else does, fine, I'm not gonna argue. So, if she's arriving next Monday, should I pick her up from the station or something? I know there's plenty public transit around these parts, but there's no bus stops anywhere near my garage, which is a good fifteen minutes outside of town."
   "That will not be necessary, miss Frelang. Miss Bosrandt owns a car and will drive herself to your place of business."
   "And she's only sixteen?!"
   "Yes, however she does possess a valid driver's license. That was a surprise to us as well, but she obtained her license at the age of fourteen. Her father is a military mechanic and apparently pulled some strings."
   "Wow, okay, now I'm actually impressed. Oh, but another thing, if this deal takes about a year, where's she supposed to stay for that time? It's not exactly a quick commute from Merian to here, it already takes the better part of two hours to get to Shelter Valley from here, and Merian is on the other side of the mountains, that's even hours and hours away from Shelter Valley. The poor kid would be driving a whole day just to get here."
   "We are aware of that, and it poses no problem. While we aim to work with companies in and around Merian for travel convenience, we do place students all over the country, so we have means available for that. Miss Bosrandt will be staying at the Plainfield Youth Hostel in South Plains, such lodging is also provided by us."
   "Are you for real right now? A youth hostel? Look, I know from experience that even the family-friendly budget hotels and motels in this country are very pleasant to stay at, but youth hostels are a pain no matter where you are in the world. And for a whole year? No, mister Blom, that won't do."
   "If you have a suggestion, I'm willing to consider, miss Frelang."
   "Indeed I have. Look, my company runs a different schedule for one; my weekends are Sunday and Monday and the workweek is from Tuesday to Saturday, and the day's hours can vary significantly depending on circumstances. If this girl is to work steady hours in my garage, she'll be much better off accompanying me to and from work every day. So here is my suggestion. I have a large and very comfortable guestroom in my house, so if you would take half of the cost for a year's stay in a youth hostel and pay that to me to cover additional groceries and such, the girl can stay with me in my house and we can go to work together."
   "That is quite a generous offer, miss Frelang. I do agree that it would simplify several things, as well, such as the working hours you mentioned. While it is somewhat unusual to have a student stay with the proprietor of the company they have their internship at, I am certainly willing to adjust the clause of the student lodging contract to name you as the temporary lodging for the student, with appropriate monetary compensation."
   "Then please do that, mister Blom, I would appreciate that a lot. Should I be expecting visits from your school to see how she's doing?"
   "In general, no. Discussions between the company and our college concerning the student's work are usually done via video call. However, with any new company added to our system, a representative from our college will occasionally visit to speak directly with the company owner, at most one time near the start of the internship and one time near the time the internship ends. So in this case, a representative shall indeed visit you at least two times over the course of the coming year, but that should be all. Unless of course there is any reason for additional visits, but such is discussed at the time."
   "Right. Well, it makes sense to me that your people need to see what kind of company your students are put to work at in person, that's just common sense. Just make sure to make note of the fact the place is closed and I am unavailable on Mondays. Uhm... oh, would there be any need for separate bank accounts, in case I would give the girl an assignment with a budget or something?"
   "There is no need for that, miss Frelang. The standard wage payments will go directly between the company's bank account and the student's bank account, and partially between the company's account and our dedicated account for the compensation of the wage payments. We also have funds available for assignment budgets, so were you to assign the student a project that requires a specific budget, that can be done in deliberation with us so that we may provide said budget partially or in whole."
   "Right, okay. Well, I can't think of anything else to ask you for the moment, mister Blom. Is there anything else you need from me?"
   "Your company's details, such as email address, telephone number and bank account number are the most important. And if you have any additional information, such as a telephone number to reach you when you are not near your company telephone for whichever reason, then I would appreciate those details as well."
   "Of course."

Missy provided the required details plus any additional details she felt would be important. After a few last pleasantries, she rang off and put the receiver back on the hook, using both paws to fold her ears forwards against her head and rub them a bit. Even while not holding the phone's receiver to her ear, it had still been such a long call that her ears were aching by the end of it.

Standing up from the desk chair, the vanilla-colored mousette also rubbed her eyes for a moment and stretched before stepping out of the office and taking a bottle of fruit juice from the Mountain Dew display refrigerator to take outside with her. Outside, Fanni was also taking a break, sitting on the bench against the wall in the shade of the roof over the fuel pumps and sipping from a bottle of fruit juice. She looked up when Missy joined her on the bench and smiled.
   "That, uh, that took some time. How did it go?"
Missy uncapped her bottle of juice and took a long drink.
   "I learned a lot of things I never thought I would learn. All sounded quite interesting and well thought out, though. And the long and short of it is that next Monday, a mouse girl will be arriving here to work as my intern for about a year. She'll be staying with me for that time too, because I wasn't gonna let that college dump her in a youth hostel like they were planning."
   "That's really nice," Fanni smiled, shaking her head for a moment and letting go a light chortle. "But, uh, if you object to being called special all the time, you should really stop doing such, uh, such sweet and considerate things for others, because that is what, uh, makes you so special in the eyes of others."
   "I suppose I have to learn to live with that," Missy guffawed. "But yeah, hey, another new thing for me; I'm gonna have an employee of sorts from next week on. If you want to meet her, you can just come along with me after we've been to the gym and to Patty's because she'll be arriving here on Monday."
   "That'll be nice, too," Fanni nodded with a smile. "Who knows, it might even be, uh, funny. If that girl is so set on working here, she, uh, she must hold you in very high regard, so it could be, uh, quite funny to see how you'll deal with that."
   "Oh sure, go and have a laugh at my expense, why don't you," Missy grunted, but with her lips curled into a very cheerful grin.
Fanni chortled softly behind her bottle of juice.
   "What, uh, me? Laugh at my moustress? I, uh, I wouldn't dare."
   "You better not, otherwise I'm gonna have to pull you over my knee and spank your bare butt, right here on the forecourt," Missy sniggered.

That was part of the relationship they had developed between each other; while Missy was anything but strict or dominant, Fanni's shy and near-subservient nature and the amount of comfort and trust she felt with Missy had made them agree on a sort of mild mistress/pet relationship, even if it was in good nature and partially in jest. And as an additional joke, Fanni had once referred to Missy as 'moustress' instead of mistress, and the joke had stuck. Fanni did blush lightly at Missy's words, but she still chortled softly and shook her head.
   "Promises, promises. And what a, uh, good example that would set for that girl."

They laughed a bit and sat on the bench together for a while longer, until both bottles of fruit juice were empty. Fanni returned to her work with the planters, and a set of trees forming a canopy over the parking spaces on the side of the frontmost new building, while Missy walked back into the garage building once more. She did put in a call to City Hall, just to get some additional information for her own peace of mind, but again she was assured that any contracts and legalities would be well taken care of without any worry to her, as the city of South Plains did in fact work with the Merian Advancement College on internships with other companies located in South Plains, so they already had the experience and all the procedures in place.

Over the rest of the week, Missy merely went about her business as usual. There was the Peugeot 404 convertible being refreshed for one of the trainers at the female-only nudist gym she and Fanni worked out at. There were two classic cars that needed complete disassembly. There was the Mazda Cosmo project she was working on for herself. And there was footage to be shot of all those projects, to be edited into videos for both her Youtube channel and her company website. Plenty of work to keep her busy throughout the week.

As had become usual, Fanni stayed at Missy's house for the weekend. It allowed them to spend a lot of relaxed and sometimes intimate quality time together, and it also made it much easier to go to the gym for their weekly workout together on Monday morning. As had also become a habit, after their session at the gym they calmly walked up the street to the wonderful little diner called "The Patty Place" where they were such steady patrons they were almost part of the furniture. Stepping inside, they were as always cheerfully hailed by the Pinyon mouse woman behind the glass counter, Patty herself, who owned and ran the place together with her hamster husband Harvey.
   "Hiya Missy luv and Fanni luv! Getting warm, ain’t it? Ooo, and ain't today the big day?"
   "Big day for what?" Missy chortled, stirring a stick of sugar through the cup of tea that was put in front of her. "My birthday is in August, we're still months away from that. And I can't think of anything else that would be big."
   "Aw, ya know what I'm talking about, luv!" Patty chortled. "What ya mentioned last week! Ain't today the day that girl arrives from Merian? The one who's gonna be working for ya?"
   "Oh, you mean that?" Missy sniggered. "That's not a big deal, just something new is all." She sent Patty a playful smirk. "Why is everyone more excited about that than me? It's just a business deal with a college, it's not like I'm adopting an orphanage or something."
Patty laughed cheerfully.
   "But in a way it is, ain't it? Didn't ya say the girl's gonna be staying with ya too, for like a year or so?"
   "Yeah, so?" Missy shrugged with a smile, sipping her tea. "That's just purely convenience for both of us. Besides, Fanni's been staying with me for months too when I just got here, and nobody made a big deal out of that."
   "Alright, alright," Patty chortled, waving a paw. "Hey, are ya gonna bring her here sometime?"
   "Sure," Missy smiled. "Every Monday after we've been to the gym, for one. And no doubt there'll be days we start work late or stop early enough to drop by here for lunch or dinner, too."
   "Oh goodie!" Patty smiled. "I'd love to meet her. And speaking of dinner, what'll it be today?"
   "I'll have the fried eggs over cheese on full-grain bread. Or should I say, my usual?" Missy chortled.
   "Uh, yeah, me too, over ham on brown bread, like, uh, like always, please," Fanni smiled.
   "Of course!" Patty turned to the hatch in the wall behind her. "Harv! Two Sunny omelettes, one over cheese on full-grain and one over ham on brown! It's Monday lunch, ya know who!"
   "Hi Missy, hello Fanni!" came the hamster man's voice from behind the hatch. "Ten minutes!"
Missy picked up her cup of tea and thumbed at the small table by the side window with a smile.
   "You know where we'll be."

Within the first month of living in South Plains, that table had become Missy's steady table in the diner. She and Fanni sat down at it, sipping the rest of their tea while waiting for the meals to arrive. Less than ten minutes later, Patty sashayed over to the tables with two plates holding two slices of bread each, covered in slices of ham and slices of cheese respectively, and covered with five fried eggs, sunny side up and decorated with slivers of carrot, small cubes of pickle and tiny silverskin onions. After setting down the plates and dipping a paw into the front pocket of her apron to take two sets of cutlery rolled into napkins and placing those next to the plates, the Pinyon mousette turned and sashayed back to the counter to refill the teacups. Missy and Fanni calmly started eating, having shards of conversation in between bites and relaxing after their workout session at the gym.

Once the meals were gone and the teacups were empty again and a bit more than half an hour had passed, both women stood up and walked back to the counter so Missy could pay.
   "Sorry to eat and run, dear, but I should get to my garage," she smiled. "I have no clue what time that girl will arrive. She's coming all the way from Merian after all, that's a hell of a drive, and for all I know she started yesterday already and spent the night halfway down in a motel in Rainbow Falls or Shelter Valley."
   "Of course, luv, no worries!" Patty smiled. "Ya go on now and make sure yer gonna be there to meet the girl!"
   "We'll be off then. Bye Patty, see you laters!"

With a cheerful wave, Missy and Fanni left the diner and got into Missy's old yellow Mini to drive over to the garage, as Fanni had left her work truck there for the weekend as had become a habit as well. Arriving at the garage almost half an hour later, they went inside to take care of business. First and foremost, Missy took care of the most urgent and important task of feeding and petting Salmon, the fluffy feral Maine Coon cat she had adopted as her shop mascot when they had found her living in one of the warehouse buildings behind the garage.

Having taken care of that, Missy checked her messages; nothing on the answering machine, a pawful of emails, and several Youtube notifications of comments on her videos that were quickly checked and replied to, plus six orders in the merchandise shop of her company website. Those were handled swiftly as well, the few shirts, hats and stickers soon packed up, as well as a set of 1980 Toyota Starlet taillight units as Missy still also ran a small online store in refurbished car parts. Once the boxes were labeled and set in the bed of the 1978 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck Missy had built for Fanni as payment for the beautification work done at the garage, they took a bottle of fruit juice from the display refrigerator and sat on the bench under the roof over the fuel pumps, as there was nothing more immediately pressing left to do.

Calmly chatting a bit, the two of them sipped their juice and looked at the traffic passing by on Shelter Valley Way - which was sparse as the old two-lane highway was mainly used by agricultural traffic from the farms in the area these days. And every half hour a light green Fiat 410 bus with white roof, purple bumpers and a purple band along the sides from bumper to bumper, which were the buses from the line that connected the bus routes servicing the number of small farming towns between South Plains and Shelter Valley to the transit hubs of South Plains.

Only by the time three o'clock started approaching, Missy suddenly nudged Fanni and nodded in the direction of the road, indicating a small sun-baked, faded light blue classic panel van with a white band along the sides and smudged with patches of surface rust and primer, that had music blasting from the open windows that Missy recognized as Jackson Browne's "For a Rocker".
   "I have a feeling that's our girl right there."
   "What, uh, what makes you think that?" Fanni smiled.
   "For one, that's just the type of vehicle a poor automotive student would be driving, especially with the music playing that loud," Missy chortled. "For another, that reason right there."

She nodded in the direction of the old van again, which now had its right turn signal activated. Indeed, a moment or two later the old blue van turned onto the forecourt of the garage, wiggling this way and that for a moment, then parking with its nose facing one of the three garage doors. The engine was shut off, the loud radio died away, and another moment later the driver door opened to let out the driver of the van.

The driver was a girl alright, and a mouse girl at that. She was covered in a muted, grey-ish brown, very sleek fur from her large ears to her petite toes, with a smudge of a lighter, grey-ish beige color over the front left part of her left foot and two of her left toes. Her hair was a muted russet color of a tint somewhere in between orange and red, flopping over her forehead in a soupbowl fringe and hanging down her back in a ponytail that was tied off with light blue scrunchies both at the base close to the back of her head and near the end, making a little tuft. She was wearing a pair of long-sleeved, full-body coveralls in a deep pond green color that showed the name of the Merian Advancement College in off-white across the back and just the initials MAC on the front right chest pocket. A pair of deep, clear blue eyes were wide open and sparkling as she looked around, her muted pink, hairless tail continually swaying slowly back and forth behind her almost as if it was wagging happily.

Missy and Fanni had gotten up from the bench, and eventually stepped around the old blue van when it took several moments for the mouse girl to appear from behind it. Catching sight of Missy, the brown-furred mouse girl put both paws over her muzzle and her eyes widened even further and grew even more sparkly.
   "Oh..! There you are! It's you! It really is you! I can't believe I'm actually here, and... and there you are!"
Missy quirked an eyebrow and made the universal 'time-out' gesture with her paws.
   "Alright, hit the pause button right there, kiddo, and let me get one thing straight right off the bat, okay? I'm not famous, I'm not a celebrity, I'm not someone super special with awesome super powers, so none of that star-struck stuff, okay? Please. Okay, sure, I'm sure a good number of people know me because I make Youtube videos, but I'm still just me, and this here is still just a garage where, aside from nifty projects that are shown on Youtube, a lot of work is done to pay the bills because those don't disappear magically." She said it in a definitive tone, but calmly and with a smile. "So, are we clear on that?"
That dimmed the sparkle in the brown-furred mouse girl's eyes a bit, but the eyes remained wide open and fixated upon Missy. Still with her paws over her muzzle, the mouse girl nodded slowly.
   "Uh... okay, yes... sorry?"
Missy made a dismissive gesture with one of her paws.
   "It's fine, kiddo, just remember it, please. I don't think I'm anyone special, so anyone constantly treating me like I am is gonna get under my skin, believe it or not." She curled her lips into another smile. "Now, with that out of the way; no doubt you know I'm Missy Frelang. And you are..?"
Of course Missy was well aware of the girl's name, but she just had to be prompted to say it herself to help snap her out of her star-struck reverie.
   "Oh..! Right! I'm Dittie! Dittie Bosrandt, spelled with DT at the end, all fancy-like," the mouse girl said, finally lowering her paws and holding one of them out towards Missy. "It's real nice to meet you, miss Frelang!"
Missy gave Dittie's paw a brief shake, then held it and leaned over a bit, widening her smile into a grin and closing one eye in a short, cheerful wink.
   "Missy. Not miss Frelang, and certainly not ma'am, got it? I'm only just about to hit forty, don't make me feel like I'm in my nineties, please. You can call me Missy, you can even call me boss if you feel so inclined, but that's it. And in that same vein, I'm gonna be calling you Dittie, or likely, kiddo, because that's just something I do to people I like. Okay?"
Dittie let out a short gasp at Missy's face coming so close to hers, but soon the sparkle returned to her eyes and she smiled wide enough to expose all the teeth to the sides of her large front buckteeth.
   "Okay, uh, Missy! It's still an honor to meet you, though!"
   "Ah ah ah," Missy chided with a grin, waggling a finger. "What have I just said? Not an honor, I'm not special. A pleasure, fine, very nice, okay, but not an honor, there's nothing honorable about meeting me. Let me reiterate; you're coming to work here for your school, so we'll be around each other all day every day. So none of that star-struck stuff, and none of that very polite stuff. We're co-workers, we're on first-name terms, and we can say silly stuff to each other. For instance, I'm pretty sure you must be dying to mention how short I actually am in real life, because dammit girl, it may not be by much but you're taller than I am! Sheesh! Half my age, a mouse like me, and still taller than me, how crazy is that?"
Dittie let go an involuntary squeaky giggle.
   "Hee! Uh, well, yes, I did notice that. It don't really show in your videos, but I was kinda surprised that you are so... that you're a bit shorter than me."
   "Yeah well, mouse stuff and all that," Missy chortled, making another dismissive gesture with her paw. "Even if it may not entirely apply to you. Anyway! This here is miss Fanni Schneider, a very good and close friend of mine who will be around here on a somewhat regular basis because she runs a small landscaping company and has done all the greenery around the place here."
   "I know, yes! I've seen your videos of all the work that was done to this garage," Dittie nodded with a smile. "I've seen all your videos! Multiple times!" She offered Fanni a paw as well. "It's very nice to meet you too, miss Schneider."
   "Uh, likewise," Fanni smiled, briefly shaking Dittie's paw.
   "Right, now that we're all properly introduced, let's sit down and talk a bit more in-depth," Missy smiled, turning to walk to the left-hand door of the garage. "Drink? I'm guessing you must be parched after all that driving."
   "Uh, yeah, I had drinks with me, but it was a long way from Rainbow Falls, that's where I stayed overnight," Dittie nodded.
   "Yeah, no kidding, that's a five or six hour drive from here," Missy nodded, leading the way into the garage and opening the display refrigerator. "Well, go on and grab what you like, kiddo, you're part of the crew now after all."
She took a bottle of fruit juice herself, as did Fanni, and Dittie took a bottle of spring water, giggling softly and pointing at the logo on the back of Missy's shirt as she followed the vanilla-hued mousette into the garage.
   "Hey, VGG, I'm subbed to that one too! That guy is so funny! I have a forehead awning and one of his back rags, the one with all the funny sayings on it, hee!" she giggled.
   "Yeah, I love the kind of humor he uses to kind of hide how knowledgeable he actually is and you actually learn stuff from his funny explanations," Missy nodded with a smile.

They took the bottles up to the mezzanine over the toilet and office and sat down on the faux-leather armchairs and sofa that were there. Almost right away, the fluffy feral cat Salmon crawled into Missy's lap and formed herself into a compact and fluffy catloaf. Missy calmly petted the cat and smiled at Dittie.
   "Now then, if you've seen all my Youtube videos multiple times, I'm pretty sure you already know a whole bunch about me, so let me start by asking you some things about you, okay? For starters, why is a young girl like yourself going to school to learn to become a car mechanic?"
   "I like cars! I love cars! Especially old cars, they look so much better. I wanna learn to fix them and make them pretty again and keep them on the road where they belong," Dittie smiled brightly. "And I'm good at it, too! I been around cars all my life! My mom works at a dealership and my dad is a military mechanic and I've been helping him pretty much ever since I could walk."
   "I was told that's also the reason you're so freaking early with getting a driver's license, right?" Missy remarked.
Dittie nodded again, taking small sips from her bottle of water.
   "My dad let me steer his car sometimes when I was a little kid, and later sometimes let me drive. I could actually drive a car by myself when I was nine, so he let me take the official course on the army base he works at when I was thirteen and I got my full license when I turned fourteen."
   "Well, good on ya," Missy smiled, lightly scritching Salmon's ears. "You live in Merian, I take it?"
   "Yeah, all my life," Dittie nodded. "I suppose I'm lucky, my dad has a steady job at the base so he don't get stationed all over the place and we don't have to move a lot. I only remember we moved once, from the apartment we lived in when I was a little kid to the house we live in now."
   "Tell me about it, moving is a drag," Missy agreed. "So what have you learned in school so far? That fellow from the college who got in touch with me last week said you've already done the first two years of the Auto Mechanics, Body and Paint course and that you've done some additional smaller side-courses."
   "Yeah, I could do the stuff pretty fast," Dittie nodded proudly. "The first year was kinda generic, diagnosing and interpreting engine codes and that kinda stuff, but I said I wanted to specialize in old cars. That's kinda one branch of the course, with modern cars being the other branch, you know." She started ticking off on her fingers. "I've learned all kinds of stuff about older cars. Diagnosing knocking and pinging and stuff like that, diagnosing starting problems and rough running, electrical problems and ignition and timing problems, rebuilding and tuning carburetors and early injection systems, diagnosing fueling and cooling problems, diagnosing braking and tracking and steering problems, rebuilding and bleeding brake systems, rebuilding suspension systems, rebuilding exhaust systems, and that's just the mechanical stuff. I've also already learned a bunch about bodywork, like replacing lights and trim, fixing dents, fixing rust, and some of the side-courses I did had things like panel alignment, fixing scratches and weathered paint, fixing trim pieces, a bit of fabrication, interior work and stuff like that."
Missy drowned a chortle in a sip of juice.
   "So if we'd go to a farm and grab a pickup from the sixties or seventies that's been sitting in a tree row for twenty years, you can get it running and roadworthy again in a coupla days?"
   "That's what I did with my van!" Dittie nodded with a bright smile.
   "Alright, let's go have a look at that then," Missy chortled.

She lifted Salmon out of her lap and lay the cat on the backrest of the sofa before standing up. Fanni and Dittie also got up and followed Missy out of the garage again, halting by the faded blue van. Missy gestured at it.
   "Now, I'm well-versed enough to know exactly what this is, but tell me what we're looking at here so I can hear what you know, and tell me what you've done to it so far."
   "Okay, yeah," Dittie smiled brightly again. "This is my van, it's a nineteen sixty-two Chevrolet Corvair ninety-five van, they called them Corvan for short. It's like the panel van version of the Greenbrier passenger van. I bought it for a few hundred bucks from a farm in Clover Burrow and got it running again so I could drive it to school. Of course I put new tires on it and redid the brakes first thing because that's super important, and I could use it for my classes so that was super nifty." She started gesturing at different areas of the vehicle. "In the past two years, I've done a conversion to disc brakes on all four corners and I put in all new QA-One suspension all around, with adjustable coilover springs in the front and helper coil springs over new leaf springs and single adjustable shocks in the back. She rides so much nicer and smoother that way! There was no air conditioning because there was no room for that in these vans, but my dad found me a completely wrecked sixty-seven Corvair Monza Spyder that I bought as a parts car, and I put the dashboard with the air conditioning of that one into my van so it now has AC, you really really need that around here. Because of that, I also had to put the engine of that Monza Spyder into my van for the AC compressor, but I was gonna do that anyway because it's a much better turbocharged motor with a hundred and fifty horsepower so now my van keeps up with traffic much better, and I completely rebuilt that engine before putting it in my van and put a brand new, slightly larger turbo on it."
   "Okay, alright, very nice, I'm mildly impressed," Missy smiled, letting go a short chortle. "And that brings me to another little thing. If you've seen all my videos a bunch, you know the standard of the work I do here at this garage. I've worked for sixteen years in a specialty garage that did in exotic and supercars, eleven of those years as the chief of the body and paint department, and I'm a perfectionist, so for my whole adult life I've been working to a standard of one thousand percent. Now, you're coming to work here for your school, and I have no doubt you're good and you have talent, but keep in mind that anything you do here is not meant to impress your teachers at school; you have to impress me, and trust me, I'm a lot harder to impress. Now, tell me, what's the rest of your plans for this van? Body's pretty straight and rust-free from what I can tell, so tell me what you're aiming to do with it from here."
   "Uh, okay, yes," Dittie said, a little bit taken aback but still with enthusiasm. "Well, obviously I want to make it look all nice and like new again. I've already done a bit of work on the interior, like that dashboard swap and I also put in the bucket seats from that Monza Spyder, but I want to get them re-covered in the proper color because they're black with red accents right now and that just looks bleh. And of course I want to fix all the body panels and do a complete repaint in the original color to make it look all nice and like new again, because it's gonna be my official revival-rig!"
   "Now there's a term that puts a thought in my mind," Missy chortled. "I follow a good number of car revival and restoration channels on Youtube, so that term is not completely alien to me. So that brings me to ask you; what's your plan for once you've finished school?"
   "I wanna do a revival channel on Youtube too!" Dittie smiled brightly. "I'm subbed to a bunch of them, and I've always wanted to do that too! I wanna go out and rescue old abandoned cars and revive them so they can be put back on the road where they should be and be driven regularly again!"
   "More power to you, kiddo," Missy said with another chortle, leaning with her back against the side of the old van and thumbing at it across her shoulder. "Now explain me this. You're a young kid with a big interest in old and classic cars. Okay, I can see that, that's been me as well. You got yourself a classic van to fix up, all good. But why a Corvair? Why not a Volkswagen minibus? They're so much simpler and easier to work on."
Dittie shrugged lightly.
   "Vee-dub vans are cute and cool, yes. But everybody's already doing a Vee-dub. In my class, there's seven of us who got a car of their own to fix as a school project, and four of them got a Vee-dub van. And with everyone wanting one, that makes them stupid expensive. You see, the school gave those of us with a valid driver's license who wanted a car for a school project a budget of ten thousand bucks to buy and restore a car over the duration of the whole course. Those four of my classmates who bought a Vee-dub van blew almost that whole budget on buying the van alone because they're so stupid expensive even in bad condition. But I like this van, I think it looks cute, it's roomier inside than a Vee-dub van, and it only cost a few hundred bucks. For the amount of money my classmates spent on just buying a junky Vee-dub van, I bought this van, the Monza Spyder for parts, the whole kit for disc brake conversion on all four wheels, the new tires, all the brand new QA-One suspension parts and the new turbo, and in the end I still spent less than my classmates."
Missy hid a wide and cheerful smile behind a paw and put her other paw on Dittie's shoulder.
   "Well now, see, there you go, you just impressed me, kiddo. That is freaking clever for one, it shows me you're not afraid to go your own way and do your own thing, and it shows me you're mighty budget-minded for a teenager and you can make very good and well thought-through decisions. And to be frank, I find that even more impressive than a stunning talent in bodywork or painting." She giggled shortly. "Also, holy crap that school of yours is hella generous!"
Dittie looked up with a bright smile and a sparkle in her eyes again.
   "Thanks, Missy! Hee, and yeah, it sounds very generous, that budget the school gave us, but it does have to last us all through the whole four-year course, you know, and by the end, at graduation time, our project car has to be fully restored to a such a good condition it could go to a classic car auction and make a profit."
   "Hahahee!" Missy giggled, shaking her head a bit. "Okay, well, that's where your choice may have been a bit poor, kiddo. Because I very much doubt a fully restored Corvair van would bring in anything above ten grand at an auction, even a really well-restored and upgraded one. But hey, you never know, and like I said, I still admire your choice and the reason for your choice."
Both of them giggled lightly again, looking around when Fanni stepped out of the garage and spoke up.
   "Hey, uh, Missy?"
   "Yeah? Sorry we've been talking for so long, darling, but it's been kind of important. Gotta get to know my new intern after all, hee! But what did you want to say?" Missy smiled.
Fanni also smiled.
   "It's, uh, it's okay, I understand this is important. But, uh, yeah, I just wanted to let you know I'm, uh, I'm off to town now so I can bring those packages to the post office before it closes. It's, uh, it's almost half past four, you know."
   "Ah, yes, of course! Go right ahead, darling, and thanks for taking care of that for me," Missy nodded with a smile. "Will you be here again tomorrow for those plants and all?"
   "I'm, uh, I'm always happy to help you," Fanni smiled again, nodding. "And yes, I have to prune and guide those linden trees over your, uh, parking spots tomorrow."
   "Alright, we'll see you tomorrow then, darling," Missy smiled.
Fanni nodded and walked back into the garage, and Missy turned back to Dittie who was checking her phone, then looking up.
   "I had no idea it was that time already. Uhm, if it's okay, Missy... I would so love to stay longer and talk a bunch more, but I should get to town too and find the youth hostel I'm staying at. Do you maybe know which one it is and where it is? They forgot to tell me that."
   "Sounds like that's not the only thing they forgot to tell you," Missy chittered, sending the young mouse girl a small cheerful wink. "You're not staying in a youth hostel, kiddo, you're staying with me. I wasn't gonna let them put you in a crummy youth hostel for a whole year for one, and for another, with how weird the hours at my garage can be sometimes, it's waaay handier when you can just ride to and from the garage with me. I have a house that's way too large for little old me alone, and there's a very nice guestroom in there, so you're staying with me."

Dittie stared at Missy with her mouth sinking open, her tail flopped limply down onto the ground behind her and her large round ears drooped almost down along the sides of her head in disbelief.
   "Wh... uh... fo... for real?!"
Missy smothered a quick giggle behind a paw and nodded.
   "Yup, for real, kiddo. It's just so much more convenient for both of us that way, and I just couldn't bear the thought of you staying in a bunk bed in a tiny room in a youth hostel for all that time." She put a paw on Dittie's shoulder again. "But that does give us a few more important things to talk about right this second, kiddo. For starters, are you a nudist by any chance?"
Dittie didn't even blink at that question but just gave a light shrug, slowly lifting her ears back up.
   "Well, yeah. Everyone in Merian is, pretty much, and here is even more south so I'm sure everyone in town here is too. And I know you're one too, I seen your uncensored videos on your website, with that old bus from the nudist resort and all."
   "You got that right," Missy nodded. "Yeah, I'm a nudist too, so that means that right after I've stepped into my house, the first thing I do is lose the clothes. That in turn also means that you can do the same if you want. But I do want to get this straight; Fanni is a nudist too and as I mentioned before, a very close and personal friend of mine. She stays with me during the weekends, and sometimes during the week as well, but while we may fool around with each other at those times, I don't want any funny business from you, got it? You're a cute girl, but you're not cute enough for me to go to jail over."
Fanni swiveled her small ears as she passed by on her way to her pickup truck and looked around with a smile for a moment.
   "That, uh, you don't have to worry about that, Missy. The, uh, age of consent, of, uh, legality, is sixteen in Minnaluna."
Missy blinked at Fanni.
   "Are you for real right now?"
Fanni nodded with a smile, and Dittie also nodded.
   "Yes, that's true, Missy. But, uh, I'll behave myself, I promise." She hid a short single giggle behind a paw. "Hee, I mean, okay, it would be awesome to... uh, no, forget I said that. What I mean is, it's awesome that I at least can be freely naked in your house, Missy. In college, I share a dorm with a girl who is one of the very few people in this country who is not into nudism, and she doesn't like me being naked in our dorm. She's actually kinda prudish and she's always asking me to put on PJs when I'm laying on bed reading or studying or something, and I hate it, it just feels way too restrictive."
Missy quirked an eyebrow with her head a bit canted, but her lips slowly curled back into a small smile.
   "Hm. Well, okay then. I do know what you mean, I'm from Wisconsin originally and even there I already was a nudist, but I couldn't even be naked around my own house due to the neighborhood so I know how you feel. But another thing, kiddo; I'd appreciate no whining about dinner, okay? I don't mind in the least if you'd fix yourself a snack or a sandwich or a cup of soup or something sometime, but even while my hours can be crazy, in general I'm home in time to cook during the week. I'll be glad to cook things you like, but when I don't, you can eat what I put on the table, agreed?"
   "Sure, Missy, that's fine," Dittie nodded with a smile. "You'll find me quite easy where food is concerned, I eat pretty much anything, hee. Oh, yeah, and I don't smoke or drink alcohol, so you don't have to worry about that either."
   "Okay, good," Missy smiled. "I have alcohol in the house and I sometimes have a glass of wine, so I wouldn't mind if you did as well, but yeah, no smoking in my house. One of my best friends, actually, three of my best friends smoke, and two of them live in this country and when they're visiting, they can take their smoking outside." She looked around and waved as Fanni drove her pickup truck to the left-side entrance of the forecourt and honked the horn, then suddenly waved even more frantically to motion Fanni to stop for a moment. "Oh! Hold on for a sec, darling, wait a minute before you go to town!" Fanni stopped the truck, and Missy turned back to Dittie. "You've got contracts for me to sign and send back to your school, right?"
   "Oh, yes, right!" Dittie nodded.

She quickly trotted around to the right side of her Corvair van, opened the passenger door and reached inside to take a binder from the passenger's seat, which she handed to Missy. Not wanting to keep Fanni waiting for too long, Missy quickly scanned through the binder and found the contracts mister Blom had mentioned to her the week before. She also quickly scanned through one of the contracts as they both were the same, borrowed a pen from Fanni to sign the contract and to scribble a mailing address on the back of one of her business cards.
   "Here, have them put this in a thick envelope and send it to that college while you're at the post office, darling, please," she smiled, handing Fanni the pen and the signed contract.
   "Of course, Missy, I'll do that," Fanni nodded with a smile.
   "Thanks darling, and see you tomorrow," Missy smiled.
She waved again as Fanni this time did drive off the forecourt and headed towards the city, then turned to smile at Dittie.
   "Bit frantic. Get used to it, I'm known for forgetting a bunch of things," she chortled. "Is there anything you want to ask?"
   "Uh... yeah, kinda," Dittie smiled, lightly fiddling with the flap of her coverall's left chest pocket. "I don't wanna be rude or nothing, but when miss Schneider leaned over like that... I thought I saw... was she, uh, was she wearing a collar?"
Missy sent the young mousette a playful smirk.
   "Told you she is a very close and personal friend of mine, didn't I? Yes, she was wearing a collar, I gave that to her because she wanted me to, and that's all I'll say about that for now." She smiled again. "It's about time to head home, it's nearing dinnertime, but would you want a tour or something? Not that I think I could show you very much you haven't seen already if you've watched all of my videos so often, but heckity."
   "Oh yes, that would be great, Missy, I would love that," Dittie nodded with a smile.
   "Let's go then, we'll make it quick," Missy chortled.

They walked into the garage building once again so Missy could show Dittie around. The toilet and the office under the mezzanine on the left side of the main building, the three bays with a two-post car lift each, the tire mounting machine and wheel balancing machine, the secondary workroom that was built onto the back of the original fuel station building, accessed through a large open doorway from the main garage building. Inside that original building, the stockroom and the personal room that had been built in there to take naps during the hottest hours of the summer days, the engine cleanroom that was built partially inside the stockroom and partially inside the secondary workroom.

Outside, there were actually a few things to show that Dittie had not seen before as Missy had never featured it in any of the videos she had made over the years. The right one of the two large buildings behind the garage, of which one half was used as a stockroom for large car parts like body panels, windows and chassis and suspension parts, and the other half was used as storage for parts cars and project cars. The building on the left, which housed the suspension and brake test path and the large floor dynamometer, as Missy hardly ever used the latter and never thought it was very interesting to show procedures on the former in her videos. On the other side of that building, the huge top tier paint booth of course had often prominently featured in her videos before, but it was still way more impressive to see it in person.

And then there were the two massively large and much newer pastel yellow buildings with the dark blue roofs on the right side of the garage, which Missy had gotten built after she had inherited the garage as she needed specialized work spaces for her specific line of work. The building at the front, which was divided in a 60/40 manner, with the car disassembly area and metalwork area in the larger part, and the body filler and sanding area in the smaller part, with their two-post and four-post car lifts respectively, and all the racks and machines and equipment Missy had moved in there and gradually added to over the years. The building behind that, which was designated for powdercoating work but which still only had the media blasting booth and the smaller powdercoating booth and oven as Missy had simply not yet gotten to shop for anything larger.

She did skip the two very large warehouse buildings, the old red barn, the office unit and the small workshop building on the neighboring farmyard, which were also her property as she'd had to buy that entire plot, but she had never featured any of it in any of her videos, and for the tour she was giving Dittie she did not think it was important enough to spend any time on - plus there were things there that were nobody's business. Besides, it had already crept past five o'clock, and it was still a good half hour of driving to Missy's house. So, having taken the tour past the washing station behind the garage and around the left side of it past the new fire escape and back to the front, Missy went back inside the garage to switch off lights and lock doors after they had gotten everything they needed to have with them from inside.

Both getting into their cars, Missy led the way in her old yellow Mini and Dittie followed her in the faded blue Corvair van, skirting the north-western suburbs of the city and driving to the north-western outskirts. There were more upscale townhouses sitting on larger plots of land out there, far enough away from each other and the city to be secluded, close enough by to be convenient for shopping. On West Willow Drive, Missy turned into the driveway of number 58 and drove all around the loop it made in front of the house, parking her car in front of the two-car garage attached to the left side of the two-story house and getting out to wait for Dittie to make it to that same spot.

It took a few moments, as Dittie was driving up the driveway very slowly, looking left and right around her with sparkling eyes again as she followed the loop around the marvelous small teardrop-shaped garden Fanni had planted in the middle of the originally fully gravel driveway. When she finally made it to where Missy was waiting, the young brown-furred mousette just sat in her van, even forgetting to shut off the engine as she gazed at the house through the passenger door window and the beautiful small front garden through the driver door window.

She only snapped out of it when Missy cheerfully tapped a knuckle against the driver door window.
   "Knock knock, hello, anybody home in there?"
   "Oh!" Dittie finally shut off the engine of her van and opened the driver door to hop out. "I'm sorry, Missy. It's just so... beautiful! That garden is gorgeous! And your house is so pretty! And so big! It's bigger than the house we live in! And all the way out here, all private and secluded and everything with no direct neighbors and, and..."
   "Yes, the aunt and uncle I never knew I had were very successful and also had very good taste when they bought this plot and had this house built," Missy chortled. "And Fanni couldn't stand how my driveway just ended in a big patch of bare gravel so she did some work there, and she's a professional gardener and landscaper after all so of course that looks great. But let's go inside already, okay? I haven't eaten anything since lunch at about half past eleven and it's half past five now, I'm about ready to devour a cow. Do you have a suitcase or something with you?"
Dittie giggled squeakily and nodded.
   "Oh, yes, of course! I'm actually quite hungry too, to be honest. I'll grab my stuff."

She walked to the right side of her van and opened one of the double side doors, reaching inside to take a battered suitcase and a small olive green duffel bag. Missy led the way up the front porch and halted as she unlocked the front door, dipping her large ears with a giggle as behind her, Dittie let out a gleeful squeal upon spotting the string of lights that were shaped like little plastic bunnies who were sitting, standing, laying down or rubbing their snoot with front paws, glued to the top of the porch railing.
   "Ohmigosh, that's so cuuuuute!"
Her voice went up a whole octave over the length of the word cute. Missy pushed open the front door and half-turned, leaning again the jamb and winking at Dittie.
   "That was exactly my reaction, more or less, when I saw it at the house of one of my best friends, so I totally and immediately stole that idea. But anyway, here we are! I'll show you to the guestroom first so you can put down your stuff, then I'll throw some dinner together, alright?"
   "Yeah, okay, that sounds great!" Dittie nodded brightly.

She followed Missy into the house and up the stairs. On the landing were several doors; two on the right leading to the front side of the house, one at the back and one on the left leading to the rear side of the house. Missy opened the first door on the right and led the way into the fairly large room that looked out over the driveway. It had a queen-sized bed made with floral sheets and bedside cabinets on either side of the headboard holding a small lamp, a dresser with doors as well as drawers, a comfortable velour armchair, a smaller cabinet with a radio on it and a wicker basket holding three velvet African violets, a small desk with a padded desk chair and a banker-style desk lamp, a ceiling lamp that looked like an upside-down petunia flower and a couple of framed paintings of landscapes on the walls.

As the heavy velour curtains were drawn, Missy switched on the ceiling lamp and made a sweeping gesture with an arm.
   "Here you go, this is the guestroom, so this'll be your home for the coming year or so."
Dittie let go a squeaky gasp and almost dropped her suitcase and duffel bag as she only just in time managed to stop herself from clasping her paws over her muzzle, looking around with wide and sparkling eyes.
   "Ohmigosh! It's beautiful! I love it, Missy! This is such a pretty room! I love those flowery sheets! And that lamp is adorable, it's a big flower too! Oh, thank you, thank you so much for letting me stay with you, Missy!"
   "You're welcome, kiddo," Missy smiled. "Like I said, it's just so much more convenient for both of us, and no doubt this is a whole lot more comfy and you have a bunch more privacy here than you'd have in a youth hostel."
   "Totally!" Dittie squeaked. "Heck, that motel I stayed at in Rainbow Falls didn't even have such pretty and comfy rooms! I love it so much!"
   "Like I said, you're very welcome," Missy chortled. "Go on and throw down your stuff, and I'll show you the bathroom, it's right nextdoor." She switched off the ceiling lamp after Dittie had put down her suitcase and duffel bag and opened the second right door on the landing. "Right here. Shower booth and bath tub so you can use either if you want to, and that booth over there is a dryer booth for when you're done showering. Toilet over there and a washer and a dryer so you can do your laundry here too. Well, actually, you can just dump that in that hamper over there and I'll do it along with my own laundry whenever it's time to do the laundry."
   "This is so pretty too!" Dittie smiled brightly and still in a somewhat high-pitched and squeaky tone. "There's so much luxury! A shower and a tub, and a dryer booth! At the dorm we just have a large shower room, and we have to use towels to dry off, so you can always tell when someone has showered because they look like shaggy poofballs. And there's five washing machines in the laundry room of which at least two are always out of order."
   "And the dryers always burn your undies to a crisp because the lint trap is always full and they overheat, no doubt," Missy sniggered. "That's how it was in our dorms when I went to college, so I know exactly what you mean."
   "Hee hee! Yeah!" Dittie nodded with a giggle. "I only have panties anyway because I don't even fit into any bras yet, and I just totally stopped bothering with them because they always got ruined by the dryers."
   "Well, this one doesn't have an underwear monster that chews up your clothes, so you can safely use this one. There might have been an underwear monster in it, but it starved to death because I never bother with undies either," Missy sniggered, patting the top of the dryer with a paw. "Just do please clean the lint trap if you use it, okay? And while we're here..." She emptied the pockets of her shorts onto the dryer and took off her shorts and shirt, revealing her full nudity as she dropped the clothes in the hamper and picked up the stuff she had taken from her pockets. "You can freshen up and unpack a bit if you want to, I'll be downstairs starting dinner so I'll see you there in a bit, okay? When you come down the stairs, it's the door to your left, that leads into the living room and that connects to the dining room and the kitchen, the door right near the stairs goes to the downstairs toilet."

Dittie very slowly nodded with wide and still somewhat sparkling eyes and a light squeaky gasp. She clearly had not expected Missy to just casually strip naked like that right in front of her, and for several moments she couldn't keep her eyes off the nude light yellow mousette. Missy gave her head a light, amused shake and just smiled before turning and stepping out of the bathroom to go downstairs and into the kitchen after tossing her three sets of keys, phone and wallet on the coffee table and switching on the radio. Of course, the moment she stepped through the archway into the open kitchen, she halted and turned on her heels to walk back into the living room to take one of the sets of keys back from the coffee table so she could unlock and open the backdoor.

Glancing the retro clock over the counter and seeing the hands forming a perfectly straight vertical line, she decided it was too late in the evening already to do any elaborate cooking. Instead, she took a family-size can of very richly filled, thick creamy tomato soup from the pantry, emptied it into a pan and set the pan on one of the rings of the electric stove. Letting the soup slowly and gradually heat up, the vanilla-colored mousette grabbed a bag of soft buns and several packets of luncheon meats and sliced cheese and prepared a plate with several buns with salami, ham or cheese, every now and then checking the pan and stirring a ladle through the heating soup.

Only a few minutes later, one of her ears swiveled to the sound of the living room door opening and closing. Looking around with a smile, Missy saw Dittie stepping into the living room, now also naked, holding her phone in one paw and looking around her with wide sparkling eyes and a happy smile. The young brown mousette didn't speak, but she did make involuntary quiet squeaking sounds, her thin hairless tail slowly swaying back and forth in happy arcs behind her as she took in the old-fashioned square corduroy sofa and armchairs, the coffee table with its collection of random items scattered across it, the wood cabinets and breakfront with their doors with small brown glass panes in them, the tall glass display case with a collection of high-end quality model classic cars in it, all the green and flowering plants all over, the vintage rolltop desk with a more modern desk squared to it on which were sitting two computers and three laptops, the small, low entertainment cabinet with a TV, a radio and a record player sitting on it, of course the fireplace against the side wall of the house, the framed pictures on the mantel and on cabinets and the walls and the framed paintings, with one quite large painting showing a small village way in the distance as seen from the edge of a forest prominently above the computer desks.

With Dittie just standing there to take everything in, and Missy being the highly observant mouse she had always been, she right away noticed that the fine, sleek fur in the young brown mousette's face was damp and a bit mussed up, that she had an irregularly shaped blotch of light grey-ish beige fur over her lower chest, midriff and upper tummy, and that she indeed had only tiny budding breasts that would not even fill out a training bra, but which did have very thick, almost pudgy areolae that were almost just as large as the tiny breasts and were capped with also relatively large and quite puffy nipples. Slowly stirring the soup again, Missy chortled under her breath as she looked at Dittie just standing there looking around with a rapt expression on her face. Eventually, she tapped the metal ladle on the rim of the pan and dropped it on the kitchen counter with a bit of noise to draw the young brown mousette's attention.

It only helped for a moment, as Dittie did snap out of it and looked around into the kitchen, then immediately was captivated again by the sight of the back garden through the opened backdoor and the window next to it.
   "Ohmigosh, look at your backyard! It's amazing! It's so totally gorgeous!" she squealed, trotting over to the backdoor to gaze out at the back garden.
   "Also all Fanni's work," Missy smiled with another light chortle under her breath.
   "Look at those neat chairs! And that big sunshade! Eee, and that huge candle thing, that's awesome!" Dittie squeaked happily.
   "Yeah, those were my contributions," Missy chortled, putting the plate of buns on the dining table. "Ready for some grub yet, kiddo? Go ahead and grab a bun, soup's almost done. What do you like on your sandwiches? There's cheese and salami and ham, so you have a choice."
Dittie slowly turned around, tearing her gaze away from the back garden to look at Missy with a bright smile and sparkling eyes.
   "Oh, yeah! Well, not to sound stereotypical or anything, but I like cheese, Missy, hee!"
   "A stereotype I'm in total agreement with, I also like my cheese," Missy chortled. She reached into the fridge and took out a small round box. "Here, you tried this before? Try one of these."
Dittie took the box and looked at it with a giggle at the name of Donner's Wetter printed on it.
   "I heard of these! I never had them though, I don't think, it's very hard to get in Merian. It's like goat cheese, right?"
   "That's right," Missy nodded, turning her attention back to the soup and stirring it again. "Mister Donner's farm is somewhere between here and Shelter Valley. I actually met him before, he bought some hay from me a few times."
Dittie was about to put one of the small white-ish cubes of cheese from the round box into her mouth, but halted with her paw halfway up to her mouth, looking up at Missy with surprise and her mouth hanging open a bit.
   "Hay? You sell hay? But you have a garage!"
Missy chortled while she turned up the heat under the pan and stirred the soup a bit more, sending Dittie a cheerful wink across her shoulder.
   "I have a garage, yes. But have you seen all those meadows to the right and behind my garage? Those were all hayfields from a farm that was next to my garage back when it was still a gas station. It's been sitting abandoned since like the seventies, and I needed room to expand so I had to buy that entire tract of land." She shrugged cheerfully. "I'm a city girl, so what was I gonna do with thirty-plus acres of grassland? I only needed a sliver of it for the expansion. But several people had mentioned those fields were super prime hayfields, so I figured to let the farmers of the area between here and Shelter Valley harvest the hay. Be a shame to let all that quality land and grass just go to waste, right?"
   "I suppose so," Dittie nodded. "I wouldn't know, I'm a city girl too, hee! But I guess that makes sense why you also sell hay, and it's nice for the farmers around here I guess."
   "Yeah, the fellow who runs the Agricultural Co-Operation in Shelter Valley told me that decision made me pretty much a local hero," Missy sniggered. "I don't feel that way, for me it was just, again, convenience, because all that grass needs occasional mowing anyway and that's way too much work for me. And if the farmers can use the stuff, well hey, let them have at it I say." She checked the soup which by now was slowly bubbling and switched off the stove. "Well, soup's up. Have a seat, kiddo, and like I said, grab a bun if you want. Wanna drink, too? I have Coke, Mountain Dew, cranberry and raspberry juice, pineapple juice and Berry Blast."
   "Oh, Berry Blast, that's real yummy!" Dittie smiled, taking a seat on one of the dining chairs. "I'll have some of that please, Missy."

Missy nodded with a smile, stirring the soup a last time. From one of the cabinets over the counter, she took two glasses that had a picture of a classic car printed on one side and a picture of a traffic sign printed on the other side, filling them with a deep maroon-ish purple drink from a carton printed with quite flashy graphics. Setting the glasses on the dining table, she also took two soup bowls in opaque white milk glass with a pattern of brown and orange circles on them and filled them with the tomato soup and a spoon and setting them on the dining table as well. For a while, the two mice sat at the table, having bits and pieces of casual conversation while eating the soup and the buns and sipping the juice.

When the food was gone, Missy rinsed the soup bowls a bit and put them and the plate and spoons in the dishwasher and refilled the glasses with more of the berry juice. Taking the glasses into the living room, Missy made a gesture around her before sinking down on the large sofa.
   "Make yourself comfy, kiddo. Did you get a bit settled in upstairs already?"
Dittie also sat down on the other end of the sofa, holding the glass of juice in both paws and nodding with a smile.
   "Yeah, I got the most important things from my suitcase already, like my phone charger and stuff. Guess I'll put my clothes in the dresser tonight and get organized a bit."
   "Good, good," Missy nodded with a smile. "If there's anything you need, just let me know, okay? Like a laptop or something, did you bring anything like that with you?"
   "Uh, no, I left my laptop at my dorm, because I thought I was gonna be staying in a youth hostel," Dittie said, sipping her juice. "I figured it'd be fine, I can get emails and stuff on my phone and watch videos on there and all."
   "Right," Missy nodded. "That is a bit small and inconvenient though, so you can use one of those laptops over there. One of them is for my video editing, but I of course took my own computer and laptop with me when I moved here and it turned out there was a computer and two laptops in this house already too, so I have extras. And if you maybe want a TV up there, just let me know as well." She gestured at the TV on the low entertainment cabinet. "To be honest, I hardly ever watch TV, only for that late talkshow In the Mix with Mint and Vix, and for the weather programs when the spring and fall storms come around, but that's it. I prefer just having some music playing, but if you'd like a TV, I'm sure we can find a decent one in one of the big secondhand stores in town."
   "Aw, thanks," Dittie smiled. "That's fine though, I don't watch a whole lot of TV either, I mostly watch videos on Youtube."
Missy chortled lightly and sent Dittie a small grin.
   "Let me guess. Vice Grip Garage, because you already mentioned you’re subscribed to that one. Junkyard Digs. Finnegan's Garage. The David Freiburger Channel. Low-Buck Garage. IronTrap Garage. NoNonsenseKnowHow. Graveyard Carz. Budget Buildz. Pole Barn Garage. Just Junkyard Jill. Chrissy's Classics. And maybe even this obscure and fairly new channel by this mousie woman who recently got a big garage?"
Dittie giggled cheerfully.
   "Hee hee hee! Well duh! Of course I'm subscribed to that one! And Chrissy's Classics and Junkyard Digs and Pole Barn Garage too, and Budget Buildz, that's one of my favorites! Because it's a guy working on old cars with his dad, and that's totally just like what me and my dad do all the time too! But you gotta write down those others for me sometime, there's a lot I haven't heard of yet! I did use to follow Roadkill and Motortrend, but I stopped doing that when they went all corporate."
   "Yeah, that was a mess, and a damn shame," Missy agreed with a chortle. "Anyway, before I forget about it again as I'm prone to do; did you have any more stuff from your school for me?"
Dittie nodded with a smile.
   "They gave me a bunch of paperwork with all kinds of information and stuff to give to you. It's all in that binder I gave you, that had the contracts in it."
   "A-a-and which I left at the garage, of course," Missy smirked with another chortle. "Ah well, I'll get to that tomorrow then. Did they tell you my work week is different?"
   "They told me you don't work on Monday, yes," Dittie nodded. "But they also said you would give me all the necessary information."
   "Right. Well, yes, on Mondays I go to the gym with Fanni, and I only stop by the garage later in the day to check messages and check on my shoptiger; the regular work week is from Tuesday to Saturday. From nine-thirty to five-thirty generally, meaning we get up at about eight-thirty as it's a good half hour's drive from here. But of course, in the summer months I also follow the tropic's schedule, so then work is from seven to eleven in the AM and from three to seven in the PM, but it can vary. Actually, all my shop hours can vary wildly, because I'm not exactly your regular maintenance and repairs garage but I mainly do my own thing with all the restorations and all that, and it's not at all unheard of that I get a phonecall about some kind of project or opportunity that throws the whole workday out of the window."
Dittie nodded again, sipping the last juice from her glass.
   "So, like, I should get up at about half past eight tomorrow, then?"
Missy made a dismissive gesture with her free paw.
   "Tomorrow we'll sleep in a bit, as it's been a long day with a lot going on today. You'll hear it when I get up because the bathroom is right next to the guestroom, and if you don't hear it, I'll pound on the door if need be to drag your sleepy butt out of bed."
   "Hee!" Dittie giggled shortly again. "Yeah, I might sleep like a log tonight. It's been such a long drive, it took me the past two days, and I love driving, but that was a bit much. And, well, and... hee, I may be all bouncy and giddy and full of adrenalin because I actually got to meet you and I actually get to work with you, and it may take a bit before I fall asleep because I'll also be all giddy that I'm actually staying in your house and all, but I'm sure I will sleep like a dead body eventually, hee!"
   "Haha, yeah, I get it, kiddo," Missy chortled. "I say again, I'm not a celebrity and I'm not very special, but I can still see how it's a mighty big deal for a young kid like you, especially if you're such a fan."
   "Hee, yeah, I'm a huge fan, you could totally say that," Dittie nodded with a soft giggle. She dipped her ears a bit and looked down at her empty glass, fiddling with it slowly. "Can I... is it okay to give you, like... a physical compliment?"
Missy snerked a chortle and made a prompting gesture with a paw.
   "Let's hear it, kiddo."
   "Well..." Still looking down at the empty glass in her paws, Dittie slowly turned her head a bit to glance in Missy's direction. "You're... you're very pretty, Missy. Like, really very pretty. There's..." She drew in a deep breath and smiled a bit. "There's something sexy about you that don't really show in your videos, you know."
Running a paw over her pointy muzzle, Missy hid a mild grin.
   "In what way?"
   "Well..." Dittie eventually looked up again. "Like, you're really strong, that shows in your videos when you carry around super heavy things and all. But when actually meeting you, it's only then you can see that... well, like, that your build is quite delicate, that you're, I suppose the right word would be, that you're dainty."
Missy snerked again, licking a pointer finger and drawing a line in the air with it.
   "Plus one again for the times I've heard that one. That's number... I lost count." She sent Dittie a smile. "But hey, that's not your fault, I can't expect every single person who says that to me to automatically know I met a million persons before who said that to me, now can I?"
   "Uh... sorry," Dittie said in a low voice. "It's just... it's maybe not original, but it just really struck me, especially when you suddenly took off your clothes earlier, how delicate and dainty you actually are, despite being obviously super strong."
   "Yes, well, that's why I work out to a very carefully orchestrated routine, kiddo," Missy chortled. "To stay strong, and to stay dainty. It's just really funny to me to see people's expression when they see a petite and dainty mouse like me who suddenly walks off with a transmission on her shoulder or an engine block in her arms."
   "Hee, yes, that is quite funny, actually," Dittie nodded with a light giggle. "Oh, but, like, you mentioned before that you work out at a gym on Mondays, right? With me staying here now and all, what should I do at that time?"
   "You can just come along if you want, kiddo," Missy shrugged with a smile. "It's a female-only nudist gym, Fanni and I have a membership so I'm pretty sure I can bring you along as a guest. Heckity, I can probably get you a temp guest membership for a year or something."
   "Oh! Well, yeah, that'd be nice I guess, I'd like that," Dittie nodded with a smile.
   "Settled then, we'll take care of that next Monday," Missy smiled, lightly patting Dittie's leg before getting up from the sofa. "And thanks, kiddo. Like I said before, you're a cute girl too, and very pretty, I like that splotch over your front."

She took the empty glasses into the kitchen to refill them. Returning a few moments later, she handed Dittie one of the full glasses and sat down again, chortling softly under her breath at the expression on the young brown mousette's face. For the rest of the evening, they just sat and relaxed, calmly talking about various topics like school, favorite cars, things to do and see in Merian and South Plains and projects going on at Missy's garage.

At half past eleven, Missy turned on the TV so they could watch the late-night talkshow that aired on Monday, Wednesday and Friday night from half past eleven to midnight. After the show was over, Missy turned off the TV, closed and locked the backdoor and rinsed out the glasses before leading the way up the stairs.

On the landing, she halted by the bedroom doors and smiled at Dittie.
   "Well, goodnight kiddo, sleep well, okay? Like I said, we'll sleep in a bit tomorrow, and you can hear it when I get up so you'll know it's time for you to get up as well. And if you're awake before me, you're free to get up and use the shower and make yourself some breakfast too if you want."
Dittie nodded with a smile, twiddling her fingers a bit with her tail slowly swaying back and forth as she hesitated, but then still took Missy into a happy hug - which looked a bit funny because she was indeed a few inches taller than Missy was.
   "Thanks, Missy, thank you so much for letting me stay with you and all. I already almost screamed with joy when they told me I could do my internship at your garage, and when you told me I could even stay at your house, I about died from happiness."
   "Heh, it's okay, kiddo, really," Missy chortled softly, returning the hug for a moment or two, then putting her paws on Dittie's shoulders. "It may be a totally new thing for me, having an intern, so I have no clue what the protocols are, but I figure just being nice and helpful is a good idea. Ever since I moved to this country, people have been nothing but nice and incredibly helpful to me, and I was raised that way too so naturally I pay all that kindness back in spades." She playfully ruffled the young brown mousette's hair with a paw, even while she had to reach up to do it. "Now, get your butt to bed, kiddo, it's tomorrow already. Goodnight, and see you tomorrow morning."
Dittie giggled softly, flicking her ears and her tail and twiddling her fingers a bit again to stop herself from completely cuddling herself up against Missy.
   "Hee... goodnight Missy, and sleep well."

She stepped into the guestroom and closed the door. Missy gave her head a cheerful amused shake when one of her ears perked to the muffled "yesssss!" coming from behind the door. Stepping into her own bedroom, she put her phone on the charger and flopped down onto her bed, stretching out for a moment, then rolling onto her side and closing her eyes.

Well! It had certainly been a long, but most definitely very interesting day. There'd still be a lot to learn and figure out in the time to come, but she was sure everything would work out just fine. A last, muffled giggle escaped her lips as Missy drifted off to sleep. An intern. Imagine that, she had an intern.", "pools_count": 1, "title": "Minnalunan Tales - The arrival of Dittie", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "text/plain", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "1", "rating_name": "Mature", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "2", "name": "Nudity", "description": "Nonsexual nudity exposing breasts or genitals (must not show arousal)", "rating_id": "1" } ], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "0", "views": "4" }