A veces me planteo el porqué de mi escritura en inglés. ¿Acaso es codicia por un mercado más grande? ¿Resultado de un odio reprimido por la lengua materna? ¿Culpa de Macri? Luego recuerdo que no, que es solo mi perfecto ego exigiendo que presuma mi naturaleza bilingüe ante los pobres mortales. De paso, voy a aprovechar para anotar que tengo que comprar huevos, leche, yerba, fideos, Miel de esa medio blanquita que me gusta tanto, hígado (de vaca (para Mariana (para comer, no para trasplante (los órganos de bovino son incompatibles con los perros (Mariana es un perro (un perro hembra (su cuerpo produce óvulos en lugar de esperma)))))))

Back to the potpourri of a language, there is a need to describe Violeta’s room. It was not that of a warrior princess, like Florencia’s, or a mad tinker, like Sabrina’s. Nor it was the pitch black wardrobe in which Cornelio battled to sleep every night, that, I admit, reminded me of the paleontology section of the geology department in the FCEN. The only thing that didn’t seem built in a rush or older than the nude stone of the walls was the new crib. White metal bars, with round angles and bed clothes that were probably sewed with love by Florencia.

There wasn’t much furniture, and she slept on a bunch of rags spread on the floor. What stood out, however, were the ashen spots and the burnt smell that pervaded the atmosphere. It was as if there had been a fire there, and Violeta had never bothered about tidying the place up.

She sat upon an old forged iron chair, playing violin. The charred furniture and the euphonious melody were at odds, a happy tune had no right to disturb the blackened wood, the half burnt picture on the wall, the tragedy that had been so deliberately preserved.

I stood in a corner, leaning against the irregular walls, waiting for her to finish. Interrupting her while she was playing was probably equivalent to taking the highway to the cemetery.

Mariana stood panting happily by her side, because being a Golden Retriever grants one special privileges. A Golden Retriever could walk into Detroit shouting racial slurs and get away with it. Could walk into La Bombonera wearing a River Plate shirt and would only get the shirt carefully replaced with one of Boca Juniors. Forget sending the eagles to Mordor, hell, a Golden Retriever could have destroyed the ring by asking a group of starving, bloodlusty orcs for directions. “Does the good boy want to destroy the Dark Lord? Yes he does, yes he does!”

“And let the world we just discovered last forever…” She sang a love song; one I didn’t know.

She glanced at Mariana, and then at me.

“Don’t you have someone else whose balls could use a busting?”

“You have so much to learn, Violeta. A good annoyer is able to act in several places at the same time.” A scream that could have frozen the blood of a fire elemental reached our ears. “I reckon, by the pitch and distance, that that was Sabrina, and she found the reanimated turdspider in the toilet.”

“The reanimated what?” she said, her lips trembling.

“Turdspider. I discovered I can reanimate excrements as they are made out of dead things. They make very poor battle zombies, but this makes my powers much more flexible and disgusting,” I explained in an almost academic tone.

“I hope you make dad angry enough to bake you into fertilizer for Sabrina’s garden.”

“Sabrina has a garden?”

“In the castle´s terrace, yes.”

Refraining from asking if the place had a terrace like the idiot I often am, I approached her. “So, can you compose a song for us?”

“For the right coin. I’d charge anyone ten thousand gold coins for three or four minutes, but for you two, I am going to make an exception, giving you a special price,” she said, leaving the violin to a side and crossing the fingers of her hands over her belly.

“Okay, how much?”

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“Nine thousand…”

There was something wrong with that, I could feel it in the air. It was a trap.

“Per minute?”

She chuckled.

“Oh, you had to ruin the punchline.”

“Mariana, bury her in gold coins”

Mariana obeyed, and Violeta’s eyes opened wide.

“Three million? How do you even have this kind of money?”

Almost hiding my head between my shoulders, I answered “I don’t even know, Mariana is an endless well of currency.”

“And you never asked yourself where she gets the money?” she said, incredulous.

“I mine it,” Mar admitted. “I use my spare brainpower to solve math problems and they pay me in gold coins.”

A gasp escaped me like Mariana a thunderstorm. The realization was beating me like I was a “bad wife” who had married an alcoholic policeman.

“So that’s why you are so painstakingly stupid?”

“Yup. I only leave a tiny portion of intelligence available for day to day life.”

Collapsing on the floor and embracing death as lovers seemed to be the only way out of the suffering I was deriving from the revelation.

“You put us in lethal danger day in and day out for money?”

“Yes! I am a Golden Retriever, therefore, I am supposed to retrieve gold.”

Her logic hit me like their discovery of sulfuric acid hit the non-avian D-boys.

She got promptly demoted to slapped-bitch, a non-functional isomer of the bitch-slap.

Mariana snarled at me.

“Stop that.”

She hid her teeth and lowered her head.

“Did you just defuse a dog’s aggression with words?” Violeta said, cringing against her chair.

“Yes, Mariana is like that, she is not a threat to anyone on purpose. Good thing she has the brow of a meth addict on acid most of the time.”

“Is meth edible?” Mariana asked the question neither of us expected.

Patting her soft head, I answered:

“Surprisingly, yes. For humans at least.”

“Can we get meth?”

“Dad has some destroymethamphetamine in the recreational drugs cabinet. It does nothing to half-elves, though,” Violeta informed.

“Dextro,” I wouldn’t let the chance to correct her slip from my grasp. “It has to do with how the asymmetric carbon has its substituents… ehm, the functional groups, let’s say, distributed around it.”

She raised an eyebrow.“Is alchemistry a widespread practice in your world? Can you make the same things Dad and Sabrina make?”

“Yes and no. I know the basics of how it works, but many reactions and the know-how to recognize the components or where to extract them are beyond me. I studied plants, could probably teach you a thing or two about cycads.”

“The insects?” she said, and that disgraceful comment settled the conversation.

I ordered Mariana to play a couple chacareras for our new employee, so she would know what we would ask her to compose.

“I can get one of the pit bulls to do the percussions, easy task, yes…” She nodded as she listened with her eyes closed.

Meanwhile, I stared at her round belly. She was reproducing, like the Chacarera del violin, and not like any music at all. Diaphanous health bars could be seen moving over the distended skin. Two of them, to be exact. She was having level 1 twins. It begged the question: would punching pregnant women in the stomach give a newcomer experience points? Could I revive the fetuses before they were evacuated? How much damage would that do? Could I Alien: The Eight Passenger my female enemies?

I realized I was becoming something too similar to Kinslayer, and, lest I started having luscious thoughts about fucking the mothers of my teammates, I decided to derail the train of thought.

“So, huh, before having a miscarriage, do people see the bars slowly drop and panic? Or do they just flip from a hundred to zero and you suddenly realize it was one too many smokes?” Sadly, inertia is a bitch, even in thought.

“What kind of question is that?!?!” she actually freaked out enough to warrant the double interrobang.

“Do they disappear in a puff like dead Minecraft wolves?” I continued with my crusade against health bars on pregnancies.

“This is why you are single!” she kept on being irrationally angry at my inquiries.

“No, I am single because I purposefully avoid the fairer sex. If I didn’t, I could suffer the terrible accident of falling into a loveless marriage,” I made a meaningful pause, “Or, god forbid, even worse: a marriage where my wife actually loves me.”

“Yes, of course, keep thinking it is your choice,” she laughed sardonically.

“A friend committed suicide after finding out he was cheated on. Jumped into the Riachuelo, of all places. There are nicer, less contaminated places to jump into. I mean, the Riachuelo smells worse than a corpse, as rotting flesh acts as air freshener in there…” I slapped myself, then shook my head. “But I digress. I will never allow anyone to do that to me. I know myself. I am fine living alone, having the sole company of someone designed to never betray me.” I patted Mariana on the back, behind the shoulders. She jumped and tried to playfully smack my cheek with her snout.

She grimaced with disgust “Designed. I hate when people use that word for animals. But, Walter, forgive my indiscretions, I am sorry for them.”

Ignoring the burning pain being apologized to sparkled in my soul took all my force of will, but I had a mission, a burden too heavy for anyone else to carry on his shoulders. I had been born with a purpose, and I was not going to let fate down, not this once.

“Hello Sorry for Them. I am Walter.”