Dave and Dawn came by at lunch. They were dressed casual today, in identical super baggy jeans and pullover sweatshirts. I was still staring at my crumpled notebook when they arrived.

  “Amanda, what happened?” asked Dawn. She pulled the notes out of my hand and passed them off to Dave. He smoothed them out the best he could and put them onto the table behind him.

  “They were here. They hired me to alter clothes.” I murmured.

  “Then why do you look like I should be asking Bill for his gun?”

  “Catgirl.”

  “They want you to make a cosplay?” asked Dave.

  “No! They want me to put a hole in those pants for a tail.” I pointed out the three sets the pair had left behind. “The woman had a tail. And ears up here, but those don’t have anything to do with pants.”

  “Did they drug you?”

  Irie took the opportunity to walk in with a handful of cookies.

  “Bill said he needed cookies to wash the taste out of his mouth after talking to a bacon-flavored-Fed. Does anyone know what happened?” They got out through a mouthful of chocolate chips. They held a cookie out to me with their other hand.

  “The bodyguard?” I guessed.

  “I think you need to start at the beginning.” proposed Dave. So I did.

  “Do you think she was really with the government?” asked Dawn when I was finished. “What if it is some rogue faction planning some terrorist thing? Or the Men in Black!?”

  “I think you are letting your imagination run wild.” said Dave. “Then again, catgirl.” He directed his attention back to me. “Are you sure you weren’t drugged?”

  “Should we tell somebody?” wondered Dawn again.

  “I don’t want to get disappeared.” I countered.

  “How about you just fix the pants?” proposed Irie, licking chocolate off their fingers. Trust Irie to keep us all grounded.

  “Oh, I asked if I could make her something nice. We need to brainstorm that.”

  “I have so many sketches we can pick from!” Irie pivoted instantly and practically skipped to my shelves to pull down a handful of notebooks she had filled and left for me to reference.

  “So long as we don’t forget the pants.” reminded Dave.

  I got started on measuring the spots where I needed to cut the pants while Dawn started trying to color match the fabrics from my scraps.

  “You don’t have anything that will match these yoga pants.” she said.

  “Luckily, the tags are still on everything. This afternoon we will go buy another to cut up.” I observed. “It's going to be enough of a pain to hand-stitch elastic materials, so I’m going to bill them for the expense.”

  I started drawing on the jeans with chalk.

  “You are putting the hole that low?” asked Iere, looking over my shoulder.

  I checked my measurements. It was right. I spun Iere around and poked them in the pelvis.

  “Her tail is right there.”

  “Ok, I am sure it isn’t a cosplay now. If someone wore a tail there on a cosplay people would assume it was a plug.” remarked Dave. Iere just swatted me for my audacity.

  “Well what do you think is behind her tail?” reminded Dawn.

  “I mean, how does her underwear even work? There would have to be a hole in it right there.” Dave continued.

  “She had some gauzy wrap thing going on.” I said.

  “Smexy gauzy wrap thing?” prodded Dave.

  “This is Amanda’s customer, and we don’t need to sexualize her.” chastised Iere. I quietly nodded vigorously at him from behind their back. Iere may be Ace but the rest of us weren’t.

  “She did that herself though, and effortlessly. When I asked her to dress down for measurements her clothes just disappeared. Her muscle definition is amazing.”

  “Dommy mommy?”

  “No, more… sleek. I would destroy nations to have that body.”

  “Yeah, you could use the inches.” Dave taunted me.

  “Someone didn’t look at the pants we're altering. She's five feet tall. I'm taller!”

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  “How about this one?” asked Iere, holding up a notepad for me to see the sketch they had flipped to.

  “That’s nice. We’ll put a pin in that and come back to it. In the meantime Dave, go to this store and get duplicates we can cut up for material. Keep the receipts.”

  While we were waiting for Dave, I made my cuts and added some stitching to the cut edges to keep them from fraying until I could cover the edges. Then we all gathered around Iere’s notebooks and got into a lively discussion about our favorites.

  The next day I got a text from a California number. “This is Kos-Api’s phone. Please save.” A few minutes later the same number called me.

  “Hello?”

  “Want you be sure I real.”

  “You! My friends think all kinds of strange things! Are you… safe to be around?”

  “Depends. You no try hurt, I no try hurt. All be well.”

  “So what can I do for you? I mean, that I am not already doing.”

  “Want tell be back next end of week. Should have pants ready.”

  “We still want to make you something cool to wear. We are looking into our options now.”

  “That good. You make something I wear I buy. Need more than dresses from clothes store and tribal wear.”

  “OK, we will see what we can come up with.”

  I spent the remainder of the day completing the pants. I cut the crotch out of the pairs that I had Dave buy and sewed them into the backs of the jeans and khakis that Kos-Api had brought after shortening the zippers to the space above the new tail holes. In both cases I left the waistband intact but cut all the way up to it from the hole I wanted for the tail. The zipper I put in upside down and put the button closure right above the hole. Finally I hid the button behind a bow that went well with the pants.

  The yoga pants I left mostly intact. I left the waistline and most of the back intact, but after cutting the tail hole I heavily reinforced it with redundant stitching and material I cut from the spare pair. Kos-Api was not going to lose a pair of nice new pants because I neglected to ensure the back wouldn’t get all stretchy and saggy. She would just have to deal with getting her tail through the slightly elastic hole and smooth out the fur on it afterwards.

  As the week progressed I combed through more of Iere’s sketch books to find more outfits I liked. Settling on just one was getting difficult. I had made arrangements via text to meet with Kos-Api on Saturday afternoon, but at lunchtime we got a text on the group chat from Alisson from the university campus he stayed at in Raleigh.

  “Everyone turn on the news, right now. Any channel.”

  That was dire.

  The first news broadcast I found had the anchors going on about an object out near the moon. It was just sitting there, doing nothing. I watched the news for an hour and nothing happened so I went back to my sewing machine to practice a difficult stitch while leaving it on in the background. After a while I remembered to send Kos-Api a text asking if she knew anything, but she didn’t reply. Hey, it seemed appropriate to ask the space alien, I don’t know.

  Still nothing. By bedtime my boss had texted me saying the store was staying closed as recommended by the Federal and state government but to check back in the morning.

  The morning wasn’t any better. Six end-of-the-world cults had staged stand-offs with local governments, and the National Guard had been called in to deal with two of them. Around the world they were having similar problems. By lunchtime there were sixteen dead out on a ranch in Montana and gun violence was on the rise. The Feds and every state had declared a state of emergency, as had most other large nations worldwide. I had never seen breaking news be interrupted by more breaking news before, but shortly after lunchtime the news came out that the thing at the lunar-whatever-point had moved. By the time they had found out it had already stopped again. It was just sitting up there like it was playing a game of red-light green-light and the green light was when we were distracted by mass panic.

  A twelve hour shelter-in-place order went up for all of North Carolina. The marines out at Camp Lejeune had been mobilized since yesterday to place themselves at the disposal of FEMA and the state government so the news got lots of background shots of bored koopa standing around in public places. I just stayed home. Bill and George over in the big house had a well stocked pantry to bolster the meager food supplies in my tiny kitchenette so I was OK.

  The next day, and for the rest of the week it kept moving a little at a time. By day four the biggest crazy pants people had been properly sorted out and everyone realized they may have bigger issues than petty territorial squabbles. Everything went quiet, like the planet was holding its breath.

  It kept coming, moving closer once a day. It was honestly getting kinda boring. If the aliens were invading they were taking their sweet time about it. We were finally allowed to go back to work on day five of the thing creeping closer by inches when the public outcry about not being able to afford to stay home became too much. We had a spaceship over us just moseying right along and I was back at work sorting book returns.

  I spent the time at home practicing and doing prep work on patterns for Iere’s dresses that I liked. I learned a lot in the process but still hadn’t decided on what I wanted to make. Bill and George kept up with the local LGBTQ+ community to make sure everyone stayed safe and fed. I felt like a little Filipino trans princess. It was a good week, all things considered.

  Suddenly it was here. It was just above the atmosphere and moving slowly around the world. The news said that objects in orbit could go over seventeen thousand miles per hour, but this thing up there wasn’t going much faster than a passenger plane could go.

  And then it landed in New York city. I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Evidently so did the people of New York city, because when the mayor got in front of the news cameras and announced with his whole chest that people should just be cool and behave as though Nana was visiting, they did.

  The security woman brought Kos-Api to see me again on the Friday after the space aliens landed in New York. Kos-Api was wearing a long sleeve off the shoulder crop top and a tennis skirt that didn’t even try to hide the bullet vest underneath. She had wicker sandals on that looked out of place with the cheeriness of her outfit, but she made it work. Her security lady was in a pants suit that looked a little warm.

  Allison was visiting from Raleigh when they arrived.

  “Sorry for long time since visit, things crazy now.” she said. She took one look at Allison and then took a deep breath like a cat would and then just shrugged slightly.

  “Do I stink?” demanded Allison, clearly gearing up for a fight.

  “No. Did not consider before Amanda have bird fellows of like-plumage. It make sense.”

  “Oh. OK then.” answered Allison, clearly unsure if he was being insulted.

  “So that certainly is a look.” I observed to redirect the conversation.

  “Ashley doesn’t like.” Kos-Api pointed at the security woman. “Still feel pretty.”

  “Can I get a picture for us?” asked Allison.

  “Only if you don’t upload it to the internet.” cautioned Ashley.

  “Just for our friend group. I’ll even use cables to put it on Amanda’s computer and then delete it.”

  “Sounds good.”

  The two stayed the afternoon for tea and a chat, but didn’t have any real answers about the stuff happening in New York. She liked the pants though, and before she left she asked me to do three more the same way.