Winning at Life (Series: Tales of Animus)

Tales of Animus

Book 3

Winning at Life

By Ken Temple and Anja Coppieters

Copyright 2016, Ken Temple, Anja Coppieters

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

We created some of the following pet stories to honour the fans of Animus. Thank you all for your questions, feedback, support and interest. We love hearing from you!

In this book, a special dedication goes out to our WINTER 2015 ANIMUS PET CASTING CONTEST winners, as they inspired awesome alter egos:

Thoreen (winner of the Surprise Award)

Cleo (our 3rd place winner)

And their wonderful owners Doreen Kimba (USA) and Sylvie Bergeron (Canada) for telling us all about the habits and personalities of their beloved pets. Our other winners' stories will be published in the next book in the series Tales of Animus: Book 4—Great Tribulations, published 30 March, 2016.

It has been a genuine pleasure meeting and working with you all.

—Ken and Anja

Map of Animus

Contents

Map of Animus

LIFE OF A HEALER

Migrating Medic

The Omen

Suspicious Snake

Convoluted, Polluted Canyon

A Cautious Approach

The Slimy Secret

The Cunning Plan

The Dramatic Escape

The Way Home

CLEO’S CASE

The Grim Sleeper

First Taste of a Case

The FBI

The Pawlice Playboy

Agent Nightingale

Little Cleoreece

Mad Wet Hen

Digging Deeper

Boxford Business

Curing of the Hams

To the Victor—the Spoils

Undercover

THE GRUMPY PUPPY – A Tale Of Puppy Love

Misunderstood

The Inexplicable Encounter

Learning to Love

Believing in Love

THE MILKOSLAVIAN MAULER

JINX – A HERO’S MEASURE

Harvester of Envy

True Colours

Weight of Fame

The Right Cause

WINNING AT LIFE

THE UNIVERSE

DIEGO’S WRATH

AN EPIC EPIPHANY

Poozestan

Trouble on the Throne

The Swami

An Epic Epiphany

Epilogue

***

LIFE OF A HEALER

***

Migrating Medic

A physician from Cuddles, with no time to dawdle or spare,

Thoreen had been on the road year after year.

She travelled between Little Diner and her home,

To heal and bring hope to those who had none.

The journey was long and not without peril,

For brigands roamed the hills and forests—mindless and feral.

They had a good reputation for shakedowns, but Thoreen’s credentials were better—

They let her pass unharassed, as one never knows when one will need a bonesetter.

Those days there was a real paucity of talented healers,

But an ample supply of opportunistic quacks and toady death-dealers.

The charlatans’ ‘drugs’ could ‘cure’ hiccups, night blindness or shortness of breath,

But came with just one unfortunate ‘side-effect’, which was certain death.

Nonetheless, folks were gullible and superstitious,

Easily convinced that false hopes could grow wings on their wishes.

Often, Thoreen found herself fighting to save a patient’s life,

Who had been told that ‘the best way to get out a splinter, would be to fall on a knife’.

The Omen

In a quaint, fishercat village, on the outskirts of her town,

Thoreen had bought a small cottage, where one day, she hoped to settle down.

On the dusty roads, she longed for the sea breeze and the sound of the surf,

Which teemed with fat tiger shrimp, of which she could not get enough.

But before her humble dream of tranquillity could be realised,

A doctor to succeed her had to be groomed and organised.

Thoreen had several promising pupils, whom she had been training,

The brightest of which, her sister, Marina, had just a year of studies remaining.

When departing, she had decided to leave Marina in Little Diner,

So that the girl could hone her pharmaceutical skills, making them even finer.

For during arduous travel, careful experiments cannot be adequately controlled,

And sterile salves in fragile beakers are hardly compatible with a bump-riddled road.

Upon her return, Thoreen hoped to teach her young sibling to see with her heart,

For only then could she truly begin to master the medical art.

Empathy and compassion are vital ingredients,

If the treatment is to be effective and diagnosis immediate.

During a pit stop at Bean and Tang, Thoreen awoke with a fright.

Something had gone wrong—she was as sure, as an upside-down pudding’s not right.

She felt the slither of scales and saw a cold-blooded stare.

She heard Marina’s yelp for help, but there was no one there…

Suspicious Snake

Thoreen’s visions were often illusive… fluid… disjointed…

With temptations, false flags and fears her mind’s halls they haunted.

It was as though her mind lost traction and up a slippery slope tumbled—

The messages were often vague and chronologically jumbled.

Although not at all coherent and events sometimes flowed in reverse,

Thoreen had long ago understood that her clairvoyance was a gift, not a curse.

She was adept at whittling down and distilling the essence of dreams,

She had learned to unravel them and find out what they really mean.

Marina was in terrible danger, so Thoreen had to hasten her travel.

She set off skipping breakfast, as in doubts and confusion she was not one to dabble.

She dangled a broccoli bouquet, before the flaring nostrils of her molerat.

And its stampede-worthy gallop in its wake, left naught but dust and skid marks from her flying cart.

***

After a few hours of travel, the beast needed rest,

And Thoreen also needed some food, she had to confess.

She stopped by a stream and spied a fish cake stall nearby.

Leaving the molerat noisily slobbering, she wandered to the kiosk to see what she could buy.

A huge white cat in funny, stripy pants darted past her, panting and drooling,

He charged onto the cart and began hungrily munching its contents without any fooling.

Something made Thoreen tense up, then pause and she was glad that she did,

As very deliberately, from under the cart a familiar, scaly form slid.

She wanted to cry out and warn the great eater, but her tongue did not dare move.

In any case, she realised, it is too late at this stage matters to improve.

The serpent grabbed the cart like a rickshaw, over his shoulder cast a wry smile,

And took off at a lopsided run, like a slither-hopping crocodile.

Thoreen knew that she must follow the reptile back to his lair,

But to be stealthy and patient she must take great care.

Her molerat was weary, so on a nearby farm she parked her cart,

And sprinted on foot after the jogging fiend and his captive fat cat.

Convoluted, Polluted Canyon

Into a gloomy, litter-filled canyon in the Chocolate Hills,

The swift lizard dragged his snoring ‘guest’, whose bulk the entire cart now filled.

Slithering lithely, dragging in tow his rattling prize,

Despite the fact that his ‘rickshaw’ was almost double his size.

Thoreen had never seen so much garbage before.

Obviously, no one dared come here to clean. She had to watch where she set her paw.

Foul-smelling mucus puddles and trails were strewn on the ground,

Rimmed by countless ‘bluebottles’, that rose as the cart passed, briefly buzzing around.

Her query’s final destination was a cave at the entrance to an old cocoa mine,

Although the place now looked more like a pen fit for a swine.

Semi-translucent chartreuse crystals seemed to be everywhere,

Perhaps this was no villain, just an artist drowning in poor hygiene and despair?

Judging by the life-like, if somewhat lumpy, quality of his work,

This sculptor must be brain damaged in a junkyard to