Moira #2: 15 Items or Less

15 Items or Less

The rabbit woman examines the onion she’s just picked up from the produce display. Round, yellow, papery. Yes, it’s sure an onion. Should be the last thing she needs. She drops it in her basket and heads toward the checkout lines. A few guys give her appreciative stares—she’s pretty and curvy—or disconcerted ones—she’s over six feet tall and borders on buff.

Only one of the three “15 Items or Less” registers is open, and it’s six people deep, but it should move fast, right? She doesn’t even have ten items.

Three of the people ahead of her have baskets, but the other three have carts. The tiger guy right in front of her, a head shorter than she is but almost half as broad as he is tall, is pushing a full cart. He’s got to have fifteen bags of corn chips alone. He’s on the phone with someone.

“Yeah, I got the diet soda, too.” Pause. “No, a half-dozen bottles, the big ones, you know?” Pause. “Yeah.”

“This is the express lane,” she says.

The tiger doesn’t glance at her. “Yeah, three packs of hot dogs.” Pause. “What do you mean, four?” Pause, sigh. “I guess I can leave my cart here.” He lowers the phone and looks up at the rabbit. “Hey, doll, watch this a sec.” The tiger starts to push past her.

“This is the express lane,” she repeats, pointing up at the sign.

“Yeah yeah.” He doesn’t look back at her.

She yanks his cart back hard, whacking him in the back with the handle.

“Hey!” he yelps, then turns around. “You trying to cut?” His voice raises. “You all see this?”

“She’s right,” a deer woman says, voice soft and timid. She’s got a basket with nothing in it but a bottle of wine, a block of cheese, and box of crackers. “You shouldn’t be—”

“Nobody gives a shit,” the tiger snarls, leaning into the deer’s personal space. He waves at the other carts. “It’s just a goddamn line.” He shakes his head and pushes his way past the deer, who’s gone frozen, eyes wide. “Herbivores. I swear.”

“Don’t make me get mean,” the rabbit woman says, sounding tired. “Just take your cart and—”

The tiger turns around, stomping back to her and trying to get up in her face the way he had with the deer, although it’s harder given the height advantage the rabbit has on him. “Oh, am I gonna make you late, bunny?” He hits her cart, making it swing enough that a carrot falls out. “You’re gonna have to wait an extra five minutes to make your vegetable stew?”

The other people with baskets, a sheep woman and another smaller rabbit man, look uncomfortable and cross; the deer remains frozen. The two other cart-pushers—a middle-aged vixen and a bobcat—look resigned. “Come on, lady,” the vixen mutters. “This is not a big deal.”

She’s clearly talking to the rabbit woman, but the tiger sneers. “No, go on, rabbit girl,” he spits. “Get mean.”

“Okay.” She shrugs, lifts a hand, and snaps her fingers.

Abruptly the tiger, his cart, the vixen, her cart, the bobcat, and his cart are all toy train scale. Big toy trains, to be sure, but none of them even reach two inches tall.

They all start shrieking. Tinily.

“I’m not a rabbit, I’m a hare,” she says. “Hares are bigger.” She turns away from the tiger and walks through the space that’s suddenly opened up between her and the sheep woman.

“You can’t do this!” the vixen shrilly yells up at her.

“I already did, idiot.” The hare doesn’t even glance at the floor when her paw comes down on the woman and her cart.

“Holy shit, you stepped on her!” the tiger screams, at the top of his tiny lungs. It’s not a lot of noise.

“Oops,” she says, not sounding remotely concerned. “Did I step on the bobcat?”

“N-No,” the rabbit guy stutters, staring at the floor. The checkout woman, a stoat, has gone ashen, hands gripping the register tightly enough to start cracking it.

Without looking down, the hare starts stomping her right foot around randomly. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. CRUNCH. “How about now?”

“Holy shit!” the tiger repeats.

“Oops,” she repeats.

Everyone remains staring at her, frozen.

After a moment she sighs, gesturing at the stoat. “Check him out, please.” She points at the male rabbit. “I’d like to stop wasting time now.”

With a soft swallowed whimper, the stoat takes the rabbit guy’s basket and unloads it in a jumble, moving faster than she ever had before.

The tiger runs around his miniature cart in a panic. “Oh god oh god oh god—”

“Goddess,” the hare corrects without looking down.

He stares up. “You are not a fucking—”

Abruptly the sheep woman smashes a hoof down on his cart, flattening it to nearly paper-width. He falls over, staring up, too terrified to speak.

“Respect her or I will end you,” the sheep growls. She’s not that big, about five foot three, but she’s fit and strikingly pretty, with black wool, long curly black locks of hair, and big, intensely dark brown eyes.

The tiger finally decides not to be flippant. “I’m sorry. Please, god—uh—please, goddess! I’m sorry!”

“Okay,” the hare says, starting to unload her own cart.

The tiny tiger stares up at her, whimpering. “Are you… are you… going to change me back?”

“Nah.” The rabbit yanks a thumb toward the sheep. “She can if she wants. She’s your goddess now.”

“I am?” the sheep says, simultaneously with the tiger saying, “She is?”

The rabbit shrugs. “Yeah, why not. I’m Moira. You are…?”

“Uh…” The sheep blinks rapidly, looking at a loss. “I’m Diana.”

“Good name for a goddess.” Moira looks at the stoat, who’s frozen again. “I’ll buy Diana’s basket, too.”

“Y-yes, ma’am. Ma’ams. Mistresses?” The stoat’s hands are shaking, but she keeps moving fast.

Diana looks bewildered. “You don’t have to call me mistress. I don’t have any powers.”

Moira shrugs. “Sure you do. You just have to decide if you’re a good goddess or a bad goddess.”

“Which… which are you?”

“Neither. I’m retired.”

“She’s a bad goddess!” the tiger shrieks. “Change me back! For fuck’s sake!”

Diana looks at Moira doubtfully. “Are—were—you a bad goddess?”

“Probably. I mean, I was good at being a goddess, but I was less of the ‘oh, our goddess is so kind and gentle’ type than the ‘our goddess is gonna lay waste to your sorry asses’ type.”

“It’s, uh, twenty-three dollars forty-nine cents, my lady,” the stoat whispers.

Moira pulls out a twenty and a five. “Keep the change.”

“Thank you, my lady. My ladies.” The stoat kneels behind the counter.

“Oh, don’t—” Moira pauses, glancing around the store. There’s at least a dozen other people on their knees, all ostensible herbivores. The rabbit who’d been in line ahead of her is one, looking up adoringly at the hare. “Dammit, this is gonna keep happening, isn’t it.”

Diana swallows, then crouches a little, looking at the tiger. “I can really change him back?”

Moira nods. “Yep.”

“Then change me back! For the love of god change me back, you damned plant-eating—”

Diana straightens up, looking down with almost regal disdain. “That’s goddess.” She brings her hoof down on the tiger, then abruptly looks simultaneously horrified and thrilled.

“I like you, kid.” Moira pats Diana’s shoulder and heads toward the exit.

“Ah…” Diana takes a few steps after the bunny, but stops in her tracks as she sees the growing crowd of worshippers dropping to their knees. They’re mostly facing Moira, but some face her. The deer woman who’d been in line is gazing up at the sheep raptly.

Diana’s eyes widen. Taking a slow, deep breath, she smiles down at her worshippers.