Brutus licked his paw and brushed it over his ear. Something was itching him so he repeated the brush a few times, trying to reach the itch through the fur with his claw.

Mildred did the same.

“Oh, there you are!” Brutus exclaimed seeing her. “I’ve missed you.” He brushed up against the other cat and Mildred returned the favor. “How has it been?”

“Beastly,” Mildred sighed in her usual nonplussed way. Brutus was convinced she’d been an aristocratic lush in a previous life. The kind that poisoned her husband by accident and was only mildly surprised when he’d actually dropped dead from it. “You know how the food is; something from a can, something from a bag that smells like human feet...”

“Oh yeah, he’s not really very good with the food. But hey, beats having to chase down three-legged rats!”

“Does it?” She arched her brow.

“Well, the pizza isn’t half bad.”

Mildred sighed and licked her paw. Brutus mirrored her.

“Yesterday when he came home with that… female-creature,” she continued without looking up.

“Sarah.”

“Sure. Pitiful gangly thing. Of course the dog was all over her. Some can’t help but be desperate. Just shoot me if I ever fawn all over a human like that.” She raised her gaze.
They were staring each other directly in the eyes.

Brutus felt that familiar twinge in his chest. She was so... so. The feline queen. The one he worshiped and waited for. The one always watching over him. His dark half. His judgment and bile and yet… she was just like him. When she brought home half dead shrews and tore open their guts, he saw himself doing the same. The blood tasted just the same on their tongues. They both protected fiercely their home from the things moving in the night the humans couldn’t see.

Brutus lifted a paw and pressed it against the glass. Mildred did the same. The two black cats sat silently looking at each other, like punctures in the universe.

The front door cracked snapping Brutus out of the moment.

“I... I think I need to go. I think he brought a box,” he said looking over his shoulder.

Mildred meowed dryly. “I suppose we all need to do our duty. For the sake of the country and the family and such things. Protect these fools from the portals they bring into their houses,” she said looking over her shoulder.

Brutus turned back and their eyes met for a brief moment.

“You know I’ll be back and we will figure this out eventually. Even if it takes nine times nine lives,” his gaze dropped to the ground. That was a sacred vow. It gripped his heart tighter than veins and squeezed the blood from it to his feet. But he knew it was true.

Then Brutus got up and headed right, into the living room.

The cat in the mirror sat still for a moment before it too got up and headed left into the living room.

Not to put a too fine a point on it, but 2018 is off to a rocking start. Ok, possibly not a start, but almost a midway point. It's May. Right. Maybe I should edit that to "2018 has been pretty good so far" but the edit button... doesn't exist and I've rewritten the start of this already a half a dozen times so what's there is gonna stay.

2018 has been pretty good so far and even though I'm not going to be able to attend this year's Helsinki Comics Festival as a vendor (which was a plan at one point!), there will be goods and things. This year! Yes, it seems almost implausible after the 4 years that everything's been very silent here, but there are reasons related to life. And some of those reasons also mean I can't fully expand on the goods and things right now. Instead, let's look at the things I CAN expand on:

Some months ago I took part in an urban design contest as part of a team and this is what happened.

We came in 2nd as the audience favorite.

Technically that means that our design will NOT be seen anywhere in the city's designated arting surfaces in the near future. However, it was discussed and we did give permission, that should another similar space have use for a design, ours could be used. Below is our team's design, with some grand spiffy photoshopping by my awesome team mate.

I'm still all tingly about that. The ceremony was lovely, the bouquet we got seemed to last forever and the people we competed against were extremely talented. All in all it was really an honor to be part of the whole process. (seriously, what did they put in those flowers? They kept for almost a month!)

Besides that, I've started at a new position as a student in the marketing department of local software company.
And sort of connected to that we come to the things I'd love to elaborate more on but can't really much. In short: there will be some coloring book stuff by the end of the year (not sooner because of Reasons) and there will be some prose stuff that I might spring on you unexpectedly when you're not looking. Because of Reasons.

Honestly, I'm not trying to be difficult, but this part of the year is legally all kinds of murky, So. Reasons.

On the Not Frustratingly Vague side of things: I have some ongoing blog stuff planned already and I'm posting flash fic, totally for free, on a few different platforms. You can find me on Wattpad, Quotev, FictionPress and Sparkatale to read my tiny prose. Now that my schedule has managed to schedule itself, I can start trying for semi-regular posting on all of those too. Or you can come here and read the same stories on Fridays. There's probably some snazzy tweety hashtag for it like #FlashFicFriday or summin'...
My user handles have been updated almost uniformly across different platforms to Mimesatwork now. If you see that, it's probably me.. Like, say, on Instagram where I try to post warm up sketches when I have the time. And my links here have been updated, so they should (SHOULD) work.
Also, as you can see on the right, I've added a coffee button in case you want to buy me a cuppa. A cup is US$3 which incidentally is about as much as a cuppa.
Ha!
I pun.
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-cough-
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Ok, so my pun is rusty.
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-crickets-
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ANYWAY... that's one squishy lump of updating with vague raisins thrown in. They'll become less vague the closer to them we get. Until then, stay peachy!

This is a blog (and the front page of my website.. in that brought you here; Hi! Welcome!). I haven't had one of these in a while. Not a text-based one. You know how it goes: you create a Tumblr-account and the next thing you know you're communicating solely with reblogs with gifs and pictures of ball pits.

And that is a reference that will date SO quickly I wont even remember why I put it there by the end of the year.
At any rate, this is a blog and I will write things about life and work and probably a social thing or two and there will be pictures.

If you want to read just comics about how mundane and wonderful life can be, you should read my Tumblr blog. Not that you can't do both. I'm encouraging you to do both. You can if you want to. I believe in you!