Brown toad

Ceto was being shuttled to Mars with all of her stuff. Her mother had not had the time to go through her things, because she was chasing after her new children. So extra trunks were ordered for all of Ceto's school work, her flute, which she rarely practiced and her clothes, all of them, even the ones she'd outgrown. All of this had been thrown into the old fashioned trunks, along with every scribble answer and all of her report cards. Her mother even stripped her bed. Ceto was both comforted by the idea that there was no part of her, other than her family that she would leave in the undersea world. But there was one thing that she was hoping her mother would forget. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Just as her taxi pulled up and started loading all of her stuff inside her Mom came out out with the God forsaken toad.

The toad was a present from her younger brother, Varuna for her ninth birthday. Ceto was not sure how he managed to get his hands on an exotic gene modified toad but her it was, a fat brown ordinary looking toad. It's just like you, her brother said, it's been modified to live both in the deep sea and in outer space. And, nothing else, he added, staring at her meaningfully. He was only five years old but his eyebrow raised meaningfully and hovered in place as he waited for her to hear the double entendre. Her brother had dual modifications as well. One of them was to live the deep sea and the other was for hyper intelligence. The meaningful stare that he gave her was meant to underlin3 the absense of this trait in her. Ceto wasn't sure but she did think that Varuna, for such a hyper intelligent creature was rather unaware of the things that he was lacking. He had an abysmal lack of charm, and alway came across as nasty even when she thought he might be trying to be nice. Like with this present, Varuna had spent a lot of money on it, such specimens were a rarity. Overall she did not think he was trying to be cruel, or even that he disliked her. He just wasn't very nice or good.

The toad unfortunately, was similarly unsympathetic or so she thought at first. It turned out to be worse than that as the toad did have something special about him. The special thing about the toad, which Ceto just called Brown Blah, in her mind was that it was extremely nerotic and very sensitive to Ceto's feelings or whoever it was near really, but especially Ceto as she reluctantly fed the Brown blah slugs. If she was at all nervous the toad went on high alert and when this particular type of sea toad went on high alert it spat extremely malodorous venom all over it's cage. If it happened outside the cage green goop would shoot in every direction for over twenty feet and if it got on your skin you would scream. But even if you avoided it, it would make a room difficult to enter for a few weeks. The cage had to be cleaned so it was difficult to avoid these encounters all together. Ceto could only sigh and look at the Brown toad and hope that the cage didn't smell bad enough to envelop her and all of her stuff in the bad odeur. It would not be the best entrance into a new life.

— 7Roses