Just as with Iolana (about whom I was speaking yesterday), I have big plans for Augie.  He makes his premier as a newborn in The Drache Girl.  So at the time The Young Sorceress takes place, he’s about 2 1/2.  I think I wrote him a bit too mature.  In fact, I went back more than once to try to make him and his sister appear a little younger.  Right now, I’m busy writing his story in The Sorceress and her Lovers, in which he is a rambuctious eight-year-old.

Here he finds out that not all the lizzies get along with each other.

Cissy finished tying the yellow bonnet below Terra’s chin and stood up.  The bonnet matched her cute little yellow dress.  Where was the boy?  He had been here just a moment before.  It seemed so odd.  Human children were almost unable to move when they were born, but by their second year, they were almost as quick and wild as lizzie offspring.

“Hyah!” shouted Augie, jumping out from behind the door.

Cissy threw her hands up, shaking them in mock fear.  Terra squealed and then laughed, just as she did every day when her brother jumped out at her.

“Now come,” said the reptilian, scooping up the girl, and taking the boy with her other hand.

“Where are you off to?” asked Mrs. Dechantagne, when they reached the foyer.  She was still in her night dress, though it was well past noon.

“To the store.  Yuah come too?”

“Not this time.  I have a headache.  I’m going to take a nap.”  She looked down at the children.  “You both look precious.  Give Mama a kiss.”

First Avenue was one of the most well traveled roads in the colony, at least on the east side.  It stretched from Town Square to the small homes of Zaeritown, along the way passing the largest homes in Port Dechantagne—some deserving the title of mansion.  Dozens of lizzie work crews were here, laying bricks on the roadways, pouring cement sidewalks, or installing little wrought iron fencing around the trees that were designated not to be cut down.  Many of the lizzies stopped to stare at the female with two human children.

A large male who was pushing a wheelbarrow in the opposite direction from the Dechantagne children and their nanny, Cissy knew him only by his human name of Zinny, hissed “khikheto tonahass hoonan.”

“Kichketos tatacas khikheto tonahass hoonan?” asked Augie, looking up at Cissy.

“Talk hoonan,” she ordered.

“What did he mean you ate a human?” asked the boy.  “Who did you eat?”

“I not eat… Cissy is lizzie.  Cissy act hoonan.  Tsass khenos khikheto tonahass hoonan.  Lizzie on outside  Hoonan on inside.”

“That’s stupid,” said the boy.  “You don’t act like a human.  You just act like Cissy.”

She reached out a clawed hand and tousled his hair.