He didn’t think anybody was going to be exactly like the special Ks. Katrina and Kynan were unique in so many ways and a little scary, to be honest.
Although he had to say that Cosmo adored them with a fiery burning passion of a thousand suns, and so Cosmo’s children did too.
My friends.
Sebby nodded to Elliot and scooped him up as if he didn’t weigh any more than any normal child and put him on one hip. “That’s right. We can go play. Do you want to go play with the Ks? Let’s go. Everybody’s home for summer, no school!”
“Play!” Elliot bounced, and Sebby did oof a little then.
“Fwy?” Isabelle asked him, eyes wide and pleading.
“You can fly, sweetie. Just stay close, hmm?” He was too off-balance to fly with her right now.
She trilled happily, pretty girl.
“I can take her.” That was Arielle’s bother, Jasper. “Do you want me to fly with you on my back, Isabelle? Or do you want to try your own wings?”
Goddess, he loved these kids. So sweet.
“On you.”
“Well, come on.” Jasper held out his arms. Such a gangly boy, but a good flyer.
“See Stella and snacks?” Elliot said, his tone like someone was grating rocks.
“As if Stella won’t come zipping here as soon as she knows you’re on this side of the guardian gate,” Sebby said with a snort.
That was so true. The little owl baby and the rock were buddies. She even tried to pick him up every so often…
It never worked.
“Ah, Corbin.” Myk met him out at the yard in the Rocky Mountain clutch’s compound. “Are you here for tomatoes?”
“Well, they are,” he said, hand on his belly.
“Congratulations, my friend! More than one, huh?”
“Yep. I need tomatoes and honey-cheese bread.”
“Well, you came to the right place.” Myk gave him a hug. “I was working in the garden, but everyone will want to hear the news. Let me just wash up.” Myk headed over to the outdoor spigot where he pumped some water and ran it over his hands and forearms.
“How is the garden going this year?” he asked as Elliot went rolling by with Stella flying overhead, screeching her happy little screeches.
“Good, I’m learning to cultivate a lot of the native plants while still keeping my own in the greenhouse. This way, they don’t propagate here just in case. Once we know they’re safe, I can start introducing some of them into the actual ground. But I don’t want to cause any sort of weird predatory plants, you know?”
“Yes, we learned that from the human world. Fragile ecosystems can be ruined by invasive varieties.”
Myk led him toward the house, chuckling. “Exactly. Though I am finding that the magic here in Lunastra picks and chooses what it allows to grow. So I’m thinking that the human plantvarieties that still grow here after all these hundreds of years of crossing back and forth were allowed by the magic. Do you know what I mean?”
“That’s fascinating.” The gardener in him thought that was the most amazing thing he’d ever heard. “I’ll have to tell my mother. She’ll be very interested in that idea.” He had a feeling that way more things had passed from the Land of Summer into the human realm than vice versa, although he wasn’t sure where roses had originated to begin with. There wasn’t a lot of desert in the Land of Summer, and he knew they were a desert plant, so he had a feeling it was in the human realm.
“Right? I love that idea. Makes me feel way less guilty for bringing things like tomatoes over. Although I found that they do have a variety of tomatoes here. There are about three times the size of what we’re used to, and they’re purple.”
“Oh wow. I’ve never seen those. I take it they don’t grow this far up in the mountain.”
“I don’t think they grow right in this region, even all the way down to the sea. I think it was Tyr’s brother Tor who told me about them, and he learned about them in the city.”
“Ah, well-met, Corbin.” Myk’s mate, Tyson, came wandering out of the house just as they were heading in the door. “I was coming to look for you, my love. We all want a snack, and I didn’t want you to miss out.”
