“With what money?” I ask, laughing. “You don’t have any.”
He grits his teeth. “I hate that you’re right, youngling.”
And I hate when he calls me that.
“I don’t know what to get, and you have no money,” I say. “So we should, perhaps, try to find something together. If you can pick it out, I will pay for it.”
There, that’s a reasonable compromise. I suppose I should have left Shathar out in the cold to find his own way, but neither do I know what Fiona would want.
“Fine.” Shathar snaps his claws, so I snap mine back. “I will find something good.”
We pass windows for clothing stores, deciding that Fiona would probably prefer to pick out her garments herself. Then we stop at a shop full of trinkets.
“Perhaps here,” says Shathar, leading us inside. “This is just the sort of thing she likes.”
He’s right—Fiona has many, many trinkets in her home.
We peruse the aisles, but I can’t identify most of what we find. There are many pretty objects, of course, ones that Fiona might like, but nothing jumps out.
After spending too much time looking at tiny wooden animals, we move on. The next shop appears to be a place to play games, as children are interacting with screens and shooting fake weapons. I move to pass by, when Shathar catches sight of something inside.
“Look,” he says, pointing. There are reels of pictures along the side of a booth. “Fiona only wants us to get along, doesn’t she?”
I nod. She has expressed this before.
“Then what if we posed in a photo together, to show her we can get along?”
This is an interesting proposition. And then she would have a photo of us, as she has photos of her mother around the house.
“All right.” I nod. “Let’s take one.”
We find our way into the booth, but it’s very small. I am forced to nearly sit atop Shathar’s leg as we both navigate our way inside, grunting and growling as we get in each other’s way. Finally, we settle—still far too close together—and figure out the instructions on the screen. All the while, I can feel Shathar’s leg under mine, how he stiffens when I touch him.
Then the machine starts snapping pictures. At first, we are far apart, but the picture looks awkward and we’re not inside the frame. So I lean in closer and Shathar does, too, until our faces are touching. Then we’re both in the frame as the camera keeps snapping. Shathar’s cheek is fiercely warm, and for a moment, I smell something strange.
It reminds me of Fiona’s scent, the scent that wafted off her when she stepped into the room back at the spaceport. But before I can really register it, the camera has stopped, and the machine starts printing out our photos. We draw apart quickly, then when the photos have finished, Shathar pulls them out of the slot. He shows them to me, and I am surprised by… how much I like them.
We are a handsome pair, I think.
“We had better get back,” I say after we have our photos in hand. We hurry to where we left Roth’kar, but he’s still sitting on the bench waiting for Fiona and Amara. He grins when he sees us.
“You found something?”
We nod in unison and show him the photos.
“You need a frame,” he says with a powerful certainty. “There’s a store on the first floor that has them. I’ll tell the women you went to get Cinnabon.”
I don’t know what Cinnabon is, but I’m grateful to him for giving us the distraction as we head off to the first floor to find a frame for our new photo.
“This was a good idea,” I say to Shathar.
He grunts and nods. “I have those sometimes.”
We keep our gift hidden on our way home, and I stash it in my room in one of my drawers where Fiona won’t find it.
Then, it’s time to go out for “drinks.” We dress up again, and I’m surprised to see Shathar in a long-sleeved shirt that compliments his smaller figure well. We wait in silence for some time for Fiona to come down. When she does, though, she is a vision. She’s wearing a tiny dress, blue as her eyes, that flashes in the light as she walks down the steps. Both Shathar and I are silent as she glances from his face to mine.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
