Aofe blinked, glanced at the chair, then back at him. “Okay, I’m sitting.”
His mouth parted, then he hastily shoved his glasses back up his nose. “You were… already sitting. Right, yeah, I knew that.”
Any nerves Aofe might have had before about Kizros fluttered away. She chuckled, shaking her head. “Please don’t make me wait, Kiz. I told you I didn’t like surprises.”
“But this one’s a good surprise, promise.” Kizros pulled the door open further, revealing the rest of him and nothing else. Just a tall green demon grinning like he’d hung the sun.
“Kiz, if you’re the surprise?—”
Aofe immediately cut herself off with a squeak as a giant silverthingbounded into the greenhouse.
“Oh. My. Gingersnaps!” she squealed,suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. Grab for her crutches? Greet this creature? Bury herself into its fur and never leave?
The beast answered for her, trotting right up to her seat and sniffing with interest. It probably should have made her nervous that this massive fox with massive ears and a massive number of eyes was licking her palm, but it was too precious to have her worry for her life. And when the animal chirruped and set its head directly on her lap, she almost cried. Her arms wrapped around its neck as she buried her face into its enormous ears that wereso dang soft.
Her head jerked up, finding Kizros with an oddly confused but happily surprised look on his face. “Where did you get a giant fox?”
And that look was immediately gone. “A what?”
“A fox. But it has six eyes. And it’sgiant.”
“What’s a fox? That’s an atteapir.”
“A what?”
“An atteapir,” he said, then shook his head and laughed. “She’s a runt, and I wanted you to have something to… okay, now I’m realizing this might have been incredibly offensive.”
Aofe frowned. “What?”
“I, uh…” Kizros rubbed at the back of his head, coming to join her at her worktable. “She was trained by my friend, Ragnar—I told you about him—and she was really good at comforting the other beasts, sometimes helping them recover from injuries, and I thought maybe she could be… well, maybe she could be here when you’re having bad days. But good days, too! You told me about that stray cat you would feed, and how much joy it brought you when it came to visit you when you were hurting—I’m getting off track.” He blew out a breath, then gave a resolute nod. “I thought maybe the atteapir could be that for you all the time. She’s yours, Aofe.”
“She’s—” Aofe looked down at the fox, all six eyes closed and ears reclined against her head.
Hers.
It didn’t feel real. Nothing felt real, and yet suddenly it was crashing down on her.
Something that washers. Something permanent.
Her throat began to burn, eyes following.
“I should have asked you first,” Kizros was muttering to himself. “This was rude of me, right? Making an assumption. Because now I realizeyoumight think thatIthink you aren’t capable, or that I’m not trusting you to stop when you need to take a break. Honestly, I was just wanting to do something nice, and?—”
Aofe was already standing, the atteapir lingering but not getting in her way as she pushed up with her crutches and somewhat fell into Kizros.
“O-oh,” he stammered, tail holding him steady as he caught her. But then she was able to ditch the crutches, wrapping her arms around him in the tightest hug she could manage.
Kizros only hesitated a moment, and then his arms wove into better positions to hold her. “Okay. You’re not mad then?”
“No,” Aofe laughed into his chest, tears slipping from her eyes. “I mean, yes, you should have asked. If we were still in the human world, just giving someone a service animal would be… it’s complicated.”
“But we aren’t in the human world.”
“No, we aren’t,” she agreed, leaning against his warm chest as that heavy feeling returned to her limbs.
“Do you… miss it?”
Aofe could hear how carefully he’d picked those words before speaking. “Not particularly.”
