“Farren, need to breathe,” he stammers.
“Shit,” I curse as I immediately let him go. “Sorry, I really missed you. Are you actually here?”
“Sort of, the goddess thought that you might like to see me since your magic has not recharged enough to return to the awake world yet,” Xerxes explains.
I nod as I continue to stroke Fluffy. “That makes sense, I still feel exhausted. Is Fluffy actually here?”
X chuckles, “Fluffy can go wherever you can.”
“Oh really,” I reply. “That’s going to be helpful.”
“Yes, well, no one is really sure how you managed to get one to be loyal to you,” X says.
My eyebrows rise. “Not even Verena?”
“Nope,” he replies. “You know that he’s the creature who was guarding the throne room at Hades’ castle.”
I look at Fluffy’s green eyes. “I thought you were. I’m so very glad that you’re not still there. I was going to come back for you when I could. You’re smaller than you were in the castle.”
Fluffy huffs, takes a step back, and then grows to the size that he was in the castle, before shrinking back down and coming back for pets.
“He must be like Meri,” X surprises me by saying.
“You don’t know?” I ask.
X flaps his pages, “Nope. I don’t know much, to be honest. He’s older than even I am. In fact, as I said, no one, not even Verena or the other Fates, knows where he’s come from, or how he’s bonded with you.”
“Seriously?” I ask.
“Yeah,” X replies. “He’s a mystery.”
I decide that I’m not going to focus on that, because if X says he doesn’t know, then he doesn’t know and there’s no point wasting time dwelling on it when I don’t know how much time I’ve got with him before I wake up.
“Are you going to go back to Hades’ place when I wake up?” I ask.
“Yes, I’ve become quite fond of the library there. It’s nice to have other books to talk to,” he replies.
I smile, “I’m really glad you like it.”
“Thank you,” he says. “Now, did you have anything that you wanted to ask me before you wake up? I sense that it’s not going to be much longer now.”
“Oh, I hadn’t even thought about that, I was just so happy to see you that it didn’t occur to me,” I reply. “Give me a moment, my brain is a little fried.”
“Take your time, there’s not too much rush,” X reassures me.
I nod and continue to stroke Fluffy as I think about the most important thing to ask X.
Something occurs to me, it’s definitely not one of the most important questions, but it is one I want an answer to. I know he said that he didn’t know much about Fluffy, but maybe if I ask him directly, the information will appear like it sometimes does. It’s worth a shot.
“Can Fluffy take down a god?” I ask.
Xerxes pages flap and turn as he thinks over my question and tries to find the answer within his pages.
“Yes,” he replies with surprise. “His kind supposedly naturally went extinct, but what actually happened is that the gods hunted them to extinction because they are the only creatures who can kill them.”
Fluffy’s eyes flash with a mixture of anger and sadness, as he looks up at me to gauge my reaction.
“I am so sorry,” I tell him sincerely, my head resting against his. “The gods are arseholes, that much is becoming abundantly obvious.”
