Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Azlan is true to his word. He promised to give me my money’s worth, and he is giving me every cent I spent, and more. I haven’t seen a Growler since he arrived. They are afraid of him, and they respect his territory.
“How do you know how to use all of these tools?”
“They’re simple enough,” he says. But they’re not simple. Making fence posts isn’t an instinctual sort of thing. Someone has taught him something.
He always avoids giving me detail when he can. It’s like he doesn’t want me to know him properly, and that makes me feel distant, like this is all transactional.
It feels silly to be annoyed by that. I literally set out to buy a living defense system who could help around the farm, and I got what I wanted.
“Do you know how to look after a baby?” I change the subject.
“Sure.”
“How?”
“You feed them, you clean them, that’s basically it.”
“That’s how you look after a plant, not a baby.”
He gives me a look. “Do you know how to look after a baby?”
“Sure. How hard can it be?”
It’s different when I’m the one making it sound like it’s no big deal. I’ve never even been around a baby. Or even a small child. I was the last baby on this asteroid. I’ve only ever interacted with adults. I’ve tended many of them in their old age. Are those skills transferrable to a baby? Perhaps. Probably. Maybe?
5
Azlan
She’s curious. All humans are. They like to project their curiosities onto their feline companions, but they are the ones who cannot stop pushing, cannot stop asking. They are the ones who get themselves into trouble. I have secrets, but they come in the form of burdens. I intend to keep those burdens from Ava, who clearly desires and enjoys a simple and remote life. It is best she knows as little as possible about me, and about my reasons for needing an heir.
In the times between the questions, we are happy.
I say we. Ava and I are happy. Buttface, her pocket lion, is anything but happy. He hisses when he sees me and has taken to urinating on anything I leave where he can get it. This is territorial behavior. He does not approve of a more dominant male in his space, and he shows it with petty acts of peeing.
We watch him stalk majestically across the open living space, kitchen and living areas combined, all heated by a large iron stove that I believe was cast by one of her ancestors. There are remnants of a sand and stone forge out behind the house. I have been impressed with the ingenuity of those who made this place time and time again.
He glances at us as he walks over to my boots, left by the door, reaches out a paw and very purposefully knocks one over, before moving to squat over it.
Ava, to her credit, is up like a shot before I have to do anything.
“Butt! No!”
She sweeps him up and into her arms, using her most affectionate terms for the ginger striped creature.
“That’s so naughty!” she says in sing-song tones. “Oh, what a bad little kitty you are. You know to go bathroom outside. Yes, you do. Oh yes, you do. Oh, he’s purring!” She looks at me with an expression of pure glee.
Of course the little shit is purring. He has exactly what he wants, his cat mother wrapped entirely around his fuzzy little paw.
“I wuv you, Mr Buttywutty,” she murmurs, nuzzling the cat when she thinks I am asleep. “Yes. I do. Yes I do. You are my sweet boy. You are my little pumpkin toes. Yes, you are.”
She spoils him. He has been the focal point for all her unused maternal attention for years, and it shows. While she snuggles him, he turns his little cat head to me and he gives me the smuggest look possible. I feel a roar rising in me, but I refrain. It would frighten Ava, and she looks so completely satisfied and happy cuddling her little infant impostor.
“Cats are nothing like babies,” she says defensively, as if she caught my thought and is desperate to refute it.
“No?”
“Mr Butts can hunt and feed himself. Mr Butts keeps small vermin at bay. Mr Butts…”
She goes on for some time, listing the many fascinating facets of Buttface’s purrsonality. None of them really matter, because though cats are clearly very different from babies, she treats her cat like her baby.
“Fine,” she sighs, a light going on in her eyes when she realizes she’s found an angle she can argue with me. “If cats are like babies, how are you going to look after a baby if you can’t handle Mr Butts?”
“Buttface is not my flesh and blood. And the baby is not going to piss on my boots.”