"Aww!"
It comes out before I can stop it. Hands still full of eggs, frozen mid-step, watching a rooster lose his mind over my chicken.
"My chicken has a boyfriend!"
Keer Jr.'s head snaps up.
Right. Voice. Movement. Me.
The trance breaks. He takes a step at me, wings flaring out from his body, that specific puffed-up I am very large and very angry posture I have seen many, many times—
Nugget steps in front of me again.
Wings out. Same posture. Mirror image. And she screeches at him—the exact pitch and venom he uses on every single member of this pack, returned with interest, right intohis face.
Keer Jr. stops.
I watch it happen in real time. The wings come down first, slow, like he's not sure they're his. The puffed-up chest deflates. His head tilts—not the threat tilt, not the calculating one, a different tilt, one I have never seen him do—and he just looks at her.
Looks.
Like he's never seen a chicken before.
His feet do a small shuffle in the dirt. Forward. Back. Forward again, smaller. He doesn't know what to do with himself.
Nugget holds her ground. Ferocious. Unmoved.
Keer Jr. makes a soft sound I have never heard out of him. Not a crow. Not a screech. Something low and bewildered.
Oh my god.
A laugh comes up out of me before I know it's coming. Quiet, a little broken, the first one since—.
Nugget glances back at me.Handled.
"Yeah," I tell her. "You sure did, girl."
I cross the clearing back toward the goats with three eggs in the crook of my arm.
Dara is still at her station. Gloved, working, the second batch nearly set. She looks up when I get close enough. Eggs first. Then my face.
"What."
"Nugget has a husband now."
"What?"
"Keer Jr. He's smitten. He fell over."
"He fell over."
"Metaphorically. Spiritually. He has gone to a place none of us can reach him."
Dara stares at me.
"...Mel, I genuinely cannot tell if you're joking."
"Neither can I." I set the eggs down on the cloth I keeps for them. "But I'm going to need you to handle the rooster'semotional development because I am at capacity."
