“I should examine her,” I said.
“Yes.” But he didn’t move away. “After.”
“After?”
He kissed me again, inside the enclosure where anyone walking past could see. When he pulled back, his gaze held mine. “Now I’ll leave you to work.”
He left me with the mirrormoose, whose hide mirrored my body as I approached. When I checked her eyes, my reflection looked back, and this time I was smiling.
When I’d finished taking notes, I left her enclosure and strolled over to Cooper’s small pen, watching him hop around and stretch his wings. We’d purposefully put him in a pen without enough room to fly. But he’d been ready to start moving, preparing for the time we’d set him free.
Brovish sat on a stool inside the enclosure, watching the bird stare toward the woods beyond.
“We can put him in the larger pen in a few days,” I said. “Maybe less. He’s doing very well.”
“I’ll keep the cage open after we release him,” he said. “In case he wants to return.”
“Has one come back before?”
“Some do. Some don’t.” He said it without sadness. “But I keep the door open for them all.”
He’d have a page in his notebook for Cooper’s release. What the bird did when he cleared the tree line, whether he circled.
I went to check on the mossnibbles, finding Drogar there.
During the past week, he’d taught the mossnibbles to steal his hat on command.
I learned this when he stopped in the middle of their enclosure, made a specific clicking sound with his tongue, and stood at attention while three of them scaled him from boots to shoulder, plucked the hat from his head, and deposited it at his feet in under five seconds.
He beamed. “A trick.”
“That’s not a trick,” Traig said from the gate, his tablet in hand. “You’ve taught them your hat is obtainable. They’ll steal it all the time now.”
“Only when I click.”
“You won’t always click on purpose.”
Drogar considered this.
“Drogar,” I said.
“Yes?”
“They’re adding your hat to their nest.”
He turned. The hat had vanished into the mound, along with a few pens, one of the rubber gloves I’d swear I was wearing while examining the fizzlings, and a belt Greth had reported missing last week. A mossnibble sat on top of the pile, whistling.
“Ah,” Drogar said.
Traig said nothing. Which was, in its own way, louder.
Late afternoon found Brovish and me alone in the conference room, supposedly reviewing adoption applications. I’d made it through two files before I started watching his hands instead of reading.
He had careful hands. I’d seen him handle newborn twins, check Cooper’s healing wing, and calm frightened creatures with nothing but touch. But watching him now, his pen moving across paper in his precise script, I wasn’t thinking about his clinical skills.
I was thinking about those hands cupping my face. Splayed across my waist. The careful way he’d held me while he kissed me.
“You’ve been looking at the same page for five minutes,” he said, his voice startling me back to the present. He’d set down his pen and was watching me with an expression that made my skin warm.
