Page 16 of The Spellreader and the Phoenix

On the other hand, some animals had grown very used to humans in their day-to-day lives. If Red had spent a lot of time in a yard with a feeder, or if they had perhaps been hand-raised after their parents were killed… Okay, he didn’t want to think about Red’s parents being killed. But maybe the bird knew that humans were an excellent source of food and that they were safe.

Max frowned to himself. Not that humans were safe. Humans were the single most dangerous being on the planet, and some of them could be downright mean. But bird brains weren’t super complex, so maybe Red had been treated well by humans and now believed that universally.

This hopefully wouldn’t do Red any real harm. If they’d already decided humans were safe, then Max wasn’t making it worse.

He should get more bird seed, though.

“Is there a kind of bird seed that you prefer?” Max asked Red, like they could answer.

Red chirped at him, sounding very cheerful, and then hopped down to wander across the table and not answer Max’s question. Because they were a bird.

“I’ll pick up some more at the hardware store tomorrow. And more of those pens for Alex.”

Max tried to shop local when he could. He had to do big box stores sometimes, but he was a bookshop that survived on people continuing to find value in small, independently owned businesses. He tried to do the same.

(Also, fortunately for him, big box stores couldn’t offer spells like he could. Perish the thought.)

He catalogued spells for another hour, then went through another couple of the boxes that he’d received from an estate sale. Although he tried to make discerning purchases, there were times where the only way to see if there was anything of value was to buy the lot and then weed through it.

Depending on whether it was total trash or not impacted just how annoyed he was with the entire process. Every once in a while, he found something really amazing, and he tried to tell himself that meant the rest of the time was worthwhile.

Today was not one of those times.

Finally, he gave it up as a bad job and headed upstairs. Nōwē still thought tripping him was the most efficient way to get upstairs. Cats didn’t take up that much space; it was a mystery of the universe how they managed to cover the entirety of every step he was trying to climb.

Red chirped happily.

“You know,” Max pointed out, “if I fall, I’ll take you with me.”

Red stretched out their wings and then rubbed against his neck again. Was that… a direct response to his comment?

When he got the door to the apartment open, Red took off, flying over to the open kitchen area and landing by their saucer of water.

Or, Max acknowledged wryly, maybe they were just thirsty.

Lots of witches never found a familiar, he reminded himself. These days were especially weird, when the trend had turned to trying to get a shifter as a familiar. If it worked, you got more power than you would from an animal familiar bond. But you lost the unconditional acceptance and uncomplicated relationship between a human and an animal. (Okay, Max had a cat; some animals could be very judgmental. But still, it was different than a human relationship.) He wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to add human emotions and human relationships to a bond. And it was exceedingly rare for a shifter familiar bond to not be a sexual one. Not utterly unheard of, but not common at all.

Max grimaced to himself. He understood that lots of people liked sex a lot, but he’d never really understood why. It seemed like a lot of fuss and bother.

Surely, a nice stable animal familiar bond was preferable in every way? There was no worry about a relationship going south or anything like that.

Yeah, that was definitely the way to go.

And as Max looked at Red, once again trying to bathe in their drink saucer, he couldn’t help but hope that maybe he’d found his familiar.

He would deny to his dying day that he was lonely. He didn’t like people, and he had Nōwē, which was awesome. But… just occasionally, he wanted something more.

The next several days let them settle into a routine. The “do not notice” spell worked very well, and he got no comments from any of his customers about having a bird riding on his shoulder or flitting about the shop. The spell worked best the quieter the subject was, but Red tended to chirp more when they were with Alex and Nōwē rather than surrounded by strangers.

Alex showed up every day—which they’d been doing already, but now they checked on the window and said hi before they disappeared into the back section and claimed one of the comfy chairs for their own.

Max had already emailed the Chamber of Commerce and the small business association Facebook group with a link to the site where they could get the dots, including ones that looked see-through to a human eye but appeared purple to birds, who had a fourth cone in their eye and could see ultraviolet frequencies. (Max was learning a lot about birds.) He’d included statistics on just how many birds were estimated to die from collisions each year (it was staggering), and if he implied that this small effort on their part would prevent them from being complicit in mass murder… well, he wasn’t wrong, was he?

He’d also included the photo of his storefront with details about the marker and the design specifications.

He’d concluded it with: I know we all want to do our part to contribute to a safe, sustainable downtown business core, full of happy people who want to make purchases without needing to step over bird carcasses.

Too much? Eh. It didn’t hurt to link it to the bottom line and being responsible humans.