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“Ice horses,” Bo said excitedly. “We saw ice horses.”
“Did you guys go to the zoo?” Minerva asked a little wistfully. “Mom used to take me there all the time.”
There was an instant of silence while they all thought about it. Memories flooded Khall’s mind of Xteniya coming home exhausted but happy with little Minerva back when she always wore her hair in two dark pigtails.
“We did,” Bo said, breaking the silence. “And I saw so many animals and I won prizes and I ate an ice cream.”
“I want to go next time,” Minerva decided.
“Sure,” April said. “We can go after school, or over the weekend. If you want, we can even look at the map together and plan out exactly what we want to do ahead of time.”
The rest of the meal passed in happy conversation. When it was done, Khall and April cleaned up together again, as if by silent pact.
“I can tell she had fun today,” he told April. “Thank you.”
She smiled up at him and suddenly the world faded away and there was nothing but her beautiful, kind eyes, and the glimmer of the overhead lights in her golden hair.
She’s young, and she’s your employee…
Somehow none of that mattered when he stood too close to her like this, and let himself really look. Not just at her beauty, but at the glow of happiness that seemed to radiate from her.
Life could not have been easy on whatever lower Terra she came from. She wouldn’t be here, looking after someone else’s children so far from home, if it had been. But there was a spark of joy in her that could not be extinguished. And Khall longed to touch it, even if it meant burning himself.
“I’ll just check on Bo,” April murmured, tearing her eyes from his.
Dangerous. This is dangerous,he told himself as he stood there, his heart pounding for a moment after she left.
He forced himself to head out to the living room, where he grabbed his glass off the cell on the way so he could check the photographer’s feed.
He believed April when she said there were no pictures of Bo, but in his experience, people didn’t always do what they said they would do. He could easily imagine the guy snapping a quick picture when she wasn’t looking.
He settled into his favorite chair and pulled up the feed.
What a joker. He had some quote about spirituality on his profile along with a picture of his abs.
Khall rolled his eyes and scrolled.
Sure enough, there were already a couple of dozen pictures of the zoo from today. They were mostly just animals and landscapes and quasi-artistic shots of the cloud cover.
True to his word, there was not a single picture of Bo. But close to the end there was a shot of April.
It was a candid shot, taken when she was laughing. Her eyes were closed, and she held an ice cream cone near her mouth. The sun lit up her hair and there was something about the curve of her lips and the way her head was thrown back that made him feel like he had been touched by the sun.
Without thinking about it, he swiped to capture the image on his glass.
He scrolled through the rest of the photographer’s feed, but there was nothing else. He found himself scrolling back up to April.
He gazed at the picture for a long time, imagining himself in the shot, being the one who made her laugh and tilt her chin up for a kiss.
“What’s that?” her voice came from behind him.
He would have scrolled on, but it was too late, she was standing behind his chair. He could only hope she hadn’t been there long enough to realize he was staring.
“I was checking the photographer’s feed,” he said. “You were right, there are no shots of Bo. Good job.”
But she was silent, and when he turned to look at her, she looked pale and almost terrified.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
