62. Helena
Helena
Helena had every intention of fixing her tent. Canvas probably wasn’t any harder to sew than skin, and she was used to that from her medical training. They certainly had the tools to sew up a tent, or maybe just adding a patch to the open portion would be enough to make it waterproof.
There was just no way to know for sure if the tent would be waterproof without risking getting wet at night, and they already knew that Bertram’s tent was definitely holding against the weather.
So, from a scientific perspective, it was a safer bet to continue sleeping in Bertram’s tent.
They briefly floated the idea of finding Dr. J’s original tent and putting that back up, but neither Helena nor Bertram seemed able to recall where they had stored it.
And beyond that, putting up a third tent would take away from Lovey’s play space.
Also, it would be wasteful not to fix Helena’s tent, so fixing Helena’s tent was absolutely a top priority.
It’s just that they were so busy!
There was the slow waking up in the morning, their legs and arms frequently tangled together, Bertram sometimes clasping her tightly to his chest to keep her frail (mostly) human body warm against the cold nights.
Then they had to actually get out of bed and give Lovey her breakfast, and then they had to make themselves breakfast, and then they had to talk about important scientific concepts or banter about the dragon Helena totally saw or reminisce about their favorite TV shows from high school and whether they would hold up in the current zeitgeist.
Throughout the day, they had to keep Lovey’s development on track.
Helena and Bertram took turns wearing their Magellanic dragon-scale gloves and letting Lovey wrestle their arms, though she was now too big for even Bertram to lift.
So, they introduced new games as well. They played hide-and-seek with Lovey to help hone her tracking skills, until she knew the cue, “Where’s Helena?
” and could find her within moments, no matter where she hid.
Diana frequently came over to fly with Lovey, who managed to fly now even without thunder as motivation.
Diana and Lovey would fly together, a little higher each time, a little further.
No reference was ever made to potential romantic entanglements between Diana and either (or both) of them, and Helena was glad to see their friendship hadn’t been altered. Particularly for Lovey’s sake.
Bertram created new prey dummies for Lovey to attack, new treat box puzzles for Lovey to solve, and Helena helped, or at least tried to stay out of the way, depending on how patient or not Bertram was feeling.
Bertram told her that her woodworking skills were getting better, but he might have been lying.
It did make Helena more sympathetic to the rollercoaster of lovingly crafting something with the purpose of it possibly being destroyed over the course of days, and then seeing it immediately destroyed.
Then in the evening they had to make dinner for Lovey, and themselves, and Diana if she had the time to join them.
Sometimes, Diana stayed and played cards with them or told stories from before the Great Merge.
They still hadn’t established how old Diana was, but the answer seemed to be old-old.
Whenever they played cards, Diana won, and they thought she might be cheating, but they let her.
As long as she was making Lovey happy, she was making Helena and Bertram happy too.
Before Helena and Bertram turned in for the night, they had to log their copious notes on owl-bear behavior and physiology.
They had to make sure everything was put into the correct tabs on MagiTracks.
Lovey trusted Bertram enough now that she would allow him to weigh her and take her measurements, so Bertram and Helena took turns gathering the data of her weight, height, and length.
Sometimes Helena offered to let Bertram put the day’s data into MagiTracks, since, as she was quick and enthusiastic in pointing out, he was every bit as competent a scientist as Helena, and by this point much more experienced.
Bertram graciously deferred to Helena every time, not wishing to deny her the joy of logging data.
Helena had a feeling he was teasing her, but it didn’t stop her from taking him up on his offer. Helena just loved logging data.
And then it was time to sleep and, oops, wouldn’t you know it, time had just gotten away from them and yet another day had slipped by without anyone fixing Helena’s tent.
That meant that Helena and Lovey would just have to keep sleeping in Bertram’s tent, if that was okay with him, which Bertram said was of course fine and if she needed his help fixing her tent he was happy to help but also he didn’t mind sharing his tent with Helena and Lovey—after all, how many People in the history of the world actually got to share their bed with a baby owl-bear?
So really it was an honor, but not such an honor that Helena shouldn’t fix her tent and sleep in her own space if she’d prefer that, she just didn’t need to worry about bothering him, and Helena assured him she would let him know if she needed her own space, but he should tell her if he needed his, also she would fix the tent up soon, just the second she had a spare minute, or he could if he wanted to when he had a spare minute, but no rush.
Helena never had a spare minute to fix her tent.
Neither, it seemed, did Bertram.
Alas, they had to continue to share Bertram’s tent, falling asleep cuddling against the cold and waking in each other’s arms.
Oh well.