Jenson
I don’t have favourites, but Arya and I have always been close and seeing her take the next step in her life makes me realise how far we’ve come. Arya starts glancing around, then sighs, whispers something to Ajax, and then walks away. He watches her go with a soft smile.
When she reaches my biological daughter, I become concerned.
None of us has ever shown favouritism to any of the kids, and some of us, like me with Arya, have bonded more with those not of our direct DNA; they all hold a piece of Ember, so we love them equally.
I walk over when I notice more of the girls huddled around Aimi-Rose, she takes after me a lot, she has traditional Japanese features, long dark hair, she’s quiet and reserved but she has a mischievous side ‘careful of the quiet ones’ rings true with her, she sits and watches and plots it took a while for us to realise some of the pranks were her.
I stand close but don’t crowd, and slip my hands in my pockets.
“Aimi please talk to me,” a young male voice says, I don’t turn I just raise an eyebrow as I look Aimi in the eyes, at Aimi’s nod I turn and find one of the guards the Demons have in place to protect our son, I tip my chin at him and with a sigh he follows I feel Evan step up next to me.
The young male looks between us, then hangs his head.
“I said something stupid and now she won’t even talk to me,” he mumbles, his head bowed even further.
“What?” Evan is always light on words, but somehow, he always gets the right tone, so more aren’t needed.
“I asked why her hair was a silly colour, normally her hair is pretty black, with yellow and purple woven in underneath, but I saw she had a stormy grey instead, and it looked wrong. I wanted to know why she changed it, but she ran off.” he looks close to tears.
“What’s your name?” he glances at me, then looks back at the floor,
“Drake, Sir.” I choke a little at the Sir but ignore it,
“Well, Drake, some Kitsunes show their emotions through their hair colour.” he glances up with a frown, then gasps as I change mine,
“Yellow means she’s happy, dark purple is playful or mischievous.”
He’s nodding, and I can see he’s taking it all in. It feels odd to be the serious one.
“A stormy bluey grey means she’s sad, find out why she was sad to begin with, then make it better, if you can’t make it better, then tell me so I can find a way to make her smile.
We guys always say the wrong thing, just means we become experts at saying sorry.
” He frowns for a bit, then smiles, asks Evan something in Latin, I know a few words, but I’m not fluent, finally he says thank you to us both and goes to head off,
“When you have some time off, my mate has a book on Kitsunes, have a read, it might explain some of our quirks. Most think they are stupid, but there is a reason for most things,” he gives me another thank you, sir and walks away. My phone pings as I watch him doing something on his phone.
EVAN: He’s asked me to get
him some thread from our home,
It’s only made there.
He thinks some girls at school are
saying mean things, so he will let us
know what he finds out.
I smile and pat Evan’s shoulder, then head to Quinny to let her know, but she already knows about the bullies and is working with the school to sort it. Once again, I bow to the awesomeness of my mate.