10. Rowan
Rowan
To say I had concerns about this adventure would be an understatement. I was completely on edge as I caught Milo right before he stumbled face first off the ATV.
He’d clung to me excitedly for the whole ride on the “land boat,” as he’d called it.
He looked ridiculous in my giant coat and boots, his legs still bare in between them, but he clearly had issues that extended beyond simply not wanting to wear clothes.
There was a fear of getting stuck in them, it seemed, due to what had caused that nasty gash on his seal coat.
While I didn’t want him to stand out, making sure he was comfortable was more important.
“Remember what I said,” I told him as I adjusted his hat, making sure it kept his ears safely covered. His eyes were silver and hands more human looking. I just had to hope he wouldn’t get overly excited and scare anyone if he accidentally shifted.
“Don’t get too far from you. Let you do the talking.” He nodded quickly. “Let’s gooo.” Milo’s arm hooked with mine as he basically dragged me into the store.
It was small, our town wasn’t big enough to justify anything more, but it had everything we needed and a very decent selection of canned and preserved food. I grabbed a basket at the entrance and followed behind Milo as he immediately forgot what I’d just reminded him of and raced off ahead of me.
I knew pretty much everyone in town, though that didn’t mean I was friendly with them, or more accurately, that they were friendly with me.
I was certain they’d have questions about the stranger.
They would have, even if Milo had been human and behaving in ways humans were expected to.
I also knew they wouldn’t question me on it, though.
I followed after him, collecting anything I could think of that we might need and planning to stock up enough that we wouldn’t have to come back for as long as possible.
“Milo,” I scolded as I rounded a corner to find him tearing through a chocolate bar wrapper with his teeth. “You can’t eat that yet.”
“Why?” he asked, licking his lips.
I spoke as low as possible as I took it from him and put it in the basket. “We have to pay for it first.” His head tilted in confusion. “Trade.”
Understanding dawned and he nodded. “What are we trading?” he asked, thankfully matching my tone and keeping his voice low.
“I’ll show you later. Stay next to me, please.”
He sighed and nodded. Then he was picking up random items from the shelves and putting them into my basket until it was overflowing.
Thankfully, it wasn’t too busy currently, but I still noticed the mix of curious and judgmental looks we got from the other customers. Milo seemed to notice too, and his excitement quieted down a little because of it.
“I’m going to get another basket,” he whispered to me, rushing off before I could respond.
Any time he wasn’t in my line of sight, I felt nervous, which was expected.
What surprised me, however, was that I wasn’t as worried about what other people thought as much as I was about Milo’s safety and how he felt being perceived by them.
I was protective of him in a way I didn’t think I’d ever felt toward anyone else before.
There had never been a need for me to protect anyone.
I was built just like my father, and so were all my older siblings.
We stood out, with our pasty skin and bright red hair, but add our heights in and people definitely found us intimidating.
It didn’t help that my family also carried the genes for major resting bitch face.
While all my siblings and I had been born here, we’d always been treated a little like outsiders. It was definitely part of the reason everyone had moved away. Everyone but me.
I got the usual cautious yet judgmental expression from a woman I’d met many times before as she passed me in the aisle. Though that expression quickly shifted to one of shock as she scurried away and I turned to find Milo behind me, a basket in each hand and a snarl on his face.
“Milo,” I whisper-scolded.
“What?”
“Don’t make that face at people, you’ll scare them.”
He huffed. “But she wasn’t looking at you very nicely.”
My chest tightened. “It doesn’t matter how people look at me.”
“Matters to me,” he mumbled.
While I hadn’t felt protective of anyone like this before, I had felt protected. When we were younger, Raina used to do something very similar if someone gave any of us kids strange looks. It warmed my chest with a sudden burst of nostalgia and emotion I struggled to remain unaffected by.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Then I cleared my throat and shook it off. “Come on, little hurricane, let’s finish up.”
Milo picked up so many random things, I wondered if we’d be able to get it all home on the ATV.
I probably could have told him to put some of it back, but he was so excited.
All of this was so new to him, and this might be the only chance he’d get to try it all.
So I kept my mouth shut and only winced slightly when the cashier told me the total.
I paid, and we went outside to load the shopping bags securely onto the ATV.
“I thought you said we had to trade for this stuff?”
“We did.”
“When? You didn’t give her anything. You just touched a scrap on her table.”
I couldn’t help the smile that pulled at my lips as he described me paying with my card. “Human magic,” I told him, and his eyes nearly sparkled with excitement. “Let’s go home.”
Milo beamed wider, and I realized how he’d taken what I said.
“To my home,” I corrected, but the damage was already done.
“Take me home, mate.”
“Not your mate,” I grumbled.
He giggled. “Not yet.”
Milo had barely stepped inside before his coat was dropped on the floor by the entrance and his boots kicked off so he could dash over to his blanket pile with the shopping bags.
I sighed, putting the shoes against the wall so we wouldn’t trip over them and picking up the coat to hang it in the closet again.
Then I made my way over to Milo and his hoard. He’d already finished the chocolate bar he’d started in the store and had torn open a box of cookies. He hummed in delight as he crunched on them.
I reached for the bag and he scowled at me.
“None of that. You have to eat a proper lunch before you fill up on snacks.”
“Why?” he asked, reaching for the cookies.
I handed him another one but took the rest away. “Because. These things taste nice, but it isn’t good for you to have too many of them at once.”
His brow furrowed, but he nodded.
“I’ll make you something else and you can have some more later.”
He pouted, and I rolled my eyes before handing him one more.