6. Willa
CHAPTER SIX
WILLA
By three o’clock the next afternoon, I’d fielded sixteen phone calls, processed three adoption inquiries, and discovered that our supply ordering system involved a physical ledger, a digital spreadsheet, and what appeared to be a third tracking method that existed only in Traig’s mind.
Or Krem’s. I hadn’t figured that part out yet.
I was trying to reconcile all three when Fred floated down from the ceiling and landed on the ledger with a thump, his tiny wings folding against his sides.
“Tired buddy?” I said. “I get it. Our jobs are tough. Bopping into walls and the ceiling is a lot. This is a lot.”
He grumbled.
“You’re right. I should probably ask Traig to explain it to me. Surely there’s something in the computer I just haven’t found yet.”
The grumble deepened.
The front door opened and Drogar strode in, holding a very small, very angry pinecone with legs between his big hands.
“What’s that?” I asked, rising, eager to greet the new arrival.
“A thornsprig.” He held it up for my inspection. The creature’s twig-like limbs flailed, and its miniature crown bristled. “I found her trying to duel with the watering can near the driftwhisp enclosure. She appears to be excited about hydration.”
I reached toward her.
The thornsprig hissed.
“I didn’t know they could do that,” I said, taking a step back, mentally counting to make sure I still had all my fingers.
“They do many things when they get with the spunk.”
“Spunk?” I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing.
“Yes.” Drogar nodded firmly. “Full of the spunk. Very fierce.”
“The word is spunky,” I said gently. “It means full of spirit.”
His face brightened. “Ah. Spunky. That word has more energy.” He repeated it three times under his breath.
Drogar set the creature on the desk. It bristled and hissed at Fred, who was still sitting on the ledger.
Fred grumbled.
The thornsprig hissed louder.
“She isn’t going to attack Fred, is she?” I asked. “He has fangs, but I doubt he uses them in defense.”
“No, they puff air.”
I frowned, almost wishing Fred would demonstrate, because I wanted to see what that would look like.
“They’re greeting each other,” Drogar said. “This is how they show respect.”
I doubted she’d been showing me respect when she hissed at me.
Fred’s grumble intensified. The thornsprig’s crown flared, going from orange to pink.
“I’m covering the desk now,” Drogar said, already settling into my chair. “You have the important meeting with Traig, yes?”
“The first school planning session.” And, because it seemed to be an orc thing, I added, “Yes.”
His grin showed full tusks. “He’s been in the conference room for an hour.”
“The meeting doesn’t start until two thirty.”
“Yes. He wanted to make sure everything was properly arranged.” Drogar sobered. “Very properly arranged. He’s particular about things like that. Particular about a lot of things, actually.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
He made a shooing motion. “Go. I’ll watch Fred and his new, small, angry friend who needs a name.”
The thornsprig climbed onto Fred’s back. Fred floated upward, the thornsprig clinging to his fur, a spiky little bareback rider.
I grabbed my notebook and headed for the conference room but stopped at the beginning of the hall. “Would it be alright for me to name the thornsprig?”
Drogar tugged his gaze away from Fred, who kept flying up toward the ceiling, hitting it as if he wanted to knock the thornsprig off. The thornsprig kept sliding to the side and sitting upright again when Fred dropped back down.
An orc creature rodeo. What fun.
“I think you should name her,” Drogar said.
“How about Amanda? That’s my mom’s name.”
“She does look like an Amanda,” Drogar said, still watching Fred’s antics.
“Thank you.”
I pretty much skipped down the hall until I remembered what was coming, when I slowed.
The door to the conference room was closed, though I could see movement through the frosted glass panel, Traig’s silhouette, pacing.
I knocked.
The pacing stopped.
“Come in.”
I opened the door but came to a stop inside.
Traig stood at the head of the conference table, tablet in hand, but that wasn’t what made my brain stutter.
The table had been transformed.
His tablet sat at one end, connected to the wall-mounted screen that was currently displaying a title slide: Educational Partnership Initiative - Phase One Planning.
A coffee cup sat at the seat to his right. Steam rose from it.
A big plate covered with cookies sat between his chair and what I assume must be mine.
Cookies?
Chocolate chip. Oatmeal raisin. Snickerdoodle. Something with M&Ms. Sugar cookies with frosting. At least twenty cookies, maybe more, arranged in neat rows by type.
“Hi,” I said, unsure how to respond to whatever this was.
“Hello.” Traig gestured to the chair. “I…acquired refreshments. In town. At the bakery. And the break room. At the coffee pot. The cream came from…” His swallow took a long time to go down. He gestured to the chair by the mug. “Please sit.”
My attention locked on the plate.
“That’s a lot of cookies,” I said.
“Yes.” His tusks shifted against his upper lip. “The bakery in town had six varieties available. I didn’t know which kind you preferred, so I bought four of each type. For sampling.”
He’d bought twenty-four cookies because he didn’t know which ones I liked?
“That’s really thoughtful of you.” I sat, pulling the chair in, placing my notepad on the table in front of me. I was lining up my pen when I realized I was behaving just like Traig always did around me.
Arranging things because I was nervous?
Which meant that maybe he was also nervous. Around me or always?
“We’ll be meeting regularly,” he said, also sitting. “Having food available will make us more efficient.”
Right. Efficiency.
I picked up the coffee cup, and the smell hit me first. The exact roast I’d been making in the pot in the break room. From what I’d seen, the orcs only drank tea, though they’d generously provided a coffee maker and various grounds for me.
I took a sip.
Two creams. No sweetener.
Exactly the way I liked it.
I hadn’t told him how I took my coffee.
I caught him watching me, his tablet still held against his chest.
“How did you know how I take my coffee?” I asked.
His tusks shifted higher against his upper lip. “I observed. You make coffee in the break room each morning and have two cups. Sometimes a third after lunch. Two portions of cream. No sweet dust. I…noticed.”
“Um, it’s called sweetener.”
“Ah, yes.” His laugh rang out, making my skin tingle. “Not sweet dust.”
“Sweet dust is a fun way to refer to it, though.”
It didn’t matter. He’d noticed.
He’d been watching me make coffee enough times to memorize how I took it. Which meant he’d been thinking about me when I wasn’t in the room. Which meant—
His dark eyes were still on me, waiting for my reaction with an intensity that made my pulse do complicated things.
“That’s very…” I tried to find a word that didn’t sound like I was reading into this. “Observant of you.”
“I observe many things.” He said it quickly, almost defensively. “It’s part of my role here at the rescue league.”
“Do you know how Drogar takes his tea?”
He frowned. Shrugged.
“Or Krem?”
His jaw clenched.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then snapped back to my eyes. “I may have paid more attention to your patterns.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to breathe again.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the coffee and the cookies.” I nudged the plate his way. “Would you like one? Two? Have twelve if you want.”
He carefully slid one off the plate and put the entire thing in his mouth in one bite, chewing, his eyes widening.
“These are delicious,” he mumbled around the treat, crumbs raining down the front of his shirt. He looked down, brushed them off, swallowed, then gazed at the plate of cookies in a way I wished he’d gaze at me.
No. I didn’t want him lusting after me.
Did I?
A woman who could bake a mean cookie noticed when a male enjoyed sweets. I was already imagining how much he’d enjoy my peanut butter chocolate cookies.
When I offered him the plate again, he took four more cookies and arranged them in a line on the table. Chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, snickerdoodle, M&M. This male was organized even in his snacking.
I took three cookies and scattered them randomly on my side of the table.
His right eye twitched.
I bit into a cookie. Good, but not as good as mine.
He’d definitely enjoy my cookies more.
Traig turned to the screen, tapping on his tablet. “We should begin. I’ve prepared a presentation.” He frowned at the screen. “Of the program.”
The screen changed to a new slide.
Then another.
And another.
He’d prepared fifty-seven slides—or so. I wasn’t exactly counting. All color-coded. With subsections.
The first slide read, Teaching Human Young About Kingdom Creatures: A Structure for Learning.
I bit my lip.
By slide four, which detailed something he’d labeled, Creature Choosing Rules, I realized what was happening. Traig had built an entire academic thesis about teaching eight-year-olds about animals.
“So,” he said, advancing to slide five, “the behavior patterns show us which creatures can do well when many small humans are present—”
“Traig.”
He paused, his finger hovering over the tablet screen. “Yes?”
“This is amazing work. It’s incredibly thorough.”
His shoulders relaxed.
“But we’re teaching this to third graders.”
His frown deepened. “Third-graders. This means…eight summers?”
“Eight or nine years old, yes.”
“Years. Summers.” He waved his hand. “I’m still learning your measurements. In the kingdom we count by—” He stopped. “It doesn’t matter. They’re young.”
“Very young.”
“But…” I gestured at the screen, which was currently showing an orc equivalent of a Venn diagram. “I’m not sure a child that young needs a diagram about how creatures change when humans are near.”
“Is that what this is called?” His frown deepened. “The circles that overlap?”
It was actually kind of brilliant when he explained it like that.
“You’re right about what it shows,” I said carefully. “But these are kids who think fart jokes are peak comedy.”
He tilted his head. “Fart jokes?”
“Jokes about…passing gas, through, um, their bottoms.” I tapped my hip.
“Ah.” His tusks shifted in what might’ve been amusement. “Digestive humor. Is this common at that age?”
“It is. But my point is, we need to make this fun. Not just educational. We want to spark their curiosity about orc creatures. Animals in general. If they’re having fun, they’ll learn more of the technical aspects you’re excited about.
But if we lose them in the first five minutes because we’re talking about behavioral complexity indexes, they won’t learn anything. ”
He set his tablet down on the table, lining it up with a pen much like I had with my notebook. “What do you think we should do instead?”
“I think we should start by asking what creature is going to make these kids say, oh my god that’s so cool before we worry about whether it shows them what the creature’s internal organs look like.”
Which one of his slides did.
His head tilted. “You want to make this fun, rather than scientific.”
“I want to do both. But in that order.”
We stared at each other across the plate of cookies.
“Alright,” he said. “Which creature do you suggest we begin with?”