13. Willa
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WILLA
The coffee was waiting when I arrived at work the next morning.
My mug sat on the reception desk, steam still rising in a thin curl. I touched the ceramic. Warm.
Two creams. No sweetener.
He’d remembered. Again. Many days in a row now, each cup appearing before I arrived, still warm enough to tell me he’d timed it. Timed me.
Fred floated near the ceiling, his grumbling pitched higher than usual. Amanda perched on his back, her crown orange with sharp bursts of light.
I set my bag down and picked up the mug.
The building felt different. Tighter somehow, like the walls were holding their breath.
Footsteps echoed from the back hallway. Traig appeared, his tablet against his chest, his hair tied back at his nape.
His gaze flicked from me to the mug in my hands.
Fred’s grumbling grew louder. Amanda’s crown went full yellow.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Morning.” He didn’t slow or stop. Just kept walking past the desk toward his office.
The door closed behind him.
Fred bumped into the wall. Amanda hissed.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I know.”
By mid-morning I’d processed six calls, updated three adoption files, and walked past the enclosures to get a breath of fresh air.
Inside, I went to the supply room, finding Traig inside.
The door stood open. Traig was on his knees in front of the medical supplies shelf, the label maker in one hand, a roll of tape in the other.
Labels covered everything. The individual bins. The contents of the bins.
Medical Supplies - Bandages - Gauze - Sterile - 4x4 – use first
He reprinted the label.
Medical Supplies - Bandages - Gauze - Sterile - 4x4 – make sure you use first
He’d created categories within categories within categories, each more specific than the last.
I didn’t say anything. Just stood in the doorway and watched.
His hands moved carefully. Print label. Peel backing. Apply. Smooth. Repeat.
He’d been doing this for the past week. Maybe the past month. The evidence was in the perfectly aligned rows and the growing pile of discarded labels where the wording hadn’t been precise enough.
He reached for another bin and froze. His shoulders went rigid.
“How long have you been standing there?” he asked.
“Long enough.”
He set the label maker down, lining it up parallel to the side of the shelf with the same care people reserved for defusing bombs. “I’m organizing.”
“Traig.”
“The system needed refining.”
I looked at the labels. At the iterations. Medical Supplies - Bandages - Gauze - Sterile - 4x4. Then right beside it: Medical Supplies - Bandages - Gauze - STERILE - 4x4. The only difference was capitalization.
“This isn’t about the labels not being clear enough,” I said.
He stood, still not looking at me. “I have work to finish.”
“Traig, wait—”
But he was already walking past me, his arm brushing my shoulder as he went.
I almost reached for him. My hand came up, my fingers stretching toward his arm.
I let it drop.
When his footsteps had faded, I stepped into the supply room and picked up one of the discarded labels.
He was trying to control this because his life was completely beyond his control.
Leaving, I returned to my desk and work.
Chaos ruled the break room when I walked in to eat lunch.
Krem stood near the corner, his hands on his hips, staring at something on the floor with an expression somewhere between fury and admiration.
“She took my spatula,” he said without looking up.
I moved closer.
A mossnibble had built a nest in the corner between the refrigerator and the wall. She stared up at us with her teal eyes before going back to grooming her mint-green fur.
The nest itself was impressive. Rolled-up bandages formed the base layer.
Sticky notes in five different colors created the walls.
My missing pen sat wedged between two rolls of gauze, and Krem’s spatula—the one he’d brought from the kingdom and refused to let anyone else use—crowned the top like a flag.
“I need that spatula,” Krem said. “I plan to cook with it on Friday.” He crouched, reaching toward the nest.
The mossnibble’s eyes went wide. She launched herself at Krem’s hand, chittering in a pitch high enough to make my teeth hurt.
Krem jerked back. “Alright. Keep it.”
Drogar appeared in the doorway, a mug in hand, grinning. “You’re letting a tiny creature defeat you?”
“You try.”
Drogar set his mug on the table and slowly approached the nest, his hands raised. “Small friend. We can talk about this. You have many shiny things already. The cooking tool can return to Krem, yes?”
The mossnibble sprang out of the nest, snatched Drogar’s hat off his head, and dragged it back to the nest before he could blink.
Krem laughed hard enough he had to sit down.
Drogar stared at his hat, now wedged behind the spatula. “That’s my good hat.”
“Was your good hat,” I said.
The mossnibble settled into her nest, arranging the new addition with careful paws. She sat back with a happy whistle.
“I think we’ve lost,” Krem said.
Drogar crossed his arms on his chest. “I’ve negotiated with fillawigs. With grumbletoads who wanted to fight the sun. This tiny thief will not win.”
“She’s building a family,” I said quietly.
Krem stopped laughing. Drogar’s grin softened.
“The things she’s collected aren’t just shiny things,” I said. “They’re parts of all of us. Proof we exist. Proof we matter to her.”
The mossnibble chirped, curling around the spatula.
Drogar cleared his throat. “Tomorrow I’ll bring her something of mine that’s better than my hat. Something she can keep.”
They left the break room together, Drogar muttering about strategy while Krem mourned his spatula.
I sat and ate my lunch before returning to my desk, but I went back later, when the building had gone quiet.
The mossnibble slept, curled in the center of her nest with her tail wrapped around Krem’s spatula.
Tucked beneath Drogar’s hat, almost invisible unless you were looking for it, lay a small square of canvas no bigger than my palm.
Someone had painted it with tiny brushstrokes, a single driftwhisp mid-flight, its silver tendrils trailing behind it, each feather rendered in shades of black so deep they seemed to hold light.
The detail was impossible. Greth’s? I’d never seen Greth paint or even hold a brush, but every other object belonged to one of us; his was the only one missing.
And half-hidden by a cluster of sticky notes, I found Traig’s label maker. She’d taken the thing that helped him hold himself together.
I stood.
The mossnibble stirred, one teal eye opening to watch me.
I didn’t try to take anything; just left, but I located a new label maker in the supply room and after labeling it like he had, I placed it on the shelf where he’d find it.
An email was waiting when I got back to my desk.
Subject: Bloomback Adoption
My heart picked up before I even opened it.
Hi Willa and Traig,
We’ve rearranged our budget and found the perfect place inside the barn. We’d like to adopt both Rue and Fern as a bonded pair. We couldn’t separate them. When can we schedule pickup?
Best,
The Huang Family
I smiled, my eyes burning.
Rue and Fern would stay together because someone had listened and changed their mind when the evidence became impossible to ignore.
My smile faded.
Tomorrow a scribe would arrive to assess whether Traig had a bonded mate.
We’d saved Rue and Fern.
I had no idea how to save Traig.
I stood and walked to his office. The door was cracked. He sat at his desk, staring at his tablet, his finger motionless on the screen.
I knocked on the doorframe.
He looked up, and his expression cracked when he saw me. Just for a second before he smoothed it away.
“The family emailed about Rue and Fern,” I said.
“And?”
The flatness in his voice made me want to cross the room and shake him. Or hug him.
“They’re adopting both. They rearranged everything. They couldn’t separate them.”
His throat worked before he could answer. “You were right.”
“We were right.”
“You saw it first.”
“And you listened.” I stepped into the office. “That’s what matters. You changed your assessment when the data supported it. You put them first.”
His hands tightened around his tablet. “I almost didn’t.”
The admission hung between us.
“But you did,” I said softly.
He looked at me, fear and exhaustion stark on his face. I’d bet anything he was aching to control something, anything, because his entire life was about to be assessed by someone who didn’t know him at all.
His eyes held mine before he looked away.
Maybe I should demand he let me help him the way he’d let me help the bloombacks. But I couldn’t be his solution. I could only be his choice.
“I should get back to my desk.”
He nodded.
I made it to the doorway before I stopped, my hand on the frame.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t—
I looked back.
He was watching me, his expression naked in a way I’d never seen before.
I left before I could do something foolish like stay.
The afternoon crawled. I processed emails. Updated files. Answered calls.
Fred and Amanda stayed on the counter, Fred’s grumbling a low constant, Amanda’s crown flaring in irregular bursts.
Late in the day, when the building had gone quiet and the sun was starting to sink, I sat back in my chair and studied them.
Amanda had claimed him. He’d claimed her back. And that was that.
No one questioned it or suggested they had to prove anything.
“You two didn’t need permission,” I said quietly. “You just knew.”
Fred’s grumble deepened.
“Must be nice,” I said.
Fred bumped my hand with his head, grumbling lower.
“I know, buddy. I know.”
Amanda’s crown flared pink. She was responding to emotional energy. My emotional energy.
“He brought me coffee this morning,” I told them. “Before I even got here. Two creams, no sweetener. He’s been doing it for weeks.”
Fred’s grumble went softer, almost questioning.