Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Three hours remained until the front gates opened and flooded the Sam Tamculo Zoo with patrons. Aila had an army’s worth of tasks to prepare her exhibits before then.
Her laptop stayed open to the Jewelport Zoo live cam, inspiration in the form of cute birds and childhood dreams. She set Rubra on a metal scale and checked her feather iridescence against a chart on the wall—crimson values only a nine out of ten today, but a papaya snack would boost those carotenoids. Some keepers found rote routines tedious, but Aila reveled in the satisfaction of filling numbers into a logbook. At a tap of her fingers, Rubra hopped back to her glove, rewarded with a juicy grape she crushed in her beak.
With check-in complete, Aila released Rubra to her public exhibit. The phoenix glided over a scrubby hillside and landed in an olive tree. The plants, like the bird, were native to Silimalo, the other side of the world from arid Movas, across the Middle Sea, on the western arm of the continent. These particular trees came from a Silimalo specialty nursery down the street.
Dawn light filtered through the glass dome, each panel outfitted with sensors and venting mechanisms to maintain the perfect temperature and humidity. State of the art. Yet no amount of fancy climate control technology guaranteed success at breeding captive Silimalo phoenixes. Somehow, the birds knew when they weren’t in the right place.
The Silimalo National Zoo had the greatest success, their phoenixes content in a climate of mild winters and arid summers shared by few other regions. Movas was such a place: the same latitude, the same west-facing coast, the same scrubby biome. Another stretch of scrub in the southern hemisphere, on the west coast of Renkaila, participated in the breeding program, but hadn’t produce a clutch. The two premier zoos in Movas—San Tamculo and Jewelport—were the only institutions to have successfully bred Silimalo phoenixes outside their native range.
Then, San Tamculo’s birds passed away from old age—right as Aila was applying to college, mind you, causing a real jab of urgency for those personal statement essays. With so few phoenixes in the breeding program, Rubra barely got transferred, and the carousel of genetically optimized bird pairings limited the pool of male partners. A whole legacy, ended by administrative red tape.
Enter: phoenix keeper Aila. Here to kick butt, scrub aviaries, and revive the phoenix program from the ashes. If only she could get that second bird—three straight years of transfer requests, denied. Who’d take that gamble on an untested keeper and a defunct facility?
So Aila had to prove herself by doing a kick-ass job at everything else.
She cleaned Rubra’s back aviary from floor to ceiling, collecting any molted feathers to dispose of according to International Magical Wildlife Service protocol (lest the plumes end up on the black market as longevity tea or chintzy cold remedies). Charred perches, Aila replaced with fresh olive foliage. Metal held up better against flame, but Rubra loved playing with leaves.
Though the Silimalo phoenix starred on her route, Aila oversaw several neighboring exhibits as well. Next stop, she returned to the World of Birds aviary, largest after the trio of dragon domes. With a high-pressure hose, she attacked the concrete paths and decorative rocks around the ponds, clearing every speck of bird poop that would be right back again tomorrow morning. Skies and seas forbid any visitors witness something so unsightly. On hands and knees, she raked leaves off the circulation outlet for the waterfall, emerging with mud beneath her nails and twigs clinging to her clothes. Clean zookeepers weren’t doing their job right.
Food time. Aila dipped into a keeper kitchen and returned with arms laden. Into the pond went bowls of bird pellets and chopped fish for the vanishing ducks—native to wetlands of the tropical Pennja savannah, to the southeast—and, yes, Aila still jumped whenever they materialized beside her, thanks for asking. Fortunately, their teleportation was only good for causing heart attacks, not phasing through anything solid. They fluffed their white cheeks and cinnamon bellies, whistling in delight as they dug into breakfast.
Next, a hike up the hill, swatting aside leaves as worldly as the animal residents: giant gunnera from the Pennja sub-tropics, aromatic cinnamon from the Ziclexian rainforest. Aila set bowls of fruit and mealworms into strategic feeding stations viewable from the public walkways.
The next residents hailed from Renkaila, even farther south than Pennja, the lower tip of the continent. The purple pixie wrens, native to Renkaila’s western shrublands, descended first, their gossamer wings fluttering like dragonflies. A sprinkle of magical dust from their feathers sent several pieces of fruit levitating, safe out of reach of other beaks.
Next, the pair of screaming mynas perused the offerings, large brown birds with eerie white eyes and yellow wattles. In the thicker forests of Renkaila’s east coast, superstition said the myna’s human-like shrieks predicted death. Others claimed they mimicked the voices of deceased loved ones. For Aila, the birds were a nuisance, the source of too many calls to zoo security when patrons mistook them for people screaming bloody murder.
Once the rowdier crowd departed, a mouse griffin slunk out of the leaves. One of the aviary’s most far-from-home residents, mouse griffins skulked the wide temperate forests of Ozokia, all the way on the southern continent. The palm-sized creature perched with rear mouse paws and front talons, wings of pastel blue and yellow, bird head marked by a comical white eyebrow. Aila offered a chunk of mango the size of her pinkie. Can’t let the extroverts get all the good stuff. The mouse griffin squeaked, snatched the fruit, then fluttered off.
With paths cleaned, birds fed and waterfall switched on to a roar, the aviaries were ready for visitors. At least, Aila’s exhibits were. Tanya handled the other half of the aviary complex, laying fish out for the Ozokian kingfishers and buckets of shrimp for the mirror flamingos.
Aila returned to the concrete path to find Archie perched on a railing, blue crest raised, cheeks puffed. Someone wasn’t pleased about losing his latest toy.
Let him pout. Aila knew this game.
She pulled a shiny metal screw from her pocket, the last remnant of her doomed enrichment item. The threads were chunky, too thick to fit in any door mechanisms (she’d double- and triple-checked). Archie’s feathers flattened, his neck raised in rapt attention.
“Are you going to behave now, Archie?”
The Archibird squawked and hopped from foot to foot.
“No stealing cell phones from visitors?”
A puffed crest, then another squawk.
“No pooping on them, either?”
This wheeze was less enthusiastic, but honestly, if Aila could vent her frustrations against the general public that easily, wouldn’t she be tempted?
She offered the screw. Archie snatched it in his beak and flew off in a blur of gray, hooting in delight. As he dipped into the forest understory, Aila leaned over a mossy railing to view the clearing below. There, Archie landed upon his masterpiece, the instinctual calling of every archibird: a tower composed of every shiny object he’d collected.
The Naelo Archipelago lay along the equator, a collection of tropical islands arcing across the Middle Sea, starting off the coast of Silimalo and nearly spanning the distance to Movas. Archi-birds originated in the islands’ coastal mangroves. As cities grew, the birds found urban life remarkably to their liking, treasure troves of shiny objects to pilfer for their towers.
In the wild, archibirds attracted mates with the dazzling constructions (taller towers were, obviously, sexier). Thanks to the tranquil lifestyle of captivity, Archie had spent years raising his tower to over six feet tall. Some pieces were rewards for good behavior: brass buttons, metal sheets, assorted screws. The addition of jewelry, sunglasses, and cell phones produced no shortage of complaints from guests, but hey: they should have read the warning signs before entering the aviary.
Archie rolled the screw in his beak, coating it with spit—a physics-defying spit stronger than any human-crafted industrial adhesive. When he placed the metal piece on his tower, it stuck as if welded. Delighted, he perched atop his throne and hooted.
Aila smiled. If she could give him the cell phone of every visitor to the zoo, she would.
One hour left until opening. One exhibit left to prepare. Though Archie was a scheming menace, his small bird body precluded him from posing any physical hazard.
The kelpie, on the other hand…
Beside the aviary domes, a pocket of dense fog clung to weeping fir trees, persisting even as the Movasi sun rose hot overhead. The air hung thick, stale, peat-scented like a pocket of real Vjari moor, transported from the sub-polar expanse of boreal forest that crowned the northern continent. She approached the exhibit from a side entrance hidden by bracken and sculpted rocks. Here was the only non-avian charge on her route, assigned partly due to proximity, partly because no one else in the zoo wanted it.
Aila preferred a carnivorous horse over other people most days.
She unclipped the radio from her belt. “Entering kelpie,” she reported, standard protocol for any exhibit with a dangerous resident. In the coordinator’s office, Tom would scribble down the time. If Aila didn’t report back after a while, well… it would be too late, but at least they’d know where to find her body.
When Aila started this route three years ago, stepping into the kelpie exhibit left a skip in her heart. Now, it was just a matter of diligence—and many checks to the gate locks. The main metal gate lay submerged in water, a barrier between the pretty public exhibit where the kelpie spent her day, and the back enclosure where she slept at night. Modular exhibits let Aila work in one section without fear of fangs looming over her shoulder.
Mist eddied at her ankles as she entered the empty public exhibit, the kelpie still locked in her back holding. In a loop around the boggy habitat, Aila collected gnawed bones from yesterday’s meal, scrubbed the bloody rocks clean, inspected the water level in the observation pool. Peat moss squelched beneath her boots, a smell of wet hair clogging her nose.
The fog? Natural. Zoo designers proposed a fog machine when the exhibit first came in, but as it turned out, the kelpie affected the air around her.
Satisfied with a clean exhibit, Aila exited, double-checked the door locks, then moved into the concrete hall of the back exhibit. The gate controls were down a flight of stairs, beside a tank of inky water separated by foot-thick observation glass.
The tank looked empty. When Aila approached, her reflection peered back at her, ghostly in the fluorescent backlighting. Then, the moor-black water rippled. Dark eyes replaced hers. Like wisps of algae, a figure materialized on the other side, snout long and eyes sunken, hooves pawing the water, mane and tail woven with kelp.
“Good morning, Maisie.” Aila laid a hand against the glass.
The kelpie pulled back her mouth to reveal fangs, followed by a gentle press of her nose to the wall between them. More polite than some patrons. Part of that was thanks to the glass, a refracting structure that blocked the hypnotizing aura kelpies used to lure and drown their prey.
At the control panel, Aila held down a red button. Mechanisms grated. The water in the tank lurched as the gate slid open, granting access to the pond in the main exhibit. With the ease of a current, the kelpie kicked off, closer to liquid than solid as she swam through the gate and into the public observation tank. She had a long day ahead, producing mystical fog and startling children.
Aila pressed a second button to close the gate.
With all her animals released into their public exhibits, she shifted back to cleaning. Aila reveled in the rhythmic scrubbing of her broom, the frizz of fog in her hair, the stinging scent of disinfectant as she worked along the concrete slab beside the kelpie’s back water tank. By the time the floor gleamed spotless, a new din had grown outside.
Opening time. From the exhibit came squeals of delight as the kelpie swam across the glass. Laughing families. Shouting parents. Louder by the minute.
Aila checked her watch and groaned.
If she could hide in her back exhibits all day, she’d do so. Unfortunately, she had “professional obligations” and a “responsibility to facilitate positive interactions with zoo patrons” and all those cheery lines that came up in the yearly HR training. With the enthusiasm of a horror movie zombie—the low-budget ones Tanya collected posters for, no less—she stalked upstairs to the kitchen. Half a goat carcass lay defrosted in the industrial sink. She’d pulled it out the day before, preparing for one of the zoo’s most popular weekly spectacles.
Just get it over with, Aila. Then she could hide again. Like she always did.
Aila peered out from the keeper entrance, squinting like a bat. The gloomy Vjari moors were home to kelpies—and Aila’s gossamer-skinned ancestors. Midday Movasi sun glared down harsh enough to sear a few new freckles across her cheeks, banishing the morning fog. At least, any natural fog. Mist still cloaked the kelpie exhibit, bog musk fighting an assault of buttered popcorn and fried food from the snack shack down the path. On the public walkway, patrons hiked past with sunhats and squeaking strollers, gathering in a horde beside the observation window of the main pool.
They clapped when Aila emerged on a platform above the exhibit, a dead goat splayed on a cart behind her, fake smile plastered to her face. She’d done this a hundred times. Her legs still wobbled like jelly.
“Ahem.” Aila cleared her throat. Tapped the lapel microphone clipped to her polo. Zero words in, and her voice already shook. Why didn’t speaking to crowds ever get easier?
“Hello. Yes. The… um… kelpie feeding will start momentarily.”
The crowd buzzed with murmurs and crinkling lunch wrappers, whizzing toys from the gift shop and electric fans in neon colors. Within the exhibit, the pond rippled as if caressed by a breeze. Focus on the animal. Aila knew how to deal with animals.
A cable ran over the exhibit. After hooking the goat carcass, Aila heaved on a pulley, sending the bait over the water. Perplexed looks peppered the crowd. Expecting more pomp? Some sparklers or perilous music? Maisie had it covered. A snout emerged from the water, a flare of fog from black nostrils. The kelpie dipped below the water’s surface.
The pond exploded in a thrash of hooves and algae-strewn mane. Fangs sank into the goat carcass. With a powerful twist, Maisie ripped her meal from its hook and dragged it into the pool. The crowd rioted, shouting and pointing and waving flashing cameras.
“No flash, please,” Aila squeaked. No one seemed to hear her.
With slumped shoulders, she pulled out her phone and set a timer. Five minutes. She could survive five minutes . Forcing a smile, she exited the exhibit and waded into the crowd as Maisie ripped apart her meal behind the glass, playing with chunks of meat in the current. Oh, how Aila preferred the smells of bog and bone to popcorn and sunscreen.
“Hello!” At her microphoned voice, the shouting lulled. “I’m Aila, keeper for this exhibit. I’ve… uh… got a moment to answer some questions about the kelpie, if you’d like to—”
“What do you feed it?” A call from a woman in giant sunglasses, her blouse a blinding shade of tangerine.
Aila lifted an eyebrow, looking at the observation pool. “We feed her… meat? Kelpies are carnivorous. In the wild, they’re known to eat—”
“Meat like what? Goats?”
“That is meat. Yes. Though stories from the Vjari moors say kelpies sometimes lure humans onto their backs, then drown them in the—”
“What about vegetables?” This time, a shout from a bouncing child, his hand buried in a bag of candied almonds. “My mom says I have to eat vegetables.”
“That is… not meat,” Aila answered.
“But where does it get its vitamins?” The child’s scowling mother.
Deep breath. Deep fucking breath. “Kelpies acquire a balanced diet from the meat we feed them. Next question.”
A hand shot up in the back. Aila pointed.
“What makes it magical?” asked a teenager, tone flat.
Better question. Aila straightened. “The International Magical Wildlife Service, IMWS, defines magical fauna as species with attributes and/or abilities beyond the explanation of current biology or physics—though scientific studies with IMWS-approved animal care protocols are constantly working to better understand these attributes and their ecological significance. Kelpies are classified with extrasensory abilities of hypnosis, as well as paradoxical water breathing and fog production.”
“Why does the kelpie look sad?” accused a man with thinning hair.
Aila fought for a level tone. “Well, actually, she’s a horse. Nowhere near the same facial muscles we associate with sadness in humans, nor should we be extrapolating human emotions or social constructs to animals, so it would be erroneous to compare…”
Blank stares looked back at her. Aila pressed her temple. She went to zoo college for her animals. Not this.
Her fake smile felt like spoiled sugar. “I can assure you, we take excellent care of all our animals here at the San Tamculo Zoo. Next question.”
Five minutes took an eternity. Fortunately, Maisie and her severed goat head proved better entertainment than Aila’s stumbling responses. When her timer rang, she excused herself, retreating toward her aviaries on swift strides.
“Exploratory design” was all the rage in zoos these days—Aila devoured every detail in journal articles and message threads on social media. Twisting walkways and screens of foliage gave patrons the allure of exploration, of discovering the zoo’s animals in the fern-thick forests of Renkaila’s eastern slope, the towering boreal forest of Vjar, the moss-wreathed marshes of Ozokia. Aila used the curving routes to skirt visitors, avoiding eye contact with anyone eager to snag a keeper with inane questions.
How was she supposed to revive a phoenix program when she couldn’t talk to people?
Aila reached the back of the phoenix complex. A waft of dust and Silimalo olive leaves welcomed her, fragrant Movasi sage along the path. At the exhibit viewing window, a crowd gasped, probably watching Rubra fluff her feathers or hunt bugs amidst singed branches.
“Got a minute, Aila?”
She froze at the voice behind her, the door within reach. So close.
With slumped shoulders, Aila faced Roberto, one of the primate keepers in the Fenese section. He met her with a frown, work boot tapping concrete. Unhappy. Splendid.
“Sure,” Aila said. “What’s up?”
“I was hoping you could tell me why my three-faced marmosets have been shouting ‘ Don’t you fucking dare, Archie ’ at visitors all morning?”
Aila winced. Rotten, three-faced snitches and their flawless mimicking abilities. Reason number one hundred and fifty-two of why birds were better than monkeys. “Oh. That. Sorry, Roberto, I got a little carried away this morning, and Archie was being a real little shit. I made him this amazing toy, great enrichment piece, and I thought he’d love it, but instead…”
Roberto crossed his arms, boot still tapping.
Aila hung her head. “Sorry. Won’t happen again.”
“Thanks, Aila.”
She slunk into her keeper sanctuary like an exposed worm, desperate to escape the judging eyes. The constant demands. Smooth, Aila. Can’t manage ten minutes out there.
She retreated to the kitchen to chop several days’ worth of fruits and vegetables, trying not to imagine the grapes as snarky patron heads smooshing beneath her knife. Not like she didn’t try to do better with the public. When first hired, she’d been a disaster, clamming up under the simplest questions. Ask her to rant about natural history of phoenixes for an hour in her apartment? Easy. Get five words out in front of a crowd? Harder than diamondback dragon scales. For some people, the outgoing attitude came easy.
Not for Aila. Never for her. Animals had always been simpler.
She glanced at her laptop, set upon the metal counter, wreathed in a battlefield of kale stalks and mango. On the screen, the Jewel-port phoenix pair preened on their nest. The chat box scrolled by, viewers all over the world debating when the eggs would hatch and proposing chick names. That, Aila could handle. Let the commenters keep their distance, and let her focus on more important work than stringing up goat pi?atas.
After dicing a cornucopia of produce, she shifted to a pack of thawed fish in the sink.
What was she so worried about? She rocked her assigned duties, kept all her animals happy, volunteered most evenings researching the latest husbandry techniques and enrichment items. Last week, she froze fruit popsicles that had Rubra chirping in glee for hours . The week before, she’d hung peanut butter bait balls (with proper nutritional supplements) throughout the World of Birds aviary. Let someone else handle the public relations.
Aila scowled, picturing the epitome of excess: the zoo’s wildly popular griffin show, luring patrons with dazzling lights and tacky music. As if a gaudy stage production would save any of these animals from extinction.
She scoured her diet list. Bird pellets next, measured into bowls for tomorrow’s breakfast. Aila stalked into the main room, but someone had cleared the boxes off the counter. A snoop around the desks and back into the kitchen revealed the stash high atop a shelf. She pushed onto her tiptoes and reached, reached , spindly arms devolving to futile swipes.
A chuckle behind her. “What’s wrong, Ailes? You’re pouting as bad as Archie.”
In the doorway, Tanya stood with arms crossed, mischievous eyes framed by aqua shadow that popped against her dark skin. Aila slumped against the counter.
“Did you put those boxes on the top shelf so I couldn’t reach?” she accused.
“Me? Nah. Why would I ever?”
Tanya reached over Aila’s head, nine inches of superior height letting her access the top shelf with ease. Box retrieved, Tanya flicked Aila’s nose. Aila swatted back.
They settled into an easy routine, Tanya scrubbing dishes in the sink while Aila measured food pellets for both their routes. At least not every person in the world burnt her out. They’d found that rare familiarity in college, staying up late cramming notes on exhibit cleaning techniques and devouring boxes of chocolate bonbons.
“How’s your morning been?” Tanya asked.
Aila chewed her lip, head buzzing with too many thoughts of phoenix cameras and jelly legs at her keeper talk. She shrugged and swallowed the stress. “You know. The usual. How about you?”
Tanya groaned. “Khonsu got himself into that little gap in the rocks again. Scared me half to death when I couldn’t find him.”
Aila nodded and dropped pellets into a dish. Tanya’s main exhibit was the Bix phoenix, a long-legged cousin from river deltas of the massive Bix Desert in western Renkaila. Not as endangered as Silimalo phoenixes, but plenty rare, their silver plumes rumored to bring women good fortune in dating when worn on now-illegal hats.
“I’ll have to seal the place up somehow.” Tanya attacked a crusted bit of grape with a sponge. “Hard to get up in the back of the exhibit, though.”
An obnoxious design flaw. The rocks of the water feature in the Bix phoenix exhibit looked gorgeous, but required a steep climb to access.
“No one’s thinking these things when designing the place.” Tanya clicked her tongue. “Some good chicken wire could do it. Or maybe a couple of plants, those ones with big frilly leaves. I’ll have to ask groundskeeping if they’ve got spares.”
“I can help,” Aila offered. “Let me know when.”
“You’re too sweet, Ailes.” Tanya nudged her shoulder. “Later this week? Project day?”
“Project day,” Aila agreed.
Work to do and a friend to help—both welcome distractions from her own stress. With keen focus, Aila pulled off a grin, words bubbling with a socially adequate dose of enthusiasm.
Tanya still locked her down with a squint. The perceptive mink.
“Everything else OK, Ailes?”
On any normal day, the thoomp of the phoenix complex door would have flooded Aila with dread, rather than relief. Her salvation came as a squeak of boots on old linoleum tiles in the next room, the telltale creak of plastic animal carriers.
“Hello?” a man called out. “Any lovely phoenix keepers back there?”
Aila couldn’t have asked a magic genie for a better Tanya distractor. Tanya abandoned her squint, beaming brighter than the fluorescent lights overhead.
Theodore appeared in the kitchen doorway, skin dark as walnut wood and stature equally trunk-like, thick-rimmed glasses perched above a lopsided smile, his orange T-shirt frayed at one hem—by teeth or claws, a toss-up. Big block letters read SAN TAMCULO HUMANE SOCIETY above a cartoon puppy snuggled against a carbuncle with giant fluffy ears and twin tails. The slogan: MUNDANE OR MAGICAL, ADOPT YOUR NEWEST FAMILY MEMBER TODAY!
In either hand, he balanced two large animal carriers. Zoo security was always finding pets abandoned in the parking lot, next to the entry turnstiles, even out by the dumpsters near the veterinary center. Poor things. The humane society came to pick them up. A call about a wayward palm dragon hiding under Tanya’s car summoned Theodore to the zoo two years ago.
One hour-long conversation about animal ethics later, and Tanya laid her claim. Boy never stood a chance.
“Morning, Teddy Bear,” Tanya greeted, dropping into a voice paradoxically softer and more devious than the cadence she used for any other human or animal. She pecked a kiss to his forehead—leant down to do so, Theodore standing several inches shorter than her.
“I go where duty calls,” he said loftily. “Hey, Aila.”
Aila froze in her attempt to slink out the door, pressed against the counter like a sneaking purserat, trying not to intrude on the happy couple who honestly flabbergasted any of her conceptions of romance, considering she’d never progressed past a second date. Theodore—entirely too similar to Tanya—was too kind to let her hide.
Teddy took good care of Tanya. That granted him a spot in Aila’s rather selective book of “ people who are mostly pleasant to interact with .” Still, this was a burnt-out day.
“Hey, Teddy.” She mustered another smile. Heroic. “What’s in the crates?”
“Caller thought they might be phantom cats.” He held up one carrier, revealing vivid yellow eyes against sable fur, almost too black to discern against the dark interior. He shrugged. “Turns out, just regular cats.” At that, an indignant meow from the occupant.
“You need help carrying them to the van?” Tanya offered.
“I thought you kept me around for my muscles?” Theodore pouted, flexing an arm in demonstration—and visibly struggling with the weight of carrier and cat. As an equally noodle-armed individual, Aila commiserated (though even Teddy had an inch of height on her—unfair, both her tall parents passing on the lamest genetics).
He and Tanya laughed together, soft and easy as she took a carrier from him. She cooed to the entrance. The cat meowed back. Good. More likely to get adopted quickly.
On her way out, Tanya paused in the doorway, shooting Aila another squint. “You sure you’re OK, Aila? Were you about to say something?”
“Why would you think that?”
“You’ve got your face all scrunched, like something’s upset you.”
Aila forcibly unscrunched her nose.
Panic, her closest friend (after Tanya, of course), pulled Aila’s gaze down to the box of food pellets in her hands, the scratch of her nails against the cardboard, the dig of her boot against a pit in the linoleum floor. If she opened up, Tanya would listen. One of the few people who did.
But Aila didn’t want to bother her. Not with the same worries day after day.
“Ricardo stopped by earlier,” she said. “I guess I upset his marmosets.”
Tanya rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t let that sour blanket get you down. Those beasts will be chanting fouler things by closing time, all the school groups we’ve got scheduled today. You sure there’s nothing else wrong?”
“Positive. You go on, I’ll be done with food prep soon.”
“Don’t you dare touch those dishes. I’ll be back to finish them.” Tanya pushed out the door in a flash of sunshine, the murmurs of the zoo creeping into the phoenix complex as she called back. “If I see Ricardo, I’ll flip him off for you!”
The door closed.
In the quiet, Aila’s companions were the humming fridge, the clack of her knife as she scraped wayward bits of kale together on the steel counter. She shoved the morning’s frustrations aside like discarded detritus, focused on finishing food prep, then washing a couple of dishes, just so Tanya wouldn’t have as much work when she got back. Simple tasks helped soothe Aila’s nerves. The prospect of helping Tanya with her exhibit later that week helped more.
But the phoenix cam on Aila’s laptop never stayed out of her sight for long.