His mother had been watching Clara's tour with an expression of warm amusement. She looked down at the grey and white cat.
The grey and white cat looked up at her.
There was a quality to this cat — Arthur had known it when he built her and was watching it confirm itself in real time — of something that had arrived in the world already knowing how it worked and what its place in it was, and was prepared to be patient with everyone else's slower arrival at the same knowledge. The blue eyes were, it had to be said, extraordinary: the same vivid clear blue as Mira's own, looking up at her with an expression that managed to be simultaneously appraising and already fond.
His mother crouched down. The cat sat.
'Well,' his mother said. 'Aren't you something.'
The cat's expression suggested that yes, this was accurate, and thank you for noticing.
Mira reached down. The cat allowed herself to be picked up with the specific quality of something permitting rather than accepting — the grace of a creature that had decided this was acceptable and was making that decision visible. She settled in the crook of Mira's arm with the unhurried certainty of something finding a position it intended to hold.
She looked at the rest of the family assembled in the yard. She looked at Arthur. She looked back at Mira.
She placed one small paw on Mira's collarbone, very gently, and blinked once with the slow deliberate quality of a cat deciding to confer its approval.
'Bella,' his mother said.
The cat's ears moved forward slightly. The tail, previously still, moved once.
'I'm going to call you Bella,' his mother said.
Bella looked up at her with an expression that said: this is acceptable.
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His family, in various states of enchantment with their new companions, assembled their attention. His father had the golden retriever puppy, which he named Haru cradled in both hands with the expression of a man who had not known he wanted a puppy until thirty seconds ago and was now quietly devastated that it had taken this long. Thomas was sitting on the fence with the black lab, aptly named Kona pressed against his side, the dog's large head on his knee, both of them looking out at the east field with the exact same expression of comfortable assessment.
'They're not just pets,' Arthur said. 'I built them to protect you. Each one of them is — ' He paused, looking for the right word. 'They're like Shadow. They're part of my magic. They're smart and they're loyal and they are going to stay with you, ideally, as much as possible. Think of them as companions who will always be watching out for you.'
His family looked at five small animals in five pairs of hands and arms and shoulders.
His father looked at the puppy. The puppy looked back with enormous sincere eyes. 'This,' his father said carefully, 'is going to protect me.'
'Yes.'
'He's the size of a loaf of bread.'
'That's temporary. Also size isn't the point.'
Thomas looked at his labrador. 'And this one.'
'Yes.'
Clara looked at Kiiro on her shoulder, who was at this moment grooming one paw with the focus of something with more important things to do. 'She's a kitten.'
'She is currently the size of a kitten,' Arthur said. 'She is not, in any meaningful sense, limited by that.'
The skepticism in the yard was polite but visible. He looked at Bella, still settled in his mother's arms with her blue eyes tracking the conversation with apparent interest.
'Bella,' he said. 'Would you mind?'
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Bella turned her head and looked at Arthur.
The look lasted approximately two seconds. It was the look of something receiving an instruction and formulating an opinion about the instruction before deciding whether to act on it. The opinion, Arthur gathered, was that the instruction was reasonable but the manner of asking had room for improvement.
Then she stepped out of Mira's arms with the deliberate precision of something that had planned this movement before executing it, dropped to the ground, and proudly strutted out into the empty field.
She walked about fifteen meters. She stopped.
She sat.
She looked up.
The lightning came down like something that had been waiting to be asked.
It was not subtle. It was not a small demonstration calibrated to impress without alarming. It was a full strike from a clear morning sky, the crack of it hitting the yard a half-second after the light, the specific sound of something that had covered a large distance very quickly and had opinions about what it found at the end of the journey. The ground where it struck threw dirt and steam in all directions. When the air cleared, there was a crater in the field approximately five meters across and half a meter deep.
The family stared at the crater.
Bella strutted proudly back across the field with the unhurried dignity of someone who had completed a task satisfactorily and was returning to more important matters. She reached Mira's feet and looked up at her with the blue eyes, patient and composed.
Arthur looked at the crater. He looked at Bella. 'I think you overdid it,' he said.
Bella turned her head toward him. The expression she produced was the expression of a creature who disagreed with this assessment and was choosing not to argue about it, because arguing would be beneath her.
She turned back to Mira, sat, and raised one paw to be picked up.
His mother, slackjawed picked her up, looking between Bella and the crater with an expression that was trying to decide which was more remarkable. As if performing a trick successfully, Mira praised Bella's performance, 'You are just remarkable, Bella!'.
Arthur thought: I built that cat to be dignified and self-possessed and I see now that I may have slightly miscalibrated it.
He thought: why did she turn out like this. I did not specifically ask for a tsundere.
He thought: I am going to have to live with this.
'So,' Lyra said, from behind him, in the tone she used when she was recalibrating significant assumptions. 'They can all do that.'
'Yes,' Arthur said. 'With some variation by type. Tsuki, do you want to show them something?'
Tsuki, still arranged along Lyra's shoulders, turned to look at Arthur with silver eyes. Then she turned to look at Lyra, who said 'please' in the slightly nervous voice of someone who was not sure what she was endorsing.
Tsuki stepped off Lyra's shoulder and jumped.
Not down. Up — and then she simply stayed there, hanging in the air at shoulder height, and then she began to move. Not falling, not flying with wings, just moving through the air with the clean ease of something that found gravity a suggestion rather than a rule. She spiraled upward, slowly, the white coat catching the morning light, and at the top of the spiral she paused and turned three times and then descended in a long graceful arc, spinning as she came, the twin-tipped tail leaving faint trails of silver light that faded as quickly as they appeared.
She landed on Lyra's shoulder and looked out at the family with an expression of mild satisfaction.
Lyra's huge smile had arrived before she finished landing.
'Tsuki,' Lyra said. It sounded like she had been waiting to say it. 'You can fly! Aw I wanna fly too!'
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