𝔖𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔦𝔰𝔠𝔦𝔞'𝔰

Ratio has repeatedly tried to nonverbally communicate to you that the sun will not burn you any faster than it does him, but you think that’s easy for him to say when he stands tall and light brown and warm all the time. Clearly, he has never had to work for the heat as you have—that much you know just from observing how little he appreciates the various sources of it in and around his dwelling.

For instance, the human sleeps in the rectangular nest on the far right side of his room instead of anywhere near the patches of floor warmed by the filtered, comfortably tepid sunlight pouring in from the window—you can very personally confirm that the best naps on land always take place on the floor. Yes, even if you spend most of your time in the bathtub.

But that’s hardly relevant to your current position—clutching a post of the shaded front porch for dear life. Your claws dig into the wood more than you mean to, etching thin lines into the areas with easier give.

Ratio’s hand remains extended before you, patient despite what you’ve come to recognize as his expression for annoyance. He says something you believe to include “here,” but you only dig your claws into the wood so suddenly it screeches more than enough to express your disinterest for you.

At that, the human sighs and pushes his lenses back up the uneven slope of his nose. Signaling for you to wait, he leaves, exiting your peripheral and soon returning with something held behind his back. Your eyes widen the moment they catch the familiar scent—fish. Still fresh. The faintness of it has to be cod. You perk up to confirm your suspicions, and had you been less distracted would have noticed a (however weary) slight smile come over Ratio’s face. But you are very, very distracted, so all your eyes wind up seeing is the fish as the man—practically taunting your senses now—holds it up in the air.

He extends his hand again.

Offering, no? You should accept. You want the cod, after all. The human feeds you, of course, but usually not whole, raw fish at a time this large. It’s not the biggest you’ve seen, no, but the size genuinely resembles that you would find and be lucky to catch in deeper waters than the humans surely found it; funnily enough, the length is close to the man before you’s height. It’s easy to guess which will taste better. So you want the fish. You want the fish very, very much. And it looks like all you have to do to get it is…move forward. Into the strange brightness, not…too difficult of a sacrifice for a fish that big. Yes, it is not difficult. The reward is (by a thinness) enough to be pursued quickly while water still drips from the lower end of your desired meal.

Breathe, you think.

Reluctantly, you permit a single finger to reach for the light, bracing yourself for a sting as the small part slips past the border of the shade.

It does not hurt.

It does feel wonderful.

Although jarring, the light warms what little you offered it down to the bone, and for a moment you wonder why you were ever afraid of touching such a thing.

You blink once, then twice, before allowing your whole webbed hand to enter the unshaded air. Wait, wait, and wait. The pain you had prepared yourself for never comes. A laugh you forgot you could make leaves your throat—although it’s not one identical to a human’s, judging from Ratio’s brief concerned look, you couldn’t feel more light-hearted at the sound of it. You move your whole body forward a little too eagerly, earning you and Ratio both a faster heartbeat at the thump of your tail leaving the porch. The flesh beneath the bandages wrapped round your midsection are, thankfully, mostly spared the impact once you hit the dirt. The same cannot be said for your caretaker, who gets the breath knocked out of him. Unceremoniously.

Time briefly slows in the moments in which you lie directly on top of him, but you’re not stunned enough to be slow to end it. Snatching the fish in your claws and promptly rolling off of his torso to tear into it sideways on the ground, the situation is forgotten to you as quickly as it began. With this, you succeed in your goal, though leaving Ratio to stare blankly at the sky, rub his eyes and sit up. The human starts pawing around for his lost aid while you make sure not one bit of flesh is wasted. The fish is exactly as tasty as you thought; though you find yourself wanting the crushed pale rock from earlier meals to accompany it, the size makes up for it.

Ratio quickly finds his lenses. He exhales with relief before wiping the smudged pair off on his shirt and returning them to his face. It’s then that he turns to you—still gnawing away, but slowing one bite at a time once you feel his gaze focus on you. He’s caught his breath. Finishing swallowing your latest mouthful, your eyes wind up coming to meet him.

Here, the light hits you two in full. It is pleasant to revel in, you think, not bothering to move from the hard, stable ground fully exposed to it. Your sight could still use practice; it is good that most days are much less horribly bright, because even now you are forced to squint and focus on a single thing when you look. You see mostly a blur of red and lighter shades you can’t name yet in the shape of overlaid circles. There is a stronger shine overlapping the border and darker lines in the corners from the radiance of everything, bringing out a view extensive enough you feel you don’t have enough eyes for it and lending to the single gaze a certain depth of once-muddled intention as he looks upon you not unkindly. It occurs to you, suddenly, that his fall could not have felt good.

You still. (If such an action is even possible anymore, given how severely his eyes stuck you in this same place.) Then raise both hands to extend your food to him. The best translatable apology you know to give.

The man’s face visibly softens at this—though he pushes the fish back towards you, refusing your offer. Within a minute, he is letting you off with a long sigh and some pats from his hand to the top of your head that you find yourself—without thinking—leaning into. With that, you resume occupying your claws with familiar wet flesh.

You do know, the voice at the back of your head begins again, you cannot stay here forever.

Yes, you say in return. I know.

The younger one is sprawled across the carpet with a blanket around her shoulders, dramatically upside down against the couch cushions in a position that looks profoundly uncomfortable and apparently isn’t.

The older sits cross-legged beside the coffee table surrounded by half-finished snacks and a notebook she’d insisted on bringing “for observations,” the nature of which she has not yet seen fit to specify.

Ratio sits in the armchair nearest the lamp, a book open in one hand.

It had been a different book an hour ago.

The first had been a comprehensive introduction to theoretical cartography that he had, in his considered opinion, selected reasonably. It covered exploration, discovery, the relationship between observation and recorded knowledge. Entirely appropriate.

“This is boring,” the younger one had announced, approximately four minutes in.

“Learning frequently is.”

“The sentences are too long.”

“Complex ideas require complex sentences.”

“Father.” The older one had looked up from her notebook. “We are nine and seven.”

A pause.

“The next chapter involves a stellar expedition,” he had tried.

“Does anyone get eaten?”

“Navigators are not typically—” He’d stopped. Looked at their faces. Closed the book with quiet dignity. “I’ll find something else.”

The current volume is an adventure, morally instructive, and the girls are significantly more engaged, which Ratio would never describe as a victory but which registers as one nonetheless.

“You skipped a page,” the younger one accuses.

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

Ratio huffs. “An extraordinary claim. Present evidence.”

“The hero was in the cave and then suddenly outside the cave.”

“A transition of location does not inherently imply missing content.”

“It implies suspicious narration.”

“…That,” Ratio concedes, “is a defensible argument.”

Your younger daughter looks extraordinarily smug. The older one makes a note in her notebook without looking up.

“What are you writing?” Ratio asks.

“Observations.”

“On?”

“Father being wrong.”

Ratio gives her a look that has, in professional settings, caused grown adults to reconsider their life choices. She meets it with perfect equanimity, having apparently developed an immunity at some point in the last year.

He turns back to the book.

You step quietly into the room carrying fresh tea, pausing for a moment in the doorway.

The scene settles into you immediately—the rain against the glass, the warm pool of lamplight, the cushion-nest on the floor, the notebook-observations, the open book in Ratio’s hand.

Ratio looks up first.

The shift in his expression is subtle enough that the girls likely miss it entirely. You don’t. The faint easing around his eyes. The immediate, undemonstrated awareness of you.

“You’re still awake,” he says.

“You say that like you aren’t.”

“I’m correcting papers after this.”

Both girls groan in theatrical unison.

“Father,” the older one says, with the measured disappointment of someone twice her age, “you are ruining the atmosphere.”

“The atmosphere,” he replies, “was already compromised when you attempted to feed biscuit crumbs to the bookmark.”

“That happened once.”

“Once is sufficient.”

“It was an experiment.”

“In what?”

She consults her notebook. “Bookmark behavior under novel conditions.”

Ratio stares at her for a moment with an expression that is doing several things at once. Then he turns back to the book with great deliberateness.

You laugh softly and move toward the couch.

As you pass his chair he catches your wrist and draws you close enough that the kiss he presses to your forehead is unhurried and unself-conscious. Then he releases you and turns back to his page as though nothing has happened at all.

Your younger daughter’s hand shoots up immediately.

“Bias.”

Ratio does not look up. “Correct.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life rarely is. Pay attention. The hero is about to do something inadvisable.”

She subsides. The older one makes another note.

You settle into the corner of the couch with your tea, pulling a blanket across your legs.

You listen to the rain and his voice and the occasional scratch of a pencil, and think that some evenings simply ask nothing of you except to be present in them.

Ratio reads on.

When he reaches the end of the chapter, the younger one is mostly asleep, blanket pulled to her chin, one hand still curled loosely around the edge of her cushion. The older is still writing with great concentration.

“What now?” she asks, without looking up.

Ratio glances at her notebook. Then at you.

“One more chapter,” he says. “For the sake of completion.”

She looks up then. Something in her expression that is very much his. The faint, private satisfaction of someone getting what they wanted without having asked for it directly.

“Mm,” she says, and turns to a fresh page.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

A/N: Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it. :)