Destiny is a book you write yourself

Stick hidden behind his back, he waited for Rayla to let her guard down. It took a while, since she was always paranoid, but eventually her swords swung lower and her posture drooped. Callum smiled mischievously and quickly snapped the stick in half. 

Crack!

It was louder than he meant it to be, but that worked fine for his intents and purposes. Rayla immediately spun around, swords raised to their usual fighting position, and ears… Callum grinned. Hypothesis proven correct. 

Rayla looked down at the two stick halves in his hand, then back up at his grinning face. She shot him a glare that would’ve come in handy about a week ago. To melt the ice, that is. “What was that for?!” she demanded, pointing her blades angrily at the ground so she wouldn’t accidentally behead him. 

“Just testing something,” Callum replied coyly, a smug smile lingering on his face. 

He dropped the broken sticks to the ground. Rayla scowled, turning to walk away. As she did, Callum pulled out his sketchbook and began doing some quick drawings to record his findings. He got halfway through the base shape of a second head when he ran smack into Rayla, who had spun around and stopped without him noticing. 

He yelped, fumbling his charcoal and dropping his sketchbook until it hung taut in front of him on its strap. He said a silent thank you to his stepdad for the ingenious design and reached down past Rayla to pick up his charcoal. 

“Why’d you stop?” he asked, annoyed. 

“What’re you drawing?” she shot back, scowl still fierce. 

He held up his sketchbook innocently. As she took it, Callum watched her visage transformed from anger to utter confusion. She squinted. 

“You’re… drawing my ears?” 

Callum grinned, nodding his head enthusiastically. He leaned in for emphasis before enunciating his wonderful discovery.

“They move.”

He leaned back self-satisfactorily, but Rayla’s face retained a blank, befuddled expression. 

“What?” 

“Your ears!” he reaffirmed enthusiastically, “They move!” 

She blinked as if finally registering what he was saying, then glared at him even harder. 

“They do not!” 

“Yes, they do. See, look,” he grabbed his sketchbook away from her and quickly finished his sketch. He pointed to each drawing in turn and explained. 

“When you’re relaxed, your ears look like this, like, pointing at a a light upwards angle towards the back of your head, but when you get scared, they lay flat, like a cat’s!” 

He grinned, hoping to see her expression brighten. It did not. 

“That’s a load of rubbish,” Rayla asserted, “My ears don’t move, and they definitely don’t move ‘like a cat’s.’ ” 

She made her fingers into quotation marks in the air around his words, further ridiculing his scientific breakthrough. He frowned, then brightened, tucking his charcoal into his sketchbook and letting them fall back to his side. “I’ll prove it to you, watch!” 

“I’m not going to fall for the stick trick agai— what are you doing?” 

He moved closer to her and held his hands up on either side of her face, but paused when she questioned his intent. 

“Oh, right, sorry, um, is it okay if I touch you?” 

She gave him a horrified look for a split second, then cleared her throat and nodded. He gently placed his fingertips on the points of her ears. 

“See, right now you’re relaxed, so your ears are… well that’s odd.” 

Callum frowned as her ears dipped down below where his fingertips were touching, but not to a flat angle like he was used to. He glanced back at her face and found that her cheeks were bright red. Huh. He’d never seen that happen before. Had something scared her that his human ears couldn’t hear? Or was she sick, like on the boat in the river? He was about to voice his questions when Ezran piped up from a ways ahead of them. 

“Callum, Rayla, what’s taking you guys so long?” the kid complained.  

Rayla immediately jumped backwards, turning away from him and hiding her face behind a hand. He noticed that the tips of her ears were also pink, and still pointed more downwards than was normal. What could’ve caused that? 

“Coming!” she called, racing to catch up.