Lost Change - Snippets

Fine Dining And Recreation

...tap.

And on the keyboard on the desk.

I walked along the length of the wall perch to get the angles right, then glided down to the desk. I landed on the upper edge where the screen rested, hopped twice to bleed off my momentum, then pulled in my wings close to my sides and sat up. I curled my tail around me, letting the end of it dangle down over the keyboard, and I looked up at Minna.

She blinked at me.

...tap.

"What are you doing, silly? I need to work on this report."

I stared back at her.

"We're going to go out soon, I promise. But this is important; I have to get this done." She looked away from me and searched the keyboard for a moment... then tapped at an alien symbol on one of the keys. Tap.

I blinked slowly at her.

"Nate, I can't see the screen. You're in the way." She leaned to one side and looked around me, getting a look at the monitor, then glanced back down at the keyboard.

I leaned in the opposite direction and replied with a questioning chirp.

Tap. "Are you really that excited to put your harness on?"

My ear tufts flattened at the word 'harness'. I sat back up and stared at her again, blocking her view of the screen once more.

A faint smile grew on Minna's face as she searched for the next key. "You're just slowing me down; if you're in a hurry to go, you'll need to get out of the way so I..." Minna paused in mid-sentence and narrowed her eyes at me. "...you're doing this on purpose, aren't you. To stay out of the harness."

I leaned my head around and began cleaning the underside of my wing, making sure to stretch it out and 'accidentally' block more of the screen as I did.

"Uh-huh. Don't play Mister Innocent with me, you know what you're doing." ...tap.

I continued focusing on the imagined spot marring my otherwise pristine scales. I nibbled at some that had been crushed in some long-forgotten fight with some animal out in the forest, then lifted my head back up and fanned my wing to its full length.

Then I pulled my wing back in... and stretched out the other one, blocking a different portion of the screen as I began to check for dirty spots on that wing.

"Weekly report. Believe I have observed what must be the courtship rituals of the fire lizards." Tap. "It involves a male interrupting whatever a potential mate is in the middle of doing, then obsessively grooming himself until the female pays him attention."

Okay, that one had been funny. I tried not to laugh, but I think my ear tufts flicked a little. I covered it by stretching my neck further down and rubbing against the underside of my wing.

"Naaaaaaaaaate. You have to moooooooove, you're in the way." Minna sat up taller in her chair and tried to peek over me. When that failed she dropped back down in the chair and sighed. "Want a shia fruit?"

I brought my head out from under my wing and sat upright again, looking back up at her with ear tufts perked in excitement. "Yes please!"

Minna just closed her eyes and shook her head... but her grin was all the wider. "You are such a silly thing sometimes."

I watched her for another moment, fanning my wings a little as I waited for Minna to give me the treat she had just mentioned - if I was pretending to be an animal, I couldn't very well understand 'sarcasm', could I? But instead of getting up and getting more food for me, Minna just opened her eyes again and sighed.