The next day, Lisa seemed oddly distant. She looked concerned, though Bath couldn’t fathom why. He certainly hadn’t done anything; was it something to do with her parents?

Bath was quite unsettled by the fact that Lisa was showing this kind of emotion at all. She was the most composed human he had ever seen, always wearing a front to protect her emotions. Bath had always respected that mental control. And here Lisa was, on a random school day, all out of sorts.

Bath wanted to get away from this confusing atmosphere. After detecting the stealthy human presence in the park, Bath didn’t know where to start looking for answers. And now on top of that, Lisa was acting strange.

Maybe he should look into protecting Lisa’s house, too.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

That evening, Bath went to Lisa’s house as a sparrow. He set up a basic scheme of tripwires, outfitting miniature eyes at each wire that he could use to inspect whoever triggered the them. He also affixed tiny ears to the outside of her house. All of these elements were connected to him by a tiny thread of matter as they joined his already rather excessive collection of monitoring units.

Just after setting all this up—before he had the chance to return home—one of his tiny ears picked up Lisa’s yelling. She seemed to be furious about something. He heard her distinctly shriek the word, “Bath.” What had he done?

He swept in close to the house to listen in with his true ears. He saw through the window that Lisa was sitting on her bed in her pajamas with an almost resigned expression on her face, like she had chosen the best of two terrible decisions.

“Bath,” she called out softly, “get your ass in here.” He realized that she had left her window slightly cracked; a sliver of mesh was exposed to the open air.

How does she know...

Had this occurred a week ago, he would have swooped into her room without a second thought, his infinite curiosity burying caution.

Now?

He heard her sigh. “Bath, I know you're apprehensive. Please just come inside. I'm worried.”

Bath listened intently for her heartbeat. He found it pulsing steadily, betraying no obvious dishonesty. But Bath knew that the best liars could trick themselves into believing their lies for truth. He knew from first-hand experience that Lisa had that talent; she’d actually developed it making up excuses for where she disappeared to after school. She certainly couldn’t tell them that she was riding a wolf in the woods.

Is there anything that Lisa can’t do? He wondered. Sure, Lisa was his best friend, and he truly believed that—he was the one she chose to spend all her spare time with for years. But all the same, he couldn’t deny that Lisa’s excellence was perhaps something more than he had once thought.

After all, how had she known he was outside the house? That meant secrets...deception. But who was he to blame her for her secrets, when he himself kept so many?

But even so...I trust her, Bath exhaled slowly, resigned.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He shifted to the size of a gnat, pulling his mass into his Center. He crawled through the mesh, then appeared before Lisa as her white wolf. He certainly wouldn’t appear before her as himself, naked.

“How did you know I was here?”

Lisa began to cry softly, her mask cracking.

Bath padded over to her where she was sitting. He sensed her hurt, a torrent of uncertainty and frustration. He jumped up onto the bed, then licked her cheek, eliciting a choked laugh. She fell into him, hugging his velveteen fur, letting tears fall into his pelt.

“Why do you even care about me?” she asked. “You're not human. Why do you even want a friend? Bath, I'm just going to die in a few years and then it won’t even matter. I won’t matter. I can’t understand why you even care about saving the environment when, for you, it’ll just be prolonging the inevitable.”

“Why does it matter?” Bath repeated, tilting his head. “If nothing I do matters, why do anything at all?” He crossed his forelegs and leaned down his head against the duvet. “Why do you live, Lisa?”

He felt her fists clench against his fur.

“For a long time, I thought I was special,” Lisa admitted. Bath wasn’t surprised that she thought that she was special; he was more surprised by her use of past tense. She no longer thinks so?

“And then,” she breathed in deeply, “I realized what you were.”

...Because of me? Bath wondered, not following her line of reasoning.

“I thought that we were both special, Bath, that’s why I knew from the moment I met you I wanted to be your friend. I thought,” she laughed humorlessly, “I thought we were destined to meet each other. I thought we were supposed to be together.” She hugged him tighter. “Not in a romantic way. We were two when we met. I can’t even properly remember meeting you, we were so young. But I remember thinking, when I first saw you, that I needed to be with you at all costs.”

“This sounds so pathetic,” she confessed. “I can’t believe that I thought we were supposed to be friends. Like it was destiny,” she spat, as though destiny was the dirtiest word in her vocabulary.

“I’ve enjoyed being your friend. Isn’t that, in itself, good enough?”

“No! Bath, you have it all wrong,” Lisa’s voice cracked as her tears began to flow again. “I'm the worst person to teach you what it’s like to be human! My entire life is a giant cheat!” She was sobbing now; Bath felt useless before this child, this despairing human. His friend.

He waited in silence; the only sound in the room was the beating of two hearts, one slow and steady, the other swift and pounding.

Then a deep sigh, an intake of breath, a storm released in slow exhale. Tension radiated off Lisa like static.

“Bath,” she muttered, her voice shallow, “you are the best friend I could ever hope for.” She inhaled deeply once more, her chest expanding against Bath’s side. He nuzzled her shoulder encouragingly. “I mean this in more ways than one.”

“First: Like me, you love adventure. No matter what I want to do, you're on board. I need that in a friend, a willingness to disregard limitations.”

“Second: You're kind. I don’t think you realize, Bath—you're pretty naive like that—but most people aren’t very kind. They grow out of it. Maybe you aren’t kind to everyone, but that isn’t what it means to be kind. If you can be genuinely kind to one person, that’s enough. Too many people can’t even achieve that.”

“Third: You aren’t human. You probably think that not being human is a terrible reason to be a good fit as a friend. That having that be my third reason is weird, or a recent development, or species-ist, or something. But I already told you: I knew you were special from the minute—the second, the instant—that we met. It makes sense, now, in retrospect. You're an alien, or at the very least, completely divergent from humans. You think differently.”

Bath felt this third point slowly closing in on a conclusion, a revelation.

“Lisa,” he said, filling the silence. “Would you like to tell me, or do you want me to guess?”

She squeezed him. “You think you know enough to guess? Cocky,” she grinned, wiping away some of her tears.

“But it’s okay, I’ll tell you. Let me start again. The reason why you’re the best friend I could’ve ever asked for,” she said, pausing. “Is because I can’t influence your emotions.”