Samanta Zemzaris crept through the dark night towards her target, her eyes and ears straining to pick out any signs of life from the blacksmith’s shop. As she expected given the late-night hour, no lights could be seen anywhere in the forge or what looked to be the blacksmith’s home connected to the side of the forge. With luck, she’d sneak in, find what she needed, and get back out without anybody being the wiser.
Fortunately, the forge itself had its own entrance, separate from the entrance to the rest of the house. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, said entrance was securely locked from the inside. Carefully walking around the building as quietly as she could, Sam spotted several long and thin windows placed high up near the top of the wall, likely for ventilation. The openings were too short for an adult to squeeze through, while a series of metal bars inside the windows would dissuade anybody else from trying. Well, almost anybody; Samanta was far too desperate to give up so easily.
With the sprightly athleticism of youth, she awkwardly climbed up the wall towards the vent windows, using the cracks in between the stones as handholds and footholds for her small digits. Like many of the buildings in Wroetin, the blacksmith shop was built from stones and some sort of mortar that she knew little about. The smooth, continuous stone found in church buildings was actually quite rare, or so she’d been told. Stone Observers capable of creating structures out of a single piece of rock cost a great amount of money, to the point where only the Church and the wealthiest Otharian families could afford to hire one to build their houses. The rest had to use stones and mortar, or, if they were on the poorer side, just plain old lumber.
Soon she was high enough to wrap her hands around the bars. Lifting her feet up against the wall and pushing off of it with them for leverage, she pulled on the bar. It didn’t budge. Neither did the second one, or the third. Finally, on the fourth bar she tried, she felt it wiggle ever so slightly. Was this her lucky break?
Giving the bar a series of hearty tugs, she felt the bar’s wiggle increase until all resistance gave way suddenly and without warning. With a startled yelp, Samanta tumbled off the wall, the dislodged metal rod still clutched firmly in her hands. Her body smacked awkwardly against the hard ground, her rear end and lower back striking the surface first and sending a shock wave of impact shooting up her spine. Between this and the fall from the fortress wall, she’d be seriously sore the next day, that was for sure.
For several moments she didn’t move, simply laying there and trying to regain the wind that had been knocked out of her while listening for any signs of life in the nearby area. After hearing nothing out of the ordinary, she smiled through the pain, knowing now that it hadn’t been for nothing. Looking up at the window, she could make out in the darkness a gap between the bars that was just wide enough for her child’s body to squeeze through.
After slowly clambering back up, Samanta paused for a moment and peered into the murky darkness, looking for anything amiss. The light from the three moons filtered in through the different barred openings at various angles, rendering the interior of the shop a confusing mess of strange shapes and overlapping shadows. Still, she didn’t see anything alarm-worthy, and so, with a soft grunt of effort, she pulled herself up into the gap. The fit was tight, but with some struggling, she was able to make it through and drop down to the shop’s floor without too much trouble.
Holding out her hand and creating a tiny flame for a bit of extra light, Sam began to search the room for anything that could contribute towards her goal of finally ridding herself of this accursed collar. Sadly, her complete lack of knowledge about smithing immediately proved problematic. In the dim illumination, she found herself staring around at the collection of tools and trying to discern their purposes to little success.
Several metal blocks with holes of different shapes and sizes sat by the wall near her feet. What use they had she had no idea, but they surely wouldn’t be useful for her task. A variety of tongs and graspers in different shapes and sizes hung on a nearby wall—also not anything she could use.
Finally, she spotted something worthwhile on the other side of the room: a hammer! More accurately, an array of hammers, all placed in a row and arranged in order of size atop a stone table on the other end of the chamber. Samanta tiptoed her way over to the table and eagerly inspected them. Many were too big for her to handle with a single hand, but the smallest third seemed doable. Grabbing the largest of the that third, she hefted it up, only to be surprised how heavy it was. There was no way she’d be able to swing something like this properly. But would the smaller hammers be strong enough for what she needed?
Perhaps if she got some sort of chisel? Chiseling with a hammer against her own neck would be incredibly reckless. She’d probably have to get the chisel in at an angle to avoid hitting her neck, and that was if she didn’t just hit herself with the hammer. Still, how else was she to get this thing off by herself? She could feel a desperation inside her driving her decisions forward. The thought of having to return to that bastard Elseling’s fortress was almost too much for her to bear.
The chisels and other assorted bits looked to be stored on a rack behind her, on the other side of the room across from the open doorway that led to the rest of the abode. Samanta crept towards the rack, her eyes on the prize. Once she’d found the proper chisel, she could leave this place and find somewhere private to-
Suddenly, a hand reached out from the shadows of the doorway and seized her by the upper arm. Samanta let out an unholy shriek, struggling against the powerful grip to no avail. The fingers squeezed around her arm like vices, strong and unrelenting to the point of pain.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know when somebody’s skulking about in my shop?” a menacing female voice asked as a woman stepped out from the darkness.
“I’msorrypleasedon’thurtmepleaseIjustwantedtoborrowthempleaseI-” Samanta blubbered as she squirmed, as the woman’s glowering eyes bore down on her.
“I don’t know if you’re desperate or just stupid, but-”
The woman’s speech halted abruptly and she pulled Samanta in closer, cutting off her desperate pleas. Seizing the child with both hands now, the woman inspected the trembling child, her eyes taking in Samanta’s face, her hair, and most of all, her collar. Even in the moonlight, Samanta could see the woman’s face pale.
“Birel! Get over here!”
A loud yawn could be heard from somewhere off in the darkness beyond the workshop. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” a tired male voice replied, punctuating it with another yawn.
A bright orange light bloomed in the shadows, illuminating the world on the other side of the doorway to reveal what looked to be a hallway leading off to the left. The light grew brighter and brighter until a short man rounded the corner, a large, brilliant flame hovering over his upturned palm.
“Is that a child I hear?” the man likely named Birel asked nonchalantly as he turned the corner. “What is a child doing in your workshop in the middle of-”
The woman dragged Samanta around and presented her to the man. “Look,” she stated. He did, and a moment later, his eyes went wide and the flame vanished into nothingness.
“Oh dear,” he muttered. Birel hurried past them to the door, unbolted it, and opened it a crack to peek outside. “There’s nobody outside,” he reported a moment later. The large, bright flame reappeared, lighting up the blacksmith shop in bright warm colors.
“Are you sure?” the woman asked.
“I think so,” came the reply. “Have you ever known those things to be quiet?”
“True. In that case...” Samanta gasped as the woman turned and shoved her roughly against the nearby wall. “What are you doing in my shop?! Talk!”
“Tereta, don’t overdo it,” Birel cautioned. “She’s just a child.”
“She’s not just a child, she’s his child!” Tereta snapped back. “They might not be out there now, but that doesn’t mean they’re not on their way!”
“For what, though? We haven’t done anything, and even if we had, why would she be involved? What is she doing out here in the middle of the night like a vagabond?”
“So what then, are you saying she ran away? There’s no way that...” Tereta’s voice trailed off as she looked into Samanta’s terrified eyes and realized that the possibility was not only there, but likely. She looked back to her cohort, possibilities twinkling in her eyes. “Do you think we could get a reward if we returned her?”
“No!” Samanta cried as tears began to stream down her cheeks. “Don’t send me back! Please! I don’t want to go back I don’t want to go back I-” Unable to hold her emotions back anymore, she broke down into sobs and slumped to the floor as she wept.
“Now look what you did,” Birel scolded.
“What? Don’t act like this is all my fault!” Tereta protested. “I didn’t do... AAAARGH! FINE!”
Samanta watched through tear-clouded eyes as the woman strode off into the hallway. A few moments later, she returned and shoved something into Sam’s face.
“Here! Eat this and quiet down, will you!” the woman grumbled. “It’s the best we have, so don’t complain.”
Samanta blinked several times to clear her vision, only to find a large wedge of cheese hovering in front of her. Cautiously, she took the proffered food. The cheese smelled great and she was honestly feeling pretty hungry at this point, so she hesitantly, she took a bite. The smooth texture and flavor almost brought a smile to her face. It had been a long time since she’d eaten cheese like this. Blake wasn’t a fan of the stuff, so it wasn’t readily available back in the fortress. “Y-you won’t s-send me back?” she stammered, her words muffled by a mouthful of cheese.
“We won’t. It’s clear that being with Lord Ferros is a terrible situation, and we don’t support throwing children into terrible situations,” Birel assured her. He turned his head towards the larger woman and gave her a pointed stare. “Isn’t that right, Tereta?”
Tereta crossed her arms belligerently while looking away from the both of them. “Fine,” she answered with a petulant huff. “But that doesn’t mean I forgive her.”
“Well,” Birel chuckled, “that’s about the best you’re going to get, uh... what’s your name?”
“Who cares? Just call her ‘the Elseling’s Pet’ like everybody else does,” the woman chimed in.
“Come now, honey, there’s no need to be so belligerent.”
“Of course there’s a need! She broke into the shop! My shop!”
“Fine, fine. Just keep it under control. Remember what happened with the Moraskos’s child? We don’t need something like that happening again.”
“Hey, I apologized!”
“And yet they still switched over to a different smith for most of their jobs, didn’t they?” He shook his head. “We’re getting distracted. Now that I think of it, how did she even get inside?”
“Looks like she pried a bar loose. See, up there? That fraud of a mason! He said he’d fixed them all, that bastard!”
“He’ll probably claim it was a bad bar.”
“I’d like to see him try! I’ll beat him with it and let him tell me just how bad it is!”
The man sighed. “Sometimes I wonder how I got stuck with such a violent wife...”
“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
Samanta watched the two of them bicker from her seat on the floor as she slowly munched away at the cheese. Now that there was actual light, she could finally make out the details on the pair.
Tereta was a large woman both in stature and build. She stood taller than the average man, her body covered in well-defined muscles, especially in her arms. She kept her silver hair very short, only falling to around her chin.
Birel, meanwhile, was quite short for a man, with a soft, pudgy body and a bald head lined with the remnants of light blue hair. Both of them appeared to be in their mid-forties, and something about how they argued gave Samanta the impression they'd been married for most of that time. There was a nostalgic quality to their dynamic that reminded Sam of her parents.
"My name is Samanta,” she said, interrupting the squabbling couple. Both of them stopped and stared at her, as if they had forgotten she was even there.
“Why hello, Samanta,” Birel replied after a moment. He crouched down to get more on her level. “I’m Birel and this is my lovely wife Tereta. Don’t mind her, she just tends to get a little worked up sometimes.”
“Hey!” Tereta interjected.
“So tell me, Samanta, what are you doing breaking into a blacksmith’s workshop in the darkest hours of the night?”
Sam’s head drooped. “I just want to get this off but I don’t know how,” she admitted, pointing to the large, thick tucrenyx ring that encircled her neck. “Please help me. I want to be free.”
“Is the Elseling searching for you? Can he track you down somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Samanta admitted. “I don’t think he can find me too easily. I’ve been gone for hours.”
“How about this, then. We’ll help you get that collar off and let you sleep here for the night. Then, tomorrow morning you get out of here and we never see each other again. Deal?”
“Wait, don’t just decide this for me!” Tereta objected.
“What do you suggest we do then? Just throw her out into the streets in the middle of the night?” Birel shot back. “You of all people should know what that would mean for her.”
“I just...” The woman scowled and folded her arms against her chest. “Fine, but she’s gone by sunrise!”
“Thank you! I’ll never forget this kindness!” Samanta said.
“Better for all of us if you do forget,” Birel replied. “We don’t want to get involved with Lord Ferros. He’s bad news all around. Now let’s see what we can do about this collar.”
Samanta stood back up and the couple crowded around her, peering intently at her neck.
“This is tucrenyx!” a shocked Tereta observed.
“Weren’t you the one who thought that all of the Elseling’s creations were made with tucrenyx?” Birel inquired.
“I was, but... didn’t you Observe a flame earlier?” she asked Samanta.
“Yeah?” Sam replied.
“How? That metal hurts anybody who Observes.”
Samanta could only shrug. “It’s never bothered me.”
“Well, either way, this is a problem. Tucrenyx is really strong and durable. If it wasn’t poisonous to the spirit we’d use it for a lot of things. Either way, getting something this thick made from tucrenyx off your neck without hurting you will be very dangerous.”
The word ‘dangerous’ triggered a memory in Samanta’s mind, one that she’d tried her best to forget over the last year. “Ummm... there’s something else I forgot to tell you. It might explode.”
“It might what?!” Tereta cried as the two adults practically threw themselves away from her.
“He said that if I tried to take it off it would explode and I’d die. He showed me what would happen.”
“We can’t touch this,” Birel said, while Tereta nodded in agreement. “Sorry, kid.”
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“That doesn’t mean it will happen!” Sam argued. “He’s not Othar! He makes mistakes! All the time! Just because he said that doesn’t mean you can’t get it off just fine!”
“And what if we can’t and you die?” Birel responded.
“...that would be fine too,” came the soft reply.
Tereta’s hand swiped forward without warning and struck Samanta across the face, knocking Samanta to the floor. “You stupid girl!” the smith hollered. “Never say something like that!”
“Tereta!” Birel cried as he practically threw himself onto his wife to keep her from advancing on the prone Samanta. “Stop! You need to calm down, now!”
The burly smith paused for a moment as she huffed with unexplained fury. She stared daggers at Samanta, but for some reason, the child felt she saw disappointment and sadness in those eyes as well.
“I’m... gonna go take a shit,” Tereta said after a moment. She marched over to the door that led to the street, practically ripped it open, stomped through, and slammed it shut.
“Wh-what...?” Sam stammered, pushing herself up into a sitting position, the harsh stinging pain bringing more tears to her eyes.
Birel sat down beside her with a tired sigh. “Let me see that,” he said, taking a closer look at her face and prodding it with his fingers. “Nothing broken, at least. Looks like you’re going to have a nasty bruise for a day or two.”
“Why did she hit me?” Sam sniffed.
“You said the one thing that she can’t stand. Tereta gets worked up over a lot of things but the one thing that makes her lose it is people giving up on their lives,” Birel explained as he sat down beside her. “Not that that’s any excuse.”
“I don’t understand,” Sam said.
Birel sighed. “She lived a hard life when she was younger. She and her younger sister were orphaned when she was fifteen and they nearly starved to death on the streets here. Tereta had to join a gang to survive, but her sister never got over the loss of their parents. She basically just... gave up. After all the pain that Tereta went through to support her, and despite how much Tereta needed her, one day she ended her own life. Tereta’s never gotten over that. It doesn’t help that you’re about the same age that her sister was when it happened.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Don’t be sorry, how would you have any idea?” He chuckled for a moment. “It’s funny, but you’d never know what hardships she’s been through looking at her now. It helps that she’s a blacksmith, I guess. Lets her work out a lot of that anger, pounding the metal all day.” He chuckled again. “It’s a good system for both of us; I handle the business side and provide the heat, and she does all the actual work.”
“I see...” Sam replied, eying the door with trepidation.
Birel picked up on her unease. “Don’t worry, she’ll have calmed down in a minute once she’s let it all out. I’ll make sure she apologizes.”
“Where did she go?” Samanta wondered. It was confusing. The woman had said she was going to poop, but she’d gone outside instead.
“She went to use the toilet booth a block down. She’ll be back soon.”
Shock and anger suddenly bloomed inside Samanta at his casual admission. She shot to her feet in outrage. “You use those?! B-but that’s-!”
“Most everybody uses them these days. What’s the problem? The city has stopped smelling so bad since.”
“They’re his! The Elseling’s! You can’t use them! It goes against our ways!”
“What, so we should all go back to using chamberpots?”
“Yes!” Sam cried indignantly. “Nobody should use anything that bastard makes! We have to reject it all, together as a country! If we allow ourselves to be corrupted by his influence, we’ll never be able to bring Otharia back to how it used to be!”
“But what if we don’t want to go back?” Birel replied sagely.
“W-what?” The answer left Samanta absolutely flabbergasted. She took an unconscious step back, eying the man with renewed suspicion. “You support that monster?!”
“Oh, no, not at all,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m not happy that Lord Ferros is here. I’d love for him to be gone, as would everybody. But that doesn’t mean that I want to return to how things were before. Things were terrible then, too, just in a different way. The Church ruined just as many lives as Lord Ferros has. More even.”
“How could you say such a thing!?” Sam hissed, her small hands balling into fists.
“All I’ve said is the truth. You’re just too young to understand. The reign of the Church was not some glorious era, no matter what they liked to proclaim. Just look at my wife. I told you she lost her parents. How do you think that happened?”
“I-”
“The Church happened. First, they killed her father when she was only eight. Said he was a spy and a heretic. Then few years later, her mother died from the food shortages that happened every winter. Her mother had to sacrifice some of her own food so that her children wouldn’t starve, and it left her weak to the point where she became ill and passed away. These were not uncommon back in the past Otharia. The Church caused the deaths of countless people, be it through their purges or through their mismanagement. I will not miss them, and neither should you.”
“But... I...” Samanta clutched her head in her hands. She didn’t know what to say or think anymore. Was he right? Was she clinging to a past that didn’t exist?
“It’s okay. You don’t have to suddenly come around to my perspective so suddenly,” Birel stated, giving her an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “Just think about what I said, alright? Learning to see things from other people’s views is part of growing up.”
Sam’s head snapped up at the sound of the workshop door opening. A muted Tereta entered, and Samanta approached her and gave a small bow. “I apologize for my words,” she solemnly stated, remembering the words of her father, who had always said that it was better to be sorry and save a relationship than to be proud and ruin one. “I was not considerate of my words.”
“You told her,” the woman said to her husband, more as a statement than a question.
“I did.”
“Haaaaahhhhhh,” she sighed. “Look, kid. I’m not good with words and crap like this guy over here. All I’m gonna say is this: the world is harsh, and painful, and there’s going to be many times when you feel nothing but despair and you want nothing more than to just give up and stop, but you can’t. You have to keep living and looking for a place where you can be happy, and never stop until you find it. Alright? If it looks like there’s no hope, change how you’re looking at everything and find a new way forward. That’s what living is all about.”
Sam glumly nodded.
“I’m sorry that I hit you, and I’m sorry that we can’t get that collar off of you, but we can at least let you sleep here tonight, alright? So let’s go do that.”
“No, I should go,” Sam replied.
“Nonsense!” the smith declared. “You look dead on your feet! You’ll fall asleep in some alleyway somewhere and get your throat cut. Believe me, I know how it is out there. Let’s all get some rest, and then you can continue on your little whatever-it-is tomorrow.”
Samanta began to protest, but the woman’s words were right. She could feel just how exhausted she was and finding the energy to argue proved to be more than she was capable of at the moment. She let the adults lead her to a spare room with a straw mattress, and she was out within moments.
----------------------------------------
Samanta realized something was off the moment she opened her eyes: the sun was too bright. Shooting to her feet, she rushed out of the spare room to find the smiths relaxing and sipping something from a pair of mugs.
“You’re finally awake,” Birel observed. “Good timing, we were about to get to work and that was going to get very loud. The neighbors complain about it constantly.”
“What about me leaving at sunrise?”
The two exchanged an amused look. “We tried to wake you but you wouldn’t come to,” he replied.
“Slept like an anvil,” Tereta added. “Never seen somebody so tired. Do you have trouble sleeping back at your home?”
“It’s not my home!”
“Whatever it is. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Nobody has come looking for you. Just leave when you want.”
Samanta looked at the ground and shuffled her feet nervously. “Thank you for everything,” she finally said. “I broke into your home and you helped me anyway.”
“Think nothing of it,” Tereta replied.
“It was interesting to meet you,” Birel added. “Gives us a good story to tell a decade from now, at least.”
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation, causing all three of them to tense up. The couple exchanged another glance, this one devoid of amusement.
“There’s a back door down the hall,” Tereta said in a low voice. “Get out of here while we distract them.”
Samanta ran down the hall, listening as best she could for anything worrying. The back door was much like the front, a wooden door with a bar locking it shut. As she pulled the bar aside, her ears picked up a voice from the other side of the house.
“Good morning, madam. I am here to retrieve Lord Ferros’s ward.”
Sam’s blood ran cold. She knew that voice. It was Leo’s. Hurling the door open, she froze at the sight of two large skitters standing on the other side. Though she knew that they were not truly alive and had no eyes, she couldn’t help but feel like they were staring directly at her.
“Who?” Tereta responded.
“Please, madam, your desire to protect her is commendable, but we know she is here. My lord has been watching her since first fled her home last night. Please be at ease; I assure you, I am not here to harm anyone, regardless of what you may believe.”
A series of light taps approached from behind her. Samanta turned to find Alpha speeding his way down the hallway towards her. As it drew near, it let out a series of chirps and boops that struck Samanta as both happy and accusatory at the same time before hopping up and down beside her feet.
With a sigh, she picked up her metallic companion and returned to the front of the house. There, standing in the front door, was Leo. A whole group of skitters stood behind him, including a long-legged one that Blake used to get around.
“There you are,” Leo said when she appeared. “Come along now, I have much more to take care of today and-”
He paused and bent over, inspecting the large bruise that had formed on her face from Tereta’s smack the night before.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked, his voice suddenly dark and ominous.
“N-no! I, uh, hurt myself when I fell in the dark when I broke into their shop last night,” she lied.
“You broke into their home?” Leo repeated, surprised.
“...yes,” she glumly admitted.
Leo let out a tired sigh and reached into his shirt, pulling out a small bag and handing it to the couple. Samanta heard the clinking of coins come from inside.
“On behalf of the child’s guardian, I humbly apologize for her actions,” he said somewhat stiffly. “I hope that this is enough to repair anything she may have broken and smooth over any grievances you may have.”
“Uhhh... yeah,” Birel replied, staring into the bag. Samanta was surprised at Leo’s actions. There must be a lot of money inside for somebody like him to be struck speechless. Was she considered so valuable to Blake?
“Come now, let’s go,” Leo said, gripping her firmly on the shoulder and leading her to the long-legged skitter. Samanta didn’t argue or struggle. There was no point anymore. It was over. She’d lost, completely and utterly.
The ride back was quick and quiet. Neither of them spoke the entire way. Sam just didn’t have it in her to say anything anymore. After starting last night with so much hope, she hadn’t even managed to make it out of the city, and to make it worse, that accursed collar was still on her. It couldn’t get any worse than this.
“You will find him in there,” Leo said after leading her to a room near their quarters that Samanta didn’t recognize. Had the layout of the fortress changed while she’d been away? “Go inside. I have to take care of my work.” Without another word, Leo turned and left.
Reluctantly, Samanta hit the panel to open the door and entered. On the other side was a room that reminded her of a study, with a couch, several chairs, and a low table between them. On the other side of the room was a doorway leading to another room.
“-but you’re not listening!” a female voice asserted. “You can’t measure the progress of a society by technology. Society matures through its morals and values, not by how close it is to television and airplanes!”
“And how do they get the opportunity to mature, huh?” Blake shot back. “Cultures won’t become utopias where everybody is good and happy if they’re all starving to death and they have to work all day every day just to stay alive! I’m buying them that window!”
She couldn’t see much of the second room, but judging by the heightened voices pouring out from there, Blake was inside arguing with somebody. The fact that he would argue with anybody struck her as odd. Instead of entering the second room, she decided to just wait where she was. She wasn’t really in the mood to deal with other people, anyway.
“Give me a break! All you’re doing is-”
“Nya?!”
Suddenly a third voice spoke up, bringing the argument to a halt. In the silence that followed, all Samanta could hear was what sounded like somebody sniffing.
“What is it? Is something wrong?” the woman asked.
“Friend?” a young voice replied. For some reason, the voice struck her as eerily familiar. “Friend!”
Without warning, a small dark shape rocketed through the doorway. “Friend came back!” it cried as it slammed her to the floor in what could only be described as a “glomp”.
Samanta looked down at the strange dark figure and blanched as her mind put those golden eyes and that familiar voice together at last. It was the demon creature that had saved her the night before! But now that she could see the thing in good lighting and without the hood, Sam realized that it might be even worse than she’d thought. Those were beast ears, which meant that the creature latched onto her torso had to be a beastkin, one of the forsaken beings right alongside heretics, elven, and Elselings.
“This... this is your friend, Pari?” the unknown black haired woman asked the creature currently latched onto Samanta’s prone body.
“Uh-huh! Uh-huh!” the beastkin replied as she gleefully rubbed her face into Samanta’s torso.
“Oh... oh thank god!” the woman replied with a strange level of relief. Then her expression changed, slowly morphing from mild curiosity into dark, ominous anger. “Blake... why is she wearing a collar?”
“So she’ll behave,” came the curt reply. “What? Don’t give me that look! I don’t tell you how to raise your brat, don’t tell me how to raise mine.”
“Don’t you dare call Pari a brat!”
As the argument between the two picked back up and the beast creature continuously nuzzled her face into Samanta’s chest, she stared blankly up at the ceiling and sighed in defeat. How silly of her to forget: it could always get worse.