Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 8)

Ky grinned, pleased with the reaction.”Yeah I did! You gotta watch out; I’m tricky.”

Zander felt himself getting oddly proud of her, even though he hadn’t done anything at all to effect any of this. Just a sort of paternal pride in his child excelling. Sure, she wasn’t his daughter and she never would be — he didn’t even want her to be — but it still counted. He was insanely proud of all his nieces and nephews, and yet somehow the girls had their fingers tightest around his heartstrings. It felt like they needed him more. And he needed them, too.

"Tell us more jokes!" Marcella begged.
"Mama," Regulus said, tugging on Pamela. "Where Mama?"
"She'll be back soon," Pamela promised him, easing him into her lap. "Don't worry, little one."

Ky forced herself not to fixate on the comment about Sara and instead went, “What do you get when you cross a porcupine with a turtle?”

"I dunno!"
"A hedgehog," Emery whispered to Zander.

Ky choked on a snort, overhearing him, but kept her gaze on Marcella. “A slow poke!”

"Porcupines are ouchie," Marcella giggled. "Uncle Tomhas got pricked by one this one time."

“Did he?” Ky asked, curious. There must be quite the story to go along with that.

"Mama said one time he was getting wood for the fire in the house he was living at and he got poked cuz he tried to touch it." She grinned.

Ky laughed. Yet another commonality. “My Papa used to say I was going to get taken out by trying to pet something I shouldn’t.”

Zander smirked. Yes. Yes he did say that. And he was accurate, too. He’d never seen a little girl as quick to bounce back up and jump back on the horse after she got thrown — aside from Jerica — but Ky was even worse about it since she was also catching snakes and biting lizards and luring chipmunks into ‘inns’ that she made for them out of pine cones. If an animal existed, she wanted to be friends with it. Hell, she wanted to be friends with anything that could move and breathe.

"I wanna pet a lot of things," Mattathias said. "Papa says I can't pet everything because not everything wants to be petted."

“It’s true,” Ky said. “And we’ve got to respect when people of things say no.”

"That's what Papa said." He pouted.

Ky nodded. “Your Papa is very wise.”

Sometimes. And sometimes he was an idiot and went walking into a situation he knew damn well would trigger him, all because he refused to honor her request to hold off on meeting Captain Bay.

"Yeah, he's the wisest. People get a lot of advice from him and he saves people too!"
"He's the best," Marcella added, glancing at the empty chairs. "Where's Mama and Papa?"
"They're busy," Pamela said gently.

Ky bit her lip and glanced at Emery.