Chapter 7

“She’s still talking about the zoo,” he complained.

Basil sat on the toilet seat me while I was finishing grooming myself, a refugee from his sister’s annoyances in the kitchen. I didn’t mind sharing anymore so long as he didn’t insist on making himself home while I was showering or striking a conversation with Mr. John.

“She’ll calm down soon enough,” I said.

“I don’t know. When she really likes something, she doesn’t forget them easily. I mean, it’s been over two weeks already. She wants me to help her write a letter to them and stuff all morning. We won’t be able to leave if she keeps on doing this.” He groaned. “I need to find some fresh air. It’s stuffy in here.”

I took out a flask of cologne and dabbled my neck with the pungent liquid. Basil craned his neck up take a better look at the bottle.

“Why do you put on that stuff?”

“It smells nice. People like it if you smell nice.”

“Oh. Can I see it?”

I handed him cologne and told him to go wild. It was a cheap piece I bought for a pittance at some dime store—the kind that had a foreign-looking name embellished with fancy diacritics but turns out wasn’t really French. He took a whiff from the open bottle and winced. He studied it some more, looked at me with reservation, and then, hesitantly, splashed the fluid on his claws and rubbed his throat with it, squealing when the alcohol bit in. He handed back the bottle and sniffed his hands.

“It’s different, I guess,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, “the ladies like it.” I toweled off my hands and left the bathroom.

Lying on her stomach on the kitchen table, Tia worked on her personal tablet. Her tail twitched behind her with each word she recited. “‘Great?’ ‘Nice?’ ‘Excellent?’ Hm, how about ‘splendid?’”

“‘Capital,’” I said. “I always liked that word.”

“Like, ‘I had a capital time’?”

“Something like that, yeah. It sounds refined.”

“Oh, huh. Thanks! I can always count on you to help me out.” She glared at her brother. “Unlike someone else here.”

Basil rolled his eyes. “It’s not like Sydney can read, so what’s the point?”

“Oh shush. You’re always so negative.” She hopped down from the table and nuzzled her brother. A frown crawled across her face, and she sniffed into her brother’s neck. She recoiled back when something struck her senses. “What’s with that smell?”

“It’s new. Doesn’t it smell good?”

“It smells awful! Why’d you do that?”

“Oh come on. It’s not that bad.”

Tia stuck out her tongue and cringed in disgust. “You can’t go around smelling like that, people’ll think you’re weird. Look at Ly-lee.” She stood up and, gripping my shoulders for balance, brought her snout to my neck. Her nostrils flared open and she closed her eyes in concentration. She pulled back and sighed. “He smells good. You should smell like him.”

Basil wore a face of utter confusion.

“Come on guys, let’s get out of here,” I said while he still had his mouth half-open and before it could turn into another squabble.

We didn’t bother getting any breakfast that morning. We didn’t have to: after several weeks, all the rest of the passengers of our N-Freight line caught that we only rode in SX14’s rearmost car (aged, weeks-old habits die hard). Before we reached the station, there would be a crowd gathered around the rear of the boarding platform and each would-be passenger jostled for position for the privilege to join us on our travels to Summit. Well, join the Isians, anyway, because who cares about a pasty-ass human? I was fine with it though, because they would bring along offerings of food to placate the insatiable creatures. Not random cheap stuff, either, but deli subs and roast beef cuts and stuff. Too much for even the twins to eat, so I ended up getting some nice pieces myself. It got to the point where I didn’t need to bother packing lunch for myself. Riding with lizards was awesome.

Passengers packed into our train car like a cheap can of sardines, but we had plenty of room to move around as the crowd left a considerate buffer for us. I was scratching behind Basil’s ear to my left while Tia was making small talk on my right. She munched on a sausage link someone had given her and went to work making a new friend.

“Hi! I haven’t you seen you ride here before. My name’s Tiamat, what’s yours?”

“Michael,” he said, waving hello.

“Oh, Michael. That’s a nice a nice name. Have you ever been to the zoo?”

“Once, with my family.”

“Oh isn’t it nice there? Did you meet Sydney?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Basil lay next to me and stared at the other passengers in the car during his sister’s preaching about the wonders of the zoo. One passenger tried to stir his attention by asking, “Hey Basil, how’s it going today?” and a few others few others tried waving and snapping their fingers at him, but he ignored them. They gave up and turned their attentions to his livelier female counterpart. It seemed a little odd, but I didn’t think much of it.

Halfway to Summit, he motioned to his sister and asked, “Ly-lee, can we change seats? I want to sit next to her.”

“Sure,” I said. I moved to the other side of Tia and left my original seat for him.

He scooted next to her, but then frowned. He got down, came in front of me, and stared. I couldn’t understand his intent.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

He patted the space between me and Tia. “Can you make room here?”

“Oh… sure.”

I prepared to get up and go back to my previous seat. Before I could, he wedged himself in that little space and forced me to shuffle over to the right. With the newly minted seat open, he leaped into the space between his sister and me. Tia, occupied lecturing the biology of komodos to her audience, was oblivious.

“Better now?” I asked him as he nestled down into the cushions. He continued his observations without a word the rest of the way. Strange.

At the Summit station, he turned loose, chirping and pulling his sister along with him, and led the way to the Spire. I followed them inside and was about to make my way to the labs, but a bellow rammed through all the other sounds of the lobby and stopped me before I could: “Hey! Lyle! Get ya ass over here, son!”

I swear, the lobby was Summit’s official little pow-wow and Aimee’s desk was the campfire. It seemed like everyone I wanted to meet, and those I didn’t, showed up there and waited for me to arrive fashionably late. No offices, no voice calls, not even an email. Just meet up on Aimee’s desk and let fate take its course.

With his fedora in hand, Ernest waved for attention and hollered at me.

“Hey, ya son-of-a-bitch! Too pretty to thank ol’ Uncle Ernest for bailing your ass out, eh?”

“Thanks for bailing my ass out, you old bastard,” I said. “How did you do it, anyway? Don’t tell me it was your goddamned charm again. That’s bullshit and you know it.”

He laughed, just containing his guffaws enough to pat my shoulder in greeting. He fitted his hat back on his balding head.

“Hah, says you, kid. Ol’ Ernest still got his power where his heart is. You got a fine young lady with a cold heart? Bring her the whole damned four-ring Lefko super special and boom! Dame melts like butter. Every single time, just like my pops before me and gramps before him. It’s the secret touch, trade secret in the family, you know. Whole generations of Lefkos owe their lives to it.”

“You’re a dirty bastard.” I mock-punched his shoulder. “An old dirty, lying bastard. Don’t ever change.”

He laughed again and slapped Aimee’s desk. The receptionist herself stood patiently behind it, hands folded in front of her and a Pleasant Smile auto-execution program running on her lips.

“So, how’ya doing, anyway?” Ernest asked.

“Pretty good, can’t complain,” I said.

He smirked. He took the brim of his hat, twisted it to the side, and shook his head at me like a father intimidating a misbehaving son. “Can’t complain, eh? You steal a bunch of expensive-ass lizards from Tetra, make ’em live in your goddamned apartment, and ya can’t complain? Really, Lyle?”

“Hey, you know it’s not like that. Don’t give me that.”

“I’m just makin’ sure you’re know what you’re getting into, kid. You know, for your own good.” He ruffled the collar of his coat over his neck when I glared at him. “The last goddamn thing I need to hear are those assholes back at corporate bringing hell because their precious lizards broke their goddamned tails or something. You know what’ll happen? Management witch hunts, that’s what. Fucking annoying.”

“They’re fine. They’re happier than I’ve even seen them, in fact.”

He patted my shoulders again. “That’s good, keep it up. I guess it’s just a few more weeks before those dumbshits finally get their heads out from their asses and put ’em somewhere else. You know, what they should’ve done weeks ago.”

“What?”

“Yeah, Arlene’s been working with brass to get those Isians into some shack downtown. Though, maybe less ‘working’ and more screaming. Oh man, what I would’ve paid to hear that. That girl, oh that girl is almost like the missus. A goddamn firecracker.” He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “Ah, just a few more weeks, Lyle, and they’ll be outta your hair for good.”

“Yeah. That’ll be great. I can’t wait,” I said, saying what I thought he wanted to hear. Said what I thought I wanted to hear. I listened to my own words as I spoke it. There was something there, something that I couldn’t bear myself to repeat. Ernest nodded his head in agreement and repeated “just a few more weeks” before going on a familiar tangent about the incompetence of Tetra management. Just a few more weeks and I’ll be rid of lizards. It was a great idea, one that I welcomed with gracious and open arms. But… something bit at me, someplace I couldn’t scratch and be rid of. I just didn’t know.

“Goddamn them,” Ernest said, bringing himself back down from a rant that missed my ears. He brushed his left sleeve and listened to the PA announcing the time. “Gotta go and make sure the children don’t blow something up back at the labs. Where are those little tykes of yours, eh?”

His eyes caught something in the crowd, and he whistled and called out to it.

I could recognize those familiar taps of claw tips scraping on the marble, interspersed between surprised yelps from the crowd. On cue, Tia scrambled over and pulled herself onto the desk. She sat politely on the desktop, snuggling her tail around her body, and chirped.

“Hi Ernest!” she said.

“Ah, there’s my girl. How’ya doing?”

Ernest scratched the soft area behind Tia’s ears, eliciting a delighted purr from her. She rolled her eyes back, closed her eyelids, and twisted down onto the desk. His fingers then tickled through the skin underneath her frill, and she squealed in delight and spayed her body across the desk. Ernest continued stroking her and asked where her brother was.

“He was behind me,” she said, her voice soft and listless.

He switched hands so he could pivot around and lean over the desk to try to find this missing brother. He whistled sharply, but nothing responded. After some more verbal coaxing, the errant lizard finally peered his head out from the opposite side of the desk. He stared at us with the same neutral expression he bore on the train, just gazing and saying nothing.

“Ah, there you are,” Ernest called out. “Come on over here. You ain’t gonna let your sis take all of this herself, will ya?”

Basil narrowed his eyelids and then ducked his head back beyond our view. Ernest gave me a quizzical glance.

“What’s with him?”

“He’s being… Basilisk,” Tia said. Her tongue hung out from her corner of her mouth and slurred her words.

Ernest shrugged and tickled her throat with an index and middle finger. Tia flicked her tail at the teasing, and the errant appendage whipped harder and harder until Aimee caught it before it could do damage. She squirmed and breathed in pants as he played her like a flute. He gave a final neck tickle and then patted her sides.

“Now,” he said to her, “if Lyle gets troublesome, you be sure to tell me and I’ll straighten him out, okay?”

She sighed and nodded weakly. Ernest turned to me, wiggled his fingers, and winked. “Lefko’s secret touch,” he said. “Never fails on the ladies.”

---

Every time I see Ernest, I found myself dreading the day ahead. The man carried bad omens. Before he left to manage his labs, he told me, “Fair warning, kid. Bunny’s bringing an early surprise today. Tried to knock some sense into ’em, but got overruled by some Summit asshole. You guys try not to kill yerselves, eh?”

All the other non-Secondary labs, apparently wrestling in a convenient fit of productivity, dumped about a few thousand quads of unformed data on us before the shift started, a pile of junk ripe for processing. The assholes did this every few months: collect weeks upon weeks of unfiltered datastreams from deepest pits of engineering hell, coalesce the debris together, wash it with sewage bits from all the other labs, and dump the whole oozing pile on Secondary’s doorstep like a stork delivering a half-aborted mutant baby. Tradition named these days “The Bunny’s Boutique.” (Why we had such always have such ludicrous names for these things, I haven’t the faintest idea.)

As soon he discovered the rabbit’s thoughtful gift for us, Mark made an emergency request with Computer and Robotics Resources to bring a smart agent online to help clean the mess. Unfortunately, CRR rarely turned around in less than several days for a requisition request, emergency or not (assuming anyone believed that Secondary was capable of having emergencies). We had anticipated the Boutique to occur next week, and that’s when Mark had ordered the agent for. No one could blame him for his lack of psychic ability to foresee such dickery from higher-ups.

The foreman was still on call to Resources while we slammed into the data, his cries stifling out our tapping. “No, no, I need it now, not Friday. Yes, today! What? Why the hell are you buying computer systems and AIs if you’re not going to use the goddamn things? Fuck Three-Eleven! No, you don’t understand, I’m up to my fucking dick in shit and Tetra cut off the balls of all my guys in my lab, get my goddamn agent online!”

As much as we would’ve liked an AI to help dredge up the mess, none of us really cried that it wasn’t available. A couple of those things could take the place of all our jobs, and human ingenuity only got you so far. The pro-human labor HELP Act gave some breather room, but not enough for us to complain since it’d only cover half the labs if Tetra decided to replace us with machines. All of us needed to prove we were useful, and Primary, in its own twisted way, did us a favor.

Small blessings, then, that the Isians contained themselves and didn’t bother us while we worked our asses off sledging through the data. Tia bundled herself on the holo platform with a quadruple set of tablets. One of them, I guessed, was surely her letter. Meanwhile, Basil orchestrated the Alie-Grommot from the base panel and examined the output warping and flickering around his sister on holo platform. Like on the train and lobby before, he seemed stoic and indifferent. It was uncharacteristic, especially for an Isian, but I couldn’t the spare the effort to concern myself when hordes of data were assaulting me.

No one could afford to get up for lunch. A few of the industrious types, in a fine display of multitasking, had food brought to their stations and chased down small and quick bites with goblets of data. The Isians had no such deficiencies, of course. Basil stirred up to greet the lunch hour first, and he tried to pull Tia away from her work by her tail. It accomplished nothing but to invoke annoyed squeals. Tia slipped her tail away and continued on her work, and he would try again. Eventually, his sister relented and stacked her tablets on the platform. She stretched and bounded out from the arena. Basil followed her.

I stopped him when he climbed next me. He looked on with that same detached face he had all day, but this time flavored with a pinch of annoyance as he watched his sister exit the lab. He clicked his tongue and twisted his head to me.

“Hey buddy. How’s your day today?” I asked.

He replied with a curt, “Fine,” and started running his nails across his chin and neck.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

It was like talking to a completely different person. Or hell, a completely different creature. Basil didn’t make direct eye contact with me, instead drawing his vision out to a distance past me as if longing for a faraway place. If the Isians were children before, then this was puberty: distant, rebellious, and wanting nothing more than to make the world go away.

“Okay, little buddy.” I patted his head. “You know that if there’s anything wrong, you can tell me, right?”

He grunted and pulled away. “Yes, I know. Can I go now?” A hint of irritation seeped his voice.

“Yeah. It’s good.”

Without wasting energy for any more words, he climbed the rest the stairs and left me confused and more than a bit worried. He didn’t make an appearance in the lab for the rest of the day, failing to return with Tia after lunch. I took a break to the pit and asked her where he was.

“Probably sleeping in the tree,” she said, not taking her attention away from her spread array of panels. “Something he ate gave him a tummy ache.”

“Is he all right?”

She nodded.

“Say,” I said, “do you know if anything’s been bothering him lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“He seems kind of off today, like there’s something wrong. But he won’t tell me anything.”

She broke her study on the tablets and looked at me, then gazed at the lab door. She shrugged and turned back to her work. I went back to do the same.

By the end of the day, the battle with the terminal keyboard deformed my fingers into a claw. My vision suffered even greater. The glowing images of thousands of screens burned themselves in the back of my eyes and toremented even with closed eyelids. My coworkers weren’t much better off. Rows of the exhausted sat broken in their places, heads on their boards and unresponsive. The stronger sorts kept on working at a mechanical pace with the spirit drained from their faces. These were the unlucky ones: they weren’t the dedicated or the hardy but poor zombies unable to will back into their humanity. It was post-traumatic stress disorder for the technical set.

Our fearless leader, having conceded his battle with CRR hours ago, keeled over an empty terminal alongside the rest of us. He absolved himself by cursing at Tetra, God, and lagomorph-kind everywhere. CRR said they would get that smart agent up for us as soon as possible. Next week.

Before my mind could fully disintegrate itself into the screen, a welcomed set of hands gripped my shoulders and rubbed some life back into me. A smooth nuzzled into the sore crook of my neck and shoulders and brought relief through a massaging purr. I dropped my hands to my sides, loosened my shoulders, and let myself melt against the smooth scales. The Isian licked my ear and whispered a soft, feminine voice into it.

“You’ve been working too hard.”

“Lots of work, gotta finish ’em all.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my body close to hers. My weight teetered on the unstable chair, but she held me tightly against it like a rocking cradle. She crossed her arms across each other to place her hands to my cheeks, tapped her nails against my skin, and rubbed circles with her palms. I let my tired body fall into her embrace. She licked my earlobe again.

“It’s not healthy working too hard,” she said.

“Being healthy doesn’t pay the bills.”

She chuckled and tapped my nose. “You humans and your bills and worries and stuff. Can’t you guys just be happy?”

“We do. We just don’t have enough money to do it all the time because of the bills.”

Her only response was an introspective, “Hmmm.” She dropped her head down against my chest and tickled my neck with her frill. It was pleasant enough, and I lay back, closed my eyes, and let her warm touch and throaty purrs lull my eyes closed. She rubbed me for only a few minutes, all said and done, but it seemed to have stretched into an hour under the influence of sleepiness. I enjoyed it more than I had any right to.

The tension of my chair’s backrest jerked me back up and into the land of the living when Tia released my neck. I blinked my eyes open and steadied myself. She clicked her tongue and tugged my arm to bring my attention to her brother on the aisle-way. He was staring at us and scratching at his neck like a teenager fighting acne. He frowned and asked, “What are you two doing?”

Tia placed her hands on her hips and pointed her snout at him with her ears pared back. “Well, nice of you to finally visit us again. We’ve been having all this fun without you.”

Basil rolled his eyes. “You guys done yet? It’s time to go home.”

“Oh, all of a sudden you want to go back to Ly-lee’s? I thought you liked it oh-so-much better here.” A slight reptilian hiss laced her voice.

“It’s better than staying around with all these… people.”

“Ly-lee’s not done yet. So we’re not leaving.”

“Oh come on! That’s not our stupid work, why do we have to stay?”

He shrieked when Tia clucked him on the forehead by the knuckle. He slunk back and turned away from her scowl, and he resumed scratching himself.

I pulled Tia away from him by the tail. “Be nice, guys,” I said.

“I’ll be nice once he does,” Tia said. She snorted and projected a sharp click at Basil. “And would you stop scratching! You’re going to peel your skin off!”

He was really at it. Since I last saw him, a pale blush infected his chin and neck, which turned a sickly purple when it mixed with the turquoise under his muzzle. He craned his head toward the ceiling to expose new areas to scratch, but it didn’t seem enough to satisfy him. He bit his lips and contorted his face, and his tail twitched on the floor in frustration.

“You really should stop scratching,” I said. “Your neck looks chafed. We can use some ointment.”

I reached over and brushed his neck, and then recoiled in horror when the skin crumbled underneath my touch and a piece broke off. It left behind a broken hole with edges curled outwards like the aftermath of an implosion. The piece of skin fluttered into my hand, and I shook it off and ground my palms into my pants until it burned.

Tia nosed the piece of skin and frowned. “Now look what you did. I told you. Stop scratching!”

“It itches!” Basil shrieked. He clawed at the broken spot and flayed skin pieces everywhere, but then Tia grabbed his wrists and restrained him. He whined, still wriggling his fingers to reach the itch.

Tia examined the patch and then snorted. “Your new scales haven’t even fully grown in yet. It must be that junk you put on your neck. Told you that stuff was bad.” She turned to me. “Looks like we’re going to have to go now, Ly-lee. I have to take care of Basil. Again. You’ll be all right, yeah?”

I nodded, my eyes still fixated on Basil’s cracking skin. With his hands still detained, the poor lizard arched his head down and tried to gnaw at the spot. He retreated and whimpered when his sister hissed at him. He was dragged by the wrists out the lab while his body trembled under malice of an ungratified itch.

“Don’t work too hard, Ly-lee, it’s not good for you!” Tia called out before they left.

It was nine in the evening when we stowed enough data away to make leaving work remotely acceptable. Even such, it would have been a faux pas for the urbane sorts of Secondary to do so and most stayed. Not for an uncultured simpleton like me though. Because in all honesty, no amount of overtime in the world could coax me to entertain at the Bunny’s lovely shindig any longer.

“Leaving already, Lyle?” a coworker asked when I packed up my station. His vision didn’t stray from his keyboard.

“Yeah, I’m done here. Tetra doesn’t pay me enough for this bullshit.”

“Blame Kanid Technologies. They’re the reason Tetra’s running scared and trying to run the blitz, seeing how the hostile takeover play failed. You do remember when they tried that buyout, right?”

“Can’t say that I have, no.”

“You should really pay more attention to your own company, really. That’s what the hell they pay you for.”

“Fine then. They don’t pay me enough to care. Besides, I got a couple of little demons back home to take care of.”

“Lucky bastard. It’s like a party back home, eh?”

“Every day is a party with these guys.”

“Then you’re already ahead of the jeffe. All this business made him miss a big one today. Poor guy.”

“Eh, forgive me if I don’t shed a tear. I’m sure he has like a couple dozen more, anyway. I wonder where he finds them all?”

“‘Hoes Are Us,’ probably. I heard they have a buy-three-get-one whore special going on. He probably has some frequent-customer discounts too. You know, that asshole could probably share the wealth a little.”

“That sounds a bit commie, buddy.”

He leaned back and stretched his arms. “It’s not like Uncle Sam’s capitalism got me anywhere, fucking rabbits.”

I patted his shoulder goodbye and left my colleagues to the deal with the boutique. I got aboard the late train (SX16, who was not nearly as attractive as her sister, sad to say) and departed to attend to my charges. You really do realize how many valuable excuses you can synthesize when life saddled you with responsibilities.

---

“Ooooh… that feels good, do it again.”

That odd moaning made me pause in front of my door with my hand hovering over entry panel. For a moment, I thought my tiredness had brought me to the door to another tenant’s room because someone was having way too much fun in there. I double-checked the door number. 4-15A, my room. The only thing that was supposed to be behind this door was a couple of lizard siblings doing who-knows-what.

I slid the door open and found Basil laying on his stomach on the carpet with his with his limbs splayed out and his eyes closed. His sister was straddling his lower back. She arched forward and clutched at his back, pressing his body onto the floor and eking out pale moans. Basil’s tongue slipped out between rows of teeth and lolled in panting pleasure. Only the small table lamp illuminated the room with a copper hue that shined their scales like miniature reflectors. Towels stolen from the bathroom piled around them.

I slid the door closed and watched Tia knead her claws into her brother’s glistening hide. She stretched and climbed her hands along his spine and massaged his neck and shoulders. Her hands left a tickle behind his neck, to Basil’s moaning content, and they reached down to start over. Neither noticed me.

“Evening, guys,” I said. Tia looked up in mid-stretch, and she smiled and clicked her tongue. I sat down on the couch. “Having fun tonight?”

“He’s having fun, all right, making me peel off his old scales for him,” Tia said. She removed her claws from Basil, to his whining protests, and wiped her hands with a towel. A translucent patch of skin fluttered from her hand to the floor and settled among piles of similar pieces.

She reached over and took a bottle of mineral oil from the table and squirted a bit onto her hands. She rubbed the oil into her palms and leaned over Basil again. Stretched over him, she nestled her chin over his frill and started polishing his sides.

“This is all your fault, Ly-lee,” she said.

“My fault? For what?”

“Because of you, my brother had an excuse to make me give him a massage. He’s not even supposed to shed his skin yet.” She sat up slapped Basil’s side. “Eh? It’s true, isn’t it, little brother?”

Basil moaned and peeked open one of his eyes. He retracted his tongue and parted his jaws just enough to speak. “She gives the best messages ever,” he said. He paused to sigh. “She should give one to you, Ly-lee.”

Smiling, Tia brought her hands up and wiggled her oil-glinting fingers for me to see. “Everyone says I give good massages. Want to see if they’re right? I’ll do you next.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” I said.

“You sure? You look tired. A massage would be good for you.”

“She’s right, you look like you need one,” Basil said with his eyes shut.

I waved the idea away. “No, really. I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

She shrugged. “Well, okay then. I owe you one then. Whenever you want it.” She dried her hands with another towel and tapped on Basil’s forehead. “As for you, yours is done.”

Basil whimpered. “Already? It hasn’t even been that long.”

“It’s been an hour already. You’re done.”

“But—”

He shrilled when she pinched his thigh.

“Clean up your scales and throw them away,” Tia said. “Don’t let Ly-lee to clean up the mess for you. I’m going to take a bath. Then, I’ll finish that letter.”

She patted his sides a few times and rose up. She brushed loose scales from her body, pecked her brother’s forehead with a kiss, and left for the bathroom. Basil, his limp body still refusing to acknowledge that its hour of bliss was over, turned to his side and blinked at the piles of shed skin. Eventually, he stretched with a hand to reach them, but his clawtips fell short. He groaned and rolled onto his back.

“Feeling good?” I asked.

He twisted his head along the floor and looked at me upside-down. He yawned and curled his lips in satisfaction. “Oh yeah. Never better.”

“That’s good. That’s good.” I turned on the rest of the lights and held in a chuckle at the sight of Basil’s pale pink skin. “You’re fine, right? No problems or anything”

He closed his eyes. “Yep. No problemos.”

“All right. It’s been a rough day. I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too late, yeah?”

Basil hummed an acknowledgment, and I retired to the bedroom. I plopped down onto my bed and reeled from the pain of my spine twisting itself like limp spaghetti. But I was okay. The knowledge that my lizard friends were okay was enough for me. I supposed that even an Isian lizard needed a little downtime now and then, and I left it at that for the night. Just so long as everyone found their happy and carefree selves. Sleep came as easily as my ignorance.