Page 57 of Office of the Lost

The gray squirrel approached cautiously, sniffing at him as if he wasn’t sure whether Crispin was real.

Small wonder.I’ve been gone for days.He reached into his pocket and held out an acorn.

Minkis stood on his hind legs, took it greedily, and dashed back toward the giant oak tree they both called home.

Crispin breathed a sigh of relief.He got his hands under Leo.Why couldn’t you have wished yourself a bit lighter?Still, he managed to lift Leo’s unconscious form.With a mighty huff, he started toward home.

Crispin whistled merrily, and Thea, perched on a little wooden table next to his wash basin, hummed right along with him.

He’d managed to get Leo onto the bed without too many of the leaves that had accompanied him from the forest floor, and his… paramour, he decided, was now in what appeared to be a blissful state of sleep.

It felt good to be home.

Around him, the cozy walls of his tree abode exuded a welcoming warmth, surrounding the wide living space inside.He’d engaged the services of a local dryad when he’d first moved in, and the rather handsome young creature had coaxed the tree to put out a variety of helpful branches, forming cabinets, hooks and wooden towel racks, and even a platform of roots which was now the base of his bed.

He’d furnished the place with colorful bits and pieces that he’d collected during his travels, a practice that was sometimes frowned upon although there was no actual rule against it as long as they were unimportant things, ones that weren’t needed by OotL.And he always paid the locals a fair price.There were the forest-green curtains from Phraxis, a very cuddly semi-animated shaggy brown rug from a dragon weaver on Ferkin Four, and the glorious multicolored quilt from Methezuno City, each panel hand-quilted by a family of ogre nuns, on which Leo was currently resting comfortably.

He finished washing his arms and neck and face.It felt magnificent to be clean again, even if only from the middle up.

He’d need to check his cold stores next to find something to whip up for them to eat.

He was so fixated on the task, looking over sealed satchels of venison and wild blackberries and a whole container of zorfnen from—where else?—Zorf, that he failed to hear the rustling behind him.

“Hey Crispy, why is there a cat on my chest?”The bleary voice brought Crispin to full awareness, like a hoarbear after the first of spring.

He strangled a scream.Minkis was peering back at him from the aforementioned chest perch, his eyes decidedly slitted and catlike, his fabulous bushy tail now a long, gray snakelike thing.

Crispin bounded across the room and picked up Minkis, who looked at him with a disturbingly catlike feral cunning.“Put him back!”

Leo stared at him, confused.“I don’t have him.You do.”He looked around.“This is a crazy place.I once had a dream about a place like this after I had too many of Joey Taylor’s edibles.Am I dreaming?”

“No, you’re awake.This is my house—” Crispin sputtered to a halt.“You… did something to Minkis.He’snotsupposed to be a cat.”His former squirrel squirmed around in his arms, freed himself with the magical prowess of a shapeshifter, and dropped to the ground, landing feet-first.Satisfied, he started licking his soft gray coat with his tongue.

“A squirrel?Oh.I just… when I woke, he was staring at me, and he reminded me of this cat I had at one of my foster homes.His name was Blackie, which was weird because he was entirely gray, except for his toes, which were?—”

Crispin put his hands on his hips.“Change him back,please?”

“You get really grumpy when you’re at home.”Nevertheless, Leo closed his eyes, creased his brow, and with an audible pop, Minkis’s tail fluffed out, his ears shrank, and his eyes moved back onto the sides of his head.The little creature shuddered, looked up at him with a clearly betrayed look—whether for being turned into a cat or being changed back, Crispin couldn’t tell—and scampered up a branch into the dark recesses of the ceiling.

Crispin sighed.He knew that Leo couldn’t help it.He should be grateful that his whole tree house hadn’t transformed into—what did they call them on Earth?—a trailer.

He sat on the edge of the mattress, which was stuffed with astral down from Rigel 3, and put a hand on Leo’s forehead.It felt normal—warm, but goodish warm.“It’s not your fault.But we’ll have to help you get a better handle on your Chaos.Can’t have you changing the world willy-nilly and causing….”

“Chaos?”The smile Leo gave him lit a spark of pure joy in Crispin’s heart.

He snorted a very un-desk-fae-like snort.“I suppose a certain bit of that is inevitable.”And it would certainly keep things interesting between them.“You don’t seem sick.”He leaned over and kissed his paramour.

But he wanted to do more.They were alone with a bed in the place he felt safest, after all.That nagging doubt about whether Leo had changed him resurfaced, but he ruthlessly pushed it down.

Maybe he could strip Leo, one piece of clothing at a time, and wash his delicious body with a warm, soapy sponge….

Minkis made a sudden reappearance, chittering wildly, at the same time that a loud knock sounded at the tree house’s only door.

Leo sat up, exposing his beautiful, even if not muscularly impressive, chest.“Are we expecting someone?”

Crispin sighed.Drop-ins were unusual but not unheard of.This part of the forest was rather sparsely settled, but sometimes Mrs.Dollywip would send one of her nineteen children over for a cup of this or a bowl of that, and old Meeser Crowflup occasionally needed help with something above the dwarf’s reach in his own subterranean den.

He just hoped it wasn’t his boss.Should have set the wards.

---