Page 62 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
“Yep.” I glanced at Miles and Lyric, saying and asking at the same time, “I guess we’ll just walk around the museum until then. We already have the tickets anyway.”
“Works for me,” Lyric said with a small smile.
Miles nodded, and Aeson said, “Awesome. Make sure you check out the pixie section. It’s weird to me that the pixies didn’t set up there when it’s right by the back door that leads to the gardens. I don’t know how or why they flew all the way to the fourth floor.”
“That really is odd. We’ll check it out.” I gave Aeson a fist-bump, he gave Lyric one, and the kid shot Miles a smile before heading inside.
Chaos said, “Back into my little tunnel of doom.”
“I don’t know how you can stand it in there. I’d get claustrophobic,” Miles said, walking the teen to his ticket booth.
He shrugged. “It’s not so bad as long as I have Clucky in there with me.”
The cockatrice gave a little chirp of approval, and a rare smile formed on Chaos’s lips as he opened the booth door and stepped inside.
Miles and I gave him waves, then headed back into the museum and straight for the pixie history area.
Unsurprisingly, the area had an indoor garden with a few real plants and flowers blooming, but there were a ton of fake plants and flowers throughout as well. Likely because they didn’t have actual pixies tending to this garden, so depending on the season, many of the flowers wouldn’t be in bloom. There were also life-size figures of pixies all over the place, on flowers, hanging from string, making it look like they were flying around the whole area, or drinking from a pretend pond.
According to one of the information plaques, all the fossils and whatnot that’d been found, pixies really hadn’t changed much. They’d always been tiny, always been the smallest faeries in the world—that we knew of—and always shed dust wherever they went.
“Do you think they didn’t like it here because of the little pixie figures?” Miles asked as he poked one that was resting on a fake flower.
I thought about that for a minute. “You know, that’s a good point. They probably didn’t appreciate all the fake flowers either.”
“Definitely not.” Lyric poked another fake pixie that was hanging close to their face. “Pretty much all faeries hate anything plastic. At least that’s what I read…?” They looked at Miles for confirmation.
“True.” Miles hummed. “I don’t think we’ll know anything unless someone figures out how to speak pixie.”
I snorted. “Agreed. Want to look at the next area? I think it’s gremlins.”
“Ohhhh. I like gremlins.” Lyric turned and started walking away.
Miles said, “As long as we avoid the gnome area, I’m game with whatever.”
I barked out a laugh. “Don’t worry, Sidekick, I wouldn’t do that to you.”
He smiled and nudged me. “Good.”
I held out my hand, giving him the option. Even though my touch helped ease the empath noise, sometimes when he got overwhelmed, he didn’t want to be touched, even by me.
That was fine. I wouldn’t lie and say it didn’t suck when he got like that, but mostly because I knew he was suffering, and yeah, I missed his touch.
But I understood too. I didn’t want to pressure him or make him feel bad at all.
So I left the option up to him.
To my utter delight, he pulled off one glove, then slid his bare hand into mine, laced our fingers together, and gave it a squeeze.
My smile was huge. I couldn’t help it. He was so sweet and so trusting, and just… absolutely adorable with his little shy smile.
Leaning over, I kissed his cheek, then pulled him along to follow Lyric to the gremlin exhibit.
Chapter Seventeen
Miles
By the time nine o’clock rolled around, we’d walked through the entire museum and ended in the dragon area. I was annoyed that we had to go all the way back to our car to get our gear now that we were up here—it was late, and I’d had a long day, so I was tired.
