Lost Change

Chapter 44

Sixteen sunrises left.

I settled down from the Morning Song and glanced back to the couch. The Kymari was sitting there with a sunburst berry. Fine. Let's get this over with.

It had been four days since I had been freed from the cast on my side. Now I only had the casts on my wings to go. My side had bothered me until the next day, and each breath had taken me a little more effort than it had used to... but by dinner that next day I had been back to normal. Even my leg felt close to its usual shape.

Which was great timing, because that was when the Kymari began putting my speed to the test.

I hopped up onto the couch and made sure to stay well away from the coffee table. The Kymari bobbed the berry to try and distract me... but I wasn't fooled. I kept a wary eye on the hand she kept by the table as I stretched my neck forward and carefully took the berry...

Ha! Too slow!

I saw her hand move out of the corner of my eye, but she wasn't nearly fast enough. I hopped out of her reach and rewarded the attempt with a swipe from my claws, feeling them connect with her hand and sink deep through the flesh. She made a frustrated sound and yanked her hand back. I doubted that slash would dissuade her any more than the other cuts and bites had... but it made me feel better.

The Kymari had finally decided to try and put that blasted harness on me. Our nightly routine for the past few days had seen her come home and spend a few minutes settling in before she would get a bowl of random fruits for my dinner. I had already accepted eating out of her hand and wasn't really willing to go hungry all night just to prove a point, so each night saw me perched in her lap and waiting impatiently for the next piece of fruit.

There were a few times I considered biting her just because, especially near the end of the meal when I wasn't as hungry... but for some reason that idea had become less appealing to me, and continued to do so with each meal.

But for the last three nights she had laid out the collection of straps on the table before she sat down to feed me, and at some point during the meal she made an attempt to put the thing on me. The first night her attempt had been after I had started chewing through an apple slice, but after that she had waited until she had passed me a sunburst berry before she made the attempt. That had almost worked - those things were good, and I liked focusing on the taste of them - but I had been wary after her attempt with the apple. I had managed to hop out of reach with only a parting swipe of my claws each time, then spent several minutes squawking and hissing angrily at her from the far side of the couch.

I refused to go anywhere near her again until she had tossed the harness far out of her reach. She eventually managed to coax me back over with held up fruits - though the third time I refused to go back until she upped the bribe to a full sunburst berry - and then I could finish dinner in peace.

At first I had been kind of worried about today and tomorrow, since her days off would mean she would have nothing else to do but trap me in that thing... but I was starting to think I had wasted all my time worrying over nothing. Ivy had made it sound like the Kymari were much too quick to avoid, and they were fast... but it was becoming obvious that my Kymari did not have the same speed and reflexes the others had. The growing collection of scars along her hand and arm were proof of that.

I was especially proud of one slash in particular, which had required her to get what looked like stitches all along the back of her arm. That had come from the first and only time she had tried catching me in the harness outside of a meal, when my hands weren't occupied with food.