Page 6 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
A recluse by choice, not because of a hereditary medical condition.
Unfortunately, Zero did not agree about the virtues of the outdoors and complained mightily. He was more than happy to spend his adolescence with his nose in a book and parked motionless in front of a screen.
Zero flung himself down on the rock beside Winter, groaning dramatically. “I’m gonna die…”
“You will recover,” Winter said, handing the kit a bottle of water and a pair of specially created sunglasses. “Put these on. Do not damage your eyesight.”
Zero complied, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and also, somehow, standing straight up from the wind.
With an amused huff, Winter plucked a leaf from his kit’s hair.
A comfortable silence fell between father and son. His body ached pleasantly. Some mornings, his joints moved stiffly as he lumbered out of bed, but he could still hike and appreciate the natural world.
The bot whirred and beeped below them. “That really is the dumbest thing Uncle Chase’s ever built. Like give up, stop bashing the rock,” Zero said.
Winter could order the bot to cease, but Chase’s directives were to have it field-tested, which meant he had to allow the bot to batter itself to pieces. Hopefully, the sensors and programming kicked in to tell it to stop, unless it was locked in a loop. Even a worst-case scenario where the bot destroyed itself provided usable data.
He sighed at the remarkably unintelligent bot. He had hoped to keep production costs down. The small size and versatility of the bot would make it instrumental to colonists and individuals on isolated, far-flung homesteads. The military, of course, would be interested in anything with explosives strapped to it. He considered that a neutral use of his research, as the bot had as much potential to save lives as it did to inflict harm.
Chase would insist on marketing it as a personal servant, ideal for glamorous camping, to the idle wealthy, the exact sort who traveled three weeks in a private space yacht for rare mushrooms that only sprouted once a decade and had to be harvested by moonlight or they turned toxic. That sort.
He and his cousin agreed on very little, especially when it came to running the company. That Chase had always been the favorite did not help.
“Dad, pay attention.” Zero nudged his shoulder.
The moon drifted across the sky as if pulled to the sun. Strange how it hung almost unmoving in the sky all day, but now the eclipse approached alarmingly fast.
“Look!” Zero pointed to the ground. Leaves from nearby trees scattered shadows of the eclipse on the ground.
The sky dimmed into darkness as the moon eclipsed the sun, and the light took on an ethereal quality.
“It’s red. So cool,” Zero said, despite knowing the color held little meaning for his father. “The sky is normally blue. Red is dark and a bit like blood.”
“Blood red,” Winter said, recognizing the phrase.
A ring of dancing fire, blinding in its intensity, encircled the moon. Winter held out a hand, letting the refracted shadow dance across his skin. He traveled light-years to witness this moment. His heart hammered in his chest, partly from a mix of exertion and awe.
Mostly awe, he decided.
Zero squirmed beside him.
“The wonders of the universe bore you?” Winter asked.
“No,” Zero said too quickly, which meant he was hiding something.
“And it has nothing to do with the notecards in your pocket?”
Zero’s ears flattened as he shifted to pull out the battered notecards. “Can I?”
“Please.” Winter turned his gaze back to the vista stretching before them, waiting patiently for his kit to gather his thoughts. This was hardly a conventional location for a presentation, but he couldn’t think of a better spot.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I know your schedule is busy.” Zero shuffled the notecards before tapping them against his thigh. “I believe my presentation,” he made an awkwardly stiff sweep with one hand, “will convince you that my proposal is advantageous to both our interests. There’s supposed to be a whiteboard. Imagine the whiteboard.”
“Consider it done.” Winter’s tail swished with amusement as he watched his son stumble awkwardly through his presentation. He found Zero’s copy ofThe Art of Persuasion and Arguments, so he had an inkling this was coming. Zero had an analytical mind and researched everything thoroughly, especially before venturing into unexplored territory.
Zero cleared his throat. “I could bore you with the statistics for adverse outcomes for child prodigies who receive exclusively private tutoring—”
“Were you able to find any statistics?” Winter leaned forward, the uneven rock digging into his ass. The shadows of the eclipse scattered over Zero’s face and the notecards.
