Copyright J.B. Norman
As part of the week-long celebrations of the Spring Festival in Porthaven, petting zoos featuring the season’s smallest and cutest animals are often set up in the city’s public spaces.
Hearing word of a particularly large and fluffy bunny at one of the petting zoos, Tenebella set out with Kat and the Four Horsemen of Castle Ansangaar. She has been pleased to discover that the bunny in question more than lives up to his reputation.
“Can we go now?” Kat asks, looking down to where Tenebella is seated with the bunny on her lap, grinning with contentment as he pats and pets its head.
Kat, meanwhile, has to contend with a goat that seems to fascinated with butting her shins, not hard enough to hurt, but certainly persistently enough that it feels like Kat has had a run-in with a four-legged Dunstana.
“I—” She opens her mouth to speak, only to be distracted by the goat’s head once again pressing into her leg. “Stop that! Are you hungry? Do you want food? Is that why you’re doing this?”
The goat quizzically tilts its horned head, and stops butting into Kat…
… and promptly starts chewing on her pant cuff.
“Whatever,” Kat sighs.
“We have few creatures such as this at Castle Ansangaar,” Tenebella muses. “I believe my father would think it wasteful to keep animals intended to be small and cute and huggable. He would much rather keep war mammoths. And war pigs. And war wolves. And war goldfish. And, well, you get the idea.”
Her smile grows as she continues to pet the bunny in her lap.
“This is quite the novel and enjoyable experience,” he declares. “This is quite the pleasant Spring Festival present.”
Her face darkens as she looks up at Kat.
“But there is yet one more thing I would request as your present to me,” she says quietly.
“Uh, okay?” Kat replies.
“The… unpleasantness with the Ancient Tanithnite spells that may or may not have diminished me,” Tenebella notes. “We shall never speak of such a thing again.”
“Way ahead of you,” Kat says.
As ever, the five members of the Four Horsemen of Castle Ansangaar — the fifth of whom is a woman and therefore objects be being classed among the Horsemen — are standing guard over their princess.
Captain Ratsumies, the brothers Secutor and Dimachaerus and Ralph stand a little ways away, dong their best not to disturb either the small animals or the small children while still standing ready to assist Tenebella.
In particular, Secutor has been suspiciously eyeing a large sheep that he thinks might actually be a human assassin disguised in a sheep costume.
Meanwhile, Gwaedbran is watching the nearby pigs with the trained eye of a professional Morfilodish boar rider.
“I’m getting hungry,” Ralph mutters. “And I’m really in the mood for lambchops.”
“Silence, you fool!” Captain Ratsumies cries.
“S-sorry, Captain…”
The Captain puts his hand apologetically on his subordinate’s shoulder. “While it’s true that lamb is indeed delicious,” he explains quietly so as to not be overheard. “This is not the place for that particular discussion. You’ll upset the children and small animals.”
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