Chapter 3

Lilith

The frog was back. Or maybe it was a different frog. I don't know how, or why, or when, but two days later, there was a frog in my planter.

I took it outside again, scolding it the entire way, and this time I made sure to deposit it a little more carefully, placing it under some bushes on the far side of the building property. Then I came back inside and searched the entire apartment, looking for any opening that it could have gotten in through. All the air vents were secure and the windows—though they all had paint peeling from the sills and creaky locks—were closed up tight as well. My doors were fitted tightly with no spaces something could enter through. The apartment was certainly old and in need of renovation, but there were no obvious gaps anywhere that I could find. There was nothing.

I had frogs magically appearing in my living room.

Maybe they were coming out of the planter? But I had planted that tree myself and had broken up the root ball and checked it for anything "off" the same way I've always done for every plant I've re-potted. It made no sense.

The next day, there was another frog. "What is going on?" I practically yelled at the frog. He was half buried in the damp potting soil, his little backside dug into the substrate, placidly sitting there with his little froggy eyes giving a thousand-yard stare. This was out of control.

I scooped him up and examined him. Now, I'm no frog-ologist, but I was pretty sure this was the same frog. It had the same toady little body, the same coloring, the same warty little bumps on its head and shoulders. His eyes were buggy and giving major "no thoughts, just frog" vibes, and his throat pouch was going a mile a minute, but he didn't struggle in my hands at all. "You can't keep doing this," I told him. "My house is not the place for you. I don't have frog food. There are no ponds for you to sit in. I'm going to come in here one day and find your desiccated little frog body dried out in my pot. Nobody wants that," I explained to him.

I carried him outside and deposited him farther away this time before continuing on to work, where I scrubbed my hands until I thought my skin might come off.

Later that day, I asked, "Artem, have you ever had a frog just show up inside your house?"

The old man paused with the watering can he held and looked at me like I was crazy. "Why would a frog show up inside my house?"

"I don't know! I keep finding a frog in my house."

"The same frog?" he asked incredulously.

"I think so," I responded with uncertainty.

He continued to stare at me like I was crazy, so I let it drop. "Never mind." I waved him off, and he shuffled away to return to his tasks, leaving me to finish balancing the books.

And then the frog was there, waiting for me, when I returned home that evening. And I had absolutely had enough. I had begged. I'd scolded. I'd pleaded. I'd threatened. I had implored it to stay out of my house. Did I know that talking to a frog, magical or not, was nonsense? Yes. Did I do it anyway? Also yes.

What else was I going to find in my house next? If a frog could get in, what else could? I also didn't want it to die of starvation or dehydration, which seemed inevitable if it managed to stay inside without me noticing it.

But Frog didn't listen.

Frog never left.

Frog was eternal.

Frog was determined to live in my plant pot.

But my plant pot already had plenty of unwelcome guests making it home— I'm looking at you, fungi friends —and so I scooped the toady menace up again and marched it right back outside.

How far away does one need to take a frog to keep it from returning to the same place?

Alistair

My neighbor was in a tree.

I'd smelled the perfume of her skin long before I arrived, that beguiling scent that had plagued me every night since she moved in as I worked among my plants. Splicing and budding and grafting my trees in my home was supposed to be a peaceful experience for me, but the scent of her living below me made me restless. My antennae itched with how much I enjoyed it, and I frowned at her, perched as she was in the sprawling branches of an old royal ibec tree in a field down the road from our building. I'd always appreciated the unique texture of its bark, myself.

I halted my flight to work, landing along the walkway to take a closer look at her confusing behavior. Rubbing at the base of my antenna, trying to scrub away her scent and free myself from her thrall, I thought about whether to approach. I had left a very exciting project in my lab—a scion I was trying to graft with a new technique!—and I wanted to see if the splint had held. I spread my wings to continue on my way… and then slowly folded them back again.

Why was my neighbor in the tree? I didn't think elvish people—or whatever she was; I wasn't particularly well-versed in the non-forest races—were tree-dwelling people. The elves I knew all tended to prefer bigger cities and more urban environments than I had much experience with, but maybe this one had a penchant for tree climbing. The way she was sprawled awkwardly within the branches, not even gripping one with her—admittedly very few—forelimbs made me doubt that she had any kind of arboreal adeptness.

I glanced forlornly in the direction of my laboratory, but I knew that my incessant curiosity and predilection for imagining the worst-case scenarios in every situation would keep me from being able to focus on my tasks without first ascertaining the well-being of this aromatically enticing neighbor. Sigh.

Picking my way across the poorly mown grass and doing my best to ignore the overly prickly feeling of the thick, rough blades between the sensitive pads of my feet, I studied the woman as I approached. Her skin was a warm golden brown, and her chin-length hair a deep chestnut with a hint of red showing in the setting sun. Her face was very expressive—an endearing trait to someone such as me without as many malleable features —clearly broadcasting her frustration and discomfort at the moment. Eyes the same reddish-chestnut color tracked my progress across the damp, horrible lawn. I could have flown, yes, but her precarious position in the branches made me loathe to risk startling her and causing her to slip.

"Hello, there," I called to her.

"Hi," she responded in an oddly squeaky tone. Her cheeks flushed pink immediately. She was stretched forward across two larger limbs, her legs awkwardly braced to keep her from falling, but instead of holding on to the branches as seemed appropriate for a wingless creature, she was cupping her hands in front of her and resting her elbow as another point of contact on the branch. I never did understand how these people survived with so few forelimbs.

"Do you require assistance?" I asked her, half hoping she did not so that I could see to my scions that much more quickly.

Curiously, the pink in her cheeks deepened to a ruddier hue. "Uh… Possibly. I mean, maybe? I don't suppose you have a ladder?" She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh.

I stared at her for a beat longer than I should have, trying to make sense of her question. I'd never had need of a ladder in my life, but the ground-dwelling races obviously used them when they needed to ascend something tall that had no stairs. Perhaps a nearby construction project would have a ladder, but I didn't really need one to get her down when I could fly.

"I'm stuck," she clarified.

"I see that," I assured her. "Unfortunately, I do not own a ladder. However, I am prepared to assist you down, if you would like," I offered.

"Oh, no. I'm afraid if you climb up here it will shake the branches and I'll fall." Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke.

Perhaps she assumed that the wings on my back were purely for aesthetic purposes. If I could have rolled my eyes in my head, I would have. Alas, I could not—I'd always been envious of that ability—so I snapped my wings out dramatically instead and gestured to them with all four hands. "I have no need to climb the tree. I can easily fly up and retrieve you."

"I don't… I don't think that's a good idea," she said with another short laugh, this one sounding incredibly nervous. "I'm not exactly pixie-sized, right? I've got thighs for days and a booty to match," she said with another strange-sounding laugh. "Don't worry about it, I'll figure something out," she finished half-heartedly.

Did she think I couldn't lift her? It was true that she didn't have the slender build most common to the elvish people, instead possessing a rounded softness that I found rather pleasing, personally. But unless she was made of lead, it was rather insulting to imply that I couldn't support such a small weight. I could carry a full-grown orc if I wanted to. "Miss—"

"Lilith," she supplied quickly. "My name is Lilith."

I nodded. A beautiful name. "Miss Lilith, I have a fourteen-foot wingspan." I gestured to my wings again and flared them to their fullest spread, feeling the bases of my antennae heat with embarrassment at such a forward display. "I can assure you that it would not be a problem to lift you down."

To my confusion, she shrank back slightly, closer to the trunk of the tree, clearly uncomfortable with the idea.

"Or—" I paused to think. "—I can summon emergency services?" I offered, having no desire to pressure her. "I'm sure they would have a ladder and experience with retrieving wayward elves from ibec trees."

"Oh, no," she gasped, "please don't bother them with this. That's so embarrassing. I'm fine. I'll just… I'm sure I can figure out how to get down," she babbled, her fear evident in her voice. She shifted slightly on the branch, glanced down, and then promptly froze again.

The odds of her climbing down without the use of her hands seemed incredibly dubious to me. Instead of lifting her down, as would be easiest, I decided to join her in the tree. "I'm coming up," I warned her, then beat my wings in short, forceful strokes, just enough to lift myself off the ground. Angling between a gap in the branches where I could settle myself on a nearby limb, I used my taloned feet to grip carefully close to the trunk so as not to dislodge her from her perch. Her alluring scent had clung to my densely feathered mane after she ran into me a few evenings ago, and it was overwhelming again this close to her. Her alarmed expression quickly calmed as I shifted my weight away from her to show that I wasn't planning to snatch her out of the tree but was simply joining her. The freckles across her nose and cheekbones, which I'd noticed while staring at her under the lamplight before, were barely visible in the shadows of the tree.

"If I join you up here," I started to explain, "then I can see to instruct you on the best footholds to climb down. Though if I may suggest, it seems like the use of your hands would be beneficial."

"I can't. I've got a frog." She said it as though that were all the explanation required.

"A frog," I prompted, after it became clear that was all she was going to say on the matter.

"Yeah. In my hands. I brought it out here," she nodded at the field below us, "because I'm tired of it coming into my house, so I figured this was far enough away, you know? But then a crow snatched it up and flew up here to eat it, alive, and I can't be responsible for that. It'd be my fault it was dead!" She clamped her mouth shut, grimacing as she realized she had been babbling again.

"So, you… climbed the tree?" I asked.

"I… Yes… Because the bird dropped the frog when I chased it, and it got caught in the crook of this branch on the way down. I couldn't leave it like that. I felt so bad."

"And now you're stuck, because you're holding the frog," I surmised.

"That, and I didn't realize how high up I was until I looked down." Her voice took on a slightly higher pitch.

"Ah," I said, things finally clicking into place. "So you're afraid of heights."

"Um, yes. Yeah. That probably seems so silly to someone who can fly. This is so embarrassing. I can't believe I climbed up here."

I tried to give my most soothing hum from deep in my thorax. "I think it was very brave to climb up here, if you were afraid. We all have our fears. I'm afraid of lots of things that would probably seem silly to you."

She shifted the weight of her legs on the tree branch, obviously uncomfortable with the way it was digging into her knee, but as she did, she looked down and froze in fear again.

I kept talking, trying to distract her but struggling to come up with something suitable. "I'm afraid of… um... gum," I said, frowning slightly as I realized what I'd just said.

But it worked.

She jerked her gaze to me and gave a few rapid blinks. "You're afraid of chewing gum?" she asked doubtfully.

"I am," I affirmed with a nod. "It's sticky and awful. Imagine getting it stuck in my fluff," I explained, stroking the feathers of my mane with a hand. "It happened once, thanks to the same small child you witnessed terrorizing my orchard," I explained. Miela had gotten a wad of it stuck in my mane one time and it had taken her mother, Solandis, over an hour to get it out using peanut butter. We'd nearly had to cut it out, and I would have spent months walking around with a hole in my mane. Gum was horrible stuff. "It is now firmly off-limits around my person," I said with a huff, causing her to give me a flicker of a bemused smile. I wanted to punch the air with pride at having managed to draw out even the smallest of smiles from her in her distressed state, but I refrained and searched instead for something else with which to distract her.

"Oh, and angler fish," I stated, suddenly remembering how horrifying they looked. I sat back further on my own branch, trying to get comfortable while I waited for my companion's nerves to continue to calm. It was strangely enjoyable watching her expressions as she mentally parsed through her reactions to my announced fears.

Confused amusement was what she landed on. "Why would you be afraid of angler fish?" she asked curiously. "Have you ever even seen one in person?"

I huffed at her and crossed my upper arms. "Of course not. Since they can't survive out of the deep ocean and I cannot swim, I doubt I'll ever meet one face to face. Can you imagine me swimming?" I gestured at my wings and the sheer amount of poofy fuzz covering my body. "I would look like a drowned rat," I informed her. If I'd had a nose, I would have raised it in the air at the thought of such a disgraceful image. I hated being wet. It was the worst.

She gave me another confused smile, still not understanding. "Then why…" She let her question trail off.

"I've seen pictures of them, and that's enough for me. The mere concept of angler fish is terrifying. Just imagine being down in the deep, dark ocean and suddenly coming upon a lovely little glowing lamp. You excitedly swim over to check out such an exquisite find, and then GIANT NEEDLE TEETH EMERGE FROM THE DARKNESS!" It was the ultimate betrayal. I might have gotten a little loud and dramatic, considering Lilith burst into laughter at my narration. Working to lower my voice, I concluded, "Truly the stuff of nightmares."

Her smile was wide as she settled a little more comfortably beside me. The sound of her laughter made my chest feel jittery, and I decided I needed to hear more of it. I cast about mentally for something else to make her laugh.

"What is your most ridiculous fear? I bet I can top it," I challenged.

"I can't really think of a ridiculous one," she answered slowly. "Unless you count the fear of heights," she said, glancing down as she said it.

"No!" That was not what I wanted. "It only counts if it can't actually harm you." Back to silly topics and not the drop below her. I would never allow her to fall. I could reach out and snatch her back in an instant, but doing so might injure her delicate skin if I weren't able to be as careful as I wanted with my claws. Better to calm her nerves and discuss a safer way to get her down, one that she consented to and felt safe with.

"Um, I don't know. Death? Dying?"

I scoffed. "You're terrible at this game."

"How about… monsters," she decided, enunciating slowly and looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "I guess… those aren't even real… so it's a ridiculous fear."

"Hm, I suppose," I conceded, scooting closer to her. Many people would consider me a monster, for some bizarre reason—probably because they felt inadequate due to their limited number of arms—but if she didn't, then I felt no need to correct her. Time to implement my plan. "How about I take your frog from you, and then your hands will be free to grip the branch?" I held out one of my hands toward her, still able to hold on to the tree with five other perfectly useful appendages, trying not to convey my smugness at how superior mothpeople's bodies were.

Lilith frowned at my hand. "He's slimy," she warned me, glancing back at my face.

I couldn't keep my own frown from mirroring hers. Slime in the velvety covering on my hands was utterly dreadful. I sighed and wiggled my fingers at her to encourage her to give up the frog.

She did, albeit hesitantly, gripping the plump little body carefully as she slowly reached to deposit the creature into my hand. I closed my fingers around it just as carefully and drew it closer to study it.

"He looks familiar," I muttered. "Is this Patrick?"

She paused while scrubbing the palm of her hand off on the bark of the unsuspecting tree and blinked at me. "I wasn't aware frogs have names."

"Why wouldn't they have names?"

"I don't know. It just started showing up in my apple tree pot around the same time that those little low-fae mushrooms from your orchard began growing in it."

"Then it's probably Patrick," I decided. This silly git was friends with some of the mushrooms that my friend Solandis had encouraged to infest my orchard, claiming the little biters helped my trees. He was always getting himself into a pickle. "You said he was inside your house?" I asked, trying to distract her again. "See if you can put your toe on the ridge of that bark, there on the trunk," I suggested, pointing to the spot where I thought she had the greatest chance of attaining traction.

"Um, yes," she confirmed as she carefully focused on simultaneously answering my question, following my suggestion, and not on looking at the ground, as I had hoped. "Do you know how he gets in? I've checked everywhere."

"I haven't the slightest idea." I didn't even know how he could have gotten there from the orchard. But maybe the mushrooms just hung out with any old frog? "Can you reach that limb there?" I asked as I pointed. Dropping from the limb I had perched on, I lowered myself to be able to get a better vantage point.

"I think so," she replied, her voice a little shaky again.

"You're doing fantastically. Just look at me—no, don't look down, focus on me—I won't let you get hurt," I encouraged, producing the most soothing buzz I knew and keeping a hand close to her so she had a safe place to grab onto if she needed. Her tremulous smile made my heart beat faster. I hadn't paid enough attention to notice how pretty she was before this evening, or perhaps her smile simply amplified her beauty so much that I couldn't miss it.

She did take hold of my hand as she climbed, startling me enough that I had lost the train of the conversation when she asked, "Is he fae?"

"Pardon?" I asked, trying to ignore the swarm of moth wings beating frantically in my chest.

"The frog," she clarified, reminding me of the slimy little body in my hand that I'd conveniently forgotten about. She leaned more of her weight onto my hand and bravely reached for another branch with her foot. "You said the mushrooms were low-fae. Is the frog fae too?"

"Oh, no. I've never seen a frog-fae. Though if you see one of the jackalopes around here, that's a fae."

She stumbled into me as I helped to lower her onto the ground. "Jackalopes are real?" She asked incredulously. "Wha—what about other cryptids? Is Bigfoot real?"

"Of course," I assured her, helping to steady her and checking her over to make sure she was unharmed. Bigfoot was the name of one of the members of a group of brown forest yetis, but he was certainly real. As my friend Jordan would say, Bigfoot was a real dick. And he was sorely lacking in personal hygiene. But that wasn't what she'd asked.

Lilith blinked at me rapidly, and then her surroundings, finally realizing she was safely on the ground. "Thank you," she said, her voice pitching high again as she released my hand and stepped back. I immediately regretted the loss, but withdrew my hand as well.

"We did it!" she exclaimed, turning to look at the tree before fixing me with her gaze. "But you never told me what your most ridiculous fear is."

I'd already forgotten my impulsive challenge. Sigh. "Bugs," I admitted, steeling myself for her reaction.

She jerked her head back, clearly startled by my confession. "Bugs? But you're—"

"Not a bug," I clarified haughtily, straightening one of my antennae that had become absurdly mussed in the branches. "I may appear similarly built to an insect, but it's called ‘convergent evolution.' You can look it up."

Half a dozen reactions flickered across her features again before she settled on incredulity. "You're afraid of all bugs? Or just certain ones?"

"I dislike most of them immensely," I hedged, "but cicadas are the worst with their incessant screaming." Bees and other pollinators were tolerable due to their work for my beloved fruit trees. No amount of hand pollinating could compare to the natural course of things, no matter how many hands I had.

Lilith wrinkled her nose, highlighting the delightful freckles dappled across its dainty bridge, and let her head dip, trying not to laugh. I was taken by the way her hair skimmed across her cheek bones. "They are pretty creepy," she agreed, "but they're only singing their love songs with their butts." She erupted into a fit of laughter so forceful that I found myself beaming at her entirely against my will, as if she had drawn my mouth into an involuntary grin. She was adorable.

Silence began to stretch, and she cleared her throat. I straightened quickly, realizing I was listing toward her slightly, entranced by her warmth and good cheer. There was no reason to stay any longer, as she was safely on the ground and I was free to take Patrick back to the orchard. But I found myself desiring to prolong our contact.

"I should probably find a better place to release the frog—"

"How are your—"

We both spoke over each other and then stopped. She blinked at me and rolled her lips in to bite them, embarrassed.

"Pardon me," I apologized for interrupting her. "Seeing as my hand is already sullied with amphibian secretions," I paused to heft the slight weight of his cool, damp body in my hand, "I might as well take him back to the orchard on my way to the office. There is no danger of crows finding him there," I assured her. The mushrooms would see to that. Vicious little creatures.

"Oh! That would be lovely, thank you."

I flashed her a wistful smile as I accepted that our interaction was over and stepped away, lifting the frog toward her as an awkward parting wave.

She stopped me. "Oh, wait, was there something you were going to ask me just now?" Her face looked curiously hopeful when I turned back to her.

My antennae flushed hot again as I took in another whiff of her pleasant scent. Whatever that was, she should bottle it up and sell it. I wracked my brain, trying to remember my question. "Oh, yes! I was going to ask how your trees were doing?" I was still feeling smug that she'd liked my Moon Blush apples enough to buy out all the rest of the bare root stock of our four-foot semi-dwarf saplings.

The curious hope immediately drained from her expression.