Considering just two days ago I was chained to his wall scrubbing his floors with a mop and wire brush, and this morning I was still traveling through interstellar space on my way here with no plan of what I was going to do when I arrived, and now I had a well-paying secure job and was on my way to buying my return ticket home, I didn’t think I was doing too badly.
Cleb shifted position on the hardwood chair and tried to get comfortable. He had a large book spread out before him on bugs and plants of Arcturon Prime’s natural world. Why was it so important for young Titans to learn this stuff? I didn’t know.
But Cleb clearly wasn’t a bookworm. He spent most of his time chewing on his pencil and doodling in the margins of his notebook. He would never get anything done at this pace.
I grabbed the book he was studying, snapped it shut, and tucked it under my arm.
“Come on,” I said.
I hustled toward the exit. He struggled to keep up with me.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Outside,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day. If you want to learn about bugs and plants and flowers, it’s best to learn about them in their natural environment.”
“The other governesses never let me study outside,” Cleb said, clearly excited.
“But I’m not a governess, am I?” I said with a wink.
Once we reached the back garden, I opened the book to the flowers and plants section.
“Okay,” I said. “First, take a look at this Trachean flower. It looks like… tracheas? Weird. Go out into the garden and see if you can find one. Snap it off and bring it back to me when you do.”
Cleb ran around the garden, returning with various flowers. It took four attempts, but finally, he was successful. Then we read through the book together and identified all the key parts. We cut the flower open and peered more closely at its inner workings.
Cleb’s eyes glinted with excitement. He was barely focusing and he was remembering far better than he had in the stuffy old library. When we cut open other plants and flowers, I asked him to identify everything we already learned. He was thrilled to realize many of the flowers consisted of the same parts.
“We’re all connected,” I said. “Every plant and animal is linked. We might not look much like a plant but they have to attract each other the same way we do.”
“I’ll never attract a girl!” Cleb said. “They’re smelly!”
“Oh, we are, are we?” I said, and I grabbed him and tickled his belly.
He giggled uproariously.
After we went through the flowers and plants, we proceeded onto the bugs. I didn’t need him to bring them to me as I wasn’t a big fan, but he did anyway. We didn’t kill the bugs to look inside them. My fault again, as I had always been on the squeamish side.
We repeated the same exercise in the afternoon until Cleb could recite all the major body and plant parts off by heart.
“Right,” I said. “You’ve worked hard and I think you deserve your first mission. Do you think you can help me?”
He turned serious and sidled up close.
“What is it?” he said.
“I want to study your uncle but he’s always working,” I said. “We need to spend more time around him. That way, I can get information on adult Titans too.”
“He won’t let you in his office. Not when he’s working.”
“You know, sometimes people surprise us,” I said.
“Not everybody,” Cleb said. “Some people are always the same.”
“I want you to do me a favor tonight,” I said.
I felt like our relationship had developed to the point where I could ask for favors.
“What?” he said.
“When we sit down and have dinner tonight, I want you to ask your uncle to join us tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? What are we doing tomorrow?”
“I haven’t decided yet. It depends on whether or not you ask your uncle to come with us.”
“He won’t go if he doesn’t know what it is.”
“You said he wouldn’t agree anyway,” I said.
“He won’t. But he definitely won’t go if he doesn’t know what we’ll do.”
“So you’re saying there’s a chance he will come with us,” I said.
Cleb’s eyes moved to the side in thought.
“I guess so,” he said.
“Then it’s not impossible,” I said. “I bet if you ask him to go with us, he’ll say yes.”
Cleb thought for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip as if running through the situation and imagining the different outcomes.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Have you asked him before?” I said.
“He’s always busy with work.”
“So maybe he’s only busy because no one ever asks him to do something else. Did you ever think of that?”
Cleb shook his head.
“Would you like for him to join us tomorrow?” I said.
Cleb nodded.
“Then how will he know that if we don’t ask him?”
Cleb sighed.
“So?” I said. “Will you ask him?”
“All right. But he’s going to say no.”
The dinner was a high-class affair with expensive dinner and the silverware. If I knew it was going to be a special event, I would have dressed up.
“You didn’t need to go to all this trouble for me,” I said.
“We didn’t,” Traes said, amused.
“This is regular dinner here?” I said.
Traes smiled as he opened his newspaper and the servants brought the silver trays around and placed them in front of us.
It was nice for a one of a kind event, I thought. It seemed a bit much if it was for dinner every single day. Would breakfast be the same? Surely you would get sick of the pomp each and every meal.
One thing was for sure: it beat eating Asshole’s leftovers off a dirty plate. I should quit complaining and just enjoy myself.
We ate our meals and talked amiably about our days. Cleb spoke enthusiastically about how we went outside and learned about bugs and flowers and bees and insects.
Traes smiled
