“Hey, Saffie! Just give me a moment to get up, okay?” Snatcher called. The moment he was out of his carrier, she was hugging him. “Whoa, whoa, I’m happy to see you too! Mind letting me get a chance to breathe, though?”
Snatcher finally managed to get free. Saffron was beaming, and Snatcher couldn’t help but smile back. “I take it you’ve been well? Awesome. Me too, especially now that I can actually move,” he told her, wincing slightly. “I hate that carrier.”
Saffron pursed her lips and tucked her chin, looking sympathetic. She squeezed his hand gently. “Thanks. I’m fine, really. Honest.” He sighed, forcing a smile. “I’m sure it will get easier. I mean, you’re happy here, right? And I know Missy wants what’s best for me, and she’s already done so much to make me happy. It’s just…” His voice trailed off in another sigh. He loved Missy too, or at the very least no longer regarded her with hopeless fear. She had rescued him from a life of terror and starvation, and had treated him with patience in spite of his resistance. If he had to give up control over his life, it was a comfort to know he was giving it to her.
He sighed heavily. “It’s just nothing. I’m not thinking straight today.” He forced a smile, and after a moment of focusing on other things, it turned into a real one. “What’ve you been up to, by the way? I completely forgot to ask.”
Saffron, unable to understand his words, still picked up on the change in tone. She beamed and threw her arms around him again, then danced away, her honey-colored hair falling around her like a curtain of silk. It was a color Snatcher had rarely seen out in the wild, back in his now-dead clan of family and friends. Saffron was from gentler stock, the product of generations of selective breeding, and it showed. Compared to Snatcher, she fit easily into the role of a docile, plump, and pampered pet.
“Hey, sounds like that’s been fun,” he smiled at her. When she smiled back, she clasped his hand in both of hers and rested her head against his shoulder. In another setting it might have been intimate, but between the hormone suppressors he’d been dosed with before arriving and the complete emptiness behind Saffron’s eyes, it was more discomforting than anything. Looking past her, he could see the wall of pictures that Lady had taken of herself and Saffron. The pictures that included the angel were particularly absurd. With her golden skin and dozens of red-violet eyes, it was almost laughable to see her acknowledging a human as anything more than vermin, let alone a creature worthy of being coddled and doted upon.
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Feeling awkward, he gently nudged Saffron forward. “Hey, do you want to come look out the window?”
Taking a few steps himself, he looked behind him to see her eager to follow. Under the careful gaze of her owner, she skipped behind him to the window. The view wasn’t much, just showing the garden and the trees beyond, all under a sapphire sky. Snatcher put a hand on the glass and exhaled. It wasn’t much of a view, but at least it was different.
Hearing a whining sound at his side, Snatcher tore his gaze from the window. Saffron was looking back at where the two angels were seated. She tugged on Snatcher’s arm and, when he didn’t come immediately, gave a little mewl and took off for the angels herself. Cartwheeling the final few feet, she landed gracefully in front of Lady and flipped onto her back, chattering happily for attention. The amused angel tickled Saffron with a feather and Missy leaned back towards Snatcher and smiled, the silver eyes on her halo burning with joy. Snatcher took a tentative step forward and was debating whether to head over when suddenly, his view was blocked by a dragon.
Saffron cried out in alarm, sitting up so quickly that she was poked by Lady’s belly rub. Ember, Lady’s aging dragon, paid her no attention and continued his chase, winding his sinuous body through the air. Snatcher dove under a sofa. A moment later, he was rolling to the side and scrambling out to avoid the dragon’s stream of fire. The movement opened him up to being slashed by Ember’s claw, but the adrenaline told him that the pain could wait. Screaming, he skidded around the corner, only to find the way blocked again, this time by a closed door. Another wave of despair rolled over him. At home he might have begged for Missy to open it, knowing the handle to be far out of his reach and the door itself to be beyond his strength, but while being chased he had no such luxury. There was no time to backpedal, though, and he felt the rush of wings as the dragon dove in for the kill—and suddenly it was gone.
He had just enough time to register that whatever had taken the dragon was a whole lot bigger and worse before he himself was seized. He thrashed wildly, fighting with all his negligible might, but it wasn’t until his teeth had closed around one of the claws that held him that his captor finally dropped him. He twisted just in time to avoid breaking anything when he hit the ground, but the landing was still jarring and he had to lay there for a moment, gasping for breath. A silver light, bright as the morning, loomed over him and unwillingly, he looked up.
Missy was crouched nearby, gazing down at him, and the silver light radiated from her. It was clear that she had been the one holding him. One claw was coiled back, not visibly injured but clearly in some pain, and he could taste her ichorous blood on the corner of his mouth. A few angel-sized steps away, Lady was restraining a squirming Ember, also looking down with concern.
Snatcher pulled his knees up to his chest, too winded to keep running. When the claws wrapped around him again, he did not resist.
