He shuffled back home to Táotáo and ran her out for another walk, then edited some of his upcoming videos before he and she turned in. Come morning, he took his meds, jaunted out with her for another good long walk, fed and watered her before doing the same for himself. Maybe she sensed something that he didn’t, because when he sat down in his studio room to get on a scheduled livestream for his supporters on Patreon, she decided to hop up in his lap.
Good thing it was mostly an “ask me anything” stream with a little bit of previewing some new music before Liánlí got it posted for the rest of the world. Meant Táotáo could snuggle up to him as much as she liked, getting all of the skritches and ruffles of her ears.
Surely, this couldn’t have been right, could it? Something as big as turning out to be a Knight of Saturn, with a pretty silk folding fan to throw at the monsters who preyed on the people of Destiny City—that was supposed to make some kind of difference to anything, wasn’t it? Interrupt the normal course of Liánlí’s life?
Except it didn’t.
Except he found himself and Táotáo sitting in front of his setup in the second bedroom of his apartment, doing a livestream as if he didn’t know, now, that other possibilities existed……that the universe had something else in store for him, something more than he’d initially been led to believe he had waiting for him, even making allowances for how he’d always known that the strictest rules of science, logic, and so-called rationality couldn’t explain absolutely everything that existed in reality.
At least he knew more than well enough how to plaster on a smile and do his job (such as it was).
Nobody in his audience seemed to notice any particular differences, as far as Liánlí could tell. Plenty of the people watching sent in extra tips for the simple presence of a dog sitting right in view of the camera. More than a few sent in questions for Táotáo specifically, even though Liánlí himself wound up answering most of them. She did give an affirmative-sounding little yip when one of Liánlí’s longest-standing subscribers asked if he’d given her the right name. But how was she supposed to answer questions like “What are some of your human’s worst habits?”
Granted, she could—and apparently did—make very amusing faces at the viewers, which felt more like the point of questions like that than, say, getting Liánlí to own up to, “I’ve brought a lot fewer people home since I adopted her, but never the same one twice.… I can’t share most of the food I make with her at all. Ya guy’s gotta have everything five-alarm spicy and the capsaicin is definitely not for dogs.… Oh, I’ve been teaching her how to sing, like I did with my bestie’s dog, Lola? Different song, obviously. Instead of The Kinks, she’s learning The Presidents of the United States of America, you know? Mmm, ba da ba ba, mmmm-mmmm, ba da ba ba, ‘Movin’ to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches. Movin’ to the country, gonna eat me a lot of peaches.…’”
Showing off that she was learning, Táotáo joined in on the next repetition of those two lines and earned herself a treat for it (not to mention a few extra tips besides).
“But that little show aside,” Liánlí told his viewers, “Táotáo doesn’t always know what the point of singing lessons is supposed to be, I think? She usually does that thing where she tilts her head and looks at me in hopeless confusion—”
Right on cue, Táotáo cut him off with a loud, judgmental huff. Got him to laugh, and plenty of the viewers followed suit, judging by how the live-chat lit up with various flavors of “LOL,” “LMFAO,” and assorted laughing emoji.
Next, Táotáo pawed at Liánlí’s hand. Specifically, at his right hand, which made him do the same thing that he’d just called out in her: tilting his head in hopeless confusion.
Maybe he would’ve understood had she gone for his left hand. He was, after all, left-handed, so she usually got to see his left hand digging in the bag to serve her food at breakfast and dinner. His left hand most often concealed the treat she’d get for learning something new, same as she’d already learned how to sit, lie down, shake hands, roll over, go to her crate, heel instead of running either toward or (more often) away from some other dog out in the park, and fetch. What did Táotáo want with his right hand all of a sudden?
What did she want with the ring finger on his right hand?
Liánlí had never worn anything there. He did have a pair of rings from Harvard: one gold with the University’s coat of arms engraved in a circle; the other, silver with an inlaid garnet, engraved with that same coat of arms on one side of the stone and Liánlí’s graduation year (2015) on the other. But those keepsakes hadn’t occupied space on any of his fingers before, not even back when they’d been Zhìháo’s fingers and the rings had been sized correctly.
(What size ring would Liánlí even wear now? He had no idea and had never seen any real point in finding out. Wasn’t as though he’d ever have reason to know. Liánlí Huáng was barely even eligible to count as “Boyfriend Material,” never mind having anything about him that counted as “The Makings of A Suitable Wife.”
Not a diss at himself, simply an acknowledgement of facts. Liánlí bristled against attempts to tie him down. Pushed back against efforts to infringe on his sense of freedom. Lashed out against anything that felt like a request that he allow himself, even a mere fraction thereof, to get swallowed up into someone else and consumed like wildfire devouring an old-growth forest.
He too easily got bored. He too easily got restless. He too easily decided that he could no longer thrive in any given conditions or other, and more often than not, Liánlí hit that point without going on a single date but sleeping with somebody only once. Boyfriend, Girlfriend, Husband, Wife—these labels had gotten stitched on shirts that wouldn’t have fit Zhìháo and certainly didn’t fit Liánlí. So what? Happiness didn’t depend on wearing anything like that.)
Although he tried to brush off Táotáo’s strange decision to focus on his hand—although he tried to continue with the stream as usual—Liánlí couldn’t entirely make himself ignore what she was up to. Even when he closed out the stream, Táotáo kept pawing and nosing at his right hand, like she meant to chase after something and expected Liánlí to know what her behavior meant. Was this how Táotáo felt when he tried to teach her something new? Totally befuddled with a side of wondering what in all creation the other party thought they were doing today?
With a soft sigh, Liánlí ruffled the fur on the back of her neck. Skritching underneath her collar didn’t give him any extra answers about what she thought was going on or what she wanted him to figure out. Neither did cooing at her about what a good girl she was, or asking her outright what she wanted him to figure out.
Mostly, all of this made her wriggle around, briefly exposing the white splotch of her belly-fur as she moved to sit up. Staring up at him with her big brown eyes, she booped her nose into his chest. Typically with Táotáo, behavior like that meant she needed to go outside, so Liánlí tried asking her—
“Mn, potty outside?” Which earned him some vacant, befuddled blinking and a tilted head. Liánlí puckered his lips and wrinkled his nose. Communicating with dogs didn’t usually give him so much trouble; Táotáo and Hayden’s baby Lola proved easier for Liánlí to chat with and understand than most humans. Today, though, he and Táotáo kept missing each other’s wavelength. How weird.
Yet, Liánlí tried again, mussing his hands up and down through the plush fur on her sides, “Walkies? …Thirsty? ……Dinnertime early?”
All of these suggestions made Táotáo shake her head with a grumbling, unsatisfied sound. Although it didn’t provide an actual answer—and all things considered, it only raised further questions for Liánlí—she glanced over at the window, past the blackout curtains (currently drawn closed) and over to the fire escape. While he silently wondered what possible outdoor activities he’d missed in his previous guesses, she tilted her head back like gazing up at the stars.
More poignantly than he could make anyone else believe (probably), Táotáo gently thumped one of her little paws against his chest.
Which gave Liánlí an idea.
Not that he knew for sure what she meant, but Liánlí nodded anyway and gently eased Táotáo off his lap. As he stood, he focused, got himself to power up into Kāifēng—and that was when he felt it.
He didn’t know for sure what it was, but in the midst of him fluttering his silk folding fan, Kāifēng felt some powerful itch, soul-deep and compelling.… Specifically, it compelled him to throw open the window and tear through it onto the fire escape. He paused only briefly to close things up behind him, then used all the other fire escapes to hop, skip, jump, and bounce his way up to his building’s rooftop.
Idly, Kāifēng wondered if staying here was really the best for Táotáo.… She did alright with apartment living, he supposed, but maybe she would’ve been happier with a fenced in backyard to play in.… His lease would be up soon, and with the property values in Destiny City, he could probably find an actual house within his budget.…
But that was a problem for later.
Right now, staring up at the fast-descending twilight, Kāifēng felt something resonating in his chest. Something burning up his tongue, his lungs, his lips. Something begging him to say it.
Trembling, he closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. And let the words spill out of him: “I pledge my life and loyalty to Saturn, and to Kāifēng. I humbly request your aid so that in return, I may give you mine.”
He didn’t know where the words had come from. He didn’t know why he knew to say them. But once he had, Kāifēng felt reality rushing around him and yanking him off somewhere else.
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