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Suddenly, Clerise steeled her resolve.

"I will." She leaped up, carrying the partycat under her arm, skipping towards his cage and depositing him inside.

She tapped her chin. Which mini next?

The shier ones cowered. "God, I ******** love minis. So glad they're all okay, little buggers."

Leaning in close to a cage, Clerise crooned at a certain Cephalato. "Who's a remnant of a big bad! Who's one! It's yoouu, yes it is~"

"Is Killer the little fatty in the cage by your guys' bed?" She smiled at the memory.

"He's awfully familiar. I think I saw Clarice brushing his hair one day, in her office." Clerise thought back to the memory, hmmming. "Yeah, I burst into her office and demanded that she showed me the minipets. No one had told me that there were adorable things in our midst.."

Clerise gave Jordan a look, and an incredulous one at that.

She shrugged it off, though, and continued to pet the little creepy crawlies she'd missed.

"Yeahhh. I am not sure really how it works, nor do I want to, really...but I missed them." The corners of her eyes crinkled with her gentle smile. "I didn't have pets, as a kid. And living out of a trailer isn't really conducive to one, you know?" She waved a hand.

"It's nice. Little tiny things that love you unconditionally, I mean."

"In all honesty, I am probably not responsible enough for a little creature." Clerise nodded, settling on taking a Spraks out of its cage, letting the beast flick its tongue over her skin. "I can do part time responsibility. That's a thing I can do."

A smirk. "I can do that." She raised a brow pointedly at Jordan. "They can like, find food and stuff on their own."

A beat.

"Uh. Most of the time."

She fell back from her cross legged position with a snort of laughter, head bonking against the ground. "Yeah, well. At least he's got someone to remind him."

Her lips twitched upwards at the memory of his nervous nature in the desert.

He'd grown a lot.

Clerise scratched the minipet under its lower jaw, not bothering to do anything but roll over onto her side, like some sort of lazy, luxurious jungle cat. "I mean, even still. I am...not a one pet kind of girl...Or two. Or three. Me and attention spans, you know."

"Hey," hands up, both of them, snake minipet in one. "Never said there was! You know I don't think there's anything wrong with that, mister! It's just uh, most of the time, it's just easier if I sort of~ let my interest be transitory."

A strange expression crosses her face, shoulders hunching just a little-- for a brief moment. It lasted for no longer than the blink of an eye.

If she thought about before the island-- she couldn't really remember a period in time when she had been happy-- save for--. Successful, vibrant, boisterous, intoxicated, enthralled, seductive-- snapshots in time with different moods laid over them, as clear as captions written beneath the action.

"Happy" had rarely been on the table. Happy implied contentedness. It implied laziness, of togetherness, of being okay with who you are and what you are capable of.

She had been happy with Danica and Erik-- but it was the sort of fairy tale happy that ended as soon as you closed the book. Or, in her case, as soon as she left their home.

That book was covered in dust, now.

"I guess you're right," is all Clerise murmured in reply, a nail scritching at the Spraks' belly. "The hardest part is finding what to chase."

Dakota. Clarice. Their names curl around her mind like wisps of smoke, lingering there.