Eventually, the party stopped continuing.
Paul only found out about this when Cozy woke him up, leaping into his lap without warning and causing him to jolt upright with a snort.
“Hnh? What? Time for cake?” He asked, blinking blearily and sitting up straight, looking around.
Time was, waking him up like that would have had him wake with a violent start and a wild-eyed moment when it looked like he expected someone to attack him and that he’d cold-cock them if they tried, Cozy knew, rather glad that he’d lost that habit. Showed that the possibility of mellowing out did actually exist.
“No dad, you slept through that bit,” she said as Paul tried to rub some clarity into his eyes.
“I keep saying stop call- wait, I slept through it? Ah bugger. Why didn’t you wake me up, Cozy?” He asked, closing and opening one eye and then other, peering down at her still sat in his lap. Cozy gave a teeny tiny shrug.
“Thought you’d prefer to sleep. Mean, you’re not exactly a party pony - er, person - are you?” She asked. Paul frowned. Hard to argue with, but not impossible.
“Well, no, but it was your birthday party! I should have been awake. Sorry, Cozy,” he said, genuinely annoyed with himself. He’d gone to some effort to try and make the day special for her, least he could do was stay awake!
Cozy didn’t actually mind.
“It’s okay. I saved you some cake,” she said, producing a paper plate on which was sat a slice of cake. Paul looked at it a moment.
“I feel worse, now!” He then said, groaning and putting his face in his hands. When he looked up he looked more curious, and took in the now-deserted, debris-stripped section of park, all party products taken down and packed up in the bag he’d brought them in in the first place. All rubbish cleared, too. Like they’d never even been there.
Nice of someone, he thought. Whoever they were.
“Where’s everyone?” He asked.
“Everyone’s gone home. Except for Swe- except for The Three,” Cozy said, catching herself. If she’d used their actual names then Paul wouldn’t have known who she was talking about. “They’re still in town. I’m going to go around to where they’re staying tomorrow, we’re going to do, well, stuff.”
He did not need to know the specifics. Being a crusty fossil from another world he likely wouldn’t have understood them anyway even if they were fairly straight-forward things like “Hang out” and “Talk”. Wild concepts.
Paul raised his eyebrows.
“Hark at Cozy! Inviting herself to places without even telling me! She’ll be moving out next!” He said. She rolled her eyes but then put on a super-bright, cheery expression.
“Sorry dad I’ll cancel. Is this when you break out the surprise present of a bell I wear around the house so you can keep track of when I use the bathroom?” Cozy asked with as much mock-sweetness as she could muster (which, being her, was a frankly dizzying amount).
Paul had been all set to tell her off again for trying the dad trick and had been entirely unprepared for her crack about the bell. So instead of reprimanding her he just burst out laughing.
It hadn’t been that good a line, Cozy felt, and she had been fully expecting him to throw one back at her and so this came as something of a surprise. He was so lost in it and so quickly that she herself quickly got the giggles, and giggles then graduated to full-blown laughter of her own.
It was quite nice, all things considered. A nice moment.
Less pleasantly the laughing did tail off into a rather nasty sounding hacking cough towards the end and while Cozy didn’t particularly enjoy that part Paul didn’t seem any the worse for wear because of it.
“Oh you. Fun kid, you. You will at least tell me where it is before you go?” He asked, hammering a fist against his chest, eyes watering.
“Yes, obviously,” Cozy said, this having been the plan all along. Paul nodded.
“Good, good. I am still supposed to be keeping an eye on you,” he said, then adding tentatively: “Um, the party was okay, wasn’t it? You did have a good time?”
This Paul asked with his usual brusqueness, the kind that always sat balanced on the knife-edge between straightforwardly businesslike and aggressively grumpy. But this time it wasn’t entirely earnest. This time it was forced. Most wouldn’t have been able to tell, but most were not Cozy, who had the benefit (such as it was) of living with him.
Cozy could detect, through the deft application of her own excellent people-stroke-pony reading abilities coupled with her deepened understanding of how Paul functioned, an actual sliver of vulnerability. He genuinely cared what she thought about his efforts, and what she said would have a genuine impact on him, whether he’d actually admit it or not.
Realising this and seeing this made her a bit uncomfortable. With anyone else she would have loved it, or at least would used to have loved it. With him it just felt unseemly, unfair. Weird.
“It was great,” she said, smiling in a fashion calculated to be reassuring.
The look of relief on Paul’s face was almost a tangible force, like a stiff breeze.
“Ah, good, I’m glad. I worry about fuc- about messing these things up.”
“Well it was definitely better than the first one,” she said.
“Keeling over and dying would have been better than the first one,” Paul said, sourly.
“You’re the one who said it…”
Their mutual memories of that awful, underwhelming first birthday party held them in rapture for a moment before, unprompted and for reasons that weren’t wholly clear to her, Cozy shoved the plate of cake into Paul’s hand and then wrapped around his chest in a hug. Being on his lap made this pretty easy to do. Paul, surprised, got over it quickly and hugged her back, though being careful at the same time not to drop the cake.
It was good cake! Or so the baker had assured him it would be.
Even having grown a bit as she had and even with Paul never having been the beefiest of men even in his prime (and he was most certainly not in his prime), Cozy still got swallowed up in his arms. Not that she minded. She quite liked it there.
Which was strange.
Initially, giving Paul hugs had been something that Cozy had done quite deliberately and in quite over-the-top fashion, specifically because she’d known it annoyed him. They hadn’t meant a whole lot, but had been quite funny to administer.
An audience had also been quite an important part, before. Them being over-the-top and in full view of others made Paul’s uncomfortableness with them the funnier, she’d thought.
Somehow - and without her really noticing how or when - that had changed. He’d stopped being so obviously annoyed by them, and though he still grumbled he had become less reluctant in the hugging back.
And while there had at first been no problem with others being around when Cozy inflicted these hugs - an awkward, amusing hug forced on a grumpy old man was funnier with an audience - now having people around to watch just felt…
... intrusive, somehow. That word again, but it fit, that’s how it felt. Like they were stepping on a moment that wasn’t theirs.
Odd. Very odd.
At length, the hug broke.
“Alright, well, enough sitting around. Upsy-daisy,” Paul said as he heaved himself upright with a groan, Cozy hopping off his lap to better allow him to do this.
Paul had dispensed with the stick these days, replacing it instead with that articulated, clockwork-driven metal frame he’d made for himself and which was secured around his one remaining leg and strapped about his waist and back. Cozy didn’t understand it, but it seemed to help him.
Didn’t stop him limping, but she doubted there was anything that could, short of getting a few decades of his life back and going back in time to stop a few bad things from happening.
Standing, Paul swayed in place briefly before promptly devouring the chunk of cake and then stomping over to the packed-up party products and hefting up the bag. He then turned back to look down at Cozy and pat his shoulder.
“Come on birthday girl, hop up,” he said around the cake before swallowing. Cozy hesitated.
Jumping onto his lap while they were just on their own was one thing, that was just an easy way of getting on his level when they talked. Flying up onto his shoulder to ride there - somewhere other ponies would see her - was something else. Hadn’t used to be, but was now.
“I was too old for this three birthdays ago…” she mumbled.
Really, she’d always been too old for this sort of thing, not that it had been something available to her prior to Paul showing up. At first the novelty of sitting on his shoulder as he pottered about had been quite intoxicating, but comparatively recently she’d become suddenly and curiously self-conscious about it and so had stopped doing it.
Paul, who had complained about it when she’d done it, had found its absence saddening for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Even if she was starting to get a little too big for it, so what?
“Indulge an old man?” He asked with an exaggerated lip-wobble. He’d stolen that trick from her and he wasn’t very good at it. Still quite effective though.
“Urgh, fine.”
And up Cozy went, reasoning that if she did then at least he’d stop with the lip.
“Can’t resist the old man line! You’d feel guilty,” Paul said, chuffed, limping off with Cozy now settled on his shoulder. Not as easily as she used to, but still fairly easily.
“You’re really overestimating your age. And my capacity for guilt,” Cozy said.
“Heh, methinks she doth protest too much.”
He had her dead to rights on that one, not that she’d admit it.
The old man line had got her thinking though. Not about him being old - though that did worry her sometimes, even if she knew he would brush it off if she mentioned it - but rather how old he was. In the sense of, how old exactly was Paul? How many years?
And when was his birthday?
“When’s your birthday anyway?” She asked, apparently out of nowhere, surprising him.
“Mine? Why’d you ask?”
“Just wondering.”
He scratched his chin and wobbled mid-step alarmingly for a moment, though the frame took the strain well enough that he kept going without particular issue, though Cozy had had to tighten her grip on his shoulder.
“Hmph. Guess that figures. Can’t really say though. Calendars don’t line up and I lost track yonks ago. Doesn’t matter anyway,” he said.
“I’d say it matters. Or should matter. You could have a party,” Cozy said.
They both had another laugh at that one.
“Heh, cute. We could invite all my friends! Though I’d have to make some first. Or dig some up…” He trailed off, eyes glazing for a second, but then shook his head and carried on: “Nah, don’t worry about it. I am an age and getting older, and that’s all that matters.”
“Hmm,” said Cozy.
“‘Hmm’ she says,” Paul parroted. Cozy ignored this, so Paul went with something else: “Any idea what you want for dinner, birthday girl? Could try making that, uh, flatbread thing again.”
“You mean pizza?” Cozy asked. Apparently they didn’t have it where he was from, or didn’t call it that if they did. Odd place, where Paul was from, if what he said was anything to go by.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” he said. Cozy considered this. She had nothing against pizza in theory, but the memory of the last time he’d tried gave her pause. On the plus side she’d heard some very interesting new swear words, on the down side she had come out of it sans pizza and dinner had ended up being soup.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Hmph,” he said.
The rest of the walk home - or the limp home, rather - was undertaken in silence, the better to enjoy what remained of the day. A handful of ponies waved to Cozy who - feeling very prominent and exposed on her dad’s shoulder - waved back a little sheepishly.
No-one waved at Paul, and he liked it that way.
It wasn’t the longest walk from the park back to the house, but it felt longer than it might otherwise have done given their arrangement. Still, Cozy didn’t mind overmuch, beyond those few times anyone saw where she was. The rest of the time it wasn’t so bad. It was nice, in its way.
And then they were home, back outside the walls. The anti-flying-away net might have been long-since removed but the walls remained, at Paul’s insistence.
He had come to quite like the walls because they did a great job of keeping the world outside and away. Cozy pointed out - often and loudly - that they also ruined the view and were oppressive and entirely unnecessary but Paul was consistently unmoved by these arguments and adamant that she’d never wear him down on this issue.
This she had taken as a challenge, and this was ongoing.
Cozy waited for him to stoop his way through the gap where the gate through the wall used to have been. They’d offered to enlarge the gap to his actual height when Paul’s desire to retain the wall had been made apparent, but Paul hadn’t felt like talking to anyone that day and so it hadn’t happened, and he hadn’t felt like bringing it up again since. But he did still like to grumble about it.
Once through, she then waited some more for him to limp his way across the garden and through the back door and into the kitchen directly, the route that Paul favoured for reasons that never made sense to Cozy.
And there, sitting on the table, was a scroll on which was shining the royal seal. Cozy blinked.
“What’s that?” She asked, fluttering down from his shoulder and landing by his feet.
“Hmm? Oh, it’s another one of those bloody letters. Just chuck it,” Paul growled, looking over, his face wrinkling in distaste on seeing what it was she was talking about. How those things kept getting in he had no idea, especially after having nailed the letterbox shut.
Cozy moved to the table and reared back the better to get a look, balancing with her hooves on the edge. Paul’s table remained human-sized by his own design, and Cozy’s increase in height only went so far.
“Can I read it?” She asked, already reaching for the scroll.
“Hmph,” Paul grunted, shrugging, moving off, unconcerned. Cozy didn’t need telling twice.
Grabbing it she ripped off the seal with her teeth, unrolled it and started reading.
A letter, it turned out, not from the palace as a vague, faceless entity but rather an actual bonafide letter from the hoof of Celestia herself. It was very polite, the letter, even as it fully acknowledged that Paul had not responded to any of the others and was unlikely to respond to this one either.
Cozy scanned through it, eyes zipping over a lot of introductory bromide about how his toys were being enjoyed by all the children blah blah how much Cozy had seemed to thrive in his charge (Cozy, being the one reading, glossed over that particular part in self-conscious embarrassment, the day apparently being one for that sort of thing) yada yada and it then continued and got onto-
“She’s offering you a job?” Cozy asked, baffled, looking up from the scroll.
Quite a cushy job from the sound of things.
“Oh, is that what they say? Makes sense,” Paul said, entirely unmoved, more interested in the teapot he was manhandling than the contents of the letter.
“You didn’t read any of these?” Cozy asked, brandishing it. The letter didn’t specify how many had come before but from the sound of things it had been a few more than one.
Paul shook his head and dropped in more teabags than most would have liked.
“No, tossed them as soon as I got them - I see a crown on something I know it’s no good. But she ‘bumped into me’ while I was out and about one time and tried to offer me much the same. Like she goes out shopping, her and her bloody entourage…”
As he moved to do things with the kettle, Cozy continued reading.
“It’s like a Royal Commission or something. The Princess is offering - wow, this is where the budget’s going - offering a whole minor wing of the palace to work in, any equipment you’d need, materials…”
It was a lot. An alarming amount. Depending on how much a ‘minor wing’ constituted. The palace was famously lousy with wings. Couldn’t throw a bread roll in the place without hitting half a dozen of the things. No wonder they had at least one spare going.
Paul, frowning, kettle in hand, stumped over to read over her shoulder. He had about as much difficulty reading Mareain as he had in speaking it, so this didn’t help him a whole lot.
“That so?” He asked.
“That’s what it says here,” she said, pointing. Paul squinted at the line she was pointing at. This told him nothing that she hadn’t already said. “Whatever you’d need to teach others how to do what you do. Oh, Princess Twilight too would be there too, apparently? Sometimes? Guess she wants to help?”
Cozy knew for a fact that Princess Twilight had at least one of Paul’s toys, and wouldn’t put it past her to own more. Seemed like the sort of thing that, if offered, she’d definitely want to at least check up on and get into the guts of.
Paul frowned, scratching his head.
“Twilight? That’s the…”
“The small one,” Cozy said, again despairing of his utter inability to remember the name of any pony beyond her own. Hell, she was glad he remembered hers at all.
“Right, right…” he said, absently. “Teaching, huh? In a palace? And with a princess. That’s a lot of effort all for me and my silly little toys. Well, good for them but it’s not happening.”
He then returned to handling the kettle, filling it and setting to boil. Generally Paul preferred to watch his kettle boil, mostly out of spite.
Cozy continued reading the letter, reading the letter and thinking (and also sitting down at the table).
It was light on the details of what, exactly, they wanted Paul to do but the general gist that emerged from between the lines was that he would be continuing what he did now only not at home anymore, while also occasionally imparting the hows and whys and whats of the process onto any ponies who were willing to learn, hence why the palace was being offered as a location - something of a public service, kind of.
And there were quite a lot who were willing to learn, apparently. Willing and eager, no less. Probably the sort who expressed this willingness and eagerness in letters to the princess, in hopes she might do something about it.
The something she’d done about it having been, in the event, letters.
And when that hadn’t worked, more letters.
So far, despite well-known and widespread efforts, none had been able to replicate the things that Paul made. They’d copied them, sure, copying them had been easy, but the copies were not what he made and fell short in several key areas that continued to have the locals stumped. Paul’s quaint creations simply didn’t work the way anyone in Equestria understood.
Some had come very close, but none ever managed it completely. Just missing something.
Clockwork they got, that part wasn’t that confusing. Magic they also got, and magic to make things move was also not exactly unheard of. [But whatever magic that got them to do what they did the quite specific way they did it was another matter. It came from somewhere else and worked according to imported rules understood by only one man.]
A man who abjectly refused to explain them, to the quiet frustration of all.
They had ideas! Neat ideas! Things they thought they could make to spice up or improve life! Who and what couldn’t benefit from tireless mechanical servants? Think of the potential! But there was a hurdle, an obstacle, a locked door with a key held by someone determined to go to the grave holding it.
Makes it all sound very serious, but that was how it was. People wanted to know.
Cozy knew that her dad could do what he liked, he was an adult, even if she did find most of his decisions and the reasons behind them kind of stupid. Still, that wasn’t really what she was latching onto here. What she was latching onto here was what looked to be an opportunity to make his life a little less crushingly repetitive.
This had been a mounting concern of hers lately.
She left the house, he did not. Or, when he did, it was on sufferance and only ever done as quickly as possible, only ever to get food or some other sundry and come straight back. She also had friends, people she could vent to or talk with if she wanted to. The only living soul that Paul ever spoke to beyond clipped, grunting single-sentences was herself, and while Cozy knew this was still an improvement on how he’d lived for years prior to barging into his life she was starting to worry that maybe it was doing him more harm than good.
Getting out - and having a reason to go out, something to force him to interact with the world - might not be the worst thing to happen to him. He might not like it, but it would be good for him, and so getting him to do it would in itself be good.
And doing good things because they were good (and not just because you’re getting something tangible out of it), Cozy had learnt in the last couple of years, was good. Hadn’t quite worked out the mechanics of it yet, but it did consistently seem to be the case, much to her bewilderment.
The answer was in reach, she felt, but only barely. She’d get it soon, she was sure, and it would all make sense. Soon.
“I think you should do it,” she said, knowing before she’d even opened her mouth that it was unlikely to go down well.
She was right. Paul, who had been pouring boiling water, nearly spilled some on himself and cursed as he slopped some onto the side instead, grabbing a nearby teatowel to quickly mop it up, looking over to Cozy in alarm.
“What? No!”
“It’d just be what you do now only somewhere else, with a bit of teaching on top. Why not?” She asked, reasonably enough.
Paul mopped aggressively for a second or so, getting his thoughts in order, before tossing the now-sodden teatowel into the sink and limping over to snatch up the letter, the better to brandish it around.
“For one thing I don’t work for anyone other than me - no-one tells me what to do, not anymore. For another I’m damn sure not teaching anyone else anything, least of all how to do what I do. The only one I’ve even considered teaching that to is you, and that’s only because you’re my d- because I can keep an eye on you.”
He bit his tongue.
Paul hated - hated! - even the suggestion of the idea that he might be starting to think of Cozy as his daughter, as that was not the nature of their relationship at all as far as he was concerned. It didn’t matter how long he’d been looking after her, he was just her caretaker, that was all.
Nothing else, nothing more.
If she wanted to keep calling him ‘dad’ in a fruitless attempt to manipulate him that was her lookout, he wasn’t falling for it! Even if she had kept it up for a good long while now!
Also, she was a horse. He might sometimes have forgotten this but it remained indisputable, and he was certain that this was an insurmountable obstacle.
For her part, Cozy found his continued, stubborn refusal to ever refer to her as anything other than ‘Cozy’ or ‘the child’ as either kind of funny or kind of sad. Right then though she just ignored it and focussed on the subject at hand (at hoof?).
“But why not though? I thought you liked working. And this’d pay better. And you’d get to leave the house. And so what about teaching? Why is that bad? It’d probably be good for, you know, everypony! To know how to do what you do. They could do their own things! Not that toys aren’t good but maybe there’s more useful things?” She said, delicately.
Paul looked at her flatly, his face set.
This was a subject they’d briefly discussed before, and he knew that she knew his feelings on it. It had been back when she’d been trying to learn, before she’d decided to stop trying. It was why they’d only discussed it briefly and not touched on it since then - he’d been quite emphatic.
“No. Because they’ll want me to make weapons and teach them how to make weapons. They always want to make weapons. Things that hurt people, or at the very least something to do their dirty work for them, whatever that’d look like around here. And I’m done with that. I’m not doing it,” he said.
Cozy’s composure was beginning to fray a little in the face of his having decided that he’d figured it all out already, despite not having even read the damn letter. Or any of the damn letters before this one!
“You don’t know that. And it’s not even true! That’s not true at all! They just want to know how to do what you do. It could be for anything! It could just be more toys! Or, uh, they want to see if they can use it to make farming equipment, I don’t know. Or anything! You don’t know!” She protested, getting increasingly annoyed the more she went on. Paul was unruffled.
“I do know. This is the big one’s idea and I’ve been told what to do by enough pricks in crowns to know that they always want the same thing and that’s something they can use to stay on top and put more distance between them and everyone below. And if they say different they’ve just convinced themselves otherwise, that’s it. I’m not giving them the opportunity. They’re all the same.”
“The Princesses aren’t that bad...” Cozy said, aware that this was another thing that Paul would not want to hear. She was right again, too, it wasn’t. He goggled at her and pointed in sheer, astonished disbelief.
“You! You of all people! After what they did to you! After what they were going to do! You- ah, my but you’ve grown haven’t you?” He said, shaking his head but smiling. Small smile, but a smile all the same.
He wasn’t sure whether to be proud or not of that, given the circumstances. Seemed a better bet to be proud, he reckoned, even if it did mean a softening stance on those who had titles, crowns and power, something he disapproved of on principle. Showed development, even if it was away from him - especially if it was away from him.
Her own person. Showed that she was better than he was.
Of course, he’d always known that she was better than he was by leaps and bounds, but it was nice to see it in action. Proved him right. He was stuck, she was moving on, growing. She’d surpass him, she was surpassing him. He might not have agreed, but that wasn’t the point.
Hard for Paul to really wrap his head around it, ultimately, so he didn’t bother to think about it too hard. Just smiled and shook his head some more.
Cozy was just kind of confused by what he’d said, and was looking down at herself. Second time in one day? Was she missing something?
“Well, yeah. I have grown. That’s how it works,” she said, looking up again at Paul only to find him giving her the oddest look. She could not for the life of her work out what he was thinking.
Didn’t last long though. He seemed to realise he was doing it just when she saw that he was, and so he stopped, snapping out of it and plunging right back into the swing of things:
“I’m still not doing it.”
“Oh come on, dad! How many years have you been here now? Have you ever seen them do anything like what you said they used to do where you’re from?”
“No. Doesn’t matter. Still not doing it.”
“Even if it helped ponies? People? Uh, just helped in general?” Cozy asked.
She knew for a fact - having heard about it when he’d been trying to impart his particular skills onto her - that he was fully aware and rather liked the idea of having handy, magically-powered clockwork companions and contraptions available for mundane tasks and general problem-solving and that, when he’d been younger, he’d felt that it was definitely worth the time.
Life could be better, he’d thought, and he could help with the making it better!
Now though, not so much. That had been ground out of him by bastards. Hence the value he put in the advice that Cozy not let that happen to her. He’d had it happen to him. He wasn’t a fan.
“It won’t. That’s not what it would be for. I know. It’d be some shiny toy for their poxy army, I know. And even if that’s not what I made for them that’s what they’d try and use it for. It’ll start out as the best of intentions and end up the way it always does, because that’s what happens. No, not doing it. That’s final, Cozy.”
“But-”
“Final. Done.”
She gritted her teeth, considered pointing out that where he was wasn’t where he’d come from, considered pointing out all the things that he’d made that weren’t weapons like that thing that pulled the wagon and which lived in the shed and the toys and that walking frame and his damn leg but no, she could see it wouldn’t get her anywhere.
There was a line in Paul’s head, she knew. On the one side him, knowing how to do things and on the other everyone else, who could not be trusted. Cozy was in there too, but she sat in a separate category he’d built off to one side that was distinct. Not that she was aware of this.
And not that it mattered. It was done, like he’d said.
“Fine,” she said.
“Good,” he said, balling up the letter and tossing it into the bin in the corner. Cozy couldn’t muster the energy to be annoyed by that. His letter, after all.
Paul resumed making tea. She watched him as he faffed with mugs and bags and spoons, watched him as he fished the teatowel out of the sink, wrung it out and hung it up. Watched him as he shuffled painfully the short distance from the side to the table - he always seemed to have more trouble with the shorter, between distances, she noticed - and watched him sit down.
“She invited you to tea again as well. You personally, not with me this time, just the two of you,” Cozy said, eventually, breaking the silence, having read far enough into the letter to catch that detail.
“Eurgh,” Paul groaned. The idea was about as appealing as dragging himself across broken glass to stick his head in a bucket of piss, even if the tea in the meetings before had been consistently quite nice. Paul didn’t like to admit that - and wouldn’t out loud - but it had been quite nice, the tea. Quality stuff. Damn royals and their taste for the finer things in life.
And speaking of tea…
“You want a cup?” Paul asked, belatedly, making to rise again.
“I don’t like tea,” Cozy said. Again, he should have remembered this by now.
“Oh, yes.” He said.
Paul blew on his tea. His tea steamed.
“Really doesn’t make sense you don’t want to teach anyone. It’d be useful. You like useful,” Cozy said. Paul was not surprised that him trying to put a stop to the conversation hadn’t held. He hung his head for a moment in exasperated exhaustion before replying.
“There’s shades of useful, Cozy. The wrong people will get it if I put it out there for anyone and it’ll do more harm than good. If I hold onto it it can die along with me and the world will be all the better for it. Me dying shouldn’t be too long now anyway.”
“Don’t say that,” Cozy said with enough actual venom and force that Paul couldn’t come up with a comeback and actually found himself quite cowed. It was quite unlike anything he’d heard from her. He just gawped, dumbstruck, as she blew out her nostrils and took a breath.
“Don’t say that,” she repeated, more calmly this time.
“Alright, Cozy, whatever you say,” he said, subdued. Where had that come from?
The silence following this was a bit more awkward than their usual silence. This time neither of them had any idea what to put into it. Normally they both had an idea and were simply waiting for the other to crack first. This time, they were both at a loss.
This time, Paul actually felt a need to fill the silence. It was the look on her face that did it, mostly. Couldn’t describe it but he didn’t like it, not one bit. Gave him a twitch. Had to shift the topic, get her fired up on something. Hopefully see a bit of a smile again. Or failing that, annoyance. Either would be better than that look, whatever that look was.
“So, uh,” he started, clearing his throat, hands on his mug. “You’re, uh, meeting your friends, you say?”
To Paul’s immense relief this seemed to perk her up a little.
“Yeah. Sweetie- one of The Three’s sisters has a place in town she let them stay in, I was going to stay there too for a day or two or whatever. You know. Do kid things, have fun, those things you keep telling me to do.”
Paul blinked. He’d had in his head that she’d just be going over for the day, as she sometimes did, as they sometimes did when they came to visit her. He hadn’t even considered that she might be staying anywhere other than their - than his - home.
“Days plural?” He asked, moving for a casual sip of tea and singing his lips.
“We’re not going to leave the city or anything, we’re not going away. We’re just hanging out. I can be fine out of your sight, you know. And I’m allowed now,” Cozy said, witheringly, though not unkindly.
Paul sometimes forgot that she was indeed actually allowed out on her own now and opened his mouth and raised a finger and took a breath to correct her before he remembered.
“True. And I know, it’s fine. You’re a smart child I just - um.”
“You just what? Don’t trust me?” She asked, perhaps a touch more sharply than she might have meant to, just in the heat of the moment.
Paul bit back on a wince. It had stung just the tiniest bit, hearing her say that and hearing her say it like that. How many years had it been now?
“Hey, don’t say that. Of course I trust you. I mean, you lie to me a lot I’m pretty sure but I can tell - and that ‘dad’ stuff still isn’t getting you anywhere, I hope you know - but I definitely trust you can look after yourself. I just worry, that’s all. Am I allowed to do that?” He asked.
“Yes, dad,”
“Eurgh, child…” He grumbled, sipping again more carefully this time.
“So am I allowed?” Cozy asked and Paul raised an eyebrow.
“Do I have to give you permission?” He asked.
“I don’t know. Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
An impasse.
“You probably should,” Cozy said after thinking on it for a second. She couldn’t be entirely sure why but it just felt like it was something that Paul should do.
“I probably should, shouldn’t I?” Paul said. He also felt that it was something he should do, even though he couldn’t fathom why.
Another impasse.
“...so?”
“You have my permission? Eurgh, I didn’t like the feel of that at all,” Paul said, grimacing.
“You’re in authority, you’re going to have to accept that at some point,” Cozy said, picking her words carefully. Paul was, as she had predicted and hoped for, stony-faced at the mere suggestion of him being in authority.
“No.”
Cozy rolled her eyes.
“And I’m the child…” She said under her breath.
“Cheeky bloody girl. That’s gratitude for you. Let her go cavort with her bad influence friends and all I get is lip.”
“Bad influence! They’re a bad influence? You-”
This, as with the party, continued for some time.