Knotted [evander & maud]

He'd never been here before. Something about seeing these animals locked up, even though they were only animals and nothing more, he picked up on their subtle movements and soft expressions, and when they looked out at him, it was like they were looking at him through a man's eyes. But that was ridiculous, wasn't it? Besides, students got in cheap. Evander just couldn't help but imagine his siblings locked in these plexiglass prisons as he led Maud through the exhibits, only living for feeding time, the spectacle of the crowd, the taptaptap against the windows.

Some of them would probably not mind a life like that.

They had more than just lions and tigers and bears, but twisted and alien creatures, with unnatural frames and calls, scales dripping with slime or covered in coats of thick, matted fur, and in the latter case, they could smell the monster before they could see it. Monsters and exotic creatures were every-day for him, and he found himself more interested in this girl named after an Irish hag, trying to read each flicker of expression like a movie made out of post-it notes.

Maud entered the zoo with a cocktail of emotions and fatigue brewing in her belly. She moved methodically, each step slow and pronounced as she walked through. "Where are the birds?" she asked. Her done did not dip or curl into a whine; rather, it stayed high and interested, her eyes glued to the animals more-so than Evander.

It was probably for the best too, she thought. She could feel his every ogle. At one point, she began to feign emotion, playing out exaggerated characters. At the lion exhibit she was a philosopher, hand to chin, stroking a non-existent beard. At the bear exhibit she tried to appear angry at something, but her weird grimace made her teeth hurt and she eventually stopped.

When they got to the weird shit, she no longer played around. "What the fuck is that thing?" she asked. She whispered as if it were a secret, rapping her arm around Evander's and pointing to a hairy, slimy beast. It looked like one of her dad's old friends, the one who played pool and was always shirtless.

Okay, so she could be... unique, but "unique" was a compliment when you were cute, and so was "quirky." Call him shallow, but that threshold of attractiveness divided the meter between "interesting" and "just weird," and she had a not-unpleasant shape to her, and he knew he couldn't be the only one ogling, and that was a prize he could dangle over the head of every guy in this park. The only thing better than eye candy was arm candy. Yes. Yes. Awful. Shallow. But what could he say? He was a guy. Maud played her charades, and Evander played his part, the puppy trotting at her heels.

He might've caught onto more than she knew. Evander caught side-glimpses of the ink wings fanning out across her wrist, and his discerning nose could pick up the trace of cigarette smoke that clung to her clothes and her skin and her hair, even if no normal human might pick up that scent, but this zoo was short on normal humans. Paired with the hair color and the kooky name, some people might take all that in as a bundle of dyed rose gold warning flags, but he liked the levity in her voice, the buoyancy in her walk, and her fake beard stroking forced even him to crack a genuine smile.

Evander pressed his finger up to the plaque. "'A melusine,'" it read in bold black letters, "'captured by Guardians in Ceres Forest on the evening of June 17, 2033. It uses its needle-like claws to induce...'" He narrowed his eyes, wordlessly reading the rest of the sign. 'It uses its needle-like claws to induce confused states of love and lust in its victims as a hunting strategy.' The unnatural creature, tapped its claws against the thick glass, slavering at the mouth. Cupid was a lizard. "I don't know, but it's pretty ugly. Let's check out the birds."

Maud put a finger to her chin. She wondered what kind of people figured that out, in the same way she thought of tomato juice as a cure to skunk odor. It must have been the hard way. The word lust stuck out especially to her, and Maud smirked. Though he mentioned birds, she ignored him and stepped forward towards the exhibit.

She knelt down in front of the strange creature, a thick layer of glass separating them. "What do you think would happen if we let it loose on the city?" she asked thoughtfully. Nearby, security guards flinched and straightened up, looking between the girl and her date.

Maud looked into the thing's eyes and put her hands to the glass, as if to try to pet it. Damn, that thing was ugly.

He raised an eyebrow. Was that a joke or a suggestion? "Well, it might solve the population crisis." One way or the other. Humanshad been fighting and killing each other over the person they wanted to sleep with since they figured out that rock plus skull equals brain soup. Throw in fireballs and lightning bolts and wolf teeth, and springing the poor creature from its cage might have the same end result as setting a pipe bomb off in the city center, with a few extra pregnancies.

Evander kept his distance from the glass. He had no plans for falling in love.

Hmm...

Maud stroked the glass for a few more moments, then straightened up. She walked back to Evander and put her arm around his again, smiling towards the security guards. "Just a thought," she told her date, keeping eye contact with the guards before looking briefly back to the monster. It lay still, eery in the way it stayed idle save for the slight waving of its tentacles.

"Take me to the birds, will you?" Maud whispered to Evander, pulling him along.

An ugly thought. He smiled it away, but just looking at the slimy creature locked inside gave him the shivers. Evander was glad to let himself be tugged toward the avian section of the sprawling park, where the air grew humid but the animals were hopefully cuter. Most of them were. Long-tailed quetzals, flocking from branch to branch, choirs of daisy yellow and powder blue parakeets tweeting from the upper heights, although to him they seemed to blur into the same Granny Smith candy apple color. Out in the open, uncaged, a peacock strut up and down the gardens just off the visitor's path. Then, again, came the stranger things. Long-billed snipes, straw-like beaks slurping blood from the necks of rodents. Birds with scales instead of feathers, flashing like samite as they arced through the air. Birds with no feathers or scales, just pinkish-yellow skin stretched over their bones like a raw Thanksgiving turkey. Birds with one eye. Birds with many eyes. Birds with no eyes. The same went for wings, and legs, and one that Evander identified as a macaw turned on them with reptilian eyes, a rope-like tongue uncurling from the tip of its beak to lick against the glass.

"Don't tell me you're smuggling any of these out either." These things, animals or whatever they were, they couldn't live anywhere outside of the zoo. Not in safety, anyway. Students were flown out to hunt the wild ones as fireball practice to this day. But if you knew the right people, and the right address, a curious person might be able to find these monsters closer to home; you could have a truly exotic pet, the kind you could only get in Rivers Pointe. He didn't know how much of an outsider Maud was, but Evander found it prudent not to tell her any of those things.

"You think lowly of me, Evander." Maud went from cage to cage, getting close enough to the cages to make anyone nervous. At least, anyone who knew her power. Occasionally she'd make a whistle or a click at the birds, but few would actually reciprocate. Perhaps most birds weren't as lovely and gifted as Fred, she thought. All beautiful on the outside and boring on the inside. She looked backwards to Evander.

Soon, she turned back to her date. She took his hands in hers and gripped them. "What about you?" she asked. "What's your favorite thing here? There has to be something here that makes you feel like a child again when you see it." Or whatever a baby squirrel boy is called.

"Not lowly." Cautiously. It was the opposite way, if anything. Evander slid his gaze away as Maud clasped his hands, eyes drifting aimlessly through the bowed fronds and exhibit signs. He might've said he grew up in an animal-house just like this. "The exhibits are fun, but there's stuff here besides that. Have you ever ridden a camel?"

"Nope," Maud released his hands and smirked. "But I'm guessing they let you on them in this zoo." She was dying for the exhilaration of being where she wasn't supposed to, to do things that were illegal. She looked back and forth, to the navigation signs plastered on every pole in the zoo. She saw 'African safari,' and most importantly, the perfect animal.

Maud took his hand and led the way.

"Have you ever ridden a zebra?" she asked.

An uncomfortable lead weight settled in his stomach, a rising suspicion, but he followed pleasantly along. "Can't say I have." Camels, horses, yes, and he thought that had been exotic enough. He'd never been kicked by a zebra either, and was not so enthusiastic to try it out for himself, but he didn't say that to Maud. "I don't think they're as accommodating."

"Have you ever seen Sheena: Queen of the Jungle?" Maud asked, giving a small 'aha' to a sign pointing her in the right direction. Sure enough, she stopped and in front of her stretched a great yellow plain. Or, at least, great in terms of the portrait across the far wall, picturing an endless grassland paradise. In reality, it was a moderately-sized habitat, just right for Maud. She eyed the zebras, particularly the ones basking around the back.

"Take out your phone so you can get pictures," she told Evander. Grabbing his hand, both disappeared in a flash.

When Maud opened her eyes, she found herself indoors. She groaned, pushing back her bangs and holding her head. She must've gone too far, she thought. that was, however, until she saw the zebra resting a few meters away, the occasional scatterings of animal dung across the enclosure. She wasn't sure how she didn't smell it before seeing it.

"I think we're in their indoor facility," Maud whispered, turning to Evander. Some part of her expected him to be gone, having appeared somewhere far away. Perhaps the lion exhibit or with the tentacle monster. However, there he was, and she squeezed his hand tightly to make sure he was still in one piece.

Sheena who? Evander let her string him along past the camels (who were indifferently carrying two delighted small children back and forth along a ten foot stretch of fence) and deeper into the heart of Africa. Dutifully, he slipped his phone out from his pocket, picking through his contacts. In the theoretical scenario someone he knew was detained by zoo security, who did he call to bail them out? Maeve? No. Father? Definitely not. He eyed the zebras, then turned to Maud. That uneasy feeling sharpened. "Isn't this close—...?"

Her hand clasped around his, and in a second space warped around them. He felt wrenched through dimensions, unstitched, unpacked, and insides poured back inside, transporting from Point A to Point B with no connecting time between. To her, it was probably routine. Him, he instantaneously decided he preferred the long route. A wave of nausea crashed through him, staggering him as he took his first unbalanced step, blinded from the sudden shift in lighting. When he came to, he found his eyes curving up false rock, across the hard grated floor strewn with dung and hay.

The smell was abominable. Evander stared evenly at the resting zebra, with no acrylic wall to separate them. "I think so too," he repeated hollowly. He didn't realize how tight he'd been squeezing her hand, and let his grip slacken. His other hand was empty, phone nowhere to be seen. "You've at least ridden a horse, right?"