SELF CARE: MAY

With the return to Woolhope finally completed, Jonathan found himself at a bit of a loss for what to do with his time. During his traveling with Pepper - and most recently with Clover as well - there had been no end of sights to be seen and experiences to behold. They’d made frequent stops in the Hidden Garden, which Jonathan had found to be not that hidden after all, to participate in community led activities.

Things like flying kites, swimming in the pools, and shooting chocolate boxes out of the air. It had been nice, but not exactly the sort of “teambuilding exercises” he had envisioned when he and Pepper were on the move.

Pepper, he was finding, was incredibly difficult to read. She rarely emoted, rarely objected to much of anything, and didn’t share her thoughts or feelings or ideas. Sometimes, when Jonathan was quiet for long enough, she would off-handedly mention something about where they were geographically, or something she had learned when wandering off, but conversations were exceedingly difficult to maintain for long.

That’s why Jonathan had taken it upon himself to pave the way so to speak. After his most recent spat with Clover, it had become a bit entangled. Messy and not at all like the way the character arcs were supposed to go. Clover, the sidekick to the tsundere, was pushing back fairly often and Jonathan was frankly tired of it. This was supposed to be a love story between him and Pepper and Clover’s jealous self was just getting in the way.

Though it was obviously more complicated than that. When Clover had apologized for mischaracterizing him, Jonathan had thought that he was just going to say something, make a fuss about it, and then leave like he normally did. But Clover had lingered for too long, and had peered through him, and had cupped his face. Like a forlorn and lost soul.

Jonathan wasn’t stupid. Well he was, but this had been so obvious that even he couldn’t have misconstrued the signs.

Clover had a thing for him.

At first, Jonathan had been surprised. And then, it made much more sense. Of course Clover would be inspired. Jonathan was a heroic fox who wanted to show that he was, indeed, the charitable and charismatic knight that would come to save the day for any lost fox who needed him. Even though he really only had eyes for Pepper.

He thought he only had eyes for Pepper.

When Jonathan rose on another dreary morning in Woolhope, it was threatening rain. It often threatened to rain in Woolhope during the spring. This was something that Pepper had mentioned in the rare moments where she spoke to him. It was a bit of a damper, but not all filler was good filler, and Jonathan was used to not having good filler. He was, however, determined to make the best of it.

Piero had graciously made room for him to stay in The Ugly Cloth so long as he was able to pay, which he was. When he’d fallen from the sky in that old village, the Scarfoxes there had made it a point to reward him handsomely for destroying the beast that had plagued them. He had more little purple crystal shards than he really knew what to do with, and he hadn’t quite figured out what the economy was like to really care much about it.

It seemed that no matter where he went, so long as he was doing the fun things and talking to others, he’d be paid for his efforts, which was a nice change from a norm he could not remember.

Today, he was going for a walk. It wasn’t going to be a long one, for the clouds were a dark grey and oozing the type of moisture that made the fire of his horns fizzle softly. Not quite rain, but still a thick soup of atmosphere. As soon as he left The Ugly Cloth, Jonathan fanned out his bright wings, stretching as he did so.

He wouldn’t take flight just yet. It was still fairly new to him, and he didn’t want to risk crash landing where Pepper might have seen him. Or worse, where Clover would. He wasn’t even entirely sure why it would have bothered him if Clover saw. Maybe it was because of Clover’s previous invitation.

He shook the thoughts from his mind. If Clover wanted someone to fix him, it wasn’t going to be Jonathan. At least, not yet? Jonathan had reasoned that if he was, indeed, going to take Clover up on that offer, it couldn’t be right away. Things like this took at least a few episodes. There had to be some kind of high stakes event where Jonathan would look Clover in the eyes and see that Clover wasn’t actually trying to manipulate him and then he’d have to have his inner dialogue and then save the day.

It would go unspoken for a while but it would be obvious that they had become something like friends. Yeah, that sounded about right. It happened all the time as far as Jonathan was concerned. It was a tale as old as time.

He’d maybe even consider asking about it later, when Clover wasn’t giving him looks that made his stomach flutter oddly.

For now, his fantasies would have to do. Jonathan had convinced himself of this. Everything had to happen in particular ways because that was simply how a world like this operated. He had to be the charitable knight, he had to woo the girl of his dreams, he had to be nice to the romantic rival - was it romantic? - and he had to provide that classic protagonist leadership as he thwarted evil.

Even though he wasn’t exactly doing that much thwarting. It was more like a slow burn romantic comedy, action adventure, self-discovery type of thing. It had to be, because it just didn’t make sense for the protagonist to feel conflicted about who he spent his time with. It just didn’t make sense for the protagonist to not get the first girl he met under extraordinary circumstances.

It didn’t make sense for his stomach to flutter like this.

And when Jonathan did try and fail to take flight, it did briefly occur to him that he had two hands.