THOTH & MORVEREN
Danny’s foot-nudging had no effect on Thoth, but fortunately his pony stepped up once again. She snorted and pushed her face under his shoulders, nudging him up a few inches off the floor before retracting her nose and letting him fall back to the ground. He groaned audibly and said something very unsightly in Norwegian. Thoth rubbed his eyes and stared blearily up at his mare, who was smiling down at him with an expression of gentle concern.
“Are you alright, dear?” She enquired, her soft voice filled with affectionate worry. Thoth pushed her nose out of his face, proving he was fine, and she whinnied with amusement and trotted back to her corner. As she moved away and Thoth’s vision cleared, he noticed the other boy standing over him.
“Who’s that?” He asked suspiciously of Junebell the pony, adopting her language as easily as he spoke English. To Danny, it would sound only as if he was imitating a horse’s nicker.
“I don’t know, dear, but he seems like a nice boy.”
Thoth groaned again as he pulled himself to his feet and staggered forward into his desk, getting his bearings. As well as the boy - who was a few years younger than him - there was also a tiger, who was presumably the boy’s familiar. The door had been kicked down, probably by Junebell, since this kid didn’t look strong enough for that. Otherwise, everything in the lab looked more or less the same… except… Thoth’s eyes focused on the desk in front of him, trying to work out why it looked wrong. Notes… pen… tripod… bunsen… beaker! Where was his beaker?! Thoth whipped around, scanning the room in dismay. The window was open - surely, no…
“Where is it?” He demanded in English, pushing past the kid to the window. “What did you do with - merde.” His jaw dropped open in horror as he stared at his precious potion on the floor, several hundred metres below his window. It was still pooling out poisonous green smoke. Thoth rounded on Junebell and switched instantly to her language, cutting Danny off. “What happened?!”
“You were out cold, honey,” she replied sympathetically. “I didn’t know what to do, so when this young gentleman knocked on the door I let him in. He opened the window for me and I threw your potion out.”
It was a mark of how used to communicating with animals Thoth was, and how honest he was, that he didn’t question how Junebell had talked to Danny or the truth of her words. He threw his hands up to his head with yet another groan and stomped back over to his desk, meaning to check his notes to make sure he’d gotten everything down, but he was distracted when he caught sight of Danny’s familiar and remembered his own. Morveren… where was Morveren? He ducked his head under the desk and found the little water-fox there, facedown on the floor and sleeping peacefully. Hmm. The sleeping gas must work dilute with increased mass, which was why Junebell was unaffected: she was simply too big. Thoth had been knocked out but revived quickly because he was bigger too, but Morveren was only about the size of a cat, so she was still out cold. Interesting. Thoth made a mental note of it as he straightened up and turned back to Danny, eying him distrustfully.
As a general rule, Thoth didn’t get along with other children. He only had two other fairy friends - Tristan and Alethea - and more nemeses than he cared to count. The children who didn’t pick on him tended to ignore him. So… what was one doing here, in his lab? Sometimes the other kids came and rattled the doorknob, laughing and jeering from the other side of the door, but Thoth always kept it locked to keep them out. Since Arthur had given him this room to keep his bedroom experiment-free, he hadn’t had a single visitor - which was how he liked it. Scientific method required a controlled environment, and if there was one thing Thoth couldn’t even begin to understand or control, it was other people.
“Who are you?” He narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing in here?”
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