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Sometimes, Eda disappeared for a day or two. She’d be running from the law, most of the time. Though it had happened without warning once or twice, she was usually able to inform Ford beforehand.
Typically, he’d just stay within the Owl House, doing something or other. Studying Hooty, usually. He’d been in living buildings before, but they didn’t usually talk, or have faces, or eat things (unless it was the people in the building. There were an alarming number of people eating buildings out there).
Most of the time, she’d bring back something she had found lying around. Never anything huge, but no matter how many odd things Ford had seen, he always found any new item that he could never dream of finding in his home dimension fascinating.
The point is, sometimes he wouldn’t see Eda for a day or two, because she was trying to get the witch police, or “Emperor’s Coven members”, as she called them, off her back. It was a totally normal occurrence.
Except, this time was a bit different.
About a day and a half after he’d last seen Eda, Ford was sitting in the kitchen, having lunch with Hooty, who was sharing a story.
“-Then he screamed, and I screamed, so then we were both screaming! Together! It was a riot!” he said. Ford nodded along to show he was listening, but before Hooty could continue, he was moved backwards a bit by the front door opening. “Eda!”
He moved back out the window in order to greet her, and Ford stood and entered the living room to do the same. When he saw her, though, he paused.
“Eda,” he started after a moment. “What the fuck is that.”
Eda looked down at the object in her left hand. “A smoothie.”
“Not that. The other thing.”
She looked at the object in her right hand. “Another smoothie.”
“Not that,” he said again. “On your head, Eda.”
“Oh, that?” she asked, moving forward to place the smoothies on the living room table so she could take the... whatever it was off of her head and into her arms. “So, long story short, I was looking for somewhere to hide from both the Emperor’s Coven and the boiling rain when I found this weird island with a strange building on it, and inside I found...” She gestured to the thing with one hand, grinning. “This weird dog!”
Ford examined the “dog.” It had black fur and a skull-like head with two horns, one of which was broken. “Okay, but...why did you bring it back with you?”
Her grin fell. “There was... something else there, too. I’m not sure what it was, but it attacked as soon as it saw us,” she said, taking a small object out of her hair. It was the rest of the broken horn. “Whatever it was, it couldn’t leave the building, but it had something it could shoot at us with, and this happened. I couldn’t just leave the little guy there, so I brought him with me.”
Just then, the little thing’s eyes cracked open. They were mostly yellow, with big, black pupils that had a purple ring around them. He opened his mouth in a yawn, stretching his tiny arms up in the air. Then he blinked, stretching his arms in Ford’s direction.
“Heh, looks like he likes you,” Eda said. “Do you want to...?”
Ford held his arms out, and she handed the small creature over. The little guy cuddled up to him, wagging his fox-like tail. It was...
“Adorable!” Hooty said. He’d been there the whole time, stuck through the window next to the door, but he only spoke now. And he said exactly what Ford was thinking.
He’d seen a lot of cute things, of course. Hell, he’d been to a Cute Dimension once, but... when was the last time he’d held something so tiny and warm?
He couldn’t remember, but it felt nice.
“...you said he was a dog?” he asked quietly.
Eda shrugged. “I mean, I can’t be certain, but that’s what it looks like.”
“Does he have a name?”
She thought for a moment. “Nope, and I can’t think of a good one, either. You got any ideas?”
He thought for a few seconds, but came up blank. “No, not at the moment,” he answered.
Eda shrugged once more. “We’ll come up with something eventually.”
———
A couple days passed, but they still hadn’t been able to come up with a good name. Eda had gotten him a collar, though, which was better than nothing.
Ford sat on the living room floor, watching as the little guy made small towers out of whatever he could get his paws on. He finished one off with a teddy bear head, and immediately fell down. He got back up on all fours right after, though, then stood on his legs and put his front paws on his hips.
A snort came from the doorway, and Ford looked up to see Eda leaning against the frame. “Look at you! A king amongst his subjects,” she said to the little guy.
“King.”
Ford froze up, eyes widening. He hadn’t said that. Eda hadn’t said it. And Hooty hadn’t said it, either.
But that meant...
“King!” the little guy repeated, flailing his tiny arms and falling down onto his butt.
“It spoke...” Eda said, standing up straight. As she walked over, she continued, laughter in her voice. “You know what else kings do? They command armies and eat delicious feasts.”
The little guy let out a small squeal-like noise and fell down for a moment. When he got back up, he looked at Eda with wide eyes. She continued telling him about kings, Ford watching in silence until she said his name.
“You’ve met some kings before, haven’t you?” she asked. The little guy turned both his wide eyes and his attention onto Ford.
“Oh, um, that’s right,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “Quite a few, actually! Now, where to start...”
And so Ford regaled them with stories of kings he’d met during his travels. Some were told in great detail, while others were kept short for one reason or another. He skipped over his longest, most dangerous story of the being known as the King of Nightmares entirely. That one wasn’t a tale the little guy needed to hear, and it didn’t have a conclusion yet, either, so it’s not like it would be satisfying.
“-And then they made me their king,” he said, and Eda laughed.
“You never told me that you were a king!”
“Well, it didn’t last long. A guy with seven fingers showed up soon afterwards,” he admitted, and she laughed even louder.
At that moment, the two of them heard a noise. They looked around for the source before they heard it again, and their eyes settled on the little guy. His stomach was grumbling.
“I guess it is about time to eat,” Eda said, looking at the clock.
Ford looked as well, slightly surprised by the time. “Wow, we’ve been sitting here for a while, huh?” he said. “Actually, I’m starting to get hungry myself...”
“Same here. Now that I think about it, though, what should we be feeding him?” she asked, looking at the little guy.
Ford thought for a moment. So far they’d just been feeding the little guy scraps of a few different regular foods, but they had also thought that he was a dog up until now. It seemed that he was closer to a person, at the very least.
It’s a good thing we never fed him any kibble, Ford thought. That would have been pretty embarrassing, actually.
“I guess we can try feeding him some of whatever we eat?” he suggested. “See how he reacts, and stop if it seems to have a negative effect on him.”
“Guess it couldn’t hurt,” Eda muttered. She stood up. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Ford and the little guy followed Eda into the kitchen, and the little guy watched as the other two prepared a meal.
“Hey, I just had an idea,” Ford said as he chopped up some sort of vegetable.
“Yeah?” Eda asked, stopping what she was doing to listen. He stopped as well, putting down the knife in his hand.
“What if we called him King?” he asked, glancing back at the little guy, who perked up and wagged his tail.
Eda glances back as well, a small smile on her face. “Yeah. That’ll do.”
And so the little guy became known as King. The time that he’d spent in the Owl House at that point was just the start of something bigger. He’d already gone from “pet” to “person” in Eda and Ford’s minds, and while they wouldn’t realize it until eight years later, he’d eventually become something else entirely to them.
But that’s a story for another time.