Son of a Witch

When Kir was one year old, he asked Brigit where his mommy went.

After listening to her wonder over his having a remarkable memory for a baby and oh how clever he was to be talking so young, she told him that his mommy had to go far away and didn't want him to get hurt.

That, more than anything, told Kir the type of person his adopted mother was. She was the sort of person who would protect a child, even from the truth. Even when said child came with horns and a tail, like Kir.

Brigit was a witch. Standing a meter and a half tall, she had auburn hair and deep purple eyes. She was human, with bronze, freckled skin, and a smile like the sun.

This was, as Kir would discover, in stark contrast with himself. He looked nothing like her, since he had firey red hair and little horns on his head. A short tail grew from above his crack, widening the closer it got to the base of his spine.

When he first saw himself in a mirror, it was to discover that he had olive skin and hair that resembled fire, black at the roots fading out to a lot of red. His eyes, however, were deep purple, fading into dark red at the edges of his irises and a tiny bit of blue around his pupils.

He could tell he was going to be quite the looker when he grew up, provided he exercised, and that brought him a lot of joy. Oh, but he hoped people didn't mind the horns and tail.

His adoptive mother was clearly human, and he couldn't recall ever seeing anyone else stop by.

Of course, he'd been confined to his room the whole time by virtue of being a baby.

The next question he'd asked was who his mom was, and Brigit cried when she told him she was a very scared lady, who said she couldn't afford to raise him.

"Why was she scared?" he asked.

"Because she loved you very much, but she knew she had to leave you behind. I gave her something to protect her and some money, and in exchange she let me keep you safe." Brigit answered.

"Oh..." Kir had said, wondering at the strange hole he felt in his heart. The fading memory of a face with glorious red hair and blue eyes, and a single red wing.

-

When Kir was six, an elven woman of Amazonian proportions named Darlae moved into the house.

Darlae was tall. Two meters tall. She had white hair that she kept short, shaved on one side, and was just on the edge between buff and soft. It was easy to tell Brigit was into her, and they clearly had a history as adventurers together. A long history. Brigit was human but circulating her mana constantly kept her looking young even into her two-hundreds.

Brigit was getting more work and didn't have a lot of time to teach Kir magic, so Darlae would give him something to do if he wanted to learn how to hunt and exercise. At first Kir thought her massive, two-handed staff was actually a piece of workout equipment. He tried to bench-press it when it was raining and he was bored. That opinion changed when he saw her smash a tree into kindling with it.

After Darlae settled in, Kir asked Brigit if they were together, and she blustered and sputtered a half-truth that made it obvious they were.

Kir put on his best adorable face and said "I think it would be great if I had two mommies..."

Kir's declaration was an immense relief. They came clean after Brigit got done crying for joy and clutching her heart. Kir didn't mind that they were a lesbian couple.

In fact, he tried very specifically not to remember Brigit calling out the name "Darlae" when she'd visited while he was a baby and he'd been helplessly trapped in a cradle by Brigit's bed and could only look away and cover his ears...

"You wouldn't think it, but you've raised a good kid, Bri," Darlae said as she rubbed Kir's hair between his horns.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kir challenged. He'd already seen how the local villagers reacted to his presence. Most were uncomfortable and some were downright hostile. He wasn't about to live with Darlae if that was how she was going to be.

But challenging an adult when he wasn't even the size of one of her legs came off far more cute than he intended.

Darlae laughed awkwardly and never made an issue of his heritage again.

One year after Darlae moved in, Kir met his first stranger.

He'd seen plenty of villagers come and go, but he'd never gotten to interact with them apart from watching Brigit's conversations with them, often from his perch on the stairwell, and being watched in turn.

Kir had been trusted with the house by himself because he was a smart kid and he knew how to cook - better than Darlae at any rate - and he'd promised not to burn the house down.

In order to prepare for the day, he'd had his moms pick up some supplies, and he'd just finished laying them out when the knock at the door came.

She was a girl who looked to be about his age, maybe older. Darlae and Brigit were out foraging for rare ingredients, so Kir tried to be brief, especially since it looked like it was about to rain.

"I'm sorry, my moms aren't here," he said to the quiet girl, who seemed to seize up a bit when she saw him.

"Oh... um..." she nervously came out of her stare. "I'm 'sposed to get a potion..."

"I'm Kir, and um..." Kir looked back toward the shelf where Brigit kept her tinctures. It was cluttered and nothing was labeled. "What kind of potion?" he asked.

"Green one..." she said, sounding uncertain. "Mom says Ms. Brigit will know..."

Kir frowned. Half the potions were some variation of green.

"I don't know how long they'll be out though," he said. "Can you come back tomorrow?"

The girl really looked like she wanted to say 'no', but Kir never found out because a sudden crack of lightning nearby sent her scurrying into his house.

"H-hey! What are you-" Kir called out as the girl disappeared into the living room.

He found her on the couch with a pillow over her head.

"Seriously, it's about to rain. You should get home," he said... right as the rain started pouring down outside.

Cursing his bad luck, Kir closed the front door. He looked over at the human girl and sighed. "If you're going to stay, you might as well come into the kitchen where it's warm," he offered, before making his way there.

Kir didn't mind the cold, mostly because he seemed to run hotter than most. But a stable temperature was hard to come by with wood as fuel, and he wasn't particularly confident in his magic for what he was about to do.

To get started he made the dough. Then he began kneading and mixing until he had what he thought was a good consistency before leaving it in the bowl to proof.

From there he started chopping ingredients; onions, peppers, and thin slices of sliced sausage onto which he added some salt. He wasn't sure what was in the sausage but it was tasty and maybe a mix of boar and aurochs. Brigit was very particular about her meats, unlike Darlae.

While he was mixing the sauce, using a combination of something that tasted like basil called teneck, and something purple that tasted like a sweet tomato named blackrim, he looked up to find the mystery girl peaking around the doorframe.

Thunder cracked and she ducked a bit, clutching the doorframe.

Kir tried to give her a reassuring smile as he continued to work, but that also made her duck away for another moment.

Putting her out of his thoughts, he mashed and mixed his sauce until it was the right consistency and a decent flavor, even though it was purple.

By that point, the bread had finished its proofing and had risen to about double its size.

Now came the tricky part. Kir still wasn't quite used to having claws, so after rolling out the dough and unsticking it from the table, he kept accidentally poking holes in it as he tried to get it into position for the toss.

Eventually, and with great conscious effort to keep his nails retracted, he managed his first toss.

Then a second. Then-

With a sound like "plut" the dough landed on Kir's face.

Before he started removing it, he heard a giggle coming from the doorway. It was the girl, and she was now standing inside the kitchen, leaning just inside the wall.

Kir let out an appreciative huff as he balled the dough up and prepared it to be rolled and tossed a second time.

He probably only had one or two more tries before he overworked it, so it was with exceeding caution that he started his second toss. He ended it with a flourish, and while the girl didn't clap he at least had her attention.

As soon as it was a satisfactory size, he stretched the expanded circle out into the bread paddle, trying to make it even.

Adding a ring of sliced peppers and sausage to the outer edge, he then moved across the kitchen to fetch the cheese grater.

He came back to find the girl had taken the seat on the opposite side of the kitchen table, and was staring intently at the forming dish.

Kir paused a bit in case she wanted to ask a question. When she didn't, he stood on his chair and ladled out his purple imitation tomato sauce. Then he started to grate fine flakes of cheese onto the dough, careful also to cover his ring of sausage and peppers.

"Whatcha making?" the girls voice made Kir jump a little. He'd gotten a bit into a flow state and had forgotten her.

"It's called pizza," he said. "Well, in this case stuffed-crust pizza."

If he was going through all the trouble to invent pizza in this world, then he was going to at least make it stuffed-crust.

"Is it good?" she asked.

"Once it's baked it will be," he smiled.

Hopefully he'd done his math right and the bread oven was at a good temperature. Lacking precision instruments was... a challenge.

"Can I help?" she asked.

"Well, um..." Kir decided to let her lay on the toppings once he finished grating the cheese mix. Then he stood by, only giving her instructions to make the distribution even.

When it came time to lift the thing, however, it turned out that the sum of one unbaked pizza was a bit heavy for him. The girl helped him by keeping the bread paddle stable as he opened the oven with his tail and shoved the pizza in.

"And now we wait," he said, smiling to his kitchen helper.

Just then, thunder cracked again, but this time the girl merely flinched.

"Thunder can't hurt you, you know," Kir said, before turning and taking his seat as he started to clean.

The girl took her seat opposite him once more. "Why?" she asked.

"Well... It's just a sound. Did you ever notice that lightning strikes way before you hear thunder? That's because lightning moves faster than the sound. At the speed of light, so it's impossible to dodge. So really, it's lightning you should be careful... of..."

Kir's explanation petered out into silence as he saw the horrified look on the girl's face.

Of course that was the moment the door slammed open, lightning flashing in the background.

The girl started bawling, crying before the thunder even hit. She remained on her seat, hands over her eyes as she cried and cried.

"Kir! What did you do?" Darlae asked as soon as she was inside.

"I just told her how thunder works!" Kir tried to defend himself. "She's scared of it. I thought if she understood, she wouldn't be."

In all the kerfuffle, Kir's voice got drowned out time and again as Darlae proceeded to lecture him on not making girls cry while he tried to argue his case, failing to get a word in edgewise.

Brigit, meanwhile, got the girl her potion and escorted her home, safe from the rain within a bubble of magic.

By the time Brigit returned, Kir had been sent to his room for misbehaving.

They didn't discover the pizza until it was already smoking.

By then, Kir was sulking as he read through a book on intermediary magic for the third time.

He looked up when he realized he'd never gotten the girl's name.