"Awful! Do not name it till there is a better idea."

Ennis pats not-Margarine the not-mal as they settle in below the trees. "If I were a diviner I'd figure you out but I'm not at all."

The butterfly doesn't voice an opinion on either names or the feasibility of figuring it out, unless "Vivill viv" is an opinion.

The sun is starting to set over the water, red and gold and purple with little wisps of cloud like drops of paint swirling into each other.

"I'll take the night watch since I'm the one the critter's attached to, if you can spot me, Nia?"

"Ugh. Yes." She does more pushups till she can incant over Ennis for wakefulness and herself and Sean for sound but not impenetrable sleep.

Ennis will attempt, during the long boring night, to see how smart his new pet is.

It doesn't respond to "flap twice if you understand me" but will reliably look where he's pointing and can be persuaded to fetch a stick.

Will it fetch sticks in a specific order? Will it fly in a circle? Will it sit on Ennis's feet while he does situps?

Yes; yes with enough repetitive hand gestures and encouragement; yes for about three seconds before it gets distracted and hops over to his head to see what he's doing.

Well, he stops doing it when it does that! Will it do it properly if he puts it back patiently every time?

Its attention span remains terrible but he can get it to sit for ten seconds with enough patience.

Something pink and blobby is snuffling around near Nia's head.

- how the shit did it get that close without Ennis noticing?

...levitating, probably.

He pinches Nia's leg.

"Fuckingbabyjesus'snappiesontoast," shrieks Nia, rolling out from under the pink thing and kicking it in the nose.

The dark grey spot on its head abruptly switches to pale pink. It shrieks "Naaaaa!" and does--something magic? The shriek reverberates painfully in their ears, making it hard to think for a moment.

"Dormez-vous!" Nia snaps at it.

It flops over unconscious, which makes it clearer that it's hovering a few inches above the ground instead of using its tiny vestigial legs for anything.

Nia stuffs some things from her backpack into Sean's and then shoves the creature entire into the bag and zips it up.

It wobbles and bumps around in there, in more of a "trying to get comfy in its sleep" way than in a "fighting to get out" way, then falls still again.

"Yours is best behaved?" she asks Ennis.

"Yeah. Maybe yours'll be a model citizen. Do you want to swap shifts now since you're up anyway?"

"Yes, yes," she sighs, and she does some stretches and puts Ennis to sleep and keeps an eye on her backpack.

Nothing else goes bump in the night, though some things flutter far overhead or chirp a long ways off in the trees.

When it's been long enough that she can wake Sean for backup if she needs it, she opens the bag and has a look at the floral critter to see if it too is now mysteriously tame.

It's sitting there, apparently cheerful. "Munn."