My eyes kept darting to my bag. Stella and I agreed to wait a bit before we gave Zeta the book present I got her, but in one of my stupider moves, the book ended up in my bag, which was open on my desk, plainly in view of Zeta, who was in my office for a chat. I couldn’t just give her the present now, right? But if she saw it, the whole thing would probably be ruined, because if she saw it and I was like “Yep, I actually got that for you, enjoy!” She’d be confused, or just think I’m making it up. And I obviously couldn’t be like “Guess who’s been fucking your sister?” about it. That would not only be throwing more info at her than she should know, information that would be insanely inappropriate for a teacher to give to their student (and also a potential guardian/kid thing brewing if I stuck with Stella). Also, blabbing about my steadily growing thing with Stella starting with the sex would make the book even more perplexing as a present. “Yes, I am having sex with your sister, and we live together now! Enjoy a book.”
Fortunately, Zeta had bigger fish to be anxious about that she vented to me about (well not really fortunate, her anxiety wasn’t my benefit).
“I am a bit concerned about this trip,” Zeta said. “First up, I’ve never been camping. And it’s like void camping.”
The big Fang Moon Web trip was a hard one to explain to students. A day trip to the void to go on more of an ‘adventure’ to study new locales. Like a fun vacation, but with fighting monsters. There was also an increased risk of Endoran schools pulling something, even with all our protections for the students from them doing real damage, legally Endoran schools can just invade on our turf and mess with the students. Which sucks. The trip was a rite of passage for first year Cani, but I don’t think Zeta believed me when I told her that.
“Rites of passage can still be scary. Rite of passages? No, rites of passage sounds better. Right?” Zeta said. “I’m…really nervous, sorry I just talked over you.”
“No, no, let it out.” I said.
Ever since Stella and I got together, I started seeing my teacher/student bond with Zeta differently, with the aforementioned vibe of “If things keep going good with Stella, Zeta’s effectively gonna be my kid too in a way.” My thoughts on that as Zeta continued to list her anxieties about the trip were: I would have absolutely no problem being her guardian.
Due to her also aforementioned “kitten you just want to help out that wandered on your porch” energy, she wasn’t someone I had trouble being a guardian to already in a teacherly role. She had helped me out too, by helping me patch things up with Caya in a way. When she helped there, I was so happy to be friends with Caya again that I blurted out that I was Zeta’s canon mom now, which is a bizarre statement I’ll admit, but I was feeling good. So if I could be her canon mom as her teacher, I could do the same as her…real life guardian? Why did I say canon? It sounded so good in my head at the time.
I’d already helped her through some rough patches as well, like her growing a tail or dealing with ex drama. For the former, I did my Cani doctor duty and basically said “Yep, you have a tail now.” For the latter, I just tried to give the best advice I could there.
But all of that was before Stella and I became a thing. So what would change with myself and Zeta if things with Stella stayed good? I probably couldn’t be Zeta’s doctor anymore, but I could make up for that with more direct guardian-ing. I didn’t have any desire one way or another for a kid, and never really thought I’d end up with one. But having Zeta as a kid, that’d be pretty sweet, I’d think? While she had some reckless teenager moments, I wondered if I could help take some burden off of Stella, who was doing all the guardian-ing of her little sister alone.
Would Zeta want me as a guardian? She didn’t immediately tell me to never say the canon mom thing again, so I was off to some kind of start there. I hoped she wouldn’t like hate the idea of me being in a relationship with her sister.
I did my best to reassure her that everything would be fine on the trip (partially for me as well, because her anxiety got me worried about her), trying to share some stories about how the last few rounds of it had went. Things had been pretty stable, so I wasn’t super concerned about Endoran presence this time. But that lack of concern led me to Thing #4 I’m not fantastic at: Predicting how a Fang Moon Web trip will go.
