"Wisdom?" the fox asked in that friendly tick-tock voice.
"Please," Everly said. "Make it flattering."
The fox's ear clicked. "Flattery is sugar," it said. "Drink water first."
Everly laughed and raised her cup. "You are a moralist."
"A hydrologist," the fox corrected.
Evelyn let the cold cling to her tongue before swallowing. "What is the second wisdom?" she asked.
The fox's tail traced a neat figure eight. "Tie your knots before you admire them," it said.
Ethan gave it a coin because he believed in paying for sentences that deserved to live in the world. The fox accepted the payment with a pleased clink.
They sat on a low wall under a string of paper lanterns that had no logical reason to be lit in daylight and were lit anyway because someone liked seeing them that way.
The garden district kept moving around them in its gentle rhythm. A vendor sold lunch boxes with colored flags to warn about spice levels or vegetables considered suspicious.
