Juno and I walked across Kylson toward the far end of the business district. Men, women, both, and neither walked around us in the hustle and bustle of the work day’s final hours. Traders were doing final tallies for the day. Coin changers were already closing down their stands. We passed a parchment store with several different kinds and colors of paper visible through the window, and even it was down to the last customers of the day.

  In the air, I detected scents of sweat and dust, most of which came from people satisfied with a hard day’s work.

  It almost made me forget the leather satchel I’d been gifted from Bella. Well — I guess since Juno paid for it all, she technically gifted it to me.

  Wrapped neatly in a waxy paper, my new dress rested comfortably folded inside the bag.

  The satchel was painted with daisies on the back and long green vines that stretched down the strap. I was about three times the size of a lunch box I might have carried to elementary school as a kid.

  The bag almost seemed brand new, and when Bella offered it to me, she said, “A Luck Bunny who is about to become an official member of the Letter Carriers Guild should have a cute bag to carry stuff in.”

  Who was I to disagree with her?

  She kept the dress Juno lent me, promising to alter it for my shape, and have it ready by tomorrow.

  “Your new outfit sure is cute,” Juno said, peeking down at me while I was lost in my thoughts.

  I cleared my throat and tried not to spiral into a fluttery mess as unfamiliar fuzzy chemicals bombarded my brain. Nobody had ever called me cute before. Hell, even when I was a boy back on Earth, I never once got a “handsome” or “good-looking.” I’m not gonna say it led to self-esteem issues, but. . . I’m also not not gonna say that.

  “Um, thanks. I’ve never had clothes tailored for me before.”

  Juno didn’t actually make it back in time to see my new dress. And since the dress she loaned me was being altered overnight, Bella, the amazing goddess she was, quickly fixed up a pair of her old overalls for me to wear out of the shop, even making an exit for my tail. That woman was remarkable.

  “Really? How did you get clothes where you previously lived?”

  I scratched my chin thinking back.

  “Uh,” I thought, picturing quick trips to Tall-Mart for jeans or t-shirts. “Where I come from, machines make so much clothing in all different sizes that you just walk in and buy it at a shop. It sits there on a shelf or hangs up on a rack waiting for you.”

  Juno’s eyes widened.

  “You mean — I could walk into a store, find 10 different versions of the same red blouse, just in different sizes?” she asked.

  I half-shrugged, feeling the denim of my overalls shift against my brown and tan fur.

  “In theory. But there was this one store that had really cool clothes. Except, when you went to grab a shirt you wanted, the only sizes left would be itty bitty or big enough to cover a horse when it rains. That always pissed me off.”

  Juno laughed at my grouchy remark.

  “Well, it sounds like there were some ups and downs to that method.”

  More downs than you know, I thought, thinking of all the people who worked for shit wages and in awful conditions to give America cheap clothing.

  My stomach growled after that, and Juno shook her head with a tooth-wide smile. She was always smiling, I realized. Just a real. . . effervescent look of joy. But if Bella’s story was to be believed, the messenger wasn’t always this carefree, this happy. I couldn’t be the cause of this change, could I? I was just one person and a perfect stranger at that.

  Well, not perfect, I thought. Pretty damn far from perfect.

  One quick stop at the bakery later, I had a fresh mini loaf of fluffy bread and a bag of almond cookies in my satchel. The bread, which had somehow been baked with a bit of butter and sugar inside of it, was wrapped in brown paper that I could also eat so nothing went to waste.

  Taking a big tear and bite of paper, Juno chewed before saying, “Honeywax paper. Bakers wrap a lot of their treats in it. Cuts down on trash. Nobody wants to waste food.” Crumbs escaped her lips as she told me this, and I couldn’t help but snicker.

  “So, what will joining your guild entail? Paperwork?” I asked, thinking about what lay ahead. Today had already been so jam-packed, and I still had tea with the governess this evening to look forward to. Did one look forward to such a thing? I knew nothing about governesses. Was she like a queen? But elected?

  I thought back to the governor of my home state and quickly wrinkled my nose at the thought of his booming voice. He’d stopped in Bartlesville once during his reelection campaign. My parents went to support him. And I went along because I didn’t like to rock the boat. They shook his hand. I stayed in the back and read Magica Riot fanfiction on my phone.

  While the gubernatorial campaign visit mostly focused on angry cheers (if there was such a thing) and “ending corruption,” I remember thinking over and over how fucking cool lesbians were. In hindsight, I might have been a tad jealous.

  Hopefully, Governess Lynn was nothing like that asshat.

  I finished my bread in half the time Juno did, licking my fingers, all the while Juno talked about work inside the Messenger Guild. She waxed poetic about life on the open trails with Svenoldson. She’d been part of the guild for seven years now.

  “When you join, it’s like permitting yourself to explore the world, all the while bringing people news and greetings from their loved ones leagues away. When someone wants to let a friend know they’re thinking of them, but they can’t travel the distance, I go in their stead, armed with parchment carrying their tidings. That’s a kind of sacred responsibility, you know.”

  The life in her eyes and the energy of her words ignited something inside me. Suddenly, I was excited to get a messenger badge of my own. I was ready to get back to work doing the one thing I was good at in my past life, delivering the mail.

  We paused for a few minutes while Juno finished her bread and laced up her shoes. Standing off to the side near a rain barrel and old wagon, Juno and I weren’t taking up any extra space or getting in anyone’s way. This was also a skill I’d mastered in my previous life.

  Need to use my phone while walking down the sidewalk? Siddle up against a nearby building so people could continue walking by. Despite my height and size, I was determined to remain invisible, or at the very least, in the fringes of everyone else’s vision.

  But while I was determined to stay out of society’s way, other people had made it their mission to do the exact opposite in life. The hairs on my left arm rose before I heard or saw her. Regardless, she arrived precisely when she meant to with a target in mind.

  A surge of static washed over me, and I felt a heavy dose of magic being cranked out, touching everything in the world around her.

  Still, I didn’t see her.

  I did spot a woolyte in a brown jacket hustling down the street with a thin paper box in his hands. His eyes were focused on the road in front of him. One of his friends called out from the sidewalk, “Hey, where you off to in such a hurry?”

  The woolyte’s hooves clicked and clacked on the cobblestone street as the man on a mission continued without stopping to chat. But a wide smile broke out of his face.

  “Gotta get this home for my daughter’s birthday! And then it’s back to work,” he said, huffing.

  His amber eyes carried all the excitement of a father envisioning the surprised gasp and giggle of his daughter.

  And where I wanted to feel the warmth of this excitement, I instead found another wave of magic washing over the street, and time taking a familiar nosedive in terms of speed or velocity. I wasn’t sure of the difference between the two.

  Looking down, I spotted Juno, still bent over her shoes, laces wrapped in each hand.

  The proud father was nearly frozen, left hoof high in the air behind him, mid-run.

  All around me, the city’s noises were distorted, just like when I altered Bilo’s luck, footsteps sounding slower, running water sounding faster. But what flattened my ears was the raspy whistle. As it rang out from the street in front of me, I stepped around the rain barrel and spotted her.

  She waltzed between a man and a woman who had been frozen mid-conversation. Of course, they didn’t see this newcomer.

  Magic trailed behind her like a scarf in the wind, and I immediately felt dwarfed by its presence.

  If I could describe my own luck magic to this point, I’d use words like “grassy,” “breezy,” and “supple.” The sensation I felt around her aura and whistle was almost the exact opposite. It felt haunting, visceral, and evocative.

  Before my eyes, a lioness in grayish-golden fur sashayed into view. A gray suit with a black vest and slackened tie covered most of her fur. She wore the jacket loosely over her shoulders with muscular arms and rolled-up sleeves visible at her sides.

  A single gold ring pierced her right ear. That ear twitched as she came up on me, stopping only a few feet away.

  Orange eyes looked down upon me with tiny black pupils.

  Neither of us spoke for a minute, each sizing the other up. The lioness’ whistling stopped as she reached into a pocket and fished out a golden cigarette tin, pulling one loose and lighting it with a flame from her index finger (or would that be index claw?).

  “So. . . you’re the Luck Bunny,” the lioness said as I watched her inhale through the cigarette, its thin paper burning away in the orange glow. The thing looked like she’d rolled it herself.

  “I am. Name’s Tilda. And you are?” I paused, waiting for a name or a term. I hadn’t seen any bipedal lions in Kylson thus far. Of course, I hadn’t seen anyone slow time to a crawl like me either.

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  While I waited for a name (and she did take her time, mind you), my heart beat slowly and hard. When the whistle went away, it was replaced with thick tension. My legs felt heavy, like if I tried to run, I’d be doing so with about 2,000 pounds on my back. And it was her stare that did this to me, I think. She eyed me the way a predator looks at prey, though her stare was just short of hungry and just over the border of curiosity.

  “You can call me Zephyr. . . or Z if you’d prefer. I’ve been known to get familiar with other gods and goddesses before.”

  Z’s voice was a borderline whisper. Her words had a musical quality to them while simultaneously coming across with a soft growl or purr. I couldn’t tell which.

  “A — are you like me?” I asked. “Did Opha send you here as well?”

  Zephyr licked a fang and took another drag on her cigarette almost looking bored with my question.

  “No, Tilda. I am not like you, servant of Opha. Unlike you, I answer to Ursa, Opha’s big sister.”

  I waited for an explanation that did not come. Was Ursa another Fate Goddess? Was she the goddess of something else? Fuck. Maybe I should have taken Gwendolyn up on her offer sooner. She could have told me about the 11 temples in this city and what gods they worshipped. Ursa had to be one of them. Hopefully, she wasn’t the Blood God.

  Walking behind me and coming full circle, Zephyr got the complete measure of me. And while I wouldn’t call her stare creepy or lustful in any sense, I had a feeling there was little I hid from her here and now.

  “Fresh meat on the board,” Z said, and I frowned, my ears drooping behind me. “So Opha makes her move at last. The question is. . . why now? Not that I expect you to have an answer being so new.”

  I said nothing.

  The lioness blinked slowly and stared at my feet for a moment before returning to my gaze.

  “You have many questions. I will answer two,” Zephyr said, blowing smoke in my face.

  My nose twitched as I coughed and sputtered. She didn’t chuckle. I didn’t detect an ounce of amusement from her.

  Z’s entire air was confusion with a hint of malice.

  While I considered my questions (because I only got two, stingy much?), Z dropped her cigarette to the floor and ground it with a paw. Then, she picked up the smothered butt and walked over to a trash bin, tossing it inside.

  After that, she circled me slowly again, that same eerie whistle blowing between her lips. Large paws strode across the cobblestone, hungry eyes observing me. Her tail, covered in thin golden fur, ending in a black puff, twitched back and forth as she waltzed around me.

  “You told me who you are, Z. Now I’d like you to please tell me what you are,” I said, swallowing nervously.

  I don’t think she wants to hurt me, I thought. But at the same time, I find her presence so off-putting.

  As the lioness slowly circled me, she finished her tune and answered thus, “If you are a Luck Bunny serving a Goddess of Fate, then I am a Luck Lion serving a Goddess of Fate.”

  I frowned.

  “You said we weren’t the same.”

  Zephyr put a paw on one hip and examined the claws of her free hand.

  “Is there a question in that sentence?” she asked.

  My frown only deepened. I didn’t like people who followed the letter of the law so closely. That was some bullshit.

  “Will you please explain the difference between us in as much detail as possible?” I asked. “I would request that you assume I’m a child who knows nothing of gods.”

  With a judgmental look that might as well have said, You ARE a child compared to me, the lioness took a breath before answering.

  “Manners, while a nice touch, will not win you any additional concessions from me, Tilda,” the lioness said. “You and I are opposite sides of the same coin. Opha, in her wisdom, decided to weave an attraction to good luck into your being. Conversely, when Ursa wove me into existence, I was attracted to bad luck or misfortune. We are not the same. We are not better than one another. We simply exist as opposing forces to balance the scales of fate in Fevara on a micro-cosmic level.”

  My mind tried to process her words.

  So. . . she’s Bizarro Tilda? I thought, raising an eyebrow.

  Where I expected a dramatic sigh from Z, I instead found her walking over to a nearby post, flexing her claws, and arcing her back as she dragged her nails downward along the wood, shredding any grains that dared oppose her.

  “If I were explaining our difference to a child who had no concept of gods, I would say. . . you helped a member of the City Guard earlier today and boosted his fortune. Well, I am here to balance the scales and boost someone’s misfortune.”

  Stepping toward the lioness as she shredded the thick post of a shop, I said, “That’s awful! Why would you intentionally make someone’s day harder?”

  Z spun on me so fast with her claws still drawn that I shrank in on myself and felt terror choking my veins. I took several rapid breaths as my eyes widened.

  But the Luck Lion didn’t hurt me. She just stood over me with a stoic expression as she said, “That’s three questions, Tilda. And I have other places to be. Until our paths cross again, Luck Bunny.”

  With those final words, the lioness placed a flat palm on my abdomen and pushed me backward. Her shove didn’t hurt me, but my heels did slide across the street until my back jostled the rain barrel next to Juno. I rubbed my back and found myself largely unharmed.

  What was that about? I thought.

  Looking up, I noticed Z had moved into the center of the street.

  And with one of her claws glowing gold, Zephyr snatched the red string wrapped around that running woolyte. She pulled it tight with her paw and wrapped it more snugly around the unsuspecting father. All the while, the red string continued to glow brighter and brighter, while the green thread thinned and dimmed.

  As she did this, I felt a slight nausea building in the pit of my guts. I wasn’t about to run over to a corner and puke, but the sensation wasn’t pleasant. It felt like watching my lab partner dissect a frog in seventh grade while I volunteered to fill out the quiz.

  “No!” I shouted, but by the time I rose to my feet again, Z raised a free hand to her mouth and lightly shushed me.

  “All luck ends eventually,” she said before time resumed, and she vanished from my sight.

  Before I could move, the woolyte’s right hoof found an even stone in the street. He tripped, face-planting into the ground, the dessert box flattening under his weight.

  Juno looked up just in time to see the aftermath.

  “Oh no,” she whispered before looking over at me and noticing I wasn’t where I had been a second ago. Well, a second ago from her mortal perspective.

  People walked around the woolyte who slowly groaned and sat up. His nose and lip were bleeding. And a smooshed cake leaked from the box, covering most of his jacket with strawberry frosting.

  He looked at the dessert without even bothering to open the box, and my heart sank. A few drops of blood dripped down from his nose and onto the smashed cake.

  Running over to the woolyte, I offered him a paw.

  He stared at my outstretched hand before gingerly taking it. I helped him up and watched despair ripple across his face. The excitement he felt just moments ago seemed to have evaporated, and I felt my own happiness fading at the sight.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He slowly nodded.

  “I’m fine, but. . . my daughter’s cake is ruined.”

  While he stared down at the box in shock, I pulled out the bunny cloth from earlier and gently wiped his nose and lip. The bleeding seemed to stop pretty quickly. These were light scuffs, after all.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my ears drooping as low as they could.

  The woolyte slowly shook his head and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. None of this is your fault. You helped me up. That’s more than anyone else offered.”

  I stared at the smooshed box.

  This still felt a little like my fault. What did I do when Z dialed this man’s bad luck up to 11? Nothing. I stood there in shock, watching. As the Bunny Goddess sent here by Opha, it was my job to. . . to what? To fight Zephyr?

  I glanced over the post covered in deep claw marks.

  Yeah, she would have shredded me, I thought.

  Still, it felt like I should have done SOMETHING to stop her. She was here to balance the scales of fate? Did that mean for every person I helped, she’d hurt someone else? Or did it mean I had to help one person for every soul she negatively impacted? I wasn’t sure I liked the implications of either.

  These were things that I just couldn’t be expected to know on my first official day with Bunny Goddess duty.

  In truth, Z confused me greatly. She didn’t smile cruelly when she increased this guy’s bad luck. Nor did she actively harm me. If anything, the Luck Lion seemed to greatly restrain herself when shoving me backward.

  Maybe there are rules about how goddesses have to interact with one another in Fevara? I thought, puzzled.

  Shaking my head and moving on from what I could have done, I looked down at the box again.

  “Maybe we can go back to the bakery and get another cake?” I offered.

  The woolyte slowly deflated.

  “I was the last customer. They locked the door behind me,” he said. “And since it’s so late in the day, all the other bakeries in Kylson will be closing now, too.”

  He sighed and started to clean some of the frosting off with a handkerchief from his jacket pocket.

  “I’m sorry. None of this is your problem. Thank you for helping me up, at least,” the man said.

  I stared at the street. There had to be something I could do to fix this. What had Zephyr said? All luck ends eventually? Did she mean that both good and bad luck ran out after a certain point? I had so many questions. Could I rewind time and undo this? No. That didn’t sound like luck. It sounded like rewriting fate, and that was definitely more in Opha’s wheelhouse.

  “Well, I have to head home and clean up. Maybe I can get her a cake tomorrow,” the woolyte said, turning to toss his ruined cake in the trash bin. I followed him and noted Z’s cigarette butt was still in the garbage.

  Gritting my teeth, I racked my brain for some way I could use magic to help this man. Could I. . . luck him into finding an all-night bakery? What if I used my magic to. . . help a bakery thief get caught nearby and a box of cupcakes fall into this guy’s lap?

  I just didn’t know enough about my magic to help him with it. And my time was running out. The woolyte was already walking around a street corner and out of sight.

  Juno came over and asked, “Was he okay?”

  I turned to her, the messenger’s sudden appearance and bread wrapper in her hands giving me an idea.

  “He’ll be fine, I think. Just — wait here for me,” I said, running after the woolyte.

  I dodged a mule and a group of kids running together kicking a ball back and forth but eventually caught up to him outside a coin changer’s table.

  “Wait! Hold up,” I said.

  Above us, a rainbow pigeon perched on a fabric awning, cooing and pecking at something just out of my sight.

  “Yes?” the woolyte said, stopping in his tracks.

  I reached into my satchel and pulled out the bag of cookies from the bakery.

  “Here. I know this isn’t a cake. But give these to your daughter for her birthday. They’re from the same bakery,” I said.

  With widening eyes, the man just stared at my paw for the second time in 10 minutes. Then, he shook his head.

  “Oh, I can’t.”

  I smiled.

  “You can and you will.”

  Placing the bag in his hand, I beamed all the more. And then, panic surged through me momentarily as I whispered, “Your daughter isn’t allergic to almonds, right?”

  He smiled for the first time since falling and said, “No. She loves them. How can I thank you?”

  I latched my satchel close.

  “You can thank me by giving those to her. I hope she has a great birthday,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Thank you!” the woolyte called after me, but I just waved without turning back and jogged over to Juno.

  She was leaning against the world’s biggest scratching post.

  “So. . . what was all that about?” she asked.

  As I eyed the claw marks and thought of Z’s words, realizing that we’d run into each other again, huffing was all I could do for a moment.

  Stupid Ursa. . . making a bad Luck Lion to hurt people, I thought. And scales of fate? That’s such bullshit.

  Still, I was left with mixed feelings about Zephyr. What if she wasn’t choosing who to spread misfortune to or how often? Could the Luck Lion just be a slave to her nature? Was I? Everyone I’d helped so far seemed random. But what if there was more to it, my divine mission to spread luck throughout Fevara and all that?

  Sighing and wishing I had some cookies to stress eat, I realized even here there was balance. When I helped a father, I was deprived of sweets for the night.

  Oh well, I thought. A small price to pay.

  And it wasn’t like I’d learned nothing from today’s encounter. Sometimes luck isn’t about magic or gods. Sometimes, it’s just about a well-timed act of kindness.

  “Let’s just get to the Messenger Guild. I’ll tell you on the way,” I said.

  Juno looked puzzled but soon brought out her smile again.

  “Okay!” she said. “Say, can I have one of those cookies?”

  I flinched.

  “About that. . ..”