Something in the Air (tag: Gin)
Bartleby Wolfe was walking along with his attention on the pages of a book. He still did not know what all the strange markings meant, but Fred had promised to teach him. He hadn’t realized how important this reading was to the humans. It seemed to be some sort of status symbol to them. Fred had already taught him that his position as a philosopher to the court of Prince Robin would be in danger if the price found out about his lack of this skill. Bartleby thought it would be best if he pretended like he knew what he was doing, which is what led him to be walking with a book.
He felt a bit silly moving while “reading”, but the other humans he passed just nodded to him. They were very strange animals. But he wanted to learn about them, so that meant learning all of their odd ways and customs. And some of them were very, very odd. But there were a few he was beginning to enjoy. Things like the way humans baked sweet things to eat.
Bartleby paused and lifted his head out of the book. He could smell something like that now. It wasn’t quite a sweet treat he smelled, but there had been one here recently. It reminded him of the way Fred’s scent held a bit of vanilla, but this one was different. He had caught this scent before, in that place the humans called a pub. There, it had been buried beneath other scents in various beverages, but this one was like what he had smelled at the bakery. It was the faint scent of what someone had told him was a cookie, though he could not remember what type of cookie.
He was so enraptured by the scent and his reading charade that he was not watching where he was going. He hadn’t noticed the other man until he had almost literally walked into him. The wolf’s instincts stopped him just inches from running the human male over.
“Pardon me.” Even as Bartleby spoke, he noticed that the scent of cookies was stronger.