Someone had been trying to get Laura's new friend to fight as well. The scruffy, striped creature had been following her for days, and she wasn't about to let anyone hurt it. When someone with a fiery-looking lizard had tried to set it on her racoon-looking friend (though all he said was 'Zigzagoon'), she had snapped, drawing her own claws and snarling as she took a defensive stance in front of her friend.
The crowd moved away quickly, and Laura said some unkind things about them, Spanish and English blending her words almost incomprehensibly. She turned and lifted the creature into her arms. "Ziggy," she said, naming him and claiming him with the word. "Do not be what they made you. You do not have to fight."
The critter nuzzled her chin, chittering "Zigzag!" Laura considered that agreement for now and headed to the bench, where she could set down Ziggy and find a tissue to wipe the blood from her knuckles. The claws had retracted, the wounds healed, but the blood lingered on her skin where they had emerged.