By his sixth birthday, Caliban Leandros had definitively determined that his brother was magical.
There was nothing he couldn't do. He could make food appear out of thin air. He could vanquish the shadows in his room just by Looking at them. Nik was definitely magic. And this belief was only confirmed his sixth birthday itself.
A few months earlier, Nik had looked at him seriously and asked what he wanted more than anything in the whole world. Cal'd been going through a phase, then, and he had his answer before he thought about it. "A puppy," he told Nik, and Nik just nodded in his Nik sort of way and they moved on and before long Caliban forgot about it.
Nik didn't.
On the morning of Caliban's sixth birthday, Niko woke him up early and dragged him out of bed, insisting on quiet. They snuck out of the house, a few streets away, then Nik told him to wait and a moment later he came back. With a puppy. A little black spotted mix puppy on a makeshift leash, his nose kind of squished and his ears crooked and Cal'd never seen anything better.
"It's just for the day," Niko warned. "And you can't take him home. But he's yours, for today."
It was one of the best days Cal had ever had.
He came home late with his knees and hands torn up from falling and his face covered in dog spit and dirt, aching and sore and without a puppy, but he hugged Nik and thanked him until Nik, laughing, told him to shut up, it wasn't that big a deal.
That night, Caliban Leandros fell asleep with a grin on his face. Somewhere, a little mongrel pup curled up to sleep in similar conditions, but it didn't matter. He'd wished for a puppy, and he'd had a puppy for a day.
There was nothing Niko couldn't do.