At first the foxcrow was a destructive inhabitant of Su's office. Her papers were no longer safe, even locked away in a metal drawer, for the foxcrow would bend it open to gather new bedding material. When Su took to filling the ex-bin with softer and more comfortable materials on a regular basis, the foxcrow turned to the legs of her furniture, bending or clawing or biting them until she sat on her chair one morning and it collapsed beneath her. When she bent a circlet of metal and threatened to put a collar and chain round its neck, the foxcrow flew into the air, bent it round her wrist instead and then dived onto the floor, pulling Su to the ground by the metal.
She wondered if it was hunger that was causing the aggravating behaviour and ordered more food as a breakfast for it, but it gorged itself so much that its belly stuck out, although it did then sleep for the rest of the day, which she was grateful for.
It was Baatar in the end who suggested it was bored, and with Su's help built a small obstacle course around her office. Remembering its ability to metal bend, and her idea of finding out more about its skill, beyond merely wrecking her chair legs, she gave it one of her meteorites and was surprised at the dexterity with which it could manipulate it. She held up various objects for it to copy; a cup, a pen, a vase and as far as it could with the amount of metal, it copied them.
Her favourite game, invented one day when she was bored with reading through long-winded political reports, was to send a small ball of metal skittering across her desk and onto the floor, rolling it around her study as the foxcrow chased after it.
On its quieter, calmer days, it would sit on her desk, tail curled neatly about itself and stare down at her papers. It looked so like it was reading them that she would occasionally turn one round if she was fed up with trying to make sense of it and offer the foxcrow to read it instead.
She told herself very firmly and repeatedly that she was not taming it, that it was not a pet. It had chosen to come live with her, with the offer of food. But it was difficult to remember that as a truth when it would curl up in her lap if it had tired itself out or drape itself across her shoulders if it wanted a better view of her desk or follow her with the now familiar tmp clicks of its mismatched feet whenever she walked through the city.
It would occasionally leave her side, flying out the window and gliding down into the garden to play with her meteorite collection. When it had not returned one evening for its meal, she went in search and found her second eldest son, Huan, entranced at the shapes the foxcrow was bending, having left work on his own sculptures to watch.
The only boundary she did succeed in keeping was that the foxcrow was never allowed back to their family quarters. Not that it ever seemed to want to follow her there, content with the life it led in Su's office. The animal healer that Su had called up from a farm in the valley to exam in it had declared the foxcrow to be in good health, as far as he could tell without being bitten, but that judging from its silvering fur it was nearing the end of its life, suggesting that this was why it had taken to raiding stores with its unique ability to metalbend, rather than hunt.
Su felt a pang of sadness at that last piece of news; despite being determined not to tame it, she'd grown accustomed to its presence and had hoped the foxcrow would be a companion for her for a while. The long hours in her office that her job as Matriarch occasionally necessitated had gone by far quicker with the foxcrow to amuse her.