Riddle
"What do you think he is, really?"
It's a playful question, bandied in a mellow, amber evening when the chores are done and the grass-shadows long. He gambols after the goats, pounces on mice, gnaws on supper's castoff bones, pauses to scratch one ragged ear with a gangly hind foot; they are watching, affectionate, amused, from the front doorstep.
"You know, there are some queer sorts of mixes among the Fair Folk, they say. Things that look like women, only with frog legs. Or bull-headed men."
She pulls a wry face. "What are you suggesting?"
He laughs. "Only that if you're that curious, perhaps next time we see Doli you should ask him if any of the lady-folk fancy…I don't know – wolves? Look at him."
"Ugh." Her nose wrinkles disgust, but her expression softens when the creature capers past in pursuit of a dragonfly. "I refuse to consider…but he has to come from somewhere, doesn't he? How can he be the only one?"
A snort. "He can be, if he's a half-breed. Like a mule, only rarer."
She's shelling peas, and throws an empty pod at his face in recompense for his flippancy. "Hush. Here he comes."
He circles thrice before folding his ridiculously long, hair-tangled limbs at their feet and gazes at the two of them adoringly, and only the jointed fingers-and-thumb creeping up to steal peas from her lap, the oddly-tuned music of his speech forming itself into human words keep her from reaching down to scratch his belly.