The clearing had become his secret place — away from his siblings’ competitions, away from the things he wasn’t good at yet. Just him and the old terminal he’d dragged there himself, piece by piece, over three trips.
But someone was already there.
A protogen, sitting cross-legged beside the terminal with the quiet patience of someone who had been waiting a while and didn’t mind. Circuit-light paws folded neatly in their lap. Visor glowing a soft, unhurried electric blue.
They looked up when Fluffy arrived.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
Then Fluffy sat down on the other side of the terminal. The machine was strange — it only understood three numbers at a time, which seemed like a very arbitrary limitation. He stared at it.
“What if I could teach it to pounce?” he said, mostly to himself.
He started typing. The code was clumsy. Awkward. It crashed twice and produced the wrong answer a third time. He went back and fixed the part he thought he understood.
The protogen watched without interrupting. When the program finally ran correctly — small, messy, entirely his — Fluffy sat back.
“I’ll keep going,” he said. “Even if it takes a hundred tries.”