The Parenthood Drabbles

Klutz

Klutz

In the style of Emily Zhang and Mars

They were walking along the docks of Vancouver Island after spending the day there. She'd taught him how to kayak, which he hadn't done in ages and was really bad at. When she'd splashed him he'd flipped over while trying to return the favour. She'd dived in after him just for the hell of annoying him even more. Nothing brought her greater joy.

Emily was laughing at his newest corny jokes when she tripped over her own shadow. Mars caught her arm and prevented a face-plant that would probably have been hilarious to him.

"Good gods, Zhang. This is a flat surface." Mars said.

"It's not my fault that I'm a klutz," she said defensively. She was just used to excusing herself to her mother that way.

"Something tells me I can't wait to hear that explanation."

"No, I'm serious!" Emily said. "Every time I shape shift -like I did in the water- I have some trouble adjusting to the new size and feet shape and limbs when I turn human again."

"No kidding."

"Yeah, it's happened to everyone as far as my family can tell," Emily shrugged. "Also why I was clumsy as a child: my body was like 'why are we human, we don't like this!' Gods, I was horrible. Then I started transforming, everything just calmed down and now I'm agile as heck most of the time."

"Huh. This is all very technical."

"You wouldn't believe it," she said. She put on a serious face to tease him. "My life is so hard."

"Yeah I bet," he said. She broke into a grin and kissed his cheek.

"Guess you do learn something new every day," he said putting an arm around her.