“Well, this is it.” She held her duffel bag in front of her, and shrugged because what else was she supposed to do. Smile? Bounce up and down in joy that she had finally found a decent place to stay? Seriously, she wasn’t some girl in those animes where she gets overly excited about every damn thing.

River had been giving her a calm smile, but it slowly melted into a frown of confusion. Wait, did his ears twitch? She must be seeing things.

“That bag contains all of your personal effects? Truly?” He frowned even deeper at her nod, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Usually, back home, she could tell exactly what people were thinking just by the tilt of their scale patches beneath their eyes. But those were Merfolk scales. River was a dragon, and his scale patches were larger than any merman’s scale patches back home, and she had never seen that shade of turquoise down in the deeps. So she was at a bit of a loss with him, but she would surely learn his tells eventually.

“I even went back home and got what would survive up here. It’s all in the bag.” She really wished he would stop staring. It was making her feel like she was in the sights of a tiger shark.

“Is all of your money in the bag, as well?” That...was a strange question.

“Yes. Why?”

“Leave the majority here and bring some with you. We are going to the shopping center and you shall buy yourself some clothes, shoes, anything.”

“Huh?”

Was he messing with her? This sounded almost exactly like what Chi-chi said might happen. Except there’s no creepy alley, or a streetlight.

But what the hell, why not live a little?

(She later learned that she had a thing for shoes when she bought six different pairs in different styles. River also began to regret being nice by taking her bags.)