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“We should eat this, Lily,” he tells his girl, currently standing dumbly with her mouth agape and eyebrows up, stuck in imaginary ceilings.

“I can’t believe you just held up a mouse.”

“Of course I can. Anything’s possible, they say,” he says with pride blooming in his chest for his own achievement. The whole overly confident, completely self-obsessed nature of his is really getting old fast. “It’ll make a perfect bacon bun, don’t you think? Extra brownie points for us if it happens to be one of the mouse king’s goons.”

The bow tie can’t really be seen under the thick coat of snow it is currently wearing.

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“No, I’m serious this time. So if you don’t want mouse bacon, we could make grilled rodents like the ancient Romans instead.”

At this, Lily shrieks, but still with less surprise than when her man picked up the rodent without gloves for the first time in forever. That was truly the greatest achievement of the century. “My man, you can’t do that. That’s fucking cannibalism.”

“Tell me about it again after you’ve had a belly full of rat meat, girly.”

Now, Lily looks nauseous, her expression changing for the third time in half a minute. “That’s just fucking nuts, Every. Wait, are you sick? Has the cold gotten to you and messed your head even more than before? You ass-headed jerk, you really are a lost cause.”

“Come on, Lily. This could have been the mouse that bit you during the barn fire. Eating it could be your ultimate revenge,” he encourages.

“Nah, it ain’t holding no matchstick.”

A thick black eyebrow raises on Every’s face. “What matchstick?”

“The matchstick it carried when it climbed my boots to bite me.”

“There was one? Why didn’t you tell me?”

After a minute of absentmindedly pretending that the mouse between his fingers is a stress ball, something in Every the CEO smartass’s head clicks. “Wait, matchstick. Shit, the mouse king guy was the one who planted the fire. Get it, Lily? Since the mouse you met was holding a fucking matchstick, and we all know that this planet is pretty much too cold for even fires to just light on their own, then that mouse must have started the damn fire.”

The girl gazes up at him with utter adoration in her eyes. “You’re such a smart man.”

CHAPTER 16: FROM BASHFUL TO BREATHLESS

They ended up not consuming the rodent, after Lily reasoned with her man that it could give them both diarrhea, which isn’t exactly ideal in an environment without a functioning toilet like this one.

Her man agreed.

He even let the mouse go, grossed out by the possible notion of it carrying evil E. coli.

They trekked back to their abode, the cave, which they found after walking in a few circles, and decided to just do yoga to pass the time.

“The upside-down cat pose ain’t that way,” Every says for the one thousand and tenth time.

“I can’t do it the right way, Mr. Flexible. I’ve got a stiff back.” Lily watches as he perfects it in only his duck print boxers, abs flexing and rippling with tension. Her man really is the bestest and baddest bitch in town.

“The more that you need to do it.”

“Why don’t we just do the downward dog pose like the usual?”

“It’s too mainstream. And last I heard, you’re different from all the ordinary girls. Now get on with it.”

Lily huffs in defeat. “Thanks. Now I have a personal yoga guru.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean that, beautiful, “ her CEO boyfriend says from his upside-down position. “Come on, you can always try again, yeah? Imagine your spine as a bridge.”

Lily lets out a deep breath and gets down on her hands and knees. “So if my spine is the bridge, my tits are cars, and my head is the downward slope of the bridge with bumps and potholes. The local drivers in this area would have reported the potholes to the authorities a million times over, but nothing would have been done. And the locals would just keep getting crashes and headaches and ruined tires from the countless unfixed potholes.”

Every blinks at her slowly. “Lils, did you just lay out a government system for a whole fantasy world?”