Glory raced up to the front porch, Emin just behind her. Glory followed Emin into the house. Which smelled very interesting. Sharp and delicious and bright. Like summer.
“Mama?” Emin called out.
A woman’s voice called out in a language that Glory didn’t understand and Emin tugged Glory through the house.
“A proper kitchen!” Glory exclaimed as Emin dragged her into the room. And it really was. There was a refrigerator almost as tall as Emin himself. And a shiny sink and something bubbling on what Glory knew was a stove. And on the side of the room, at a little table under a window, sat a woman who looked just like Emin.
She peeked, in surprise, over a pair of glasses, her salt and pepper hair up in a bun. She wore faded jeans and slippers on her feet, an apron over everything. She was writing on paper and eating something when they came into the room.
“You must be Mama!” Glory exclaimed, rushing into the room. She couldn’t help but lean down and embrace the woman, who was rigid in her arms for a moment before her hands came around Glory’s back. Oh, it felt good to be hugged. Glory hadn’t been hugged in so long.
“And this is what makes your house smell so good.” Glory picked up the thing that Mama was eating. “What is it?” she asked Emin.
“It is orange, a kind of fruit,” Emin replied, but his eyes were on his mother.
“I am Katya, child.”
Glory flushed and turned back to the woman, Katya. She was being rude to Emin’s mother by going so fast and trying to see everything at once.
“I’m Glory.” She held out her hand to shake as she knew that civilized people liked to do. The two women shook hands and Glory held very still while Katya studied her carefully.
“So, you find your tiger, Emin,” Katya said, looking up at her son. He must have told his mother that he had been looking for Glory all those months.
“Da,” Emin answered, looking only at Katya and not at Glory at all. Glory shifted on her feet.
“And you find that she is also woman.”
“I knew she would be woman,” Emin answered.
For some reason Katya laughed, swept her hand through the air toward Glory. “Yes, but…”
Emin tightened his teeth in his jaw and looked irritated. With his mother? With her? Glory wasn’t sure so she just kept still.
“You need break, Emin.” Katya’s eyes scanned Glory. “Before you have heart attack.” A curious smile worked its way over Katya’s face. “Gather your brothers.”
“But, Mama,” Emin started, sounding so much like a child that Glory felt something in her chest flap its wings like a bird. She couldn’t have imagined strong, quiet Emin as a boy until that moment and it was doing things to her.
“Don’t argue. She’ll be safe with me.”
Glory looked between the two of them. “You’re leaving me?” Glory asked Emin.
Something sharp and pained crossed Emin’s face for a moment and he took a small step toward Glory. But then his eyes slid to Katya and the look was gone. “For a while. You are safe here with my mother.”
And then he turned and walked out of the room. Out of the house. Glory heard his car turn on.
She turned back to Katya, suddenly nervous.
“You want to shift, child?” Katya asked gently.
Glory nodded, so grateful to be understood.
“Okay.” Katya took her hand and led her to the back porch. “But don’t go far. And when you come back, I teach you to make sweet perepecha.”
And Glory was so excited about whatever that was that she didn’t shift for very long at all.
When she came back into the kitchen after a good hard run in the woods, snuggled back into Emin’s borrowed clothes, there was another woman in the room.
She was short, and wearing clothes even baggier than Glory’s. Her hair was cut in a very interesting way that made her look very beautiful.
“Ah,” Katya said, looking up from the steaming cups where the two women sat at the table. “Glory, this is AJ. You can trust her too.”
AJ’s eyes were wide as she took Glory in. “Holy smokes,” she whispered, then turned back to Katya. “Did Emin have a stroke? I mean, good lord.”
Katya chewed back her smile and beckoned for Glory to approach them. “You need new clothes, child,” she said to Glory.
“And a haircut,” AJ commented, cocking her head to one side.
Glory instinctively raised a hand to her hair. “You want to cut it?”
“Just to make it look a little more intentional,” AJ said, standing up and squinting her eyes at Glory. “I’m in school for it. I did my own.”
“Oh!” Glory lit up. “Well, yours is very beautiful so you can do mine.”