[AS: 004] Characterastic!

Sunny bounced in place as the census-taker sat across from him, waiting for the next question as the grownup wrote something-or-another about what he'd said, and possibly notes on whatever it was that grownups liked to decided that meant. Like from last month, after talking with a whole bunch of xeros, the people who had taken the survey had looked at the information and had said that Xeros liked to stand mostly, which meant that Sunny had been working hard to walk on all fours sometimes, just so he didn't mess things up. It was important, what the grownups were doing, and while he didn't know why it mattered whether xeros chose to walk on all fours or just on two, they had decided for some reason that standing, not all the time but only most of it, was care-uh... what was the word? It was one of the ones with a silent 'H' in it, like the word Chemicals, which had one c with an h after it and one without, even though both sounded the same. And it was about characters, like if a person was a character in a game or a movie... charactery? No, that was silly-- characterastic?

Characterastic. Like fantastically part of a character-- that must have been it! It was characterastic of a xero to walk on all fours just a little bit of the time, just like how moddy and zaza had been told they had to have the wardrobes attached to the walls when they moved into a new, bigger house in Torini that was all on one floor, with no stairs so it would be easier for Tati to move around now. Because even if Sunny promised to be really good, maybe one of Sunny's friends would try climbing the fridge to get to the cookie jar on top of it-- because it was characterastic to have pawpads that could help with climbing walls and sides and stuff and if the fridge wasn't secured maybe they'd fall and the cookie jar would too and could hurt them. And that would be bad.

He blinked as he started to pay attention to the census-taker again- she was in the middle of saying something "new trait or mutation would you want to have, if you could?" she was asking him.

He perked up, bouncing in his chair. "A mutation, like how my hand has webbing and my ears are finny, but Tati has horns that I don't?" he asked. The census taker nodded. "Well! I want to breathe underwater! Like a mermaid-- or-- or a superhero!" The census-taker sighed. "Not quite like that, sweetheart. It has to be a real thing, not a make-believe."

Sunny knew that he was being explained to, like a teacher who was disappointed that he hadn't understood what they were implying on the first try. There was a twinge of guilt-- he had asked a clarifying question, but he didn't know exactly what options did and didn't exist.

"Well, I'd like to fly, too, or to be able to bounce and fly like the Vethri can, because they're all full of light gases when they're not in the water-" "Sunny?" "or maybe I could have eyes that shot little light points sometimes when I focused real hard, so I could show people what I was looking at when I was trying to t-" "Focus, Sunny." His fins drooped in a momentary display of apology.

"It's okay, but we should work on answering this last question. We're almost done, and then you can tell me about all your wonderful ideas, all right?" The small xero nodded enthusiastically.

"Part of the question also involved asking if there was some part of you that you wished you could remove. Is there anything that you have that another xero doesn't, but that you feel is inconv- Sunny perked again, cutting in with excitement.

"My tail! It's too light and it likes to try to float on the water and I can't dive very good because of it and I can't hide under the water and I wish it didn't do that!" He had bounced up to his feet by this point, pawpads gripping instinctively to the chair as it wobbled slightly with his sudden motion.

"That will do, thank you. Now please, if you want to stand, get off that chair."