Page 5 of Culture and Curiosities (Blue Ridge Charm #1)

Wren

“Where did he go? Where did he go?” How was it possible to lose my mate before I’d actually found him?

“Whatcha lose, birdie?” One of the men from the diner frowned at me before looking around and down at my hands. “Did Kenzie steal your cake?”

Ah. Empty hands worried him.

Did littles around town always have stuff?

“No.” But I’d be on guard for it going forward. “I can’t find my mate. Or he might be a bad decision. I haven’t figured out which yet but he’s going to be a wonderful Daddy.”

I just knew it.

Diner dragon smiled and reached out to pat my head like I was a puppy. “That’s wonderful. We’ll take you off the list then.”

They had a list?

I loved this town.

“Do you need help finding him?” Diner dragon frowned again. “We can’t have you wandering around town unsupervised. That’s always a disaster.”

How?

What did their littles do without someone watching them?

“You’ll end up getting slaves and having cake for dinner.” The man’s grumbles didn’t make any sense at all but I smiled anyway which seemed to make him happy. “But you’re a good boy.”

Most of the time.

I certainly wasn’t keeping anything or anyone that could count as a slave.

I didn’t even have a dog because I traveled too much.

“If you need help you just find one of us and we’ll be right here.

” He looked too serious for the conversation I thought we were having, so I just nodded solemnly which seemed to make him happy again.

“It’ll be fine. Now I just need to find out where the grumpy one wandered off to.

He’s not in any of the hotels and his grown-up person is very vague. ”

Well, we just couldn’t have that.

“I’ll let you know if I run into any grumpy littles.” That was what we were talking about, right? He smiled. I did it. Decoding them was so much fun. “Everyone has been very happy so far, though.”

No cake stealing.

No fits.

No strange behavior we had to explain to the local humans.

They were so good at playing dumb it had to be some kind of generational skill they were passing down, but it wasn’t my business to out anyone.

No matter what they seemed to be in the closet about.

“We’ve got the best Team Binkie members.” Mumbling something to himself about other towns not being as lucky, he gave me a wave as he walked off…probably to go get more cake since that seemed to be top on his mind.

What other towns were they talking to about littles?

I’d obviously missed some good gossip already.

“No. I can be nosy later.” I had to figure out where my Daddy had wandered off to. “Not by the cake. Let’s try the bathrooms.”

Him being at the urinal would’ve been helpful and informative but no such luck.

I got sidetracked several times, but I managed to get away and I even avoided Pierce, but that was easy because he’d found someone he looked like he wanted to keep too.

Yay, more privacy for me.

Now to find my Daddy.

“Okay, where would I go if I was a slightly confused sexy Daddy?” He’d been watching everyone entirely too closely to be comfortable with the locals and I hadn’t seen him hanging out with any of the other Doms from the different groups. “He was curious but not confident yet.”

Hiding.

I’d be hiding and telling myself I was just regrouping or planning or another Dommy kind of buzzword.

Inside was entirely too full of people and clowns and people watching the clowns who were very confused…they clearly hadn’t read the wedding plan email closely enough…so my Daddy had to have wandered outside.

“Where did he go? Where did he go?” Some Daddies just liked to make their littles work for attention but that was the first thing I was going to make sure my new Daddy understood. I didn’t beg for attention; I just got it.

I’d beg for orgasms, though, so that would make up for it.

“Oh.” He was there. Yep, planning and frowning and pacing behind the building. “I found him.”

He had the best little ever and I was going to make sure he knew it.

“I found you.” Looking wide-eyed and cute, I bounded over and stopped just beside my Daddy man. “You play Hide-and-Seek so good.”

I was adorable.

I was nonthreatening.

I looked excited to see him.

He was very confused.

“That is…” Pausing, he looked like he needed to review the situation, so I was patient. “That is a game children play where one hides and the other seeks to find. Yes. I know that one.”

Okay, not the weirdest reaction I’d gotten from anyone in town but even the diner men knew what to do with a cute little.

“You are a grown adult with child-like tendences who would like to play.” Still walking through the obvious, my Daddy didn’t look worried but he did look like I was some kind of weird cake he’d never seen before.

Oh, was I blue bananas to my Daddy?

I’d seen that one on the dessert table and I wasn’t going to eat it, but I had questions about where they’d found sparkly blue bananas.

My Daddy better not think I was that weird.

I was cute, not yucky.

“One that requires a caretaker, which you do not seem to have.” My new Daddy finally paused, head cocking. “Oh.”

Poking his arm, I grinned. “Tag. You’re it.”

I’d found my mate and he was weird.

But he was cute and I could handle interesting.

I was very smart and hardworking.

“ I’m your mate .” My new Daddy was slowly catching up and it was fun to watch his eyes get bigger. “Oh, this complicates things.”

I’d been called an asshole before and a nuisance a lot, but I’d never been called a complication.

“I’m Wren. I’m a little. I’m here from Texas, but I’ll move so that won’t be an issue.” And I was his mate but he seemed to have gotten that fact already, so I didn’t bother repeating it yet. “I’m really glad you’re not a bad decision.”

That made him blink.

“You were in the celebration. You were talking about someone being a bad decision and finding them to be a high temperature.” His information was technically correct but it sounded like he was translating it into English from Japanese or one of those fun African languages.

Or Klingon.

“Hot. I found you hot.” Where was he from? Did we have Amish communities or something like that? Would that explain the language issue? “That means attractive and usually in a sexual way. I saw you across the room but I kept getting sidetracked by people before I could walk over to talk to you.”

That was the trouble with being nice to everyone…they wanted to talk and were incredibly distracting.

My new Daddy just blinked again. “I have a mate. I’m going to be a Daddy.”

That made me giggle, but it took him a few long moments of processing before he smiled. “Ah, I see why that was so funny. You are not a baby. You do, however, require a caretaker.”

Yep.

And lots of attention.

“I’ll help you learn how to take care of me.” We seemed to be starting from scratch on that one, but at least he knew what being a little and a Daddy meant. “I’ll answer questions and I won’t make you guess what I want.”

Until he could read my mind, of course.

Then I’d show him what I wanted.

“You are the…the pull.” He frowned like he wasn’t sure he liked something but he didn’t make me guess what he was thinking. “That word may not be right. English is difficult and has many words with similar meanings.”

Was he one of the French Canadians?

No, he was confused but he was still really nice and hadn’t screamed at me yet.

Did people from Florida speak something else?

Who else had come?

Oh, the Scottish men…but no…Daddy didn’t have an accent.

“Yeah, it’s built on a variety of languages and that makes it confusing. Did you know moose and goose have different origins? It’s so weird but that’s why English has geese but not meese.” It was a good fact but Daddy had to think.

He needed to think a lot.

“That does explain some of the strange…variations in language.” He’d responded but I could almost hear the wheels in his head spinning faster and faster. “Why does temperature indicate sexual arousal?”

Oh, that was a good question.

“Maybe because looking at someone you really want to touch and kiss and snuggle and get spanked by makes you flash hot?” If there was a better reason I couldn’t think of it.

“Sometimes phrases like that come from movies or books that were popular a long time ago. Like gaslighting. That comes from a movie. It’s really old but it was good. ”

That guy was a dick and that lady was going to need a lot of therapy.

“Oh. That would explain it. I wonder if Klynn has run into any of those in his reading yet.” Daddy blinked but didn’t seem to realize that sentence didn’t have enough context to make sense. “What kind of reading material do you ingest?”

Daddy paused again. “No. Consume?”

Hmm.

English was kind of weird.

“Consume works. I like things like romance novels and sci-fi, the hard kind and the dirty kind. But who doesn’t like tentacles?” Everyone around town seemed to like them but Daddy just blinked. He was easily confused.

Didn’t everyone know about tentacle porn?

There were even real romances with tentacle aliens in them that weren’t just word porn.

It was a whole genre.

Comedians made dirty jokes about it…how did he not know that?

“Um, fiction books. Stories that aren’t real and are just made up. Make believe. Books that let you play pretend about aliens and people falling in love and space.” I wasn’t sure listing off more would help, so I waited for him to think about it since books seemed confusing too.

Where could he be from where they didn’t at least have Amish romance novels?

Every library I’d ever seen had those.

“Stories.” Daddy frowned again but seemed to be processing. “Like the way poetry can tell a story but in a longer form?”

Where was he from? Mars?

Oh.

Daddy didn’t know what dirty books were.

Daddy didn’t know much about littles.

Daddy didn’t know what telling someone they were hot meant.

My mother was going to kill me.

“Yes.” Okay, we were going to explain books and then handle the other stuff. “Like sometimes cultures have stories we tell children to teach them lessons?”

When he nodded, grasping that concept, relief rushed through me.

“We started there too but we kept going. Some people love telling stories, so we eventually started writing them down. Adventures and love stories…from all kinds of places and now we tell stories about alien adventures and falling in love with all kinds of people.”

Yes, that would show him I was open-minded.

“I’ve read stories about people falling in love where one of them was human or at least looked human and one of them was from another planet or another time or even another dimension.

” Daddy’s head started nodding, so I thought we were making progress.

“Mates come from all kinds of different places but we love them anyway because they’re our mate. ”

Did he get it?

Was that the right English to use?

Did portal people count as aliens from another planet or another dimension?