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Missing Mouse
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"Wha'cha doing?"
Stiles looked up from the video playing on his tablet. The video was just a long compilation of funny animal antics, so it wasn't like he would be missing much. The tablet was propped against the handle on his picnic basket. The thick cloth napkin draped over the handle kept enough of the sunshine off the screen so that he could still watch it despite being outside in the park. The video watching was just to keep his mind busy as he worked on the gift he was knitting for his step-sister.
A young girl stood at the edge of his quilt. She had on a set of denim dungarees shorts over a teal shirt. Her tennis shoes were a dingy sort of gray with bright sky blue shoelaces. There was a lacy hem on the top of her white socks. An attempt had been made to pull her tawny curls into a ponytail, but more than half had already escaped the rainbow scrunchie. Combined with the grass stains on her knobby knees and the dirty smeared across her cheek, she looked a little wild. Her dark hazel eyes were focused on the way that Stiles' hands were moving as he continued knitting on autopilot.
"I'm knitting a shawl," he explained. The fuchsia yarn kept moving between the wooden needles as he continued down the course. The girl just stood there, silently watching. It was a bit eerie, given what Stiles could glean from her appearance, but he didn't think she meant anything by it. So Stiles did what he did best: he filled the silence by talking. "It's for my sister. Her name is Lydia. This is her favorite color, but she can't always find things in it. So I searched the wild woods for the softest of rabbit fur to spin into this yarn. Then I bundled the yarn in the symbol of infinity. Do you know what that is?"
The girl gave a silent nod. With the dirty fingers of her left hand, she traced a figure eight. Stiles gave her a smile and a nod. He licked his lips before continuing the grandiose tale.
"I boiled the bundle in a bubbling stew made of red onion skins and the darkest of berries. When it was the color I desired, I washed the yarn with a special powder made from the root of arrows. That makes the color stay against the claws of time."
Stiles paused his story as the little girl raised both hands and curled her fingers towards him like claws. She let out a rough growl at the same time that her fingers extended into actual claws and her eyes flashed a deep amber yellow. He nodded, unfazed by the display. It was a child's display, and honestly, his many niblings did the same kind of things all of the time. At least this girl's display didn't include small sparks of fire or splashes of water like Kira's twins.
Though it did beg the question of where her parents were. Every shifter he knew was extremely protective of their children, especially when they were as young as this girl seemed to be. She looked to only be six or seven. He beckoned her closer. She didn't hesitate to curl into his side, her sharp chin pressed into his bicep as she watched him knit.
"Lydia became my sister shortly after a bunch of our friends became werewolves." He grinned at the little growl the girl let out. "Another of our friends became a sticky reptile. And another member of our pack is a kitsune." Stiles carefully set down his needles to run one hand over her head. The motion displaced her rainbow scrunchie. Out of habit, Stiles automatically slipped it around his wrist like he would any of his nieces' hairties. "Where's your pack, myszka?"
"Malia," the girl corrected with trace of confusion to her voice. Stiles gave a low chuckle. Malia let out a tiny growl before saying it again with exaggerated care. "Mal-e-ah. Not miz-ka."
Before Stiles could repeat his question, the quiet peace of the park was pierced by a howl. Stiles winced as Malia gave an answering howl from right beside him. He made quick work of packing away anything fragile into the wicker basket. If a few stitches frogged themselves, it would still be better than what a werewolf could potentially do. And there was no doubt in his mind that Malia's caregiver was a werewolf and coming in hot. Boyd had once tracked his son half a mile through a foul-smelling quagmire after he had wandered off.
"Over here," Stiles called out as soon as he spotted the well-dressed dressed man coming from the jogging path into the preserve. He lifted a hand to wave him over.
He could tell when the man spotted Malia's rainbow scrunchie by the flash of electric blue eyes. Despite knowing what it meant for a wolf to have blue eyes, Stiles wasn't worried. Most blue-eyed wolves were just angsty marshmallows, no matter what hunter journals had to say on the topic.
"Calm down, Papa Wolf," Stiles said once he was confident that the man was close enough to actually hear him. Malia didn't move away from him or tense up at the sight of the wolf running across the playground towards them. "Malia is fine."
"How do you know her name?" the wolf demanded as he stopped at the edge of the quilt, just as Malia had done. Stiles frowned, both in confusion at the question and recognition of who the man was.
Peter Hale was a bit of a legend in the county, even outside of how the Hale family owned most Beacon Hills and had their fingers in most things. He had left in the dead of night nearly eight years ago, with no warning. None of the Hales would speak about where he had gone or why. Stiles had a few new theories about that, now that he had met Malia.
"She told me?" Stiles said in a questioning tone. "She didn't seem to like the nickname I gave her. Isn't that right, Mal?"
"Mal-E-ah," the girl corrected. Her nose scrunched in irritation. Peter looked like someone had whacked him with a rolled up newspaper. "Not Mal. Not miz-ka."
"You got her to speak." Peter sounded both shocked and amazed. He slowly lowered himself to kneel on the quilt. "She hasn't spoken since I got her back." He blinked suddenly focusing on Stiles with recognition in his eyes. "You're the McCall emissary."
"Lyds is actually the emissary," Stiles corrected with more politeness than Malia, "because apparently fireballs aren't diplomatic, but I am part of the McCall pack, yes." He gave Malia a squeeze. "You're Peter Hale, missing Left Hand of the Hale pack, and this is Malia, who is not a mouse."
"Yeah," Malia agreed, nodding rapidly. The motion rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. Peter got a hungry look on his face. It looked disturbingly similar to how Scott looked at Kira in the few days before the full moon. It also warmed something deep inside of Stiles' gut. Suddenly, pain radiated from his bicep. She sounded so wildly proud when she spoke again. "Mine now."
Stiles rolled his eyes.
Puppies.