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“Harry, what’s this?” Asta asked, holding what was clearly a small canine in the early stages of development.
Humans weren’t very bright, and so he often had to explain things to them. He cared about Asta, so he had more patience to explain things to her than he normally would.
“This is a puppy,” he said, enunciating the words clearly. “It is a dog in the early stages of development, in approximately eight months it will have developed fully into a mature dog.”
Asta rolled her eyes, instead of thanking him for the explanation. He still wasn’t sure what that reaction meant.
“I can see it’s a puppy, I want to know why it has wrapping paper all over. You’re lucky it was able to chew through it, you could have suffocated it,” she said, ripping the rest of the paper off the puppy.
It was wrong, she wasn’t supposed to open her gift this early, but when he told Asta that she wasn’t supposed to do something, she would usually be mad at him.
“It was not lucky, it was very hard to wrap it, it kept trying to eat me with its tongue. You should be careful, its tongue is full of bacteria that would be harmful to your weak human immune system,” he said, taking a couple steps back so the puppy couldn’t get to him.
“Why are you wrapping a puppy? You don’t wrap puppies! They need to breathe,” she said, rubbing her hands on the puppy’s side.
He hoped she wouldn’t try to touch him after that.
“The puppy is for you, your Christmas gift. We are friends, so I should give you a gift. It means you have to give me a gift too, I made a list,” he said, showing her his short, one hundred and twelve items, wishlist.
She had until the next morning to give him a gift, so she should have time to get him everything.
“What? No, Harry. Puppies are not Christmas gifts, you’re next supposed to give anything alive to people as a gift.”
That made no sense, but he wasn’t surprised. Humans were often very confusing creatures, because nothing that they did made much sense. He blamed that on their limited intelligence.
“You gave the mayor something alive as a gift, on his birthday,” Harry said, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain to her how little sense she was making.
“That wasn’t… Harry, that was a plant. Alright, new rule, you can give people plants, non-poisonous plants, but not pets! Pets aren’t gifts, they are a commitment.”
“Fine, I will dispose of the puppy,” he said, reaching for it.
She pulled it out of his grasp. “No! Absolutely not. I’m sure I can find someone to take it. How can you even…? Don’t kill dogs, that’s the easiest way to get people to hate you.”
He had observed that humans were overly attached to canines, at times more so than their own young. Humans were so dumb, they didn’t even know they were supposed to care about their species more than about dogs.
“No killing dogs, fine, but that counts as your gift, so you still have to give me one.”
Asta sighed. “You know what? Fine, don’t kill any dogs, and I’ll buy you something.”
“Perfect,” he said, handing her the list. “You can use my extra key to leave everything under the tree.”
She took one look at the list, made it into a paper ball and threw it away. “No. I’ll think of something myself. Also, you can’t ask for Lennie Briscoe for Christmas, he’s a fictional character. And I think the actor who played him died twenty years ago.”
“That’s not fair, I gave you what you wanted.”
She just blinked at him for a moment. He also wasn’t sure what that reaction meant.
“I don’t even know how to explain how wrong you are. Just… I’ll take the puppy now, try not to do anything weird with animals. And I’ll bring you a gift tomorrow.”
That didn’t seem fair at all, but Asta was scary when she started to argue with him, so he decided not to point that out to her again. At least he was going to get something, although he wasn’t sure if he could trust Asta to give him a good gift. She didn’t have very good taste.