How Green Becomes Wood

Xander shrugged, not believing Dark. It wasn't personal. Xander genuinely didn't believe anyone who said he was a good student or smart enough to go far. He was proud of his current grades, but he didn't believe they'd last through college or anything that actually challenged him. Still... it would be cool to be able to do something like that. Did horses even need zoologists anymore? They were so thoroughly domesticated, but there were breeds like the Takhi. He leaned on the fence and watched the horses as they shook their scrubby manes and stamped at the flies. "I just think they're cool."
 
"We can go see the bears now," Dark said.

"And not the ones your father fought," Daizi chuckled, finding Dark's arm so she could walk with him, although it was a tiny bit more cumbersome with the stroller so she stopped using her cane as much.
 
Over at the bear section, there were both sun bears and sloth bears as well as a brown bear and a polar bear. Except for the sun bear, none of them were particularly active, although the polar bear was lounging in its pool. Unfortunately, Ivy slept through all of them, but Daizi enjoyed herself because there were a lot of tactile display elements.

Dark also enjoyed looking at the bears, at least until, when describing to Daizi how the brown bear was sleeping, she innocently said, "That's what you're like when you're in a deep sleep."
 
Both twins snorted and snickered at the comment about the bear, completely taking them out of their sense of mortality as they realized just how big a bear was, especially the polar bear. The polar bear could eat both of them without blinking. The brown bear looked deceptively huggable. Alec wanted to pet the ears, especially.
 
"Do not pet the bear," Dark said dryly, shooting his wife a futile look when she rubbed his back, "I thought I was a Goose?"

"You are, but you sleep like a bear when you do sleep," Daizi reminded him, bumping her shoulder against his, "Come on, the primates are next, right?"
 
"My last words will be, 'Who is the cutest fuzzy wuzzy?'" Alec replied.

"I'd kill you if you said something like that to me," Xander said dryly.

Alec laughed and offered to take the stroller while they walked to the primates.
 
Dark gladly let Alec take over the stroller, and once his hands were free, he and Daizi fell in step with each other without a word. When she gently squeezed his arm, he looked down at her and frowned slightly. He couldn't deny she looked lovely in her giant sunhat, but at times like these he hated the wretched thing because when he looked down, he couldn't see her face.
 
Long before there was a monkey, a lemur, or an ape in sight, they could hear them. Some of them were literally whooping and hollering as they bounced around in their enclosures. Alec and Xander both winced at the level of the noise, but it was manageable once they got used to it. Xander found the monkeys eerie and unnerving. Alec loved watching their hands and feet.
 
Almost immediately inside the Primate House, with the sound of the hollering and chirps, Ivy woke up with a start and began to cry. After folding up her cane, Daizi took her from the stroller and bounced her, trying to calm her down. It took awhile, but when Dark was able to point out marmosets running in the trees near the end of the first section of the Primate House, she was able to soothe herself down. After they settled her, she did have fun pointing out monkeys to people, and soon amused herself by cheering, "Mokey!" whenever she saw one.

Once they made it to the apes, although they were significantly less noisy than the monkeys, Dark slowed down a lot more. Especially once they made it to the gorillas, which he had already said were his favourite in the entire exhibit.
 
Xander and Alec took turns calling, "Monkey!" with Ivy, enjoying her glee. When they came to the small monkeys in their little enclosures, both forgot about calling out "Monkey" and instead studied the little cotton-tipped Tamarins and the emperor tamarin with his highly impressive mustache. They lingered with Dark around the apes and sat watching the gorillas. They were good gorillas.
 
Really, Dark just liked to watch the way the family interacted with each other, and after reading the signs about who the different members were, he used the moment to teach Ivy family words in Arabic, when he wasn't busy sketching their dynamics.
 
Surprisingly, the gorillas did not hold much interest for the twins. They were awesome, and the twins read all the signs and watched them for a while, as well as listening to Dark give Ivy Arabic lessons, but they ended up wandering off a short distance away to look at other things. They were careful not to go too far. They would have been in easy sight except for all the people around, but they stayed within sort-of-sight with a lot of people in between.
 
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