She blinked back her tears. “Because not all Littles are children,” she said. “And I’m setting a bad example for my daughter and the others who are.”
“Why do you care about setting examples if your Littles will never grow up?” I asked. Immediately I hated myself. I sounded like a typical Amazon just then.
“Because children still learn about their world, Mr Gibson.” Mrs Zoge said. She wiped her face on her sleeve. She stood up. A soft, demure smile came to her. “And I want my children to learn that the world is fair.”
I was standing straighter, too. “It’s not, though.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s not. But it’s my responsibility as an adult to try.” She looked at me. “How do I make this right, Mr Gibson? Shall I wear diapers for a day? A week? Till Spring Break? Summer Vacation?” There was resignation in her voice. Weary but determined. It felt like she was asking me to flog her in the public square.
Wild. Just wild. I couldn’t believe it. This was a trap. It had to be a trap. From the back of my head, my survival instinct was screaming behind a carefully constructed cage of etiquette. It was a trap. But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. Amazons were crazy, and if you managed to trigger their crazy in the right way, they still had to play by their own asinine rules. That’s why Zoge had been crying.
In her eyes, she’d trespassed on an actual adult, and the penalty for most Amazon trespasses was, of course, diapers. Her own crazy brain couldn’t accept less.
This was the opportunity of a lifetime.