DC's birthday was coming up. Zephyr couldn't remember the date exactly, but he was pretty sure it was in April. So after work, he instructed Reg to stop at the local megamart. Reg parked the Buick at the far end of the parking lot, away from other cars, and they walked the rest of the way.

The store was a little too crowded for Zephyr's liking. He grabbed Reg's arm and hurried him past the greeter trying to accost them at the entrance. He stopped next to a rack of women's tee shirts, made sure Reg was doing all right in the dramatic shift of environment, and scanned the store.

"He's four, right? What can we get a four-year-old? Gah, I'm so bad at this."

"Toys," Reg said. Zephyr followed Reg's gaze right to a large sign hanging from the ceiling on the opposite side of the store.

"Wow, that's impressive," Zephyr told him. "Thanks." He really meant it, too. If this place gave him sensory overload, he could only imagine what it did to Reg. He took Reg's arm again - this time to prevent Reg from getting too far ahead - and they began their trek through the obstacle course of displays and shopping carriages and small children. People gawked at them as they pushed through. Zephyr found this infuriating; the only proper reaction, he thought, was to glare back malevolently at them and force them to avert their eyes. But he couldn't. There were just too many of them.

The children didn't bother him so much. Children stared as a matter of course, and he sympathized with them too much to want to hurt them. The adults, however, were a different story. He could guess exactly what they were thinking, and it wasn't kind.

They finally made it to the toy department (why did they put it so far into the store?) and stopped to sort through another round of sensory overload. "There's so much shit here," Zephyr mused aloud, and then grinned sheepishly as he noticed a girl of about seven standing not five feet away. She blinked her round brown eyes at him and scampered out of sight down one of the aisles.

Reg moved forward and Zephyr allowed himself to be pulled along. So much junk... but a lot of it could be overlooked. This entire aisle was all dolls and girl stuff, and over there were the three-and-under toys. Board games? No, he didn't know what to look for. Ooh, balls and sports equipment... but he wasn't sure whether DC was athletic.

Books. That idea appealed to him. He pulled Reg to a stop and scanned the book rack.

"We should get two or three of them. Help me out, Reg. Find a book with really nice pictures that a little boy would like."

Zephyr picked up one book after another. Some were activity books or coloring books; all of the storybooks seemed to be on Reg's side. Finally he chose a coloring book featuring construction equipment. DC had a lot of toy dump trucks and backhoes and related vehicles, so Zephyr figured it was a safe bet. He considered tracking down a yellow-orange crayon to include with the book; he was sure DC would need one. Oh well, the kids probably already had crayons.

Reg handed him a colorful hardcover picture book. Zephyr flipped through it. It was a story about a little boy and a parrot, and each page had English and Spanish versions of the text.

"Perfect!" he told Reg. "I'm sure he'll love this. Portia will, too. I don't know if she's teaching the kids Spanish, but I wouldn't be surprised if she is." He tucked both books under his arm and led him back out of the toy department.

"Okay," he continued as they dodged a variety of people, "we probably should toss something else in, something small, and then we'll go next door to the office supply store and find a box to put these things in so we can send them." He spotted a rack of long tubes filled with chocolates. "Hey, one of those would be great. Reg, grab one for me."

Reg did so and they headed to the checkout counter. They ended up in a line next to a broken candy rack. Reg pushed the tube into Zephyr's hands and bent down to examine it.

Zephyr nudged him with his knee. "No, Reg. Get up."

"I can fix this," Reg said.

Zephyr grumbled to himself. It had been stupid of him not to foresee this and choose another line. "I know that. Leave it alone anyway. It's not for you to fix."

"I can fix this," Reg insisted.

Zephyr glanced around. Maybe it wasn't too late to switch lines. But the other lines looked longer than this, and the old woman directly behind him gave him such a disapproving glare that he couldn't get himself to move. "Look," he told Reg, "they have somebody who fixes those. That's his job. If some stranger came into your workshop and did your work for you, how would you feel? You'd be angry, right? It's not fair to that man if you do his work for him. Leave it alone."

Reg stared at the broken rack, and slowly stood up again. Zephyr pushed him forward to close the gap forming between them and the customer ahead of them, who by now had also taken an interest in Reg's activities. When he had completed the purchase and gotten them both out of there, relief took over.

Now they only had to get the box and they were all set.

The packaging department of the office supply store wasn't nearly as well marked as the toy department had been, but the crowds were smaller and less intrusive and They eventually found it by process of elimination. When they found the boxes, Zephyr took a few moments to look closely. Unassembled as they were, it was difficult to estimate how big they'd be, so he tried to go by the dimensions listed on the shelf labels.

Reg reached forward and took a box.

"I don't know," Zephyr said, looking critically at the selection. "It looks too small. I don't think this'll fit in it." He reached into the megamart bag and pulled out the tube of candy. As he'd feared, it was longer than the box's longest side.

Reg blinked at him. "a² + b² = c²," he said. Then he unfolded the box, took the candy tube from Zephyr, and demonstrated how it fit diagonally.

Zephyr broke into a grin. "You totally kick ass, man!" he replied.

He took the tube of candy back and returned it to its bag. Reg refolded the box, followed Zephyr to the cash register, and grabbed a high-quality black pen from the impulse-buy rack when they reached it. Zephyr bought it for him.