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starffledust · 2 years

Text

By the South

[crossposted on AO3]

Original Summary: Jack and Katherine are new to the neighborhood where a man named Mr. Lunar Lunanoff is rather stingy about who he rents his houses to. The residents are curious about their new neighbors.

“Jack!!” Katherine’s voice reverberated throughout the house. “You haven’t seen my hair brush, have you? The one with the goose on it?”

Jack appeared at the top landing of the stairs, peering over the railing at Katherine, who was standing empty handed in the center of the living room. “Everything you own has a goose on it,” he said with an underlying chuckle. “You mean the one with a bow or the one with a top hat? Or maybe the one with the top hat and the bowtie.”

His laughter stopped short as a cushion barreled into his face. With limited vision, Jack held out his arms to catch the cushion as gravity peeled it from his face, wide eyes meeting Katherine’s glare. “O-kay,” he muttered. “Well, I haven’t seen it.” He dropped the cushion, jumped onto the railing, and slid the rest of the way down the stairs.

Katherine sighed and shook her head. “I’ve searched all of the essentials boxes and I couldn’t find it. I’m scared I left it on the bathroom counter.” She kicked at one of the many boxes on the floor, all labeled with marker titles spanning from “Kitchen” to “Jack’s unhealthy obsession with the Easter Bunny.”

“Eh. It’ll show up, trust me.” Jack bumped her shoulder with his own as he passed her into the kitchen. “We don’t have any food yet, do we?”

“Just the snacks we had in the car.”

“Hmm.” Jack surveyed the kitchen counter, which was covered in bags of chips, fruit, and some takeout boxes with unknown contents inside—Jack didn’t touch those ones.

He rummaged for a minute, not noticing as Katherine stomped off to another room.

When Jack was examining a bag of some sort of cheese cracker, Katherine finally walked into the kitchen, holding a comb to her head. It was tangled into her hair. “Pass me a bag of pretzels,” she said in a monotone, face carefully grave.

Trying not to laugh, Jack tossed an unopened bag of pretzels in her direction.

When Katherine caught it, she used both hands, letting the comb freely hang from a curl in her hair. “Thanks,” she said, opening the bag with a pop and walking back out of the kitchen. A faint sound of crunching left with her.

Jack rolled his eyes and turned back to the piles of food.

When he had just begun to reach for one of the mysterious takeout boxes, the doorbell rang.

“Jack!” Katherine called out from somewhere down the hallway. “Can you get—gahh—” A sound of ripping made Jack wince. “Can you get the door?”

“Sure!” Jack dropped his hand away from the box (for better or worse) and jogged up to the front door, yanking it open with a friendly smile. “Hello.”

He never actually pictured who could have been behind it, but this was not that.

“Oh my…” said the stranger at the door, brown eyes widening at the sight of him. Her face was florid, and her hands closed tightly around a plastic tin. “You are…” She leaned close. “So… cute!!” Her smile widened and she hopped in place.

“Uhhh thanks?” Jack cringed and glanced back into the house, but Katherine had not emerged from wherever she hid away to fix her hair.

“Oh!” The woman at the door leaned back a bit and nervously ran one of her hands over her head, where a green cloth covered her hair in a hijab. “Sorry, I swear one of these days all my manners will just flutter away.” She held out a hand, golden jewelry settling closer to her wrist. “Hello, I’m Tatiana, but most people call me Tooth.”

Jack reached slowly for her hand, shaking it with a limp grip. “Tooth.” He finally smiled. “I’m Jack—no nickname.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” a smaller voice joined from closer to the ground.

Jack looked down, finally noticing the brown and blue eyes watching him warily from behind Tooth’s leg. The child was almost a perfect copy of the woman, down to the most intricate clothing choices.

“Well, hello.” Jack crouched down to see the child better. “What’s your name?”

Tooth looked down at the kid with a smile and placed a gentle hand on her back. She gestured with her head toward Jack.

The kid glared at Jack. “I’m Bibiana, but Mom calls me Bibi.” She pointed at him menacingly. “I did not steal someone’s eye.” She was, of course, referring to her left eye, which was blue, unlike her right eye, which was her mother’s brown.

“Of course not,” he said with a smile. “You’re not quite old enough for murder yet—OW!” His head dropped to the side as something hit him from behind. He moved a hand to rub at the back of his aching head. “Katherine, what in the—?”

“Hi, I’m Katherine Shalazar.” She held out a hand for Tooth, which Tooth immediately shook with a nervous glance at the hairbrush in Katherine’s hand. “Sorry about him. He loves kids but he often forgets what is and isn’t kid-friendly.”

Jack slowly stood again. “You found it?” he asked, looking at the yellow hairbrush with a white goose on its handle.

“Of course I found it. I’m a genius, Jack.”

“Why are you wearing so much yellow?” Bibi piped up.

Katherine looked down at her. “I like yellow,” she said, running a hand over her yellow sweater-clad arms.

Bibi nodded. “Yellow is a good color. It matches your hair.”

Katherine grabbed at her ponytail, the single red wave in the front curling slightly like it, too, could hear Bibi. “Thank you,” she said with disbelief in her voice.

“Hmpf.” Bibi crossed her arms and looked away.

Tooth laughed. “She likes you,” she said.

“Mom!”

“I know, sweetie.” Tooth smiled and placed a hand on Bibi’s head, who immediately shook it off.

“So what brings you over, Mrs—?” asked Katherine.

“Tooth is fine. And we’re here to welcome you. You know, neighborly things.” Her eyes widened in recollection. “Oh, right!” Tooth thrust the plastic container in her hands toward Katherine. “I come bearing gifts. It’s just a soup, because I didn’t know what you liked and I only noticed your car a few hours ago. It’s still a bit hot.”

Katherine took the container with a smile. “Well, thank you. You didn’t have to.”

Tooth waved an uncaring hand through the air. “We all know that’s just your politeness speaking. Really, it’s the least I could do. It’s been a while since there have been any new residents in this house.”

“Why?” Jack leaned over Katherine’s shoulder to stare at Tooth. “Is it haunted?”

“What—no, no nothing like that!” Tooth laughed nervously. “It’s just that—the owner of this house tends to be extremely conservative in who he rents it out to.”

“You mean Mr. Lunanoff? He didn’t seem all that concerned to me,” said Katherine. “In fact, he was actually very amiable toward me when we were negotiating. Gave it to me with low interest and everything.”

“That’s only because he has a thing for Ombric Shalazar,” said Jack.

“He does not have a thing for my dad.” Katherine glared at him. “They knew each other for like one semester in college. He was just nice!”

“Mim is very rarely ‘just nice,’” Tooth interrupted them. “Maybe it was your dad, or maybe it was something else, but there's something about you two that Mim thought we needed in this neighborhood.”

“Huh.” Jack frowned. “Well, that’s not creepy at all.”

Katherine elbowed him in the stomach. As he doubled over with a wheeze, Katerine smiled at Tooth. “Would you like to come inside? We have…” She glanced back at the piles of bags and boxes in the kitchen. “Chips…?”

Tooth laughed. “If you’re offering.”

---

A loud knock on the door made Katherine jump just as she was handing Tooth a glass of water. Thankfully, Tooth grabbed at the glass quick enough that none of it spilled.

“I am so sorry, oh my—” Katherine’s hands hovered around the glass still, as if waiting for it to jump up and splash them.

“It’s okay, it happens.” Tooth smiled up at her from the couch. “I wonder who that is, though.”

Jack stood from where he was reclining in a chair next to the couch. “I’ll get it!” he called out as he hurried toward the door.

This time, when he opened it, Jack actually let go of the door handle in shock. A loud bang resonated through the house as the door swung back shut.

Then it opened again, but not by Jack.

“Hello!” A giant man with a white beard covering half of his torso lumbered over him, holding the door with one hand. “You are first new person in this house in two years!” His voice was loud and accented with something that sounded like Russian to Jack’s ears.

“That’s… interesting… Hey, what—” The man has begun to move away from the door and into the house. Jack chased after him as he maneuvered around Jack and walked down the hallway. “Woah, woah, hey!”

“Oh, North!” Tooth stood from the couch as the man entered the room.

“Toothie!” North moved forward to pull her into a tight hug. Bibi, who sat on the ground leaning against the coffee table, stuck out her tongue at him. He laughed when he saw her and simply waved.

“How’s the ice sculpture going?” Tooth asked when North finally set her down on the ground.

“Same old, Toothie, same old.”

Katherine appeared at North’s shoulder, making him jump. “Hello, I’m Katherine Shalazar. I live here with that idiot over there.” She gestured to Jack, who huffed and sunk back into his chair. Katherine looked up at North—he was very tall, so she had to strain her neck—and hummed in thought. “His name is Jack. And you’re North?”

“Nicholas North,” he said with a smile that never seemed to leave. “I prefer North.”

Katherine nodded. “I prefer Katherine.”

“Nice to meet you, Katherine.” North held out a hand, which she shook, showing no discomfort at his strong hold on her hand. When they both pulled their hands back, he laughed and turned to Tooth. “I like this one.”

“Apparently, Mim did, too,” said Tooth.

“Apparently,” Jack echoed.

“Why does that matter so much anyway?” asked Katherine, glancing at Tooth. “Okay, fine, he liked us for some reason, but you people just keep going on about it!” She threw her hands into the air in exasperation.

North chuckled. “Mim is a particular man. Took me two plates of cookies and one dangerous hike through the snowy mountains before he agreed to let me buy my property off of him. And even then I had so many” —he paused here to think of a word— “hoops to jump with some random real estate agent and contract saying that I would keep the house for at least five years before I even thought of moving. I suspect that he was actively trying to discourage me.”

“Two plates of cookies?” Tooth cried with a scandalized gasp.

“Hike through the mountains?” Jack squinted at North.

“You bought your property?” asked Katherine.

After a nervous cough, North waved off Tooth and turned to Jack first. “Yes, through the Alps. Very dangerous, do not recommend for pale child like you.” He turned to Katherine, ignoring Jack’s indignant claims that he was “not a child” and definitely had an average amount of paleness. “And yes, I rented for a while, but eventually I realized owning the house could do me some good—I never plan to move if it can be helped, and there were certain…. restrictions Mim keeps for his properties that I’d rather do without, you see. Took some convincing, as I said, but Mim eventually got the message. He could afford a few less houses, and I still see him every month or so for friendly dinners so he has not lost company.”

“O-kay. Here’s another question,” Jack pronounced slowly, still parsing through the new information in his head. “Why do you all call him Mim?”

North paused at that. “Well, I do not rightfully know. I always have. Toothie?”

Tooth shook her head. “I just picked it up from you.”

“Hm.” North ran a hand along his beard. “Well, I picked it up from Bunny, so perhaps he knows.”

“Bunny?” Jack lifted a hand to his trembling lips, chest heaving with the effort not to laugh. “You know a guy named Bunny?”

“Oh, it’s not his real name,” said Tooth.

“You guys and your nicknames.” Katherine rolled her eyes. “So, this Bunny guy just started calling Mr. Lunanoff Mim—why?”

“You’d have to ask him that yourself.” Tooth shrugged. “It may as well just be an inside joke between him and Sandy for all we know.”

“Oh great, more people,” Katherine groaned.

“You think it is best idea to let them meet each other alone, Toothie?” asked North, blue eyes darting between Jack and Katherine like he was weighing them against images in his mind. “You know how Bunny is about newcomers, and Sandy… well, certain people take to him better than others.”

Tooth shook her head with a smile. “They’ll be fine, North, trust me.” She lifted an arm and settled it into North’s arm in a comforting gesture. “I mean, really, what are they going to do, throw paint cans at them?”

“I’d rather that not happen, actually,” Jack protested, sitting up in his chair.

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” said North.

“You don’t seem sure about that,” Katherine retorted.

North chuckled and pushed her toward the door. “A bit of doubt is healthy for the brain, you know. I can’t go around liking all of my own ideas.” He grabbed at Jack’s sleeve and tugged him—flailing and protesting—off the chair. “Now, how about you go meet them and ask them any questions you have about Mim. They’ve been here the longest so they’re bound to know.”

He pushed them all the way to the door (pausing only for Tooth to open it) and then led them outside. He grabbed their shoulders and turned them sharply to the right, where up the street they could see a house that was significantly larger than the others, with a giant lawn of trees and flowers encompassed by a dark fence. The house, with golden-brown wood and lush bushes, towered above all other houses except for its neighbor, which was like its shadow with blackened wood and curtains covering any possible lights inside.

The sun was reaching the horizon, and the warm sky behind the house made it glow like an orange specter, little blotches of yellow piercing through the dark from lamps in the windows.

“They live—they live there?” Jack sputtered, staring slack jawed up at the property. “But—”

“No buts!” said North. “Now come, friends. You must meet rest of neighborhood.”

---

The doorbell was not much of a doorbell at all. Instead, it was more of a series of clicks and chimes which would come from one corner of the house one moment and then another the next.

“Comin’!” a rough voice called from somewhere far within the house, followed by clanging of what sounded like cans.

“It’s not bigger on the inside is it?” Jack squeaked into Katherine’s ear.

She shook her head, wide eyes finding his own.

The door opened.

And out stepped a man, taller than Jack or Katherine but still much shorter than North. His hair was brown with touches of gray, and his arms were covered in tattoos of what looked like abstract plants.

“North?” he said in a rough accent, scowling at North as he glanced warily at Jack and Katherine. “Who’re you coercing into kleptomania this time?”

“Kleptomania? Hah!” North coughed into his hand. “What are you saying, Bunny? I have never taken anything in my life.”

Bunny glared.

“Okay, maybe I have been eyeing that one book of yours on aerodynamics and high-altitude wind resistance, but I have never made to touch it. Honest!”

“For the last time, Sandy likes that one and isn't gonna risk you losing it like you did the others, so unless he ever lets go of it you’re out of your luck, mate.” Bunny crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “But that's not what I was talking about.” He moved an open hand toward Jack and Katherine. “Are ya going to introduce me to your guests?”

“Right!” North grabbed them by the shoulders. “Bunny, meet Jack and Katherine.” The mentioned smiled awkwardly at their names. “They live in the house Mim has been scrambling to rent out for years.”

“‘Scrambling’ is a relative term,” said Bunny with an unimpressed droop to his eyelids.

“Yes…” North agreed quietly.

There was silence for a few moments as Bunny glared at North, who in turn glanced away periodically. Jack and Katherine shared a look of confusion.

“Question,” Katherine finally spoke. “Why are you called Bunny?”

“Because my name sounds like—hey!” Bunny stood to his full height in surprise and turned sharply around to a shorter man with tousled blonde hair in the doorway. “Sandy, why the hell do ya poke so hard?” Bunny demanded.

Sandy did not lose his smile as he shrugged and turned to the group on the doorstep. He made a confused face then gestured with his hands, staring directly at Katherine like he was addressing her.

“Sandy!” Bunny hissed.

North began to laugh. “He is right! You are garden bunny with twitchy nose!”

“I am not!” said Bunny, his nose twitching in irritation. He stopped and glared at it in betrayal, making him go cross eyed.

Sandy nodded and patted Bunny’s arm consolingly.

“That's what he said?” asked Jack. “How do you understand that?”

“Sign language, ya galah,” Bunny replied dryly. “Ever heard of it?”

“Oh—”

“I don't know sign language,” said Katherine, her eyes sad like someone who had just put down a dog rather than someone who was admitting to not knowing a language.

“Wow, something you don't know.” Jack smiled. “Finally!”

Katherine tried to swat him over the head, but Jack ducked behind North. She huffed and turned back to Bunny and Sandy. “So, North said you have some info on Mr. Lunanoff.”

“Loads. We’re best mates. Known each other a long time if ya count all his recluse years,” said Bunny. “Depends on what you need to know though.”

Jack emerged from behind North. “Why do you call him Mim?” he asked.

Sandy raised his hand eagerly, then made several more gestures that Jack and Katherine couldn’t follow.

Bunny rolled his eyes. “It’s because this gumby over here can't learn when is and isn't an appropriate time to talk about ancient nursery rhymes that no one reads anymore.”

Sandy scowled and elbowed him.

Bunny jumped. “Seriously! Why do you poke so hard?”

A glare.

“Fine!” He turned back to the group. “He said it's because ‘Mim’ stands for ‘Man in the Moon.’”

“But what does that have to do with Mr. Lunanoff?” asked Katherine.

Bunny and Sandy traded looks.

Sandy made a beckoning gesture and stepped farther away from the door.

Bunny sighed. “Okay, ya bogans, come inside. You’re new here so count this as a little getting-to-know each other or something.” He stepped to the side to let them in the door as Sandy ran off to… do something.

As Katherine and Jack started forward, North turned toward the sidewalk. “Toothie!” he called out. “Bunny’s letting us inside!”

Two heads covered in green cloth appeared from behind the bushes, one taller than the other. “Really?” the taller one yelled back.

“Yeah! Come on!” North gestured for Tooth to come over.

Bunny gripped the space between his eyes with his fingers. “Why do I even put up with this?” he muttered.

Katherine and Jack shared looks of amusements and stifled their laughter as they bypassed Bunny into the house.

---

“Oh, it is bigger on the inside,” said Jack, between several “woah”s. Bunny was leading them through a giant foyer with deep purple carpets and mahogany tables with globes and lamps.

Tooth and North stopped in front of one of the tables, staring at an ornate egg on a pedestal. They traded smiles and quiet chuckles.

“I got that one for his birthday,” Tooth whispered.

North laughed. “Good choice,” he said.

“Oi, keep up, ya drogos” said Bunny from the front of the group, face completely stoick even as he showed them toward an enormous staircase. “And it’s called perspective, Jack. You were looking at the front of the house—not the sides.”

Jack nodded with a faux serious frown as Tooth and North stepped away from the table behind him.

“So we stepped into the painting?” asked Jack, jogging up the stairs to be side-by-side with Bunny.

Bunny raised an eyebrow at him. “What kind of porky is that?”

When they reached a landing, Bunny veered off to the side, toward an unassuming wooden door with a vase beside it.

“I don’t know,” Jack shrugged, “like Mary Poppins or something. You’d look good enough with a carpet bag and an umbrella.”

Bunny’s hand fumbled on the door handle he had been turning. His nose twitched.

He hadn't grabbed the handle again when the door opened, and Sandy gave Bunny a puzzled look from the other side.

“Ah.” Bunny glanced back at Jack. “It’s nothing.”

Sandy shrugged and opened the door wider for them to enter.

Katherine grabbed Jack’s arm and led him into the room with a tight grip; North, Tooth, and Bibi followed behind them, laughing at one of their own jokes. Bunny grumbled as he entered last and shut the door behind them.

He ran right into Katherine.

“Oi! What's the—”

“Oh… my… goose!” she interrupted him. Jack was pressed against her side, arm still trapped between her torso and her elbow. “There's so many books!”

The whole room itself was covered in bookshelves—multiple floors of them with ladders and balconies spanning three floors. A skylight poured evening light from the outside throughout the library, making the spines of the books glow orange. On the floor were several sections of armchairs, all padded with spotted patterns that looked more oval than circle and with side tables or large coffee tables between them. Lamps were scattered around on these surfaces, many turned off except for one in the center, where Sandy stood over the table with a few sheets of paper.

Katherine’s eyes had gone wide and twinkled with the familiar mirth of someone who was well read and understood the calming scent of old tea-stained papers. She could not move from the entrance even as Bunny slid past her to join Sandy in the center of the room.

“Oh, wow.” Jack rolled his eyes sarcastically. “So impressive. You killed a bunch of trees.”

Katherine let go of his arm and whacked the side of his head with the back of her hand, never looking away from the shelves that lined the room.

Jack didn't even react this time. Probably because her slap was so weakened by the fact that, as she hit him, she had already begun to approach one of the shelves and taken from it a book of old Irish mythology.

Bunny chuckled as he watched her, a softness around his eyes. “Glad you like it, sheila. This room is perhaps the only reason we have the house.”

Sandy looked at him sternly as he signed something.

Bunny sighed, but he still smiled. “Fine. The bed is nice too.”

“I love this room,” Tooth announced as she stared up into the skylight. “It always reminds me of finals week in college.”

North and Jack looked at her strangely.

“You enjoyed finals?” asked Jack, voice a high pitch in disgust.

Tooth huffed. “Well, yeah. Some of us enjoy keeping busy, you know!”

North shook his head gravely. “I will never understand you, Toothie.”

Bibi muttered under her breath, a sentence which, from the small bits he could hear, Jack interpreted as “I told you so.”

At this point, Sandy had finished doing whatever he had been doing (Sorting papers? Jack thought. But no, there must have been five sheets at most. He decided not to question it.) and walked back to the little group near the door, holding what looked to be a few photos and printer paper with dirt stained on the edges.

Bunny, of course, also rejoined the group, a scowl on his face that may as well have just been his resting face. It probably was.

Sandy handed Jack the paper first and signed something that Bunny said was “Man in the Moon”, the title of the poem.

“Read it aloud,” said Katherine.

So Jack read the poem aloud:

The man in the moon,

Came down too soon,

To inquire his way to Norwich.

He went by the south,

And burnt his mouth

With eating cold pease porridge.

“What?” Jack looked up from the paper and gave an inquiring look to Sandy. “What's a poem about the Man in the Moon burning his mouth have to do with Mr. Lunanoff?”

At this, Sandy grinned and glanced away to regain his composure. After a moment, he handed Jack one of the photographs in his hand which was a picture of Mim holding a can with a disgusted look on his face, Bunny standing beside him laughing with his arm around his shoulders.

When Jack passed it to Katherine, who then passed it to North and so on, Sandy signed for longer than before, which Bunny translated as this:

“When Bunny and I first moved in, Mim lived in the house beside us. He didn't own most of the houses in the neighborhood like he does not. In fact, he was actually using the house while the actual owner was away on business.

“For about three years he and the owner, whose name is Pitchiner, by the way, would trade off living in the house. In the winter, when Pitchiner was most scarce in the house, Mim would come to look after it, and when he was most often home in the winter, Mim would live in what is now North’s house with his college friend.”

(At this, Jack elbowed Katherine and whispered “Ombric”, earning him another elbow in his side.)

“The schedules didn't always line up, though,” Sandy signed with a frown. “Sometimes there were miscommunications where Mim would come too early or too late into the season, which Pitchiner was never happy about. He’s a bit particular and paranoid.”

Bunny stopped Sandy a second to say “A bit particular and paranoid? That man’s a walking horror movie with control issues!”

Sandy shrugged and signed something that Jack imagined was “just let me get on with the story.”

Bunny sighed and gestured for him to continue.

“One day, Mim showed up on our doorstep, weeks before winter even started,” the story continued despite Bunny’s grumbling between sentences. “Apparently Pitchiner had gone away early and Mim was struggling to find any food in the fridge. Usually he at least had time to plan out meals or shop ahead of time, but Pitchiner had simply called him one day and told him to come over because he was to watch the house. Now this wouldn't have usually been a problem, except that all Pitchiner had in his cabinet was…” Sandy’s hands stopped as he tried not to burst out with laughter. After a second where his face grew redder, he managed a “All Pitchiner had in his cabinet was canned pease pudding.”

Sandy doubled over and laughed. He waved his hand at Bunny.

Bunny himself was also chuckling. “Yeah. Of all the things he could have stocked up on, Pitchiner decided he was gonna go all in on canned pease pudding. So Mim ended up at our doorstep begging us for something that wasn't pease pudding. Apparently it was winter break so his college friend had left to visit family for the holidays and the stores were closed for the weekend due to weather.” He looked at Sandy. “This one thought it was the funniest thing he ever saw and called him the Man in the Moon because of it. That's a lot to sign and say all the time so we eventually shortened it to Mim. Just kind of stuck.”

Sandy finally looked back up and nodded to confirm what Bunny had just said. He held up another photo in his hand which was a picture of Mim passed out over a table with a bowl of what looked like cereal in front of him along with a plate of some sort of sandwich.

“So…” said Katherine, “you call him Mim because he has horrible time management and at one point was forced to eat a bunch of canned pease pudding?”

Sandy only smiled as he stuffed the photo in one of his pant pockets. He signed quickly, which Bunny said meant “And because his name has luna in it.”

Katherine facepalmed.

“Is interesting story,” North said suddenly, his eyes darting around guiltily. “Did not know about Mim… Now, Sandy… about that aeronautical engineering book—”

Sandy glared at him. He shook his head and pointed to a box in the corner, simply labeled in full caps “NORTH.”

“Ah… right.” North paled. “I will bring them back.”

Bunny rolled his eyes with a sigh. “Just give up, mate. You won’t win.”

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