#she kind of had a little bit on her last molt also but i don’t remember it being this noticeable

[bluemoonbeam15]

Hey, so I saw this video and it got me thinking. What if the reason Hopper bullies the ants for food so much is because he molted into a locust during a time of famine? Maybe his family didn’t have anything to eat and he had to do anything he could to stay alive? What if because of this change he’s always hungry, and that causes a lot of his outbursts? That poor bug. If Flick knew maybe he would’ve shown him more mercy or reached out.

https://youtu.be/uURqcI08IC4

^That’s the vid.

This is actually the first time I've been introduced to the differences between a locust and a grasshopper. For a long while, I assumed they were two different species in the same genus or family.

After watching the video and doing more research, it turns out the only defining difference between them is their psychological state. A grasshopper is only defined as a locust when it is surrounded by others of its kind and it essentially "panics" and grows manic and savage. That's why locusts are known for wreaking havoc on crops, it's like a manic episode for them.

This manic state happens when the sensory glands on the grasshopper's hind legs are rubbed constantly over a period of 4 hours. So, when they are surrounded by more due to famines, that spot is getting rubbed and it drives them crazy.

In comparison, it's similar to how a cat will oftentimes bite when you scratch that spot at the base of its tail. That spot is actually a sensitive gland that, when touched, overstimulates the cat's senses.

Based on my research, the molting that transpires during this psychological change is because of the stressful environment of being overcrowded. Kind of like how people themselves will lose more hair when stressed or a lot of animals shed their fur when facing anxiety. It's a consequence of the circumstances more than a method of adaptation.

That being said, I tried researching to see if locusts could go back to being grasshoppers, or essentially reverse that psychological state. And, unfortunately, came upon controversial answers. It's one of those, yes and no type questions.

This means I get to interpret the information however I want! XD

So for this short story, I'm going to be assuming that the psychological state can be reversed when they are distanced from the other grasshoppers (locusts). However, because they have already been in that manic state, Hopper and Molt find themselves in dangerous territory where the glands on their legs are much more sensitive. Meaning, they have a higher chance of reverting back to that manic state if they are too stressed.

Additionally, I'm twisting it a little bit from what we see in the movie. Now that these glands are more sensitive, the brothers are prone to be driven into a deeper manic state than what they were initially in. Especially Hopper, who was shown in the movie to be more on edge compared to his brother. Thumper's mentality is a prime example of this deeper state. So, Hopper and Molt -- mainly Hopper, but Molt must also tread lightly -- can easily be coaxed into that savage state if the glands are rubbed.

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"Come on! You'll have a great time, I promise!" Flik tugged on Hopper's arm. It was times like these he wished he weighed even half of what Hopper did.

The grasshopper didn't have to resist much. "Kid, I don't think that's such a good idea," he scratched the back of his neck.

Flik dramatically groaned, "But everyone will be there! Do you realize how often the Monarchs throw a huge party like this? Every ten years! This is our chance to meet them in person! The Monarchs, Hopper!"

"Yeah, no, I get it, really...but it's really just not my scene," Hopper unclasped Flik's hands from around his arm and stepped back. "You can go without me. The Circus Bugs are going aren't they?"

The ant gave a defeated huff, "Well, yeah..."

"Well there ya go," Hopper shrugged and nudged Flik toward the entrance of his room, "You'll have the time of your life. Go and enjoy yourself."

Flik spun around, "But it won't be the same! It's just for the night, Hop."

He sighed, "Flik--"

"Please?" The ant drooped his antennae back, lip quivering and eyes doleful. It was the most pitiful thing Hopper had laid eyes on.

His resolve lasted about five more seconds before he dropped his head, "Alright, fine...I'll go."

Flik laughed in victory, "You won't regret it!" He pulled Hopper with him down the tunnel.

"I highly doubt that."

____________________

The lightning bugs were flashing around, creating a mystical ambiance. Flik was awed at the plethora of species dancing and conversing with each other. The Monarchs held their celebrations in The City, which seemed fitting for a social creature.

Unfortunately, some of the creatures there weren't exactly social...

Flik laughed as Heimlich immediately zoned in on the food table, clearing a wide path among the crowd. "See Hop? Isn't this great?" His question wasn't answered. "Hop?" He looked around behind him, pinpointing the grasshopper a ways off.

Hopper tried staying calm, biting his lip unconsciously. There were just...so...many...insects. So much noise and racket. Where was Molt when he needed him? Lucky idiot made the excuse of helping Dr. Flora restock her infirmary. Now here he was. Why didn't he just say no? All the voices seemed as if they were blaring in his antennae.

"--op?" He blinked his eyes open, not realizing he'd squinted them closed. Flik was looking up at him worriedly, "You okay?"

"Huh? Yeah! Yeah, I'm fine," Hopper gave a wavering smile, "Just...enjoying the view," his heart felt like bursting from his chest at the sight. Everyone was just inches from each other...swarming the area.

Flik, in all innocence, gave an encouraging smile, "Well come join the fun! You can't enjoy yourself just standing here!" He went behind the grasshopper and nudged him forward.

Hopper jumped back when another insect brushed against him, "Wait, Flik! This isn't--"

Another insect bumped into them, apologizing offhandedly before moving along. Flik was small enough to not worry too much about the overcrowding. He lived in a colony for goodness' sake. Hopper felt the world spinning around him as more insects kept sliding past. To any other insect, the faint brushes of their wings against their leg would have passed them by. For Hopper, it felt like lightning jolting through his body at every touch.

While everything blurred around him, the sound of Flik calling his name was becoming white noise. A scream pierced through the chaos of his senses.

"Everyone watch out!"

"Be careful!"

"What's wrong with it?"

Flik was pulled back by the arm just as a claw sliced the air in front of him. Gypsy pushed Flik back cautiously. He stared wide-eyed at his friend, "W-What's happening?"

Hopper was doubled-over, clawing at his head momentarily before lashing out at the closest bug to him. A dragonfly fell back trying to get away, "It's gone savage!" she screamed and scrambled back into the crowd. Everyone started panicking and pushing to put distance between them and the grasshopper.

"Hopper! Are you okay?" Flik stepped forward, but Gypsy kept him back.

The grasshopper flattened his antennae baring his teeth at Flik and stalking toward him. His pupils were dilated, wings flared out, and breathing manic. Flik swallowed and shakily called out again, "Hop?"

Like a blur, Hopper lunged forward with claws sheathed. The crowd dispersed in a panic. Gypsy moved Flik behind her protectively, "Dim! Rosie! A little help over here!"

She closed her eyes shut as Hopper snarled and came inches from her face. A heavy thud directed her attention to the rhino beetle beside them. Rosie was perched on his back, working quickly to shoot her webbing around the grasshopper. Hopper tried cutting through the material but it wound tightly around his arms, immobilizing him.

"Man, what the heck happened?" Francis and the others dared walking up to Hopper, earning a hiss in response. "He...he's acting kinda like Thumper."

Flik stepped out from behind Gypsy, keeping his eyes focused on Hopper, "Hop? What's wrong buddy?" He yelped when the grasshopper snapped his jaws toward him. "Th-That's not Hopper..."

Gypsy put an arm around Flik's shoulders, "Let's take him back to the colony. Maybe Dr. Flora knows what's wrong."

_______________

"Goodness! I-I can't say I have anything of use," Flora frantically searched through her herbs. Hopper was on the floor still wrapped in the webbing, his back pressed against the rock-slab bed.

Molt walked in with some supplies in his arms, catching sight of the others, "Oh, you guys are back early!" His smile dropped when he saw his brother. "Hop!" the supplies were quickly forgotten about. Molt slid to the ground beside his brother, "Aw, Hoppy, I knew that party was a bad idea."

"You know what's wrong with him?" Francis tossed a seed at the grasshopper's head, making him snarl and push against his binds.

"It was probably 'cause o' the crowd," Molt cautiously brushed Hopper's antennae back, ignoring the growls. "The stress can make grasshopper's go savage."

Francis snorted, "Stress?"

"Well, yeah," Molt shrugged. "That and...say, were there a lot o' bugs swarmed together?"

Flik blinked, "Yeah, it was a party."

"Did he run into anyone? Or brush against anyone?"

Slim rolled his eyes, "The place was so crowded you couldn't take one step without touching someone."

Molt hummed, "Well that's why he went savage. We grasshoppers have a gland on our legs that's sensitive to touch. It's overstimulating and drives us crazy." Tentatively, he drew a claw over Hopper's leg, making the grasshopper squirm and growl from the sensation. "It's a survival tactic for when there's no food. We'll join a swarm of grasshopper's that will trigger those sensations and drive us to find food."

Flik felt a bit braver to sit down beside Hopper, "Is that why you guys were in a gang? For survival?"

"Yeah, a drought hit us bad at our old home and we were forced to find others to get food."

The ant looked back at Hopper, taking in his demeanor. Was Hopper savage back then? He certainly hadn't acted this wild. But he was definitely on edge. He was just...hungry. Starving, actually. Driven on fear for his own survival.

Gypsy kneeled down in front of Hopper, "Well, I can't do much for that gland. But I do know how to relieve stress." She forced her thumbs beneath his jaw to keep him from biting, pushing her other fingers against the back of his head. "There's a pressure point called 'the gates of consciousness' that helps relieve stress." She carefully pressed down on the back of his neck.

A deep shudder coursed his body before going limp. Gypsy felt his jaw relax and she slowly drew back, lifting his head up, "Alright, Dear, let me see." He blinked his eyes open groggily. They were back to normal from what she could see, "There we go. How are you feeling?"

Hopper groaned, "What...What happened?"

"You went a bit...feral, Dear," Gypsy sat back as Hopper took in his surroundings.

"Feral?" Everything began returning to him. He remembered the party, the lights, bugs, crowding, touching...

He shuddered at the memories, "My head hurts," he groaned.

Gypsy rubbed his temple and began cutting through the webbing, "I can imagine. We'll get you some poppy seeds to sleep it off." Dr. Flora was already getting the medicine together.

Flik wrung his hands together, "I'm sorry, Hopper. I shouldn't have pressured you into going. Why didn't you tell me this would happen?"

"What was I supposed to say?" Hopper gave a mirthless laugh, "I'd go savage if anyone touched me? Yeah, I don't think you would've believed me."

Dr. Flora handed Gypsy a few poppy seeds. "Here, eat these," she placed them in his hand. Hopper took them and laid his head back against the bed. She patted his knee and stood, "You get some rest, Dear. That headache should be gone by morning."

Flik hesitated, "I hope you're not mad."

"Me?" Hopper peeked an eye open. Flik nodded, "Why would I be mad? You didn't know, kid. On the bright side, I got to leave early," he chuckled.

Flik laughed a bit too, "Yeah, and I won't force you to go to another party again. I promise."

Hopper squinted, pinching his fingers, "I'll go to small parties, how about that? And just with our friends."

The ant grinned, "Works for me."

#a bugs life #hopper #flik #request #ask #anon ask #prompt #fanfiction #gypsy #molt #francis #slim #dim #rosie #circus bugs #writing #zootopia vibes tho

[thetravelerwrites]

DuMont (Part 3) Lemon

Rating: Explicit Relationship: Female Elf Ranger/Male Tiefling Barbarian Additional Tags: Exophilia, Tiefling, Elf, Kobold, Half Elf, Human, Rogue, Bard, Barbarian, Ranger, Mage, Wizard, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Sex, Third Person Perspective Words: 3839

Kharis seems dissatisfied with DuMont's... performance, so DuMont intends to ask for advice from Rupert. Things don’t go as planned. Please reblog and leave feedback!

The Traveler's Masterlist

“Why do you do that?” Kharis asked as she and DuMont lay in their bed of straw and furs together.

They were sheltering in a run down barn on the outskirts of the nearest town. Rupert, Sanoh, and Norman were at an inn, but DuMont was too large to fit through most doors. Kharis decided to stay with DuMont instead of enjoying the comforts of the inn, which usually meant she was feeling frisky.

“Do what?” DuMont asked, looking over at her in confusion.

She sighed. “Ask me if I’m okay every time I make a noise when we have sex? And you’re always so gentle, like I’m made of glass and you’re scared you’re going to hurt me.”

“I am scared of that,” He replied, propping himself up on his elbow to look down at her. “I could injure you very easily if I’m not careful. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Kharis sighed discontentedly and reached up to scratch his chest absentmindedly. “It’s not that I don’t like the gentleness. It’s sweet. But I wish you would lose control sometimes, take charge, be spontaneous. Just grab me and fuck me senseless without even saying anything. I’m always the one who tells you what to do, and trust me I love giving orders, but I’d love it if you told me to just shut up and suck your dick once in a while.”

DuMont grimaced. “I don’t think I’d feel right, saying something like that.”

“That’s kind of my point, darling,” She said, sitting up with a slight chuckle. “You’re too pure for your own good sometimes. It’s growing up in that church that did it, it must be. What did that caretaker of yours tell you about sex?”

“That it was mostly a trap set by women to steal a man’s money. He was rather bitter about some woman in his past, I think, though he never talked about it.”

Kharis snorted. “That tracks. Look, it’s not like I want you to treat me badly or be cruel to me. It’s not about being gross or vulgar or wanting to hurt me, it’s about being aggressive, feral, demanding. Using my body to get what you want. When that’s done the right way, it’s so sexy. And I’m giving you consent to do it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“But I don’t know how to do that without hurting you,” He said, mildly frustrated.

Kharis sighed again. “I know, angel. It’s alright, don’t worry yourself too much over it. We’ll figure it out.” She rolled into him and snuggled against his body. “Get some sleep. We need to be up and moving before dawn. Love you.”

“Love you,” DuMont echoed, curling his body around hers and making sure she was as warm as he could make her.

Kharis fell asleep pretty quickly, but DuMont was unable to fall asleep for some time. He replayed the conversation with Kharis over and over in his mind, trying to parse what it was she wanted. Did she really want him to hurt her or be violent with her? That couldn’t be right. When he was violent, he killed people. He didn’t even mean to kill people sometimes, it just happened. He was still trying to gauge his strength and he often failed. How could he be forceful with her and not end up injuring her, or even killing her?

Maybe he could ask Rupert or Norman. Rupert and Sanoh were… very active… almost as active as he and Kharis were, but they both had more experience than he did. Norman was known to hire companions frequently, so he had different partners often. Norman and Rupert might be able to help.

The next day, the five of them came upon something that they hadn’t encountered in their travels: a proper bathhouse. It was lavish and resplendent and wildly out of place in this little town.

“Oh! Look!��� Kharis said, pointing excitedly. “Look how big the doors are! DuMont, you’ll fit! We should splurge a little! We made a ton of gold from our last job and I haven’t had a bath that wasn’t in a cold pond in ages. Please, let’s go!”

“I’m totally down for this,” Sanoh said. “My scales have been so dry and itchy. I think I’m getting ready to molt.” She grimaced and scratched at her arm, which did look a bit flaky. “I hate molting. I’m out of commission for a solid week. It’s such an inconvenience.”

“How often do you molt?” Norman asked.

“Once a year. The good news is, once I’m done we can sell the skin for a good price. People grind it up and use it as a wound paste.”

“That’s actually fascinating,” Rupert said. “I wonder what magical properties your sheds might have.”

“Yeah, that’s great and totally not gross at all, are we doing this or what?” Kharis said impatiently.

“Sure, sure,” Norman said. “As long as we’re not spending all our money, it’s fine.”

The four of them started forward toward the building, but DuMont hesitated. Kharis doubled back.

“You okay, big guy?” She asked, patting his arm.

“Are you sure you want me to come in with you?” He asked apprehensively.

“Of course!” Kharis said. “Have you ever had a proper bath before?”

“I don’t think so,” He said.

“Then this could be an opportunity for you. Come get pampered with us. It’s fun.”

DuMont groused uncertainly, but he allowed Kharis to drag him into the bathhouse.

DuMont felt very out of place inside the pastel walls of the parlor, looking around at the delicate figurines and statues with discomfort and attempting to make himself smaller. The hostess, an elven woman, looked at him warily but greeted them all brightly.

“Welcome to the Rushing Waters Baths. Will you be needing separate rooms or a communal room this evening? The separate rooms are more private, but also more expensive.”

“One for the boys and one for the girls?” Rupert asked.

“Sounds good to me,” Kharis said. “Do you have one big enough for my sweetheart here?” She patted DuMont’s arm.

The elven woman looked him up and down appraisingly. “Unfortunately, I think the only bath that will fit him is the public bath. However, we have no other customers at the moment, so he will have it to himself.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Kharis said. “You’ll get to stretch your legs and soak for a while.”

DuMont grunted. “Thank you,” He said, addressing the hostess. His deep, low voice rattled the shelves slightly.

“We also offer laundering services,” The hostess said. “Simply leave your clothing on the shelves at the exterior of the bathing rooms and a silver for the service.”

DuMont looked down at himself and the simple loincloth he wore for modesty’s sake. He also donned a simple coat that Kharis had fashioned for him out of some large drapes for when it started getting cold. She wasn’t a great seamstress and the coat was a little haphazard and slapdash, but DuMont had treasured the gift and rarely took it off.

He had money now for the first time in his life, but there wasn’t many places that made clothing in his size. He could commission something, he supposed, but considering how often he ended up covered with dirt and blood, there wasn’t much point.

“You will need to leave your… weapons,” She glanced at the massive church bell tied to a post that DuMont used as a bludgeon. “At the door, of course. They will also be cleaned.”

“This is a strange place to be in the middle of such a small town,” Norman said.

“We’re a resort town, actually,” The hostess replied in a chipper tone that made Kharis roll her eyes.

“A what?” DuMont asked.

“It’s a town rich people build so they can pretend to be simple country folk while looking down their noses at them at the same time,” Kharis said in an undertone. The hostess frowned at her.

“How much for two private rooms and the public bath?” Sanoh asked, redirecting the hostess’s attention.

“The public bath is only two copper, and another copper for soap,” The hostess replied, still eyed Kharis while disfavor. “For two private baths, it’s six silver. Soap and towels are provided.”

“Do you provide companionship?” Norman asked.

“Wait until we get to the inn, Norm!” Rupert said. “I don’t want to be in the room with you when you have your fun!”

“Prude,” Norman sniffed.

“We actually own the inn, as well,” The hostess said. “You can book your rooms and companionship here for later, if you’d like.”

“Good, let’s do that,” Norman said.

It took a few minutes for them to iron out all the details while DuMont stood in the back awkwardly. He then waited while his friends were led to their own bathing rooms.

Before he could be taken to the public bath, he asked the hostess, “Could I visit my friends’ room? I’d like to ask their advice privately.”

“Of course,” The hostess said. “Right this way.”

She led him to one of the rooms, in which there was a flowery perfume smell. Steam emanated from under the door.

“They are undressing in the side room,” The hostess said. “You are free to wait for them.”

“Thank you, miss,” He replied. She nodded and excused herself.

DuMont stepped in and lowered his massive body into a squat-sit position, waiting patiently. The door opened after a moment, and to his dismay, a very naked Sanoh walked through. DuMont slapped his hands over his eyes.

“I’m sorry!” He exclaimed. “The hostess must have brought me to the wrong room! I meant to go to the mens’ bath!”

Sanoh laughed. “It’s okay, big guy!” He heard the sound of her slipping into the water. “Feeling a bit lonely? Did you want to bath with the guys?”

“No,” He replied, still covering his eyes. “Well, yes, but no. I wanted to ask their advice about something.”

“Oh?” She said, her voice piqued with interest. “Maybe I can help. What’s the problem?”

“Oh…” DuMont hesitated. “Well… It’s private.”

“It’s about Kharis?” Sanoh hazarded.

“Yes,” He responded.

“Is it about sex?” Sanoh said shrewdly.

“Yes,” He said, almost dropping his hands in surprise. “How did you know?”

“Because Kharis and I talk, sweetie,” She replied. “Look, you can lower your hands. I’m not all that shy, honey; ask Rupert. Besides, if you want to know what a woman wants during sex, you shouldn’t ask a man. Why don’t you get in and sit with me and we can talk. Kharis is getting a drink, so she’ll be a few minutes.”

DuMont slowly lowered his hands and was relieved to see that Sanoh had sunk beneath the bath, which seemed to have a cloudy, pleasant smelling mixture in it that obscured most of her body. He carefully stood up and climbed into the bath, raising the level of the water by at least a foot. He took great care not to crowd her, looking much like an oversized dog crouching in a box too small for him.

“Alright, so what’s the issue?” She asked.

“Kharis wants me to be more aggressive,” DuMont said, hanging his head. “But I’m worried that I might hurt her.”

“I see,” Sanoh said, leaning forward a little. “I mean, I like a little bit of pain during sex, but I imagine it would be difficult for you, considering your size and strength.”

“That’s what worries me,” He replied anxiously.

“Well, there are plenty of ways of being assertive without hurting anyone,” Sanoh replied. “What about just ripping her clothes off the next time you feel frisky? Ooh, with your teeth! That would be hot.”

“But wouldn’t I make her mad if I ruin her clothes?” DuMont asked, cocking his head.

Sanoh shook her head. “Trust me, do it right, and she’ll be putty in your hands. Besides, we’re flush with cash right now. Kharis can buy new clothes. Kharis is also a little bit of an exhibitionist, so she’d probably like some public sex.”

DuMont balked at this idea. “That’s indecent! And also illegal, as far as I know!”

“I don’t mean do it out in the open! Although, knowing Kharis, she would probably love that,” Sanoh muttered thoughtfully. “No, no, somewhere public adjacent, like a rooftop or just beyond a tree line, somewhere you have the potential to be caught.”

DuMont frowned uncertainly. “Alright. What else could I do?”

“You could snarl at her when the two of you are getting in the mood. Some women really love that primal, feral energy. Love bites could be good, too. I do love it when Rupert puts his teeth to my scales.”

“But…” DuMont ran a finger over his exposed fangs. “I don’t know if I could do that. What if I actually bit her?”

“Drawing a little bit of blood might be alright, just don’t go very deep.”

DuMont grimaced uncertainly, but didn’t say anything.

“Honestly, honey, I think you’re really overthinking things. You’re just a big sweetie pie! I don’t think you could hurt Kharis, even if you tried to.”

“That’s patently incorrect,” DuMont protested.

“Just try it, big guy,” Sanoh insisted. “It’s called experimenting for a reason. If it doesn’t work out, then you don’t have to do it again.”

“I suppose,” DuMont replied slowly.

“Either way, Kharis should be here soon, and you should go take your bath. First rule of being a freelance mercenary: never let something you paid money for go to waste.”

With some difficulty, he climbed out of Sanoh’s bath and headed back for the public bath. It was fairly large; he was able to stretch out, still clothed, and soak his whole body with relative ease. He swam around the bath a little, using the soap Kharis had bought for him to wash his body and clothes.

In the warm water, he mulled over the suggestions Sanoh had given him. Feral, huh? Like… maybe hunting? The only time he really let loose is when he was hunting, though his intent was usually to kill. Perhaps he could modify it and turn it into a game? Would Kharis like that? He could try it.

After only ten minutes, he rinsed himself and got out of the bath, sloshing water all over the floor and walked dripping back out into the foyer, the hostess glaring at him as he exited the bathhouse. Should he try now? It certainly would be unexpected. He wanted to be more spontaneous, like Kharis suggested, and take her by surprise. She might like that.

Hide. He needed to hide. There was a grove of trees near the bathhouse, an orchard likely belonging to the inn. The trees weren’t especially dense, but the sun was setting and it would be easy enough to hide in the dark.

It was over an hour before Kharis came out of the bathhouse. She was alone, thankfully, and looking around with concern, likely for him. It was understandable; DuMont usually stuck close to Kharis in unfamiliar places.

“DuMont?” She called. “Where’d you go?”

DuMont purposefully snapped a twig, catching Kharis’s attention. She spun around and looked into the orchard, squinting, and moved away from the lantern light.

“Is that you?” She asked as she walked forward.

DuMont let a low, quiet, guttural snarl issue from his throat, shifting his weight carefully. Kharis’s brow furrowed and she laid a hand on the hilt of her short sword. DuMont moved forward slowly, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He had to admit, this was kind of fun.

“Show yourself!” She said. “I’m armed!”

DuMont snarled again, a little louder this time. Kharis started backing away, beginning to draw her weapon.

Now.

DuMont rushed out of the shadows of the orchard, snatching Kharis by the waist and throwing her over his shoulder, making her squeak in surprise, and began to scale the tall bathhouse building, digging his claws into the stone.

“DuMont!” She shrieked, smacking his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

DuMont didn’t answer, just continued to climb the wall up toward the roof. As he pulled himself up, he dropped her unceremoniously, pulling rope from his waist pack. Kharis watched in confusion as he tied her hands up, behind, and down to her legs.

“DuMont, what are you doing?” She asked, a slight smile on her face.

“Taking your advice,” He replied, a deep growl to his words.

Her eyebrows raised, intrigued. “Well, I’m glad, but how are you going to get my clothes off if I’m tied up like this?”

He took hold of her tunic with his hands and ripped it open down the front, exposing her breasts to the air. Her skin smelled of the rose and cardamom soap she had used.

“Oh,” Kharis said. “Well, then.”

He put her on the ground and sniffed down her body, growling low like an animal stalking prey. She bit her lip and squirmed a little. DuMont pressed his nose in between her legs and took a deep breath before taking the fabric in his teeth and ripping it, tearing a ragged hole

“Oh, fuck,” He rasped. “That’s so fucking hot.”

His tongue came out and licked a large swipe up and down, and she strained against the ropes, squealing. She was swollen and pulsing against his tongue, and he could tell she was enjoying herself.

With one hand, he picked her up and carried her to the ledge, where there was a large decorative gargoyle looking down over the courtyard. He placed her face down on top of it, so that she could see the courtyard. The way the light was directed by the lanterns, she could see down, but people couldn’t see her. Probably.

Holding her down with his hand, he plunged his tongue inside her and contracted it over and over, in and out, up and down. She moaned loudly, and DuMont answered with a snarl. The entire lower half of her body was inside his jaws, and while he knew he wouldn’t hurt her, he had to admit that the hint of danger was thrilling.

Her hips moved in time with his strokes until she lay her face down against the stone and just whimpered in pleasure. Before she could recover, he withdrew his jaws and lined himself up with her entrance, thrusting in hard.

She howled, making as much noise as she could, reveling in the feeling of him inside of her and the idea of being overheard by anyone down below. She’d always loved the idea of being almost caught.

She began to quiet down to a faint whimpering, and the interior of her body flexed and contracted as she climaxed around his cock. He slowed to let her draw out the orgasm, and then sped up again, thrusting so hard that her body rocked to and fro on the back of the gargoyle. He pulled out, flipped her onto her back, and pulled her up against him, holding her in the air and pumping into her, moving her on him, using her body as she told him to. He granted her, it did feel amazing.

Her head was thrust back and she grunted with her teeth clenched, her eyes closed. Her face was flushed, a vein bulging in her neck, and she was sweating all down her body.

“Are you--” He began, but she opened her eyes and snarled, “Don’t you fucking dare ask if I’m okay,” and he shut his mouth.

He thrust and thrust vigorously, with more force than he normally used, until her body went completely stiff and she was gasping for air, then went limp in his arms. He slowed his movement to a crawl, giving her a moment to recover, before driving himself back in again, full-speed, not giving her a chance to regain speech. She strained against her restraints, not as though she wanted to be free of them, but in a manner that suggested she was trying to contract and stretch with pleasure, the muscles in her stomach and legs rigid and hard. Her face was red with exertion and sweat poured off her body.

“Cum,” She grunted at him. “Cum for me. Do it.”

He snapped his hips against hers faster still, the rise of ecstasy building in him quickly, and he roared as he released inside her. He had to be careful not to drop her as he felt himself pop finally, gushing and shooting into her. As such, he did manage to lay her down before collapsing. As exhausted as he was, he used his claws to snap the ropes free and let her body completely relax under him.

“Is that what you wanted?” He asked breathlessly.

“Shush,” She replied faintly. “Let me bask in the afterfuck.”

They lay there together on the cool bricks of the roof, the evening air blowing lazily over their flushed, overheated skin.

Eventually, Kharis pushed on DuMont’s shoulder and he rolled off and lay next to her. She sighed contentedly.

“Yes, to answer your question,” She said. “That was undoubtedly the best lay I have ever had in my life. I didn’t think you had that in you, but I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“I wasn’t too rough?” He asked.

“No, not at all,” She said. “It was perfect. Just what I needed.” She rolled on her side and looked up at him. “You weren’t uncomfortable with doing it, were you?”

“No,” He replied. “I was uncertain I was doing what you wanted and worried I was hurting you. Did I?”

She shook her head. “I think if you had gone any harder than you did, you might’ve, but it was great.”

“Good,” He said, satisfied. “The hunting and stalking part was really fun, I enjoyed that very much.”

She laughed. “You startled me, certainly, but it was fun. Next time we’re camping in the woods, we should have ourselves a nice game of hide and seek.”

“I would like that,” He said.

“Well,” She said, hopping to her feet. “I’m starting to get cold, and my clothes are…” She looked over at the shreds of her tunic and trousers. “Well, unwearable. Can you give me a lift down to the ground?”

“But you’re naked.”

She shrugged. “I’ve got spares in my bag downstairs.”

“But you’re naked.”

She snorted. “It’s not the first time I’ve walked nude through an inn before and it likely won’t be the last. Just get me down.”

He obliged, lifting her onto his back and scaling back down the wall. Kharis drew a lot of stares as she made her way through the common area of the inn. Like normal, DuMont was too large to get into the inn, but he watched Kharis from the door to make sure she didn’t run into trouble.

Norman, Sanoh, and Rupert were sitting and drinking, staring at Kharis as she strode through the room, though Sanoh caught sight of DuMont at the door and smirked, winking at him.

If he ever needed advice in the future, he definitely knew who to ask.

Since my work is no longer searchable, please do me a favor and reblog this story if you enjoyed it. Help me reach a wider audience!To help me continue creating, please consider buying me a Kofi, becoming a Patron, or donating directly to my PayPal!

Thanks for reading!

My Masterlist

The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

#Exophilia #Tiefling #Elf #Kobold #D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #D&D Fanfic

[fascinatedhelix]

Okay so in your NSR/HK AU is there anyone else who learns about the lord of shades? Also since Ghost is very much implied to around the same age as the Hollow Knight in the game, do Mayday and Zuke ever learn that Ghost is just as old as the hulking beast that is Stearling?

Ooh, fun stuff!

Something that’s important to note is that I kind of doubt any of the humans would fully understand just what the Lord of Shades is/was, given that they’re a collective entity regarded as divine, which doesn’t blend with the world of Vinyl City one bit.

If any of the humans learn about the Lord of Shades, Eve’s probably actually going to be the first to learn, if only because her encouragement of Riley’s artistic expression means that they’re going to paint about things that incur a strong emotional impact on them, and the whole becoming part of an eldritch god with your thousands of siblings thing is a pretty powerful experience. She initially mistakes it for a metaphor for whatever strange and tragic events led to their arrival in Vinyl City, but learns later that it was very much a literal thing.

While Eve’s the first to learn about the Lord of Shades, she’s not the last; most of the older trankil (as in, the ones that weren’t literal babies/toddlers when they died) who are close with their caretakers and companions do eventually try to communicate their origins, but the memories of most are so fragmented and scattered that they can’t articulate just what happened beyond something along the lines of “Many became one and Ascended, then were reborn.” It was a powerful moment for them all, but even they tend to struggle to describe just what happened. Riley was lucky enough to be encouraged to work through these memories to piece together what happened, with the help of Eve’s powers, but most of them weren’t lucid enough to really have any idea how to describe it.

Ghost is probably the only one that knows what happened in detail (as much detail as there is to it, anyway), but they hesitate to communicate it if only because it’s not really... relevant? They’ve fulfilled their obligation to Hallownest, they don’t see the point in lingering beyond what may prove useful in the future; the Lord of Shades, as a form used primarily for fighting gods, has no real purpose in a world that lacks beings on that level (at least, ones that need to be fought). If Mayday and Zuke ask, they’ll try to sate their curiosity, but they won’t go full exposition mode; it’s just not Ghost’s style.

As for the age thing, Sterling’s the one to break that news. A little while after their integration into NSR and being taught human writing, Tatiana asks them, “There seems to be quite the age gap between you and your kin, though you claimed they are your siblings. Why is that?” All vessels are clutchmates, but did not live the same times, they wrote, we have been reborn in the condition we died in. Considering all but the one were children when they arrived, including quite a few that were clearly babies, Tatiana opted to break out the whiskey that night rather than dig deeper.

Tatiana would eventually tell most of the NSR artists, barring Yinu and instead telling her mother, and later Mayday and Zuke. Of course, they were all horrified to learn just what happened to their companions prior to their arrival in the city, though Eve and Neon J already knew bits and pieces from their own. DJSS keeps Comet on his person almost 24/7 for a week after that, repeatedly brushing a hand over the pocket he keeps them in to reassure himself that they’re there. Remi, Tila, Sofa, and Dodo shower Bunny with affection and toys when they return from the meeting, much to their confusion. The Sayu team figured they had a lot of catching up to do. Yinu and Thorn are confused when Yinu’s mom is suddenly way more physically affectionate than normal (which is saying a lot, she’s a hugger!). After some prying she has a conversation with them about the origins of the trankil, and Thorn’s place in the family is set in stone. The news seriously freaks out Neon J, so by the time he comes home he has to be stopped by 1010 to avoid setting up even harsher security measures in the mansion. “We don’t need more buzzsaws!” Eve throws herself into her art, as she tends to do when she’s stressed. Riley doesn’t think much on it (she just does that sometimes) until they see the subjects of the work. A thousand tiny void black hands reaching to a fading light above, and she’s sobbing by the time they see it. Later, they add bigger hands, of all shapes, sizes, and colors, reaching down to meet the smaller ones. It’s an instant hit. Mayday blubbers like a baby and gripping Ghost like a little girl gripping a teddy when she learns of it, and Zuke’s just barely keeping it together once it sinks in. They opt for staying in and hashing it out over pints of ice cream and sad rock.

Mayday and Zuke at first assume Ghost died around the same time as most of the other vessels, but got super confused when they denied that. Zuke put two and two together when the trankil began molting a little while after the rock revolution, after they’d told them about the conditions they lived in prior to their return to Hallownest and subsequent arrival at Vinyl City. “You spent who knows how long in a dangerous wasteland with no reliable sources of food, water, or shelter; no wonder you hadn’t grown an inch until you got here!”

#hollow knight #no straight roads #crossover au #headcanons #crossover shenanigans

[s-creations]

Return the Flames - Chapter 2

All at Dead Bird Studios knew of Amos' (The  Conductor's) ability. How the owl could suddenly erupt into flames if  angered enough. When the studio first opened, Dominic (DJ Grooves) was  told that Amos had his ability under control. Nothing to worry about. No  possible loss of anything from an open flame.

A few years later however, and that control seems to have lessened to a dangerous degree.

It should have just been a simple, week long drive to fix the problem. It really should have been.

Dominic should have asked a lot more questions and should have been prepared for a twist ending.

_________________

Fandom: A Hat in Time Rating: General Audience Relationships/Pairings: The ConductorXDJ Grooves Warnings: Eventual depictions of violence, slow burn relationship, named characters, attempt of an accent, being hunted down, a race against time (sort of).

In two days time, the back of Dominic’s trunk was filled with suitcases. Dead Birds Studio had its doors closed, with its workers being told to relax at home for the next week. All were confused as to why their bosses were leaving, together, for so long, together. But there was a spark of hope that this was the indication that the feud was well and truly over. 

 Dominic closed said trunk before casting his eyes over to the studio steps. Amos was taking time to give farewells to his family. Grandchildren climbing over the elder owl, who was speaking to a very sickly looking one. Even with a few mottled patches, Dominic knew it was Amelia from the numerous photos that hung from Amos’ office. 

 The penguin knew that the younger owl was very ill. With what, he’d never known. But it exhausted her, seeming to continuously molt, Amos being heard from his office shouting to make sure she was cared for. The conductor constantly fretted over the possibilities. Amos worked over time as train conductor, director, and baby sitter when Amelia needed a day to sleep. Dominic may not like the other’s personality some times, the penguin couldn’t deny that Amos was an amazing father. Pushing himself to a dangerous degree. 

 Amos was speaking quickly and quietly, occasionally reaching out to preen a few feathers on Amelia. Who in turn would just smile and nod, giving a gentle response, eventually pulling Amos into a tight hug. When they broke apart, Amos helped his daughter back into her wheelchair. It was a bit of a challenge to get the grand kids off of him. A pure white dove, the nursemaid if Dominic remembered, helped pull the tiny birds off. Now free, Amos placed a gentle kiss on Amelia’s forehead before making his way over to the car.

 The penguin caught Amelia’s eyes and gave a wave in greeting. Which she returned in kind with another warm smile. 

 “Oi, are we goin’ or not.” Amos huffed as he climbed into the car. 

 “Alright Darling, alright. Let’s get this show on the road then.” Climbing in as well, Dominic brought the car to life and pulled out of the parking lot.

 They’d left early enough that the streets were bare. The sky was an inky darkness, the stars unseen among the steady lights of the city. The silence stretched on between them. Dominic itched to turn on some music. But he wasn’t sure what Amos would not complain about. Although the penguin also wasn’t sure what to talk about to fill the silence. They’d just started and it already felt like it had gone on for too long. Clearing his throat, the penguin went with the first safe topic that came to mind.

 “Amelia looks well.” Dominic chanced as the traffic light turned green. 

 “She is…” Amos offered as a reply. 

 “Is she...okay with this? This trip, I mean.”

 “More than I am.”

 “You didn’t have to take my offer-”

 “Not that, ya peck neck. She’s actually thankful I’m doin’ somethin’ reasonable about this.”

 “For once.”

 “And what does that mean.”

 “That you only recently stopped doing your own stunts.”

 “Ya sound like my bloody health insurance.”

 “But you can admit, I have a point.”

 “Peck neck.”

 “Bringing the original topic back. Are you worried about the trip?”

 “There’s...a lot ta worry about. But I did spend the better part of these days ta make sure she was financially set. So, that’s one less fret.”

 “Are you expecting a problem with her while we’re gone?”

 “...No. Not really. And I thought I told ya no more questions.”

 “It’s in relation to the conversation about your daughter. I wasn’t sure how far that request went.”

 “She’s fine. She has help. She’s goin’ ta be set. There, we talked. Now leave it.”

 Dominic felt his feathers ruffle in frustration, but did as requested. It wasn’t his place to push for answers and he honestly didn’t have the fighting energy at the moment. If the Conductor was going to shut down then the penguin wasn’t going to worry about it. He was just a convenient ride. But as they left the city limits and silence fell again, Dominic searched for another point of conversation. Anything to just get rid of this tension.

 It dawned on him how little he and Amos had in common. Amos never opened up and, when they were full time rivals, they weren’t ones to share personal information or interests. Even if the penguin liked conversing, when they were fighting he knew better than to try and get close to the other. Now that the rivalry fell away, there was still too many years of animosity to just have everything be okay. This new beginning was going to be hard to achieve. Especially if Amos shut down like this.

 Dominic was broken from his musings hearing the other beginning to snore. It wasn’t as loud as the penguin thought it would be. Just a gentle whistling created by the owl’s barely opened mouth. Such a contrast to his large personality. Dominic chuckled as he refocused on the road. 

 Turning on the radio and keeping the volume low, Dominic let himself become lost to the music.

         It was burning.

  A fire alight in his chest that was steadily growing. Clawing, tearing at his throat as it tried to escape. When it couldn’t, it started to consume him. Fear rising as he felt his body starting to melt from the heat. The inky blackness that surrounded him, the cool pressure, filled with bright, brilliant stars that shined in the quiet calm. It was maddening. 

  As he burned, it’s soothing presence was mocking. It seemed so close. That he could reach out and touch it. To calm the flames that consumed him. But it seemed to move away as he scrambled forward. He needed relief. 

  A noise, a voice, a chanting started growing from the distance.

  “Release, burn, return…”

  He couldn’t. It hurt too much. He didn’t want to.

  “Release, burn, return…”

  No, no he can’t.

  “Release, burn, return…”

  STOP!

 “Amos.”

 Giving a startled gasp, Amos woke, quickly scanning the area. He was first aware of how close Dominic was to him. Worry clearly seen on the penguin’s face. Next was the fact they were parked in a large lot. A large, grandly decorated hotel spotted in the distance. Amos almost winced seeing the night sky spread above them. 

 “Amos,” Dominic spoke up again, “Are you alright? Were you-”

 “‘M fine… Did...I sleep all day?”

 “Yeah, you did.” Dominic stood, stepping away from the owl. He wasn’t sure why Amos was nervous so suddenly. But he didn’t really want to be within hitting range if things turned ‘fight of flight’ with the owl. “I figured it would be best for us to rest for the night.”

 “Aye...are we makin’ good time?”

 “We are, but I need some sleep.  I’m going to get our bags. Take some time to wake up.” 

 Amos gave a grunt in response. Rubbing his forehead as Dominic headed to the trunk, the owl’s hand eventually traveled down and rested on his chest. Where the uncomfortable burning sensation was coming from. It was bearable, for the moment. No urges to release flames from his mouth. He was surprised he survived the majority of the day without that. But, he worried more about how much long he was going to last. 

 “You alright?”

 For the second time that night, Amos was startled to attention. He recovered quickly and stood. Actively avoiding making eye contact with the penguin. “I said ‘M fine. Give me my suitcase.” 

 “Come now Darling, you’re on this trip to relax. I can handle this.” Dominic took Amos’ moment of stunned confusion to lock the car and begin the treck up to the hotel. He smirked hearing familiar, anger filled footsteps rushing towards him.

 “‘M not a crippled, old bird. Ya don’t need ta mother hen me. Now, give me my bag.”

 “Amos, you’ve been bursting into flames. You’re clearly in pain and you needed a companion on this journey. I’m here to make sure you don’t push yourself. So, that means I will handle the bags.”

 “...Ya peck neck.”

 “Good counter argument.” And with that, Grooves let it drop. If Amos’ silence was anything to go by, he was done as well. 

 The owl’s grumpy demeanor slightly dropped as they entered the lobby. The interior reflected the exterior in it’s design. Pure white with ornately designed golden accents. The furniture matched the color scheme, Amos worrying he would trip over something if he wasn’t paying that close attention. The only pop of color came from the floral arrangements. Bundles of green with breaks of blue, yellow and pink flowers. 

 It was relatively empty, save for the workers and stragglers like themselves. 

 Amos hung back, deciding Dominic didn’t need to be crowded as he checked them in. He claimed a cushioned seat nearby, grunting as he attempted to get comfortable. A hand reached up to rub his chest again. The heat was still down, but there was that constant burning. Peck, he hated feeling like this. Old, exhausted, in pain. He couldn't wait for this to be over with. 

 Amos’ attention perked hearing a familiar laugh. Dominic was conversing with the hostess, both enjoying something the penguin had said. No doubt. With how charismatic, down right  charming the other was. Grooves could say anything that could just light up the room.

  U̬̒n̩̓l̨̯̳̓̈i̫̋k͎̰̥̍̌́e̼̿̈͜ ẙ̱͙̏ö͕̺͈́͘͠u̠͉̗͗̐.̳̬̙̇̊͗

 The owl coughed, frantically covering his mouth when some flames flickered out. He hunched over to hide himself away. He needed to get to the room. If he could make it to the shower, he could cool himself down. What was taking Grooves so long!

 “Amos?”

 He snapped back to attention. Dominic standing over him with a look of worry. Amos stood, stumbling slightly as he put weight on his legs.

 “Whoa, Amos, are you-”

 “Room, now.” The Conductor coughed out, a few flames licking against his cheeks.

 “I...right. Right, come on then.”

 It was a tense and quiet track to their room. Dominic kept a hand on Amos’ shoulder to direct the owl. As his focus remained on keeping the flames at bay. The attempted to appear ‘normal’ while quickly moving to the properly numbered room. As soon as they entered, Amos made a direct line towards the bathroom. 

 Ignoring the fancy decor, the owl climbed into the tub and turned the water onto the coldest setting. He let out a strangled gasp of relief as the water hit him. It was brief contact, however, as the liquid seemed to evaporate as soon as it made contact. There was a moment of shock when ice cubes suddenly slid into the tub, pooling at his feet. Only to look up and find Dominic holding the signature ice bucket, looking sheepish. 

 “I figured...ice would help.” Dominic offered with a weak shrug. 

 Amos nodded. He sat down, leaned back to allow water hitting his face and chest. “Think you could get me some more?”

 “Yeah...hang tight Darling.”

 Amos merely gave a wave. Letting himself lay out as best he could, he picked up a handful of ice to eat it. All turning to water as before it even touched his tongue. A small cough brought his attention back to Dominic. 

 “Do you want me to just pour it on you or…”

 “Give it.” Amos dumped the contents directly onto his chest. A small sigh of relief escaped him, eventually holding the bucket back out. “More.” 

 “Think you could ask politely?”

 “I’m in pain. Politeness is not my biggest concern.”

 Bucket returned to the penguin and left alone, Amos buried himself into the already collected ice. It was slowly lowering his raging temperature. The owl allowed himself to relax, falling asleep before Dominic returned with another round. 

#A Hat In Time #discotrain #the conductor #dj grooves #s-creations #fanfiction #ahit conductor #ahit dj grooves #Multi-Chapter

[troop-scoop]

Mistakes & Regrets XIX

Summary: When a trip to your Dad’s hometown of Hawkins goes wrong, you end up in the year 1983, and have to learn how to cope with being stuck in the past.

Pairing: Steve Harrington / Future!Reader (like, a really slow burn)

Warnings: Swearing probably,

• • •

Clutching the side of the jacket you let your mind wander, walking along the abandoned train tracks shivering. 

Every few minutes you’d bump shoulders with Steve, taking the right side of him because the middle schoolers were on the left, and while you usually liked to be around people at night, especially under these circumstances, you just felt crowded, and wanted to be near someone familiar.

The zipped up jacket was practically stabbing into your throat with it’s zipper, the unbuttoned collar also getting on your nerves with how it brushed against your cheeks whenever you let your head hang. 

When you were little you could remember your dad and pa giving you their jackets when you were cold, and they were comically too big on you then, going down to your ankles when you were super little, and then to your knees when you were about five. 

You’d stolen your brother’s jackets a few times but most of the time you opted for your dad’s hoodies that weren’t too big on you when you stopped growing in sixth grade. But your dad and pa still towered over you then.

You were used to jackets that weren’t yours, but you’d never worn someone’s clothing that wasn’t family, so when Steve stopped everyone to give you his jacket because he noticed that you were freezing, it was awkward, with you shivering and shaking your head to try and refuse it before he’d grabbed your face to make you look at him, telling you “You’re gonna freeze, put on the jacket.” 

Aggressive caring. 

“Thanks, by the way.” You told him. Sometimes it was hard to accept that people actually cared about you. It didn’t used to be, but it was now. And Joyce and Jonathan were too nice and worried about you to get aggressive or irritated by your refusal to accept their affection or nice gestures. 

But Steve wasn’t, and that's why you didn’t want to tell him about the truth. He could not only be killed, but you didn’t want him to coddle you like they tried to.  

“Yeah.” Steve responded, looking at you as you looked back up. “Stop being so stubborn all the time.”

From movies to acts of kindness, you were stubborn about all of it. You were sure you got it from Pa.

You smiled, looking ahead of you, reaching for his hand, taking the flashlight. “You too.” Grasping onto his hand you could see him smile and shake his head from beside you while you pointed the flashlight. “You also need to accept help sometimes.”

“You’re positive that was Dart?” Lucas asked Dustin.

“Yes. He had the same exact yellow pattern on his butt.” 

“But he was tiny two days ago.” Max pointed out, confused by it all. Just like you all had been a year prior. But the Demogorgon was scarier than a single one of Dart. But five of them? Forget it, you wanted to move. You technically could, but you were sure the government didn’t want you to. 

“Well, he’s molted three times already.”

“Malted?”

“Molted.” Dustin corrected. “Shed his skin to make room for growth like hornworms.” 

“Thinking about milkshakes, Harrington?” You teased quietly, feeling his grip on your hand playfully tighten before rolling your knuckles. “Ow,” You hissed, elbowing his arm. 

“Well, when’s he gonna molt again?”

“It’s gotta be soon. When he does, he’ll be fully grown or close to it. So will his friends”

“Yeah, and he’s gonna eat a lot more than just cats.” Steve pointed out, making you shake your head a bit, sad for the poor cat you’d brought back to Dustin’s once when he got out in January. 

Lucas grabbed Dustin’s shoulder, “Wait, a cat?” Did he not already know? “Dart ate a cat?”

“No, what? No.” Dustin stuttered, while you, Steve and Max stopped as well, staring back at the two boys. 

“What are you talking about? He ate Mews.” 

“Mews? Who’s Mews?”

“Mrs. Henderson’s cat. Poor thing.” You said sadly, leaning your head on Steve’s shoulder and holding onto his forearm with the hand holding the flashlight. 

“Y/n!” 

“I knew it! You kept him!” Lucas accused. 

Looking up at Steve you both had semi wide eyes, “I think we said stuff we weren’t supposed to.” He gave you a nod as if to say that was obvious. 

“No. No, I. . . No, I. . . He missed me. He wanted to come home.”

“Bullshit!” 

Growing up, out of your dad and his friends, it was always Uncle Lucas to call someone on their shit. You supposed it was no different when he was thirteen. 

“I didn’t know he was Demogorgon, okay?”

“Oh, so now you admit it?”

“Guys, who cares? We have to go?” And Aunt Max was always the voice of reason. 

“I care!” Lucas was always the one to dwell on things. “You put the party in jeopardy!” Now you just wanted to hum the Jeopardy theme. “You broke the rule of law!

“So did you!”

The three of you who weren’t arguing were just staring, mouths slightly open and forming a semi circle to watch. 

“What?”

Dustin flashed Max’s face with his light. “You told a stranger the truth!”

Now Max was involved with the argument. “A stranger?” SHe demanded, walking the few steps to them on the tracks. 

“You wanted to tell her, too!” 

Steve looked to the right, over your head, and when you noticed, you did too, hearing the faint screeching from far away. 

Steve let go of your hand, leaving you with the flashlight pointed in the direction of the sound as he stepped off the tracks to look deeper into the woods. “Hey guys,” Steve tried, but the trio continued to argue. “Guys!” He yelled, turning to look at them and you. 

The screeching continued, and you both looked at each other before you stepped off the tracks, taking the gun from your waist and following him into the treeline, hearing Lucas and Dustin follow behind you in a hurry while Max’s voice could be heard asking you all the question you often asked while watching horror movies. “Why are you headed towards the sound!” 

You followed Steve until you reached a clearing on a hill, the small downtown of Hawkins in the distance with the winding roads dark except for the few headlights you could see from where you were. 

“I don’t see him.” Dustin spoke. 

Lucas grabbed his binoculars, looking out over the landscape. “It’s the lab. They were going back home.” 

Suddenly you got a shiver up your spine, and that sinking feeling came. The one you kept comparing to being on a rollercoaster. You hadn’t felt it for awhile. In fact the last time you felt it was when the Demogorgon was at the middle school, and before that, was when Will was-

You didn’t have time to process anything, you took off running in the direction of the lab, fear powering a surge of adrenaline that pushed you in the direction of the dark laboratory. 

“Y-Y/n! Hey!” Steve yelled after you, and you could hear all four sets of feet following after you. THe last time it was this bad, this feeling, where it felt like you were going to freeze and vomit and start violently sobbing all at the same time was when Will was at the wall when you tore the wallpaper. When he was in danger.

“Hello? Who’s there?” a deepened voice yelled as you came out from the tree line. You stopped dead in your tracks, seeing Jonathan and Nancy, the old ford parked outside the closed gate of the lab.

“Y/n?” They both asked you in unison. Dropping both the gun and the flashlight you began to run again. 

“Uncle Jon!” 

 You saw the worry on his face, both of them approaching you too, he opened his arm to embrace you, holding you tight in a hug once you’d reached them. 

“I’m so glad you’re okay.” Jonathan admitted, his grip on you almost suffocating. 

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” You asked, pulling away, looking up at him with a questioning gaze. 

“Our house was trashed, and there were polaroid cartridges all around, someone was there, and when we went to your apartment it was trashed to and I-” Jonathan was talking so fast that you could barely understand him. He looked past you and up the hill you’d come down from. 

“Steve?” Once again both he and Nancy asked at the same time. 

“Jonathan?”

“Nancy?”

“What are you doing here?” Nancy asked, approaching the group while Jonathan stayed with you, finally noticing the jacket you were wearing. 

“Is this Steve’s?” He asked, grabbing the side pockets.

“That doesn’t matter! WIll’s in there, I know it!” You told him. “And something bad happened or is going to happen, I just know it!” 

“Okay, okay.” He tried comfort, grabbing your shoulder and walking over to where Steve and Nancy were along with the thirteen year olds. 

The loud screeching started again, and you could feel tears well up in your eyes, they went into arguing, and explaining themselves on how they got there, the tweens arguing with each other about Dart, you held onto Jonathan’s arm in a death grip, staring at the building, wanting to go in even if there was a gate that wouldn’t open and barbed wire on top of the fence. 

But when you saw the lights turn back on, you then tried to grab Steve. You didn’t like feeling weak, like you couldn’t control anything. Like you were a scared little kid.

But you were a kid, maybe not little enough to wear a hoodie as a dress, but you knew that you weren’t fully developed yet, and wouldn’t be for a long time. It was cruel that the moment you didn’t have your dad, this is how you felt, terrified of anything the dark had to offer, when that was usually a child’s thing. 

You should have had that phase as a child, so Dad or Pa could have held you and told you it was alright, that there were no monsters under the bed, and back then? You could have believed them. Now? You’d call anyone who tried to say that, ‘a fucking liar.’

But instead you started walking back to the Ford, where the security box was, the type you’d see at payed parking lots or at drive-in. When you turned your head to look back at the group, they started running, Jonathan grabbed your arm, dragging you along until you both reached the box, the others arriving seconds after while he began to press the button. 

“Lemme try.” You told him not articulating your first two words of the scentence, stepping into the box and hip checking him to move. You pressed the red button, and nothing happened. You continued to press it like you would a crosswalk button, that was until Dustin came over. 

“Let me try.” He offered, trying to step into the box. He grabbed your shoulder trying to move you. 

“Hang on-” You and Jonathan both tried to tell him before Dustin pushed you back as gently as he could. 

“What the fuck, dude? This isn’t like the arcade!” You told him, shoving the back of his shoulder, while he proceeded to hit the button over and over again like the two of you had tried to do already. 

Looking over at Steve, he only shrugged. 

“Son of a bitch! You know what-” Dustin started when the gate didn’t open. 

“It’s not an IPhone dude, it doesn’t care who you are.” you grumbled while he continued. 

“A what?” Jonathan questioned while you shook your head and put your hands on your hips and started to bounce your right foot out of anxiety, impatience and irritation, for a second your brought it up and kicked the back of Dustin’s ankle, earning a loud “Ow!”

You heard the gate, and looked up at it, seeing it slowly begin to open. “Hey! I got it!” Dustin laughed while you and Jonathan pushed past him and out towards the car. 

“You stay here.” Jonathan told you, opening the driver’s door, looking back at you. 

“Are you insane? I’m coming with you!” You told him as Nancy went to the passenger side. 

Jonathan shook his head. “If something bad happened I don’t want you to see it, you stay here.” He told you. Joyce told you that if it came down to it, Jonathan was incharge of you even though right now, biologically he was only a year older than you, and you were both equally responsible. “Steve, make sure she stays here.” He told the oldest male who nodded and walked over, trying to grab your arm, but you swatted his hand away. 

“Don’t put your responsibility on him! I’m going!” You told him. 

“It’s dangerous!”

“I don’t care!”

“You could get hurt!” 

“Y/n, he’s right, I don’t feel-” Steve tried.

“I don’t care if I get hurt, we’re family Jonathan, we protect each other!” 

Everyone went quiet, and you finally realized what you’d said, and even you went quiet, your brows now resting normally on your face while Nancy looked at you, wide eyes and then looked at Steve. “Keep her here.”

• • • 

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#steve harrington #steve x reader #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #Steve Harrington slow burn

[twilighteve-writes]

Summon the Wind, Fly

Summary: She took a deep breath, let it out, and jumped over the gate, summoning the winds to push her up. Almost without even realizing it, she had used the wind to push her up to the door of the manor.

Della could call to the winds and have it carry her to the clouds. It was almost as great as having her family back.

(Also available in AO3)

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Della knew she had long since lost control of the ship.

Which was both hilarious and ironic. Della Duck, best aerial pilot of her age, had finally bitten off more than she could chew when she jumped into the Spear of Selene and honest to god uttered the words, “It’s just a rocket ship. I’m just taking it for a test drive. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Let it be known that she had learned her lesson about tempting fate.

She hissed as she pulled at the controller, trying to steer it back into Earth’s orbit, hoping the field of gravity would pull her back. But the cosmic storm was messing with everything, including Uncle Scrooge’s frantic transmission as he tried to guide her back home. The transmission was cut short, and Della cursed loudly, still trying to bring the ship back to her control.

(She saw white mist at the edges of her vision and resolutely ignored it. She had far more pressing matters to attend to.)

“Come on, come on, come on,” Della hissed. “Please, I need to get back to my kids, please.” She begged for anyone, anything, with all her heart, to bring her back home safe and sound.

For a moment, it felt like she ship was finally following her order, dipping down for a split second, and Della’s hope soared. Then the cosmic storm hit mercilessly and she was swept away.

Bright white exploded in her eyes. Her ears caught the sound of a distant explosion, and she felt something rocking her down to her bones.

Everything went dark.

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Okay, so. The ship was pretty much wrecked, her leg was a goner and she had to cut it off herself, and she was stranded on the moon. On the bright side, her new metal leg was cool as hell, she was all for being a cool mom.

On the other side, well… everything.

But not all hope was lost. She would just keep sending transmissions to Earth; Uncle Scrooge was resourceful and she had high hopes the transmissions would reach him. There were manuals, too, and she was a Junior Woodchuck, between the manual and her training there had to be something she could do about rebuilding the ship eventually.

She chewed on the OxyChew, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

(If white mist rose around her, she wasn’t aware of it.)

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Her sense of time was pretty much shot because she didn’t have the same day-night cycle anymore, but she estimated it happened around the third month.

She was making her way through the wreckage, and she was suddenly hit by the realization that she felt much more alive than she had been. The bright alertness of the adrenaline shot when she was caught in cosmic storm felt like it never truly left, with how aware she was of herself right now, but it felt wrong to call it adrenaline. More like her eyes was opened, like her senses broadened.

She made use of Moon’s gravity to jump up, and was surprised to see how much higher she jumped compared to usual. She looked down and paused when she noticed a trail of white mist she left in her wake, nearly impossible to see with Moon’s bright, silvery shine in the background.

How she floated, suspended by nothing in mid air, was a lot harder to miss.

Della lost control of it the moment she became aware of it. She fell to the ground, and only Moon’s forgiving gravity let her escape another injury.

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She learned about her ability, slowly but surely. Between rests and rebuilding, she willed herself to float, to jump higher, to flutter like leaf in the wind. In time, she managed to create wind of her own, and she used it to twist around herself and let her fly with a lot more speed, finesse, agility than she ever could with a plane.

She felt invincible. She felt alive.

And how ironic was it, that when she was most alone in a place where she shouldn’t even be able to live, that she felt most alive?

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“You shouldn’t have taken the Spear,” her inner voice, one that sounded suspiciously like Donald, hissed into her mind when she closed her eyes to sleep.

“Shut the fuck up, Inner Don,” she hissed back. She didn’t need to hear it; she knew it already.

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“Get the fuck away!” Della screamed when the Moon Mite attacked again. Plumes of white rose around her, and she shot like an arrow loosed from a bow, punching the mite in one of its oversized eyes.

It screeched in pain and ran off. Della stared at her hands, surprised that the flight she had managed to learn was even capable of being used this way.

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She never used her ability in front of the Moonlanders, not really. If they noticed her hanging in the air a little longer than what they consider normal, they didn’t say anything.

She mingled with the Moonlanders, telling them bits and pieces of Earth cultures when they showed her theirs, rebuilding the Spear little by little until everything was right, functional, swallowing her longing to go home all the while.

When the rocket was built fully, she swallowed another wave of longing. Not yet, not yet. It was untested, she was still helping the Moonlanders – she needed a little more time to make sure she would leave without regrets and get home safe and sound.

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She woke to the rocket readying itself for a launch and panicked immediately. Penumbra told her to go home, and Lunaris assured her the Moonlanders would build more Spears, and they would meet Della on Earth. With the countdown hunting her and her planet calling her home, Della shoved the Spear’s manual to Lunaris and let the rocket lock her in.

The moment she entered Earth’s orbit, she could feel the changes in herself. The gravity pulled on her, harsher than she was used to – Moon’s gravity was much lesser than Earth’s and she would need time adjusting to it – but at the same time, she felt lighter. Like the air was hugging her and pushing her up, like the clouds infused themselves into her bones and let her float, like the sky itself was pulling her up to fly forever. Her vision exploded in sunny, bright white with speckles of sky blue for a split second, and then she blinked the colors out her eyes, looking down to search for Duckburg among the ocean blue – and then, searching for Killmotor Hill.

The ship landed roughly at the base of the hill, not too far away from the main road and the bus stop. Della scrambled out, desperate to get back to the manor, and fought the gravity that was so intent in bringing her down. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt her limbs so heavy. With a grunt, and breathed out and let the power she had come to master envelope her, and her steps became lighter and she climbed up the hill, jumping and shooting forward with each gust of wind, leaving a trail of white cloudlike plumes behind her.

The gates of the manor stood as tall as imposing as ever. She stared at it, breathing deeply, letting the white that she summoned fade away.

“I’m home,” she whispered.

She didn’t see the Spear taking off again. She didn’t hear the hum of its engine, roaring through the atmosphere – the wind didn’t bring the sound to her. Her mind was solely focused on her kids, her family, and in her mind, the Spear might as well not exist anymore.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and jumped over the gate – or, at least, she tried to. Earth’s gravity clung to her mercilessly, and she growled and summoned the winds to push her up. With that, she jumped over the gate easily, and almost without even realizing it, she had used the wind to push her up to the door of the manor.

(She botched her first impression, because of course. But the point was that she was home, the kids were with her, she was back with Uncle Scrooge, she was back with her family, she was home.

The names were wrong, but that wasn’t important. They were her kids, and she loved them, whether their names were Jet, Turbo, and Rebel or Huey, Dewey, and Louie.)

The girl approached her, introducing herself as Webby, looking as touched as one could be at the family reunion, looking like she wanted to ask a million questions but unable to speak clearly. Scrooge coughed to hide his laugh.

“She’s Mrs. Beakley’s granddaughter. Donald called her his bonus kid,” Scrooge explained.

“Of course he would,” Della snorted, and she looked around. “Where is he?” She didn’t say about how much she missed him, how she longed for her twin, the person she revolved around just as he revolved around her, like planets caught in each other’s orbit. It must have shown anyway, because Webby immediately reassured her.

“He’s off on a relaxing, remote vacation,” she said. “He’s stress molting, and we thought it was best to get him to relax somehow.”

“Aaah, instead of welcoming back her sister. Must be nice,” Della said. Donald was a worrywart, though, a vacation would do him good. “Well, I guess I’ll have to wait until he gets back, then.” She jumped to her feet, excited to finally bond with her kids, and accidentally summoned the white plumes around her again. She bit back a curse and landed down on the floor again. She had kids now, she had to self-censor.

Dewey gasped loudly. “You can fly?!”

“Umm, yes,” Della answered reluctantly. “I still don’t know the full extent of what I can do.”

“You couldn’t fly before, what happened?” Scrooge asked.

“Well, one day on the Moon I kind of just realized I could float in the air,” Della explained. “And then I pushed that further and further, and now I can fly, sort of. It’s different here than on the Moon, though. I feel like my whole being is itching for a flight and it’s all so much more powerful than in space.” She held up her hand and twisted her hand, and a gust of wind blew Louie’s hood up. “Whoops. Sorry.”

“It’s no problem,” Louie answered, pulling his hood back down.

“Maybe we got it from her, after all,” Dewey said excitedly. “So it’s not a thing that just appeared out of nowhere, but it’s like, um…”

“Hereditary,” Huey finished for him. “We got it from Mom. But it’s different.”

“Boys, I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about here,” Della interjected.

“Oh, um.” Huey fumbled around for a moment, then he looked down at his hands. Heat rose around him in alarming speed, then his hands caught fire. Della bit back on a surprise squawk, but it was clear that the fire wasn’t hurting Huey. If anything, he carried it like it was a small pet he was eager to show Della.

“Yeah, we each have something!” Dewey said, eyes twinkling. The air around him buzzed, and when he held up his hands, she could see blue-white light jumping from one finger to another – electricity. “See? Isn’t it cool? Come on, Louie, show her what you’ve got!”

Louie looked around the room as if in search of something. When he seemed to have found it, he stretched out his hand, and Della got the sudden impression that he was pulling something. A flash of gold flew and shot through the room, landing perfectly in Louie’s hand. He swung the golden khopesh with ease that spoke of experience. “I guess this one needs an explanation. I can control gold. Magica called me a gold-touched.”

“Who called you a what?” Della asked. This was getting a little absurd, honestly.

“Magica,” Louie repeated. “He called me a gold-touched. I guess it’s a term for someone with magic to control gold?”

“She also called Huey a flame-born and me a lightning-kissed,” Dewey said. “I think she also said something about you?”

“She said borne from a sky-called.” Huey tilted his head in thought. “I think she also mentioned something like a sea-called… it might refer to Uncle Donald?”

“Huh,” Della blinked, leaning back. She hadn’t thought of the possibility of her kids having powers. Granted, maybe she should have, with her being able to fly and all, but it just occurred to her that maybe her journey to motherhood wasn’t as typical as she thought it would be.

(But of course it wouldn’t be. She was a mother of a set of triplet, and she was born of the Duck and McDuck family. They were anything but typical.)

“Mom?” Dewey called, soft and hesitant. “This… this is okay, right?”

Her breath hitched for a moment, and she gathered all three of her kids into her arms. Huey’s flames dissipated the moment she reached out and Louie was quick to angle the khopesh to keep it from hurting anyone, but Dewey was a little late and she felt a jolt of electricity buzzing through the four of them for a split second. She ignored it and hugged them close. “Of course it’s okay! It’s more than okay. This is us, and I will never trade it for anything in the world.” She let go and grinned. “If anything, this makes us even cooler! Look at us here, having superpowers!”

“Yeah!” Dewey grinned back, instantly mollified. Della knew things were going to be hard, but maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought it would be.

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Oh, yes. It was worse.

Her own recklessness had woken the Gilded Man and now it was hell-bent on destroying her family. Well, okay, she fucked up, and she was all for un-fucking her fuck ups, so she had to save her family and stop the Gilded Man somehow.

Her pride soared when she saw her kids bravely running about, catching the giant ape’s attention and slowly weakening it (and subsequently angering it, oh boy) with the horn Della had given them. Louie, the bright boy, had Huey fetch some tape and put together the three horns and threw it to Dewey, who easily threw them to Della, who was able to slip them inside and step on them and sound the horns at once. The Gilded Man began to crumble, and Della swiftly took off her metal leg and summoned wind to her air, flying up to the sky. Her eyes caught Louie, trying to push the gold away with his powers, but the Gilded Man was too big, too heavy. Its hand fell straight to him, and Della found herself screaming his name, shooting to him faster than she had ever flown.

She slammed to him bodily just as the gold hand fell on them, with Louie glowing brightly like the golden sun, speckled with emerald green. The hand stopped its trajectory and fell sideways instead of straight down, and Della peeked out when she heard it thump heavily to the ground. She blinked out the light in her eyes and realized Louie was still glowing gold.

“Louie,” she called softly. “Louie, can you hear me? It’s okay, we’re safe now.”

Louie looked up, and Della realized for the first time that his eyes looked like flat discs. The effect faded little by little as the golden glow dissipated, the glittering green disappearing, and Louie slumped forward a little, tears in his eyes. Della held his face in her hands and smiled.

He rushed forward and hugged her midsection. “Thank you, Mom.”

“No, thank you, Louie,” Della breathed into his ear. “You saved us both.”

Yes, her journey to motherhood sure was shaping to be a rocky one, but nothing could stop Della Duck. She was prepared for anything that was thrown to her.

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Okay, so her kids’ magic was apparently something she wasn’t exactly equipped to deal with, but that’s okay. She could learn.

Louie seemed to have his magic easily controlled, at least. He had sensing gold down pat and summoning his khopesh was child’s play to him, but controlling a large amount of gold at once seemed to drain him. Della tried to tell him to slow down, don’t burn himself out, and she was thankful that he was at least willing to listen to reason.

Huey, as well, had his own magic controlled to an extent, but when he was lost in thought or too emotional, heat haze would rise around him, and something would inevitably catch fire. On good days, it would be himself. He was pretty much fire-proof, and his clothing was never singed or anything, which was a good thing. But sometimes he would be holding to something – a map, a book, a pen – and the object instead would catch fire. But as long as he was aware of it, he was also quick to extinguish the flames.

Dewey proved to be the one most careless with his magic. He zapped basically everyone with his electricity, apologized and said to be more careful, and zapped the very same person in the very same breath. He was absentminded at best, and Della racked her brain trying to find a way for him to reign the magic in.

“Uncle Donald usually talks to me and hug me until the zapping passed,” Dewey said. He was frowning. “I thought the zapping’s not that bad. He can take it.”

Not for the first time, Della felt gutted. She was busy playing catch up to be able to care for her kids, and Donald had been doing it for a decade and he wasn’t here to teach her the ropes. He knew the kids so much better than she was, and that was so painfully obvious even to her.

It was weird, though. Dewey’s zaps were enough to make even Scrooge scream, sometimes, and Donald was able to take it? Was he even okay? Another thing she needed to ask him. Later, though, after he was back from his cruise.

“Maybe we should find someway else to help you deal with it,” Della said. “I don’t know about Donald, but I know I can’t take your electricity. Do you know how powerful it can get?”

“I don’t know,” Dewey admitted. He winced. “We, um, can find out?” he offered, but he didn’t seem too thrilled about it.

“No, no, we don’t have to,” Della assured. “It’s okay if you don’t want to find out. Now, let’s see… have you ever tried discharging your electricity somewhere safe?”

Dewey blinked. “Where?”

In the end, it turned out the best way they could deal with Dewey’s zaps was to bring him to an empty field and have him discharge his electricity into the ground. As it turned out, the buildup was what made him zap people, and having him exhaust the buildup helped tremendously.

It helped Dewey, but it made Della feel less, still, how she was still trying to give the boys all she could give and it still wasn’t enough.

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The sky felt like it was beckoning her, sometimes, calling her up to stay with the clouds and bask in unfiltered sunlight. She wondered, sometimes, if should float and never come back down if she didn’t have her kids – usually Dewey – calling her down for something. An adventure, a meal, a simple question.

They asked, once, how it felt like to fly. Her answer to that was to hug Huey in one arm, Louie in the other, have Dewey clinging to her back, and bring them up to the sky. Later, after they landed, Webby asked shyly if Della could bring her up to the clouds, too, and Della was more than happy to let her feel the wind up in the sky.

Mrs. Beakley yelled at them when they got down, but relented when Webby promised to bring parachutes if she ever went again. Mrs. Beakley then proceeded to shove more child-sized parachutes to Della’s arms, and Webby was soon teaching the boys how to use it. The next time Della brought them all on a flight on her back, they jumped off and used the parachute.

Della instructed them how to steer the parachutes as she floated on wind of her own making, and Dewey stared at her with stars in his eyes. “How do you know all this?!” he yelled, more because they were riding the wind and the noise made it hard to have their voices carry over.

“I wasn’t always able to fly like this, but I’m great at anything that requires a vessel to fly!” Della answered. “I’m boss when it comes to paragliding!”

“Teach us sometime so I can get a paragliding badge!” Huey requested.

“Sure! But let’s land first, okay?” She blew gentle breeze them down, and they concentrated on landing.

They landed safely at the backyard, and this time Scrooge was the one yelling at them. Della somehow managed to placate him by promising to fly him up, though, so that wasn’t really a problem.

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This was getting out of hand. Everything was.

The hurricane outside was getting worse, the flow of space-time was getting tangled, Beakley was missing, and Louie Duck was absolutely grounded. How did he even get the idea that stealing from time was a good thing? It sounded worse than her and Donald’s worst ideas combined, and that wasn’t even counting how Donald’s luck would put everything through a blender.

Pirates of all things were attacking her family, for god’s sake. Huey had long since abandoned his careful demeanor and had started throwing fire around just to keep their attackers off their backs, and Dewey was basically just punching lightning everywhere at this point. She should really have listened more to Beakley. Her feelings were in the proverbial blender right now, she was thrown back in time and she had to witness her kids disappearing in front of her eyes. Louie needed to learn that his actions had consequences and he could’ve hurt so many people.

It felt like he had stabbed a knife through her heart when he muttered venomously, “I wonder who I got that from.”

She sent him to his room after banning schemes and having him stop Louie Incorporated. She knew it was the right thing to do, but the knife in her heart felt like it was being twisted when she saw his retreating back.

(“You’re not doing this right,” her Inner Donald said to her quietly.

“Then how do I do it right?” she asked him back.

He didn’t answer.)

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It got sorted out, somehow, between Louie somehow managing to usurp both Glomgold and Scrooge’s riches and finally giving Scrooge his company back.

And then the Moonlanders attacked, because of course. Nothing ever went smoothly, with her family. It made her wonder if Donald’s luck was just something that was uniquely his or if it was actually a family curse that somehow ended up manifesting more clearly in him. Neither of them sounded like a good option, honestly.

“We can take them,” Dewey yelled, when they were discussing what they should do with Gyro, after seeing Lunaris had landed one of his ships above the manor. “They don’t know we have superpowers. And Uncle Donald mentioned magic not mixing well with technology, so that’s another thing in our corner!”

“Yeah, I doubt they would be prepared for three kids being able to use fire, lightning, and gold magic coming to them. Plus Louie could probably damage the ships, right? They’re gold,” Huey said, looking at Louie for confirmation.

Louie nodded and made some sort of smooshing motion with his hands. “It’ll take a while, but I can probably total the ships if I want to. Do they know you can fly, Mom?”

“I – I don’t think so,” Della said, mind reeling. Her boys wanted to fight? Right there, in the thickest of the danger, letting themselves walk right in the middle of the line of fire? She glanced in panic at Scrooge, and he seemed to be concerned, at least. That’s good, Scrooge’s Concern was usually Della’s Panic and Donald’s Absolutely Losing His Marbles In Fear. That meant her fear wasn’t irrational.

“Great, so we can go to town and just start burning, zapping, and crushing stuff,” Huey said. He opened his Junior Woodchuck book. “We should plan more, though. Hang on, let me check on battle strategy for a bit.”

“No!” Della yelped before she could stop herself, and she froze in place when the kids stared at her. “We, uhh… we should go find… find more reinforcement! Yes! There are a lot of Moonlanders and there are only so many of us. If we can get help, surely our chance of success will be better too!”

To her relief, Scrooge caught on quickly. “Ah, yes! Yes, that’s a good point, lass. I should be able to round up some more help here. Della, you and the kids go scour the globe for reinforcement. Perhaps Selene and Storkules would be willing to help.”

“Oh, yes! Ithaquack! Perfect place,” Della smiled. She exchanged meaningful gazes with Scrooge, and soon, they departed.

She would do anything to keep the kids safe – including Webby, because Donald was right, she was their bonus kid, as precious as the triplets were. She needed someplace she could keep them safe, and she didn’t care that they would think her a coward for it. Anything was better than letting them come to harm’s way.

“At least Don’s safe in a cruise,” Della muttered bitterly under her breath.

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Okay, so, Ithaquack’s fucked too. Fine. Okay. Fine. They could find someplace else safe. There had to be some uninhabited island somewhere that the Moonlanders overlooked. The Earth’s littered with it, anyway.

And also they’re being chased. Fuck.

And the kids found out they were there to run away. And they got shot. And the plane was downed.

Fucking hell. Was Donald’s bad luck contagious? It felt like it was.

It took Della’s all to channel her magic to summon enough wind to counter Earth’s gravity so she could keep them safe. The downside of it was that the brilliant white and sky blue was too bright, blinding her and taking away her vision, but it was fine – somehow, the wind enveloping the Cloudslayer gave her enough sense of where they were, and they managed to land relatively safely. It didn’t stop the plane from getting totaled, but they were alive, and that was what was important.

“We made it! We’re safe!” Della exclaimed when they set foot on the sand.

“And stuck,” Hewey pointed out. “You’d have to be pretty unlucky to be stranded here.”

So of course Donald of all people was stranded there.

(Oh man, he wasn’t safe in a cruise. He’d been stranded this whole time. How did they not know about this.)

They fought almost immediately after they set eyes upon each other – typical – but the overlaying deception of anger melted immediately to reveal the longing underneath, and they exchanged teary-eyed hug that seemed to last forever. The moment was ruined when his sculpted melon companion made appearance, and hoo boy was that weird.

“Has the melon been a thing the whole time I’ve been gone, or…?”

“No, that’s new,” Huey answered, and good, the kids were as concerned as she was. How long had Donald been stuck here, for him to get a melon that looked like Mickey of all people and start treating it like the actual Mickey? What were the chances of him actually finding a Mickey-shaped melon in the first place? Melon shaped like that shouldn’t even be able to grow in the wild, what in the world, Don.

And he was all for going back in the fray and danger and laser shots to bring the Moonlanders down. What the fuck, Don. And this was the Moon all over again! What even was going on! She was Della Duck and nothing stops Della Duck, but this – all this – the possibility of losing her family again, the Moonlanders attacking, Lunaris betraying her – she didn’t know if she wanted to be mad or scared or what and she just landed in bunk up in a deserted island and pray no one finds them. She hated this.

Louie pulled her out of her funk, and Fethry and Gladstone appeared, riding a giant purple krill. Somehow, the fact that they were riding a giant krill was a lot less painful to bear than the fact that Gladstone was eating Donald’s Mickey-placeholder. Fethry was always good with animals, after all, but this was their cousin eating Donald’s only companion while he was stuck in an island.

They all rode on Mitzy and braved the sea to get back to Scrooge. The sea was rough, but their course was true, and Della couldn’t help but notice how Donald kept glancing at the ocean every now and then, an unreadable look in his eyes. Maybe he was worried about slipping and falling into the sea, it wouldn’t be that weird for that to happen to him.

They reached Duckburg and saw it a frozen wasteland, a giant golden ship pushing Earth to orbit the Moon. They saw Lunaris holding their uncle hostage, and Della saw red.

“Lunaris, let go of my uncle,” Della demanded.

“And lose any potential advantage I might have?” Lunaris shot back as he tightened his grip on Scrooge’s collar. “I don’t think so.”

Della growled. “What is wrong with you?” she barked. “You helped me when I was in the moon. I thought we were friends! And then you turn around and do this?”

“Friends?” Lunaris asked back. His laugh was derisive. “Do you even hear yourself? Are you so foolish that you don’t even realize people can lie?” He levelled a cold gaze at her. “We are not friends,” he spat. “You are but a lowly Earthling. I am General Lunaris of the Moon. For you to even consider the possibility of us being friends is an insult to my name.”

Della recoiled feeling like she had been slapped. All this while she had thought she had been making friends but it was all just a lie. The very air stirred around her, white plumes materializing as it always did when she called to the very sky to her aid, thin but undoubtedly present. She narrowed her eyes at the Moonlander. “You lied to me. All this time, all you wanted to do was just to get here.”

“Oh, so you finally realized after all,” Lunaris said with a mocking smile. “I honestly thought it would take you longer to understand.”

Della took a deep breath. The air was cold, but she felt hot with raw anger. “I had high opinions about you,” she said. “You helped me in the Moon. Was that all a lie? All of it?”

Lunaris didn’t even hesitate. “All of it.”

Della felt something in her snap. The white plumes surrounding her strengthened as a sudden gust of strong wind blasted Lunaris in the face, making him flinch back while his cape was blown. He squinted at Della but made no move otherwise.

“I will give you to a count of three,” Della began, “and if by then you have not released my uncle, I will make you sorry for being born.” She narrowed her eyes at Lunaris. “One.”

“Do you honestly think that meager threat is enough to scare me?” Lunaris asked.

“Two!”

“I do not care for your countings, Della Duck.”

“Three!” Della paused, eyeing Lunaris closely. When he made no move to release Scrooge, she rushed ahead and jumped off Mitzy’s head. The wind carried her and she glided effortlessly like a feather riding on a breeze, for all intents and purposes weightless. Then she shot like an arrow to Lunaris, leaving a trail of white while her metal leg aimed at his head as she spun a kick. Lunaris dropped Scrooge to block her kick, and chaos reigned.

It didn’t take long for her to convince her kids to mess up the ship. While she summoned the wind to bring her to dance in mid air, she saw how Louie was able to crumple the ship like it was paper. Penumbra, of all people landed on ice on a smaller ship, immediately rushing ahead to throw a punch at Lunaris.

“Hi, roomie!” she cheerfully greeted Della.

“Penny! You came here!” Della greeted back, delighted that she was around, and that she wasn’t attacking her. At least someone wasn’t lying.

So of course Lunaris would declare her a traitor.

They fought side by side, and it was so much easier bringing Lunaris down like this. Penny seemed intrigued at her being able to fly, but she knew it wasn’t time to ask questions.

Mitzy’s massive legs fell from above, destroying the docks and smashing ice. Della could hear Donald reprimanding Fethry, but her attention was taken by her kids, who she could see were losing their balance in the ship while Louie clung to one of the ship’s legs to keep himself from falling. His khopesh had fallen and skidded away.

Lunaris took him prisoner, and Della’s blood ran cold.

“Stand back or I will stab him,” Lunaris threatened.

“This is rich coming from the guy who yelled I will not fall!” Louie yelled. He looked miffed that he was taken hostage at all, and Della had to suppress a laugh at that. Somehow, it was typical of their family’s trend, to be insulted that someone was keeping them hostage instead of feeling scared. Louie was so alike to Donald that way.

Lunaris frowned, clearly confused. “I have you at bladepoint. Don’t you realize what position you’re in?”

“Oh, sure, go ahead, get the guy who seems like he can’t defend himself and take him as hostage, why don’t you?” Louie grumbled. “If you’re so high and mighty I would’ve thought you’d think or a nobler plan.”

Lunaris’ frown deepened into a scowl. “I hope you realize I am perfectly capable of slitting your throat right now, if I so choose.”

This time, it was Huey who answered. “No you won’t,” he said, matter-of-fact, and his tone was dry enough to turn this frozen ocean into barren desert, and Della had to feel proud at that.

“You see, about that,” Louie spoke up again, “I’m sure you’ve seen my brother conjure fire and my other brother conjure electricity. You’ve seen my mom fly, too. Haven’t you considered I might have something up my sleeve, too?” With that, he lifted a hand and jabbed up, brightly shining gold with glittering green, eyes flat discs of gold, and the fallen khopesh lifted up on its own and slashed through the air to Lunaris.

The Moonlander moved to block the attack with his dagger, and Louie took advantage of the distraction by biting Lunaris’ hand so he’d be released. As Lunaris did in surprise, Louie shimmered brighter and made a pulling gesture. The dagger in Lunaris’ hand was ripped away and clanged to the ice.

“You filthy Earthling!” Lunaris spat. He slapped Louie backhanded, hard enough to send him reeling and falling to ice and landing on his face, the gold glow disappearing abruptly as the boy cried in pain. He grazed his cheek on a rough patch and came out with red welts. Della gasped, stomach lurching, and she felt the white plumes around her freezing its motions.

Lunaris wasn’t done. He marched with purpose, eyes locked at Louie. Louie, for his part, extended his hand and called to the dagger, once again shining gold as he motioned so the dagger moved according to his will. The dagger shot to Lunaris, but he simply slapped it away. He lifted his hand, a murderous glint in his eyes

Della yelled at Lunaris to stop, feeling desperate to save her kid, and her magic rose to the forefront. White mist escaped her beak as she breathed, and she could feel herself glowing, glowing, and her vision was starting to get overtaken by brilliant white and specks of sky blue, wind whipping around her and pulling at her hair, slapping at her cheeks.

Someone beat her to the punch. Seawater burst from cracked ice and rushed ahead like tsunami, effectively sweeping Lunaris off his feet and leaving Louie safe and dry. It rolled Lunaris over in its waves and pinned him down on ice, effectively drowning him mercilessly.

“Stop hurting my family!” Donald yelled at Lunaris, feral in every way Della could think of, looking even wilder than when they found him on that island. His whole being was glowing sea blue, and even so far away, Della could see his eyes had turned blue with specks of white, like rising wave, like the sea and its seafoam. She could feel his magic rolling off like waves, the sea singing its song and magic through Donald’s hands, and suddenly it all made sense, how Donald was less clumsy at sea, how Donald was the best person you could have to get you safely through naval voyage, how Donald was so at home among the deep blue like she was with the clouds. The power receded, and Lunaris sputtered on cold ice. Penny went ahead to put cuffs on him.

There was an alarming creak, and Della saw the golden ship careening down to hit Donald. Judging by the trajectory, it would hit Louie, too, and the kids were still inside.

“Look out!” Della yelled, releasing her magic as her sight whited out, but she couldn’t do much – Donald was only pushed back a little. She gritted her teeth, suddenly realizing that her power wasn’t much at all when she wasn’t really using it for flight, but her yell had done the job well. The people in the ship’s way scattered, and while Louie tried in vain to keep it upright, the whole ship was too heavy for him to bear. Dewey and Webby snagged him, and his golden glow dissipated, and the ship fell into the sea.

When the sea and the ice settled, Della rounded on Donald. “You can control water?!” she asked, almost insulted that he hadn’t told her about this. He’d seen her fly, in the island! The least he could do was tell her about what he could do!

“You can fly,” he protested, but he scooted back all the same.

“You never told me you can control water!”

“It never came up! And I can only do the sea! What am I supposed to say, anyway? Hi, Dell, remember how I always loved to be by the sea since we were little? That’s cause I can make some waterworks a little, no biggie!”

“That would have been better than radio silence!”

The argument was broken when Glomgold voiced his disbelief on what was happening – and really, that was rich coming from a guy who came up with the plan to attack a golden ship with sharks wearing parka, having Scrooge dress up and Santa (that was honestly cruel, that was absolutely crossing the line), getting Scrooge to gift him back his company, and having Beakley dress up as a boy to sling shot Launchpad dressed up as a rock into the ship.

Really, how were they the weird one when Glomgold was the one who came up with that?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Why didn’t you come home when you were in that island? You can control the sea,” Della asked after the whole thing started to quiet down.

“It wouldn’t let me,” Donald said. He let her lean into him and used his shoulder as a pillow as he leaned into her, propping his chin on her head. “The sea’s kind of possessive.”

“It’s sentient?”

“Not really? …kind of.”

“Huh.”

Donald nuzzled his cheek into Della’s hair. “I thought you were dead for ten years.”

“I sent transmissions.”

“We never received any.”

Her stomach churned with guilt. She didn’t know. “I’m sorry.”

She snaked her arms around his torso and hugged him tight. He hugged back, just as tightly, and they stayed like that for a while in their old room back in the manor, and she could feel things slowly settling back down into their family’s wacky sense of normal.

She was back, and she had all of her boys with her, and their family can do magic.

And she would fight Lunaris all over again to keep them safe and sound with her.

#ducktales #ducktales 17 #della duck #donald duck #scrooge mcduck #huey duck #dewey duck #louie duck #webby vanderquack #bentina beakley #magic au #basically everyone in this au have magic #ao3 #dt17 magic au

[fly-sky-high-bug-games]

gghgghhgg SILVA IS REALLY THE CHILD OF ALYSSUM AND MUGO ??!!! I knew Mugo was like an adoptive father but ... Mugo knows that Silva is really his daughter? I think Silva doesn't know. but if mugo knows ... how he understood that she is his daughter ??? especially that he doesn't know that Alyssum had an egg !! and Alyssum have not seen Silva yet. she can't say it's her daughter! ;-;

Oh man, y’all gotta understand I absolutely love how much their story sounds like a soap opera~! 8D

Short answer: Yes, Silva is Mugo’s and Alyssum’s child. No, Alyssum doesn’t know her baby survived (thank you Gambit, you’re the best mom!). Yes, Mugo somewhat figured it out but he isn’t sure yet, Amalma is suppose to confirm it for him. No, Silva doesn’t know aaaaanything~!

Long answer under the cut~

Well, Mugo and Alyssum obvious had their intimate moments while dating and while my logic of “female chooses if eggs are fertile or not by deciding to lay them in the first place”, Alyss picked to have just one for this occasion. I figure eggs themselves don’t have to be in the egg too long before larvae hatches and has to be nurtured with food so it can molt and grow until they cocoon themselves to actually reach a stage of the anthropomorphic look, AKA baby 2.0., so they can develop other skills and not just through fetus like stage as larvae. (uhh sorry if this is confusing, I’m trying to do logic but it’s literally cartoon bugs...)

Anyways, Alyssum dumped Silva sometime after hatching. While Mugo got her letter to come meet her for the “little surprise”, he obviously refused to show up (he had every right to do that), Alyssum had no use of the baby and just left her at crossroads to die. No one knows about, no one hears about, dangerous place... perfect baby dumping situation with no evidence~

Of course, Gambit found Silva soon after some time after her poker night with Sly, coming back to the entrance of the mines and passing by near the tram to find her and adopted her. 

So you have both parents kind of being quiet for about 20 years, each doing their own thing and no one really knowing anything.

Then you have our sweet Yonna who met Silva then some time later, while Silva was busy OBSESSING OVER TRYING TO RID OF INFECTION IN THE MINES BY HERSELF (gods...), Yonna also met Mugo by chance while on the way to colosseum. Mugo got a little attached to both her and Rham due to sharing quite a bit of interest (like disliking the nobles and having weird/abusive parents and intimate traumas... haha), he sort of got attached to being Yonna’s weird uncle.

During the whole coli mess with Zeeke, they also met Amalma, who works for Alyssum’s White Magnolia as a spy, being on the mission. She knew about Mugo’s existence because her clan shares some information and keeps them safe regarding Magnolia members. From Alyssum’s claim, Mugo is a creep who hurt her and that’s a story that’s been within the inner circle of the members.

Admittedly, Amalma attacked moment thinking he was creepy and harassing Yonna. She kind of got concerned for the moth and tailed them for most of the stay until Mugo and Amalma almost fought and Yonna stopped them, demanding they all have a talk.

Things were cleared out but the fact that Alyssum resurfaced in Mugo’s life by hearing she’s been saying he’s a nasty harasser of nice girls really got him mad and upset. Amalma learned that wasn’t true, at least, and she somewhat got attached to the group.

SOOOO the whole shabang with Zeeke and the vessels and getting banned from the coli happened and Yonna, Rham and Mugo head back to the Crystal Peak to meet up Silva again. Taka let them know via dreams Silva wasn’t fine and they kind of zoomed back home, Yonna having to save her arse and memories. Mugo tagged along because he honestly didn’t want to just leave for work without seeing Yonna and her supposed crazy girlfriend will be fine.

After the whole unlocking Silva’s memories deal, Mugo was asked to stay a bit longer. He didn’t really want to rush and leave, getting to really love some company and understanding family vibe after being a lone wolf for so long.

So the gang chilled at the peaks, Mugo was having issues with looking at maskless Silva but didn’t quite click why for him yet. He also tended to be harsh with words towards her but Yonna would draw attention to it and he’d apologize.

Then... this fun conversation happened~

It was dinner time, Rham was basically cracking Mugo’s spine with stretches and massages and Silva and Yonna talked about whether Mugo is a moth or a butterfly, Silva never really understanding the difference. The two curiously and playfully went to ask him and while Mugo was on the floor groaning in pain, he replied with something like “What sort of butterfly has a mane like this?”

To that, Silva got a little concerned and said “I’m a butterfly though” and they started to chatter about Silva’s past and parents. She said she couldn’t know, she was found at the Crossroads, near tram station, adopted by the miners and that was the story Gambit told her, to which Rham confirmed because he remembered.

Cue Mugo’s anxiety jumping sky high (hehe). He figured “no, the location must be a coincidence” but the very accurate coincidence made him remember the letter... Mugo then started asking them questions, last one being “Silva, how old are you again?”. She replied the exact number of years since he got the letter.

Cue Mugo entering panic attack. He hopped up to his feet, briefly apologized while hyperventilating and hurried outside for some air. Yonna was too familiar with the reaction so she went to be support for him while Silva and Rham stayed behind, Rham explaining to Silva he had a rough past with someone and that the talk might have triggered something.

Mugo hasn’t taken off his mask at this point... But he had to. He couldn’t breathe and with Yonna around, he took his mask off. Rather similar to the ask I drew and reply, he had to pace and take time to breathe before calming down and explaining to Yonna what’s happened with Alyssum and the letter...

Of course, Silva’s looks were somewhat a giveaway too but neither was too certain. So Yonna assured him to wait and see, not tell Silva anything until they are fully certain. Mugo told Rham later but Silva is absolutely oblivious.

They had a chance to meet Amalma again because she was hiding from Zeeke’s assassin going after her to kill her for carrying information she got about Zeeke. It was during Pim’s kidnapping and after the group was almost killed in fire by said assassin. They stayed at Dirtmouth and Amalma hid there for a little while. She spoke to Mugo and he asked her to check for information at Highgrove and see if Alyssum ever bore a child.

Upon Amalma’s return to Highgrove (that has yet to happen but very soon), Alyssum has already spoken to Zeeke... who mentioned Mugo to her... so now she knows Amalma did as well because she helped stop Trail when she was after Pim’s life. Luckily, Amalma knows how to lie. She acted as if Mugo was the scum Alyssum talked about to be more convincing.

“So you confirm there is a young, wingless moth girl very close to him?”

“.... yes.”

“Uhuhu, how his gentleman persona has rotten. Say, if they’re close, you wouldn’t mind fetching the said moth girl for me, wouldn’t you, Amalma dear?”

“... anything you wish, mistress.”

“Good. I’ll leave that task to you then.”

#UFUFUFUFUFUFUFU!!!! #so many muses #but wee!! #lumiere-angel-90

[unsettlingshortstories]

Catskin

Kelly Link (2003)

Cats went in and out of the witch’s house all day long. The windows stayed open, and the doors, and there were other doors, cat-sized and private, in the walls and up in the attic. The cats were large and sleek and silent. No one knew their names, or even if they had names, except for the witch.

Some of the cats were cream-colored and some were brindled. Some were black as beetles. They were about the witch’s business. Some came into the witch’s bedroom with live things in their mouths. When they came out again, their mouths were empty.

The cats trotted and slunk and leapt and crouched. They were busy. Their movements were catlike, or perhaps clockwork. Their tails twitched like hairy pendulums. They paid no attention to the witch’s children.

***

The witch had three living children at this time, although at one time she had had dozens, maybe more. No one, certainly not the witch, had ever bothered to tally them up. But at one time, the house had bulged with cats and babies.

Now, since witches cannot have children in the usual way—their wombs are full of straw or bricks or stones, and when they give birth, they give birth to rabbits, kittens, tadpoles, houses, silk dresses, and yet even witches must have heirs, even witches wish to be mothers—the witch had acquired her children by other means: She had stolen or bought them.

She’d had a passion for children with a certain color of red hair. Twins she had never been able to abide (they were the wrong kind of magic), although she’d sometimes attempted to match up sets of children, as though she had been putting together a chess set and not a family. If you were to say a witch’s chess set, instead of a witch’s family, there would be some truth in that. Perhaps this is true of other families as well.

One girl she had grown like a cyst, upon her thigh. Other children she had made out of things in her garden, or bits of trash that the cats brought her: aluminum foil with strings of chicken fat still crusted to it, broken television sets, cardboard boxes that the neighbors had thrown out. She had always been a thrifty witch.

Some of these children had run away and others had died. Some of them she had simply misplaced, or accidentally left behind on buses. It is to be hoped that these children were later adopted into good homes, or reunited with their natural parents. If you are looking for a happy ending in this story, then perhaps you should stop reading here and picture these children, these parents, their reunions.

***

Are you still reading? The witch, up in her bedroom, was dying. She had been poisoned by an enemy, a witch, a man named Lack. The child Finn, who had been her food taster, was dead already and so were three cats who’d licked her dish clean. The witch knew who had killed her and she snatched pieces of time, here and there, from the business of dying, to make her revenge. Once the question of this revenge had been settled to her satisfaction, the shape of it like a black ball of twine in her head, she began to divide up her estate between her three remaining children.

Flecks of vomit stuck to the corners of her mouth, and there was a basin beside the foot of the bed, which was full of black liquid. The room smelled like cats’ piss and wet matches. The witch panted as if she were giving birth to her own death.

“Flora shall have my automobile,” she said, “and also my purse, which will never be empty, so long as you always leave a coin at the bottom, my darling, my spendthrift, my profligate, my drop of poison, my pretty, pretty Flora. And when I am dead, take the road outside the house and go west. There’s one last piece of advice.”

Flora, who was the oldest of the witch’s living children, was redheaded and stylish. She had been waiting for the witch’s death for a long time now, although she had been patient. She kissed the witch’s cheek and said, “Thank you, Mother.”

The witch looked up at her, panting. She could see Flora’s life, already laid out, flat as a map. Perhaps all mothers can see as far.

“Jack, my love, my birds nest, my bite, my scrap of porridge,” the witch said, “you shall have my books. I won’t have any need of books where I am going. And when you leave my house, strike out in an easterly direction and you won’t be any sorrier than you are now.”

Jack, who had once been a little bundle of feathers and twigs and eggshell all tied up with a tatty piece of string, was a sturdy lad, almost full grown. If he knew how to read, only the cats knew it. But he nodded and kissed his mother’s gray lips.

“And what shall I leave to my boy, Small?” the witch said, convulsing. She threw up again in the basin. Cats came running, leaning on the lip of the basin to inspect her vomitus. The witch’s hand dug into Small’s leg.

“Oh, it is hard, hard, so very hard, for a mother to leave her children (though I have done harder things). Children need a mother, even such a mother as I have been.” She wiped at her eyes, and yet it is a fact that witches cannot cry.

Small, who still slept in the witch’s bed, was the youngest of the witch’s children. (Perhaps not as young as you think.) He sat upon the bed, and although he didn’t cry, it was only because witch’s children have no one to teach them the use of crying. His heart was breaking.

Small could juggle and sing and every morning he brushed and plaited the witch’s long, silky hair. Surely every mother must wish for a boy like Small, a curly-headed, sweet-breathed, tenderhearted boy like Small, who can cook a fine omelet, and who has a good strong singing voice as well as a gentle hand with a hairbrush.

“Mother,” he said, “if you must die, then you must die. And if I can’t come along with you, then I’ll do my best to live and make you proud. Give me your hairbrush to remember you by, and I’ll go make my own way in the world.”

“You shall have my hairbrush, then,” said the witch to Small, looking, and panting, panting. “And I love you best of all. You shall have my tinderbox and my matches, and also my revenge, and you will make me proud, or I don’t know my own children.”

“What shall we do with the house, Mother?” said Jack. He said it as if he didn’t care.

“When I am dead,” the witch said, “this house will be of no use to anyone. I gave birth to it—that was a very long time ago—and raised it from just a dollhouse. Oh, it was the most dear, most darling dollhouse ever. It had eight rooms and a tin roof, and a staircase that went nowhere at all. But I nursed it and rocked it to sleep in a cradle, and it grew up to be a real house, and see how it has taken care of me, its parent, how it knows a child’s duty to its mother. And perhaps you can see how it is now, how it pines, how it grows sick to see me dying like this. Leave it to the cats. They’ll know what to do with it.”

***

All this time, the cats have been running in and out of the room, bringing things and taking things away. It seems as if they will never slow down, never come to rest, never nap, never have the time to sleep, or to die, or even to mourn. They have a certain proprietary look about them, as if the house is already theirs.

***

The witch vomits up mud, fur, glass buttons, tin soldiers, trowels, hat pins, thumbtacks, love letters (mislabeled or sent without the appropriate amount of postage and never read), and a dozen regiments of red ants, each ant as long and wide as a kidney bean. The ants swim across the perilous, stinking basin, clamber up the sides of the basin, and go marching across the floor in a shiny ribbon. They are carrying pieces of Time in their mandibles. Time is heavy, even in such small pieces, but the ants have strong jaws, strong legs. Across the floor they go, and up the wall, and out the window. The cats watch, but don’t interfere. The witch gasps and coughs and then lies still. Her hands beat against the bed once and then are still. Still the children wait, to make sure that she is dead, and that she has nothing else to say.

***

In the witch’s house, the dead are sometimes quite talkative.

***

But the witch has nothing else to say at this time.

***

The house groans and all the cats begin to mew piteously, trotting in and out of the room as if they have dropped something and must go and hunt for it—they will never find it—and the children, at last, find they know how to cry, but the witch is perfectly still and quiet. There is a tiny smile on her face, as if everything has happened exactly to her satisfaction. Or maybe she is looking forward to the next part of the story.

***

The children buried the witch in one of her half-grown dollhouses. They crammed her into the downstairs parlor, and knocked out the inner walls so that her head rested on the kitchen table in the breakfast nook, and her ankles threaded through a bedroom door. Small brushed out her hair, and, because he wasn’t sure what she should wear now that she was dead, he put all her dresses on her, one over the other over the other, until he could hardly see her white limbs at all beneath the stack of petticoats and coats and dresses. It didn’t matter: Once they’d nailed the dollhouse shut again, all they could see was the red crown of her head in the kitchen window, and the worn-down heels of her dancing shoes knocking against the shutters of the bedroom window.

Jack, who was handy, rigged a set of wheels for the dollhouse, and a harness so that it could be pulled. They put the harness on Small, and Small pulled and Flora pushed, and Jack talked and coaxed the house along, over the hill, down to the cemetery, and the cats ran along beside them.

***

The cats are beginning to look a bit shabby, as if they are molting. Their mouths look very empty. The ants have marched away, through the woods, and down into town, and they have built a nest on your yard, out of the bits of Time. And if you hold a magnifying glass over their nest, to see the ants dance and burn, Time will catch fire and you will be sorry.

***

Outside the cemetery gates, the cats had been digging a grave for the witch. The children tipped the dollhouse into the grave, kitchen window first. But then they saw that the grave wasn’t deep enough, and the house sat there on its end, looking uncomfortable. Small began to cry (now that he’d learned how, it seemed he would spend all his time practicing), thinking how horrible it would be to spend one’s death, all of eternity, upside down and not even properly buried, not even able to feel the rain when it beat down on the exposed shingles of the house, and seeped down into the house and filled your mouth and drowned you, so that you had to die all over again, every time it rained.

The dollhouse chimney had broken off and fallen on the ground. One of the cats picked it up and carried it away, like a souvenir. That cat carried the chimney into the woods and ate it, a mouthful at a time, and passed out of this story and into another one. It’s no concern of ours.

The other cats began to carry up mouthfuls of dirt, dropping it and mounding it around the house with their paws. The children helped, and when they’d finished, they’d managed to bury the witch properly, so that only the bedroom window was visible, a little pane of glass like an eye at the top of a small dirt hill.

On the way home, Flora began to flirt with Jack. Perhaps she liked the way he looked in his funeral black. They talked about what they planned to be, now that they were grown up. Flora wanted to find her parents. She was a pretty girl: Someone would want to look after her. Jack said he would like to marry someone rich. They began to make plans.

Small walked a little behind, slippery cats twining around his ankles. He had the witch’s hairbrush in his pocket, and his fingers slipped around the figured horn handle for comfort.

The house, when they reached it, had a dangerous, grief-stricken look to it, as if it was beginning to pull away from itself. Flora and Jack wouldn’t go back inside. They squeezed Small lovingly, and asked if he wouldn’t want to come along with them. He would have liked to, but who would have looked after the witch’s cats, the witch’s revenge? So he watched as they drove off together. They went north. What child has ever heeded a mother’s advice?

***

Jack hasn’t even bothered to bring along the witch’s library: He says there isn’t space in the trunk for everything. He’ll rely on Flora and her magic purse.

***

Small sat in the garden, and ate stalks of grass when he was hungry, and pretended that the grass was bread and milk and chocolate cake. He drank out of the garden hose. When it began to grow dark, he was lonelier than he had ever been in his life. The witch’s cats were not good company. He said nothing to them and they had nothing to tell him, about the house, or the future, or the witch’s revenge, or about where he was supposed to sleep. He had never slept anywhere except in the witch’s bed, so at last he went back over the hill and down to the cemetery.

Some of the cats were still going up and down the grave, covering the base of the mound with leaves and grass and feathers, their own loose fur. It was a soft sort of nest to lie down on. The cats were still busy when Small fell asleep—cats are always busy—cheek pressed against the cool glass of the bedroom window, hand curled in his pocket around the hairbrush, but in the middle of the night, when he woke up, he was swaddled, head to foot, in warm, grass-scented cat bodies.

***

A tail is curled around his chin like a rope, and all the bodies are soughing breath in and out, whiskers and paws twitching, silky bellies rising and falling. All the cats are sleeping a frantic, exhausted, busy sleep, except for one, a white cat who sits near his head, looking down at him. Small has never seen this cat before, and yet he knows her, the way that you know the people who visit you in dreams: She’s white everywhere, except for reddish tufts and frills at her ears and tail and paws, as if someone has embroidered her with fire around the edges.

“What’s your name?” Small says. He’s never talked to the witch’s cats before.

The cat lifts a leg and licks herself in a private place. Then she looks at him. “You may call me Mother,” she says.

But Small shakes his head. He can’t call the cat that. Down under the blanket of cats, under the windowpane, the witch’s Spanish heel is drinking in moonlight.

“Very well, then, you may call me The Witch’s Revenge,” the cat says. Her mouth doesn’t move, but he hears her speak inside his head. Her voice is furry and sharp, like a blanket made of needles. “And you may comb my fur.”

Small sits up, displacing sleeping cats, and lifts the brush out of his pocket. The bristles have left rows of little holes indented in the pink palm of his hand, like some sort of code. If he could read the code, it would say: Comb my fur.

Small combs the fur of The Witch’s Revenge. There’s grave dirt in the cat’s fur, and one or two red ants, who drop and scurry away. The Witch’s Revenge bends her head down to the ground, snaps them up in her jaws. The heap of cats around them is yawning and stretching. There are things to do.

“You must burn her house down,” The Witch’s Revenge says. “That’s the first thing.”

Small’s comb catches a knot, and The Witch’s Revenge turns and nips him on the wrist. Then she licks him in the tender place between his thumb and his first finger. “That’s enough,” she says. “There’s work to do.”

So they all go back to the house, Small stumbling in the dark, moving farther and farther away from the witch’s grave, the cats trotting along, their eyes lit like torches, twigs and branches in their mouths, as if they plan to build a nest, a canoe, a fence to keep the world out. The house, when they reach it, is full of lights, and more cats, and piles of tinder. The house is making a noise, like an instrument that someone is breathing into. Small realizes that all the cats are mewing, endlessly, as they run in and out the doors, looking for more kindling. The Witch’s Revenge says, “First we must latch all the doors.”

So Small shuts all the doors and windows on the first floor, leaving open only the kitchen door, and The Witch’s Revenge shuts the catches on the secret doors, the cat doors, the doors in the attic, and up on the roof, and the cellar doors. Not a single secret door is left open. Now all the noise is on the inside, and Small and The Witch’s Revenge are on the outside.

All the cats have slipped into the house through the kitchen door. There isn’t a single cat in the garden. Small can see the witch’s cats through the windows, arranging their piles of twigs. The Witch’s Revenge sits beside him, watching. “Now light a match and throw it in,” says The Witch’s Revenge.

Small lights a match. He throws it in. What boy doesn’t love to start a fire?

“Now shut the kitchen door,” says The Witch’s Revenge, but Small can’t do that. All the cats are inside. The Witch’s Revenge stands on her hindpaws and pushes the kitchen door shut. Inside, the lit match catches something on fire. Fire runs along the floor and up the kitchen walls. Cats catch fire, and run into the other rooms of the house. Small can see all this through the windows. He stands with his face against the glass, which is cold, and then warm, and then hot. Burning cats with burning twigs in their mouths press up against the kitchen door, and the other doors of the house, but all the doors are locked. Small and The Witch’s Revenge stand in the garden and watch the witch’s house and the witch’s books and the witch’s sofas and the witch’s cooking pots and the witch’s cats, her cats, too, all her cats burn.

***

You should never burn down a house. You should never set a cat on fire. You should never watch and do nothing while a house is burning. You should never listen to a cat who says to do any of these things. You should listen to your mother when she tells you to come away from watching, to go to bed, to go to sleep. You should listen to your mother’s revenge.

***

You should never poison a witch.

***

In the morning, Small woke up in the garden. Soot covered him in a greasy blanket. The Witch’s Revenge was curled up asleep on his chest. The witch’s house was still standing, but the windows had melted and run down the walls.

The Witch’s Revenge woke and stretched and licked Small clean with her small sharkskin tongue. She demanded to be combed. Then she went into the house and came out, carrying a little bundle. It dangled, boneless, from her mouth, like a kitten.

***

It is a catskin, Small sees, only there is no longer a cat inside it. The Witch’s Revenge drops it in his lap.

***

He picked it up and something shiny fell out of the loose light skin. It was a piece of gold, sloppy, slippery with fat. The Witch’s Revenge brought out dozens and dozens of catskins, and there was a gold piece in every skin. While Small counted his fortune, The Witch’s Revenge bit off one of her own claws, and pulled one long witch hair out of the witch’s comb. She sat up, like a tailor, cross-legged in the grass, and began to stitch up a bag, out of the many catskins.

Small shivered. There was nothing to eat for breakfast but grass, and the grass was black and cooked.

“Are you cold?” said The Witch’s Revenge. She put the bag aside and picked up another catskin, a fine black one. She slit a sharp claw down the middle. “We’ll make you a warm suit.”

She used the coat of a black cat, and the coat of a calico cat, and she put a trim around the paws, of grey-and-white-striped fur.

While she did this, she said to Small, “Did you know that there was once a battle, fought on this very patch of ground?”

Small shook his head no.

“Wherever there’s a garden,” The Witch’s Revenge said, scratching with one paw at the ground, “I promise you there are people buried somewhere beneath it. Look here.” She plucked up a little brown clot, put it in her mouth, and cleaned it with her tongue.

When she spat the little circle out again, Small saw it was an ivory regimental button. The Witch’s Revenge dug more buttons out of the ground—as if buttons of ivory grew in the ground—and sewed them onto the catskin. She fashioned a hood with two eyeholes and a set of fine whiskers, and sewed four fine cat tails to the back of the suit, as if the single tail that grew there wasn’t good enough for Small. She threaded a bell on each one. “Put this on,” she said to Small.

Small puts on the suit and the bells chime. The Witch’s Revenge laughs. “You make a fine-looking cat,” she says. “Any mother would be proud.”

The inside of the catsuit is soft and a little sticky against Small’s skin. When he puts the hood over his head, the world disappears. He can see only the vivid corners of it through the eyeholes—grass, gold, the cat who sits cross-legged, stitching up her sack of skins—and air seeps in, down at the loosely sewn seam, where the skin droops and sags over his chest and around the gaping buttons. Small holds his tails in his clumsy fingerless paw, like a handful of eels, and swings them back and forth to hear them ring. The sound of the bells and the sooty, cooked smell of the air, the warm stickiness of the suit, the feel of his new fur against the ground: he falls asleep and dreams that hundreds of ants come and lift him and gently carry him off to bed.

***

When Small tipped his hood back again, he saw that The Witch’s Revenge had finished with her needle and thread. Small helped her fill the bag with gold. The Witch’s Revenge stood up on her hind legs, took the bag, and swung it over her shoulders. The gold coins went sliding against each other, mewling and hissing. The bag dragged along the grass, picking up ash, leaving a trail of green behind it. The Witch’s Revenge strutted along as if she were carrying a sack of air.

Small put the hood on again, and he got down on his hands and knees. And then he trotted after The Witch’s Revenge. They left the garden gate wide open and went into the forest, towards the house where the witch Lack lived.

***

The forest is smaller than it used to be. Small is growing, but the forest is shrinking. Trees have been cut down. Houses have been built. Lawns rolled, roads laid. The Witch’s Revenge and Small walked alongside one of the roads. A school bus rolled by: The children inside looked out their windows and laughed when they saw The Witch’s Revenge walking on her hind legs, and at her heels, Small, in his catsuit. Small lifted his head and peered out of his eyeholes after the school bus.

“Who lives in these houses?” he asked The Witch’s Revenge.

“That’s the wrong question, Small,” said The Witch’s Revenge, looking down at him and striding along.

Meow, the catskin bag says. Clink.

“What’s the right question, then?” Small said.

“Ask me who lives under the houses,” The Witch’s Revenge said.

Obediently, Small said, “Who lives under the houses?”

“What a good question!” said The Witch’s Revenge. “You see, not everyone can give birth to their own house. Most people give birth to children instead. And when you have children, you need houses to put them in. So children and houses: Most people give birth to the first and have to build the second. The houses, that is. A long time ago, when men and women were going to build a house, they would dig a hole first. And they’d make a little room—a little, wooden, one-room house—in the hole. And they’d steal or buy a child to put in the house in the hole, to live there. And then they built their house over that first little house.”

“Did they make a door in the lid of the little house?” Small said.

“They did not make a door,” said The Witch’s Revenge.

“But then how did the girl or the boy climb out?” Small said.

“The boy or the girl stayed in that little house,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “They lived there all their life, and they are living in those houses still, under the other houses where the people live, and the people who live in the houses above may come and go as they please, and they don’t ever think about how there are little houses with little children, sitting in little rooms, under their feet.”

“But what about the mothers and fathers?” Small asked. “Didn’t they ever go looking for their boys and girls?”

“Ah,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. And after all, who was living under their houses? But that was a long time ago. Now people mostly bury a cat when they build their house, instead of a child. That’s why we call cats house-cats. Which is why we must walk along smartly. As you can see, there are houses under construction here.”

***

And so there are. They walk by clearings where men are digging little holes. First Small puts his hood back and walks on two legs, and then he puts on his hood again, and goes on all fours: He makes himself as small and slinky as possible, just like a cat. But the bells on his tails jounce and the coins in the bag that The Witch’s Revenge carries go clink, meow, and the men stop their work and watch them go by.

***

How many witches are there in the world? Have you ever seen one? Would you know a witch if you saw one? And what would you do if you saw one? For that matter, do you know a cat when you see one? Are you sure?

***

Small followed The Witch’s Revenge. Small grew calluses on his knees and the pads of his fingers. He would have liked to carry the bag sometimes, but it was too heavy. How heavy? You would not have been able to carry it, either.

They drank out of streams. At night they opened the catskin bag and climbed inside to sleep, and when they were hungry they licked the coins, which seemed to sweat golden fat, and always more fat. As they went, The Witch’s Revenge sang a song:

I had no mother and my mother had no mother and her mother had no mother and her mother had no mother and her mother had no mother and you have no mother to sing you this song

The coins in the bag sang too, meow, meow, and the bells on Small’s tails kept the rhythm.

***

Every night Small combs The Witch’s Revenge’s fur. And every morning The Witch’s Revenge licks him all over, not neglecting the places behind his ears, and at the backs of his knees. And then he puts the catsuit back on, and she grooms him all over again.

***

Sometimes they were in the forest, and sometimes the forest became a town, and then The Witch’s Revenge would tell Small stories about the people who lived in the houses, and the children who lived in the houses under the houses. Once, in the forest, The Witch’s Revenge showed Small where there had once been a house. Now there were only the stones of the foundation, upholstered in moss, and the chimney stack, propped up with fat ropes and coils of ivy.

The Witch’s Revenge rapped on the grassy ground, moving clockwise around the foundation, until both she and Small could hear a hollow sound; The Witch’s Revenge dropped to all fours and clawed at the ground, tearing it up with her paws and biting at it, until they could see a little wooden roof. The Witch’s Revenge knocked on the roof, and Small lashed his tails.

“Well, Small,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “shall we take off the roof and let the poor child go?”

Small crept up close to the hole she had made. He put his ear to it and listened, but he heard nothing at all. “There’s no one in there,” he said.

“Maybe they’re shy,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “Shall we let them out, or shall we leave them be?”

“Let them out!” said Small, but what he meant to say was, “Leave them alone!” Or maybe he said Leave them be! although he meant the opposite. The Witch’s Revenge looked at him, and Small thought he heard something then—beneath him where he crouched, frozen—very faint: a scrabbling at the dirty, sunken roof.

Small sprang away. The Witch’s Revenge picked up a stone and brought it down hard, caving the roof in. When they peered inside, there was nothing except blackness and a faint smell. They waited, sitting on the ground, to see what might come out, but nothing came out. After a while, The Witch’s Revenge picked up her catskin bag, and they set off again.

For several nights after that, Small dreamed that someone, something, was following them. It was small and thin and bleached and cold and dirty and afraid. One night it crept away again, and Small never knew where it went. But if you come to that part of the forest, where they sat and waited by the stone foundation, perhaps you will meet the thing that they set free.

***

No one knew the reason for the quarrel between the witch Small’s mother and the witch Lack, although the witch Small’s mother had died for it. The witch Lack was a handsome man and he loved his children dearly. He had stolen them out of the cribs and beds of palaces and manors and harems. He dressed his children in silks, as befitted their station, and they wore gold crowns and ate off gold plates. They drank from cups of gold. Lack’s children, it was said, lacked nothing.

Perhaps the witch Lack had made some remark about the way the witch Small’s mother was raising her children, or perhaps the witch Small’s mother had boasted of her children’s red hair. But it might have been something else. Witches are proud and they like to quarrel.

When Small and The Witch’s Revenge came at last to the house of the witch Lack, The Witch’s Revenge said to Small, “Look at this monstrosity! I’ve produced finer turds and buried them under leaves. And the smell, like an open sewer! How can his neighbors stand the stink?”

Male witches have no wombs, and must come by their houses in other ways, or else buy them from female witches. But Small thought it was a very fine house. There was a prince or a princess at each window staring down at him, as he sat on his haunches in the driveway, beside The Witch’s Revenge. He said nothing, but he missed his brothers and sisters.

“Come along,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “We’ll go a little ways off and wait for the witch Lack to come home.”

Small followed The Witch’s Revenge back into the forest, and in a while, two of the witch Lack’s children came out of the house, carrying baskets made of gold. They went into the forest as well and began to pick blackberries.

The Witch’s Revenge and Small sat in the briar and watched.

***

There was a wind in the briar. Small was thinking of his brothers and sisters. He thought of the taste of blackberries, the feel of them in his mouth, which was not at all like the taste of fat.

The Witch’s Revenge nestled against the small of Small’s back. She was licking down a lump of knotted fur at the base of his spine. The princesses were singing.

Small decided that he would live in the briar with The Witch’s Revenge. They would live on berries and spy on the children who came to pick them, and The Witch’s Revenge would change her name. The word Mother was in his mouth, along with the sweet taste of the blackberries.

“Now you must go out,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “and be kittenish. Be playful. Chase your tail. Be shy, but don’t be too shy. Don’t talk too much. Let them pet you. Don’t bite.”

She pushed at Small’s rump, and Small tumbled out of the briar and sprawled at the feet of the witch Lack’s children.

The Princess Georgia said, “Look! It’s a dear little cat!”

Her sister Margaret said doubtfully, “But it has five tails. I’ve never seen a cat that needed so many tails. And its skin is done up with buttons and it’s almost as large as you are.”

Small, however, began to caper and prance. He swung his tails back and forth so that the bells rang out and then he pretended to be alarmed by this. First he ran away from his tails and then he chased his tails. The two princesses put down their baskets, half-full of blackberries, and spoke to him, calling him a silly puss.

At first he wouldn’t go near them. But, slowly, he pretended to be won over. He allowed himself to be petted and fed blackberries. He chased a hair ribbon and he stretched out to let them admire the buttons up and down his belly. Princess Margaret’s fingers tugged at his skin; then she slid one hand in between the loose catskin and Small’s boy skin. He batted her hand away with a paw, and Margaret’s sister Georgia said knowingly that cats didn’t like to be petted on their bellies.

They were all good friends by the time The Witch’s Revenge came out of the briar, standing on her hind legs and singing:

I have no children and my children have no children and their children have no children and their children have no whiskers and no tails

At this sight, the Princesses Margaret and Georgia began to laugh and point. They had never heard a cat sing, or seen a cat walk on its hind legs. Small lashed his five tails furiously, and all the fur of the catskin stood up on his arched back, and they laughed at that too.

When they came back from the forest, with their baskets piled with berries, Small was stalking close at their heels, and The Witch’s Revenge came walking just behind. But she left the bag of gold hidden in the briar.

***

That night, when the witch Lack came home, his hands were full of gifts for his children. One of his sons ran to meet him at the door and said, “Come and see what followed Margaret and Georgia home from the forest! Can we keep them?”

And the table had not been set for dinner, and the children of the witch Lack had not sat down to do their homework, and in the witch Lack’s throne room, there was a cat with five tails, spinning in circles, while a second cat sat impudently upon his throne, and sang:

Yes! your father’s house is the shiniest brownest largest the most expensive the sweetest-smelling house that has ever come out of anyone’s ass!

The witch Lack’s children began to laugh at this, until they saw the witch, their father, standing there. Then they fell silent. Small stopped spinning.

“You!” said the witch Lack.

“Me!” said The Witch’s Revenge, and sprang from the throne. Before anyone knew what she was about, her jaws were fastened about the witch Lack’s neck, and then she ripped out his throat. Lack opened his mouth to speak and his blood fell out, making The Witch’s Revenge’s fur more red now than white. The witch Lack fell down dead, and red ants went marching out of the hole in his neck and the hole of his mouth, and they held pieces of Time in their jaws as tightly as The Witch’s Revenge had held Lack’s throat in hers. But she let Lack go and left him lying in his blood on the floor, and she snatched up the ants and ate them, quickly, as if she had been hungry for a very long time.

While this was happening, the witch Lack’s children stood and watched and did nothing. Small sat on the floor, his tails curled about his paws. Children, all of them, they did nothing. They were too surprised. The Witch’s Revenge, her belly full of ants, her mouth stained with blood, stood up and surveyed them.

“Go and fetch me my catskin bag,” she said to Small.

Small found that he could move. Around him, the princes and princesses stayed absolutely still. The Witch’s Revenge was holding them in her gaze.

“I’ll need help,” Small said. “The bag is too heavy for me to carry.”

The Witch’s Revenge yawned. She licked a paw and began to pat at her mouth. Small stood still.

“Very well,” she said. “Take those big strong girls the Princesses Margaret and Georgia with you. They know the way.”

The Princesses Margaret and Georgia, finding that they could move again, began to tremble. They gathered their courage and they went with Small, the two girls holding each other’s hands, out of the throne room, not looking down at the body of their father, the witch Lack, and back into the forest.

Georgia began to weep, but the Princess Margaret said to Small: “Let us go!”

“Where will you go?” said Small. “The world is a dangerous place. There are people in it who mean you no good.” He threw back his hood, and the Princess Georgia began to weep harder.

“Let us go,” said the Princess Margaret. “My parents are the King and Queen of a country not three days’ walk from here. They will be glad to see us again.”

Small said nothing. They came to the briar and he sent the Princess Georgia in to hunt for the catskin bag. She came out scratched and bleeding, the bag in her hand. It had caught on the briars and torn open. Gold coins rolled out, like glossy drops of fat, falling on the ground.

“Your father killed my mother,” said Small.

“And that cat, your mother’s devil, will kill us, or worse,” said Princess Margaret. “Let us go!”

Small lifted the catskin bag. There were no coins in it now. The Princess Georgia was on her hands and knees, scooping up coins and putting them into her pockets.

“Was he a good father?” Small asked.

“He thought he was,” Princess Margaret said. “But I’m not sorry he’s dead. When I grow up, I will be Queen. I’ll make a law to put all the witches in the kingdom to death, and all their cats as well.”

Small became afraid. He took up the catskin bag and ran back to the house of the witch Lack, leaving the two princesses in the forest. And whether they made their way home to the Princess Margaret’s parents, or whether they fell into the hands of thieves, or whether they lived in the briar, or whether the Princess Margaret grew up and kept her promise and rid her kingdom of witches and cats, Small never knew, and neither do I, and neither shall you.

***

When he came back into the witch Lack’s house, The Witch’s Revenge saw at once what had happened. “Never mind,” she said.

There were no children, no princes and princesses, in the throne room. The witch Lack’s body still lay on the floor, but The Witch’s Revenge had skinned it like a coney, and sewn up the skin into a bag. The bag wriggled and jerked, the sides heaving as if the witch Lack were still alive somewhere inside. The Witch’s Revenge held the witchskin bag in one hand, and with the other, she was stuffing a cat into the neck of the skin. The cat wailed as it went into the bag. The bag was full of wailing. But the discarded flesh of the witch Lack lolled, slack.

There was a little pile of gold crowns on the floor beside the flayed corpse, and transparent, papery things that blew about the room on a current of air, surprised looks on the thin, shed faces.

Cats were hiding in the corners of the room, and under the throne. “Go catch them,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “But leave the three prettiest alone.”

“Where are the witch Lack’s children?” Small said.

The Witch’s Revenge nodded around the room. “As you see,” she said. “I’ve slipped off their skins, and they were all cats underneath. They’re cats now, but if we were to wait a year or two, they would shed these skins as well and become something new. Children are always growing.”

Small chased the cats around the room. They were fast, but he was faster. They were nimble, but he was nimbler. He had worn his catsuit longer. He drove the cats down the length of the room, and The Witch’s Revenge caught them and dropped them into her bag. At the end, there were only three cats left in the throne room and they were as pretty a trio of cats as anyone could ask for. All the other cats were inside the bag.

“Well done and quickly done, too,” said The Witch’s Revenge, and she took her needle and stitched shut the neck of the bag. The skin of the witch Lack smiled up at Small, and a cat put its head through Lack’s stained mouth, wailing. But The Witch’s Revenge sewed Lack’s mouth shut too, and the hole on the other end, where a house had come out. She left only his earholes and his eyeholes and his nostrils, which were full of fur, rolled open so that the cats could breathe.

The Witch’s Revenge slung the skin full of cats over her shoulder and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Small said.

“These cats have mothers and fathers,” The Witch’s Revenge said. “They have mothers and fathers who miss them very much.”

She gazed at Small. He decided not to ask again. So he waited in the house with the two princesses and the prince in their new catsuits, while The Witch’s Revenge went down to the river. Or perhaps she took them down to the market and sold them. Or maybe she took each cat home, to its own mother and father, back to the kingdom where it had been born. Maybe she wasn’t so careful to make sure that each child was returned to the right mother and father. After all, she was in a hurry, and cats look very much alike at night.

No one saw where she went—but the market is closer than the palaces of the Kings and Queens whose children had been stolen by the witch Lack, and the river is closer still.

When The Witch’s Revenge came back to Lack’s house, she looked around her. The house was beginning to stink very badly. Even Small could smell it now.

“I suppose the Princess Margaret let you fuck her,” said The Witch’s Revenge, as if she had been thinking about this while she ran her errands. “And that is why you let them go. I don’t mind. She was a pretty puss. I might have let her go myself.”

She looked at Small’s face and saw that he was confused. “Never mind,” she said.

She had a length of string in her paw, and a cork, which she greased with a piece of fat she had cut from the witch Lack. She threaded the cork on the string, calling it a good, quick, little mouse, and greased the string as well, and she fed the wriggling cork to the tabby who had been curled up in Small’s lap. And when she had the cork back again, she greased it again and fed it to the little black cat, and then she fed it to the cat with two white forepaws, so that she had all three cats upon her string.

She sewed up the rip in the catskin bag, and Small put the gold crowns in the bag, and it was nearly as heavy as it had been before. The Witch’s Revenge carried the bag, and Small took the greased string, holding it in his teeth, so the three cats were forced to run along behind him as they left the house of the witch Lack.

***

Small strikes a match, and he lights the house of the dead witch, Lack, on fire, as they leave. But shit burns slowly, if at all, and that house might be burning still, if someone hasn’t gone and put it out. And maybe, someday, someone will go fishing in the river near that house, and hook their line on a bag full of princes and princesses, wet and sorry and wriggling in their catsuit skins—that’s one way to catch a husband or a wife.

***

Small and The Witch’s Revenge walked without stopping and the three cats came behind them. They walked until they reached a little village very near where the witch Small’s mother had lived and there they settled down in a room The Witch’s Revenge rented from a butcher. They cut the greased string, and bought a cage and hung it from a hook in the kitchen. They kept the three cats in it, but Small bought collars and leashes, and sometimes he put one of the cats on a leash and took it for a walk around the town.

Sometimes he wore his own catsuit and went out prowling, but The Witch’s Revenge used to scold him if she caught him dressed like that. There are country manners and there are town manners and Small was a boy about town now.

The Witch’s Revenge kept house. She cleaned and she cooked and she made Small’s bed in the morning. Like all of the witch’s cats, she was always busy. She melted down the gold crowns in a stewpot, and minted them into coins.

The Witch’s Revenge wore a silk dress and gloves and a heavy veil, and ran her errands in a fine carriage, Small at her side. She opened an account in a bank, and she enrolled Small in a private academy. She bought a piece of land to build a house on, and she sent Small off to school every morning, no matter how he cried. But at night she took off her clothes and slept on his pillow and he combed her red and white fur.

Sometimes at night she twitched and moaned, and when he asked her what she was dreaming, she said, “There are ants! Can’t you comb them out? Be quick and catch them, if you love me.”

But there were never any ants.

One day when Small came home, the little cat with the white front paws was gone. When he asked The Witch’s Revenge, she said that the little cat had fallen out of the cage and through the open window and into the garden and before The Witch’s Revenge could think what to do, a crow had swooped down and carried the little cat off.

They moved into their new house a few months later, and Small was always very careful when he went in and out the doorway, imagining the little cat, down there in the dark, under the doorstep, under his foot.

***

Small got bigger. He didn’t make any friends in the village, or at his school, but when you’re big enough, you don’t need friends.

One day while he and The Witch’s Revenge were eating their dinner, there was a knock at the door. When Small opened the door, there stood Flora and Jack. Flora was wearing a drab, thrift-store coat, and Jack looked more than ever like a bundle of sticks.

“Small!” said Flora. “How tall you’ve become!” She burst into tears, and wrung her beautiful hands. Jack said, looking at The Witch’s Revenge, “And who are you?”

The Witch’s Revenge said to Jack, “Who am I? I’m your mother’s cat, and you’re a handful of dry sticks in a suit two sizes too large. But I won’t tell anyone if you won’t tell, either.”

Jack snorted at this, and Flora stopped crying. She began to look around the house, which was sunny and large and well appointed.

“There’s room enough for both of you,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “if Small doesn’t mind.”

Small thought his heart would burst with happiness to have his family back again. He showed Flora to one bedroom and Jack to another. Then they went downstairs and had a second dinner, and Small and The Witch’s Revenge listened, and the cats in their hanging cage listened, while Flora and Jack recounted their adventures.

A pickpocket had taken Flora’s purse, and they’d sold the witch’s automobile, and lost the money in a game of cards. Flora found her parents, but they were a pair of old scoundrels who had no use for her. (She was too old to sell again. She would have realized what they were up to.) She’d gone to work in a department store, and Jack had sold tickets in a movie theater. They’d quarreled and made up, and then fallen in love with other people, and had many disappointments. At last they had decided to go home to the witch’s house and see if it would do for a squat, or if there was anything left, to carry away and sell.

But the house, of course, had burned down. As they argued about what to do next, Jack had smelled Small, his brother, down in the village. So here they were.

“You’ll live here, with us,” Small said.

Jack and Flora said they could not do that. They had ambitions, they said. They had plans. They would stay for a week, or two weeks, and then they would be off again. The Witch’s Revenge nodded and said that this was sensible.

Every day, Small came home from school and went out again, with Flora, on a bicycle built for two. Or he stayed home and Jack taught him how to hold a coin between two fingers, and how to follow the egg, as it moved from cup to cup. The Witch’s Revenge taught them to play bridge, although Flora and Jack couldn’t be partners. They quarreled with each other as if they were husband and wife.

“What do you want?” Small asked Flora one day. He was leaning against her, wishing he were still a cat, and could sit in her lap. She smelled of secrets. “Why do you have to go away again?”

Flora patted Small on the head. She said, “What do I want? That’s easy enough! To never have to worry about money. I want to marry a man and know that he’ll never cheat on me, or leave me.” She looked at Jack as she said this.

Jack said, “I want a rich wife who won’t talk back, who doesn’t lie in bed all day, with the covers pulled up over her head, weeping and calling me a bundle of twigs.” And he looked at Flora when he said this.

The Witch’s Revenge put down the sweater that she was knitting for Small. She looked at Flora and she looked at Jack and then she looked at Small.

Small went into the kitchen and opened the door of the hanging cage. He lifted out the two cats and brought them to Flora and Jack. “Here,” he said. “A husband for you, Flora, and a wife for Jack. A prince and a princess, and both of them beautiful, and well brought up, and wealthy, no doubt.”

Flora picked up the little tomcat and said, “Don’t tease at me, Small! Who ever heard of marrying a cat!”

The Witch’s Revenge said, “The trick is to keep their catskins in a safe hiding place. And if they sulk, or treat you badly, sew them back into their catskin and put them into a bag and throw them in the river.”

Then she took her claw and slit the skin of the tabby-colored catsuit, and Flora was holding a naked man. Flora shrieked and dropped him on the ground. He was a handsome man, well made, and he had a princely manner. He was not a man that anyone would ever mistake for a cat. He stood up and made a bow, very elegant, for all that he was naked. Flora blushed, but she looked pleased.

“Go fetch some clothes for the Prince and the Princess,” The Witch’s Revenge said to Small. When he got back, there was a naked princess hiding behind the sofa, and Jack was leering at her.

A few weeks after that, there were two weddings, and then Flora left with her new husband, and Jack went off with his new princess. Perhaps they lived happily ever after.

The Witch’s Revenge said to Small, “We have no wife for you.”

Small shrugged. “I’m still too young,” he said.

***

But try as hard as he can, Small is getting older now. The catskin barely fits across his shoulders. The buttons strain when he fastens them. His grown-up fur—his people fur—is coming in. At night he dreams.

The witch his mother’s Spanish heel beats against the pane of glass. The princess hangs in the briar. She’s holding up her dress, so he can see the catfur down there. Now she’s under the house. She wants to marry him, but the house will fall down if he kisses her. He and Flora are children again, in the witch’s house. Flora lifts up her skirt and says, see my pussy? There’s a cat down there, peeking out at him, but it doesn’t look like any cat he’s ever seen. He says to Flora, I have a pussy, too. But his isn’t the same.

At last he knows what happened to the little, starving, naked thing in the forest, where it went. It crawled into his catskin, while he was asleep, and then it climbed right inside him, his Small skin, and now it is huddled in his chest, still cold and sad and hungry. It is eating him from the inside, and getting bigger, and one day there will be no Small left at all, only that nameless, hungry child, wearing a Small skin.

Small moans in his sleep.

There are ants in The Witch’s Revenge’s skin, leaking out of her seams, and they march down into the sheets and pinch at him, down under his arms, and between his legs where his fur is growing in, and it hurts, it aches and aches. He dreams that The Witch’s Revenge wakes now, and comes and licks him all over, until the pain melts. The pane of glass melts. The ants march away again on their long, greased thread.

“What do you want?” says The Witch’s Revenge.

Small is no longer dreaming. He says, “I want my mother!”

Light from the moon comes down through the window over their bed. The Witch’s Revenge is very beautiful—she looks like a Queen, like a knife, like a burning house, a cat—in the moonlight. Her fur shines. Her whiskers stand out like pulled stitches, wax and thread. The Witch’s Revenge says, “Your mother is dead.”

“Take off your skin,” Small says. He’s crying and The Witch’s Revenge licks his tears away. Small’s skin pricks all over, and down under the house, something small wails and wails. “Give me back my mother,” he says.

“Oh, my darling,” says his mother, the witch, The Witch’s Revenge, “I can’t do that. I’m full of ants. Take off my skin, and all the ants will spill out, and there will be nothing left of me.”

Small says, “Why have you left me all alone?”

His mother the witch says, “I’ve never left you alone, not even for a minute. I sewed up my death in a catskin so I could stay with you.”

“Take it off! Let me see you!” Small says. He pulls at the sheet on the bed, as if it were his mother’s catskin.

The Witch’s Revenge shakes her head. She trembles and beats her tail back and forth. She says, “How can you ask me for such a thing, and how can I say no to you? Do you know what you’re asking me for? Tomorrow night. Ask me again, tomorrow night.”

And Small has to be satisfied with that. All night long, Small combs his mother’s fur. His fingers are looking for the seams in her catskin. When The Witch’s Revenge yawns, he peers inside her mouth, hoping to catch a glimpse of his mother’s face. He can feel himself becoming smaller and smaller. In the morning he will be so small that when he tries to put his catskin on, he can barely do up the buttons. He’ll be so small, so sharp, you might mistake him for an ant, and when The Witch’s Revenge yawns, he’ll creep inside her mouth, he’ll go down into her belly, he’ll go find his mother. If he can, he’ll help his mother cut her catskin open so that she can get out again and come and live in the world with him, and if she won’t come out, then he won’t, either. He’ll live there, the way that sailors learn to live, inside the belly of fish who have eaten them, and keep house for his mother inside the house of her skin.

***

This is the end of the story. The Princess Margaret grows up to kill witches and cats. If she doesn’t, then someone else will have to do it. There is no such thing as witches, and there is no such thing as cats, either, only people dressed up in catskin suits. They have their reasons, and who is to say that they might not live that way, happily ever after, until the ants have carried away all of the time that there is, to build something new and better out of it?

[headspacedad]

Writer Nonnie and hey real quick for silly MLP fanfic reasons what's the bunny equivalent of a cold? Just wanna make two characters meet and have awkward shenanigans ensue. Also how ya been?

Hey there, WN!  Been going good, thanks.  Bun equivalent of a cold?  Well, you could probably just go with a cold.  Buns don’t really get sick the way people do.  Bun ‘silly issues’ might be along the line of molting/shedding, itchy ears, droopy ears or sneeze attack (Fizz sometimes has these and its super cute).  Once when Fizz when outside she got a few ‘stickies’ stuck to her, you know those plants that have little velcro seeds?  Well Fizz got some on her butt and every time she tired to pick them off they got stuck to her face and let’s just say Fizz had a Rotten No Good Very Bad day for the full five minutes it took her mother to figure out why she was freaking out (they kept ATTACKING her lip when she tried to bite them off of her!!!!) and picked them safely off.  Fizz hasn’t gone outside since because she gets as far as the front step, vaguely remembers something attacked her the last time she was outside, plus its hot and she has to clean the bottom of her feet with her tongue and she promptly turns around and goes back inside.

aaaand I rambled a bit but basically to answer your question any rabbit will treat any kind of mild inconvenience you want to pick as if its the Worst Thing Ever when it happens to them so you can probably get away with all kinds of silly stuff if you want to.

#the Fizz that IS! #Anonymous

[x0401x]

Mekakucity Talkers: Chapter 31

This time, guess what... we have a boys’ group talk!? The conversation unfolding amongst fellow young men while the girls aren’t looking is about...!?

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Mekakushi-dan ☆ Boys’ Room

Kano: No, I think something’s up with this plan... Just a rabbit isn’t enough, is it?

Seto: Is that so? I think that’s plenty...

Shintarou: OI~~~~SSU. It’s so peaceful, huh~~~~~.

Kano: Uwah. What’s wrong, Shintarou-kun?

Seto: Oissussu. Doing fine today?

Shintarou: Well, well, well. It’s great that you guys are doing fine too. Aren’t you pretty fired-up? What? You wanna ask me what I’m doing right now? I’m currently entrusting my body to my bed and letting myself reflect about world peace.

Kano: No, we didn’t ask that. Also, aren’t things the same as ever?

Seto: You sure are fine, huh? Did something good happen?

Shintarou: Well, everything has been solved, after all. Don’t mind me. Summer has ended as well, so let’s not lose to the coldness and have fun.

Kano: Hey, it’s a bit hard to make the connection...

Seto: Shintarou-san is sometimes emotionally unstable, huh.

Kano: Well, but indeed, it ended in a blink of eye, didn’t it? Summer, that is.

Seto: That’s right.

Kano: In the end, we didn’t get to do anything summer-like.

Shintarou: True. What did you guys do this summer?

Kano: Hu~m... Ate... Slept... Woke up...

Shintarou: Uwah.

Kano: What about you, Shintarou-kun, did you do anything summer-ish?

Shintarou: That’s right. This summer, I went to a beauty parlor.

Kano: That’s not eventful at all. And you, Seto?

Seto: I worked part-time.

Kano: Thought so~. It’s really like we spent it without doing anything... Ah, but we did go camping.

Seto: That’s right, but I kinda don’t remember it very well.

Shintarou: Weren’t you tired?

Seto: I guess.

Shintarou: But thinking about it made me feel lonely. So it’s over... Summer...

Kano: If you’re this lonely, why don’t you play the sounds of cicadas or something?

Shintarou: I’ll do that. Oh, it’s super summer-like? Guess I’ll raise the volume a little.

Kano: Won’t the person of the room next to yours be able to hear it if the sound is too loud? You’d said there’s quite a bit of sound leakage in them, right?

Shintarou: That’s right. Sometimes I can hear the explosion sounds of the videos that Momo watches.

Seto: What’s with those videos that Kisaragi-san is watching?

Shintarou: How’s the hideout in this aspect?

Seto: Eh, the hideout? Let’s see... The walls between the rooms are thick, so I don’t think we have that problem.

Kano: I’ve also never been bothered by it~.

Seto: Ah, but doesn’t Kido listen to music? I think she probably listens with earphones, but maybe because she doesn’t realize that the earphones get plugged off, I sometimes hear music blasting loudly when I pass by her bedroom.

Kano: Eh, is that true?

Shintarou: Isn’t it better to tell her about it?

Seto: That’s right... Kano, won’t you say it?

Kano: Don’t wanna. Why me?

Seto: See, aren’t you used to this kinda stuff?

Kano: It’s not like I meddle on Kido’s affairs every day. Besides, if I say something uncalled for, in the end, I’ll just get beaten up.

Shintarou: So you’re aware that you say uncalled-for things.

Kano: Hey, hey, enough of this. Seto, you go say it. It’d be a pity to leave her without noticing, wouldn’t it?

Seto: I get it. Then... I’m off.

Kano: ‘Ka~y. Kido often deals people a blow of her right-leg kick, so I think you can guard yourself if you’re careful with just that.

Shintarou: Don’t give scary advice.

Konoha: Hello.

Shintarou: Oh~, Konoha.

Kano: Hello~.

Shintarou: My bad for earlier. You saved my ass.

Konoha: It’s fine. I’m glad I was able to help Shintarou.

Kano: What, what? So something really did happen?

Shintarou: To tell the truth, the rabbit I keep here at home, Tono-chan, escaped from our place.

Kano: EEH!? Isn’t that a disaster!?

Shintarou: Aah, no problem. It’s already been resolved. Konoha found her.

Kano: Ah, that’s great~. I see, that’s why you were energetic earlier.

Shintarou: Exactly.

Konoha: But it wasn’t just me.

Shintarou: Did you get advice from someone?

Konoha: From Sensei.

Kano: Ah, if it’s Dad, he’s knowledgeable of animals’ habits and the like. It’s good that you found her. Ah, was Nee-chan home at that time?

Konoha: Hm...? She was, I guess? Maybe not.

Kano: Then that’s okay. Because, if Nee-chan had gotten to know that Shintarou’s pet rabbit had gone missing, she’d have caused a big fuss.

Shintarou: Ah? Why? Does she like rabbits that much?

Kano: No, no, it’s not like that~. Well, anyway, aren’t you glad that Tono-chan was unharmed?

Seto: Just came back.

Kano: Ah, welcome back~.

Konoha: Hello.

Seto: Ah, hello.

Kano: How did it go? Did she get mad at you?

Shintarou: Why’re you having expectations on her getting mad?

Seto: Well, about that, it seems she was in a pretty bad mood, so the feeling of overpowerment was incredible.

Shintarou: Hie...

Kano: Well, did you tell her?

Seto: I couldn’t bring myself to say it... But I also didn’t want her to think I’d called her over without having any business with her, so I handed her a rabbit hairball instead.

Kano: Why!?

Seto: Well, it was in my pocket by coincidence...

Kano: No, that’s not what I mean!

Seto: I said it’s a hairball, but it’s kinda like a stuffed toy, y’know? A rabbit that often comes to play around at the hideout is in its molting period, so it sheds a lot of fur. I thought that, if I tried making a plushie out of the rabbit’s fur, it might turn out cute, so I gave it a shot.

Shintarou: That’s nice. My Tono has also been shedding a lot of hair lately.

Seto: Next time, I’ll lend you my tools.

Kano: Well, Kido doesn’t hate fluffy things, somaybe she’s thinking of it as a present and is surprisingly pleased?

Seto: That’d be good.

Konoha: Animals? In the hideout?

Kano: No, it’s not like we own any, but it seems that the ones that got attached to Seto sometimes come over.

Seto: They’re precious friends that have been playing with me since the past.

Shintarou: Hehe, isn’t that a nice story...?

Kano: Ah, speaking of animals, Shintarou-kun, there’s a game I wanna recommend you.

Shintarou: A game?

Hibiya: Huh? Just when I thought that it was getting kinda tumultuous here... You’re talking about animals again?

Kano: Ah! Hibiya-kun. No, no, it’s not a talk only about animals.

Seto: Lately, Kano and I have been hooked on a card game. The cards have animals as their motifs.

Shintarou: Heeh~, a card game? I’ve never played any.

Kano: Right? Shintarou-kun, I think you’ll enjoy it too.

Seto: We’ve been getting together in my room in the middle of the night lately, assembling decks.

Hibiya: An animal card game? The boys from my classroom might be into it.

Kano: Isn’t that just great?! Hibiya-kun, come do it too~. Next time, I’ll give you the cards I have in excess!

Hibiya: I’m not very interested in that stuff, though...

Seto: If I’m certain, I think there were countless of them inside the living room’s self. I’ll go look.

Kano: Please~.

Hibiya: Actually, aren’t you embarrassed of doing that at your age? Even though I’m saying this myself, cards are stuff for elementary scholars like me to play, right?

Kano: You shouldn’t say stupid things, Hibiya-kun. Card games are the preference of true adults.

Seto: A disaster has happened.

Kano: Hm?

Shintarou: What’s wrong, Seto?

Seto: Just now, when I went to the living room, I ran into Mary.

Kano: That’s ‘cause we live together. We'd naturally run into each other, right?

Seto: No, about that, she was totally glaring at me.

Shintarou: After running into you, out of the blue?

Seto: That’s right...

Kano: Kido was the same just now. Did you do anything to make her angry~?

Hibiya: Eh, what did you do to a woman...?

Seto: No, no, no, I have no idea!

Shintarou: Ah. Wait. Crap. Mary is pissed?

Seto: Well, speaking in terms of being pissed, I think she was.

Shintarou: No, but could it be it’s about that?

Kano: Do you have any idea?

Shintarou: Well, last time, I promised Mary to take her to the amusement park, didn’t I? To tell the truth, on the arranged day, the weather was horrible, so we canceled it.

Kano: A typhoon had been approaching, right? Isn’t it something that can’t be helped?

Shintarou: About that, ever since I said “let’s leave it for next time”, I’d forgotten it...

Kano: Ah~

Seto: Indeed, Mary always remembers these things. Maybe because of this...

Shintarou: Is she that mad? Kano! Please! Go apologize to her!

Kano: Eh~, why me?!

Shintarou: I can’t tell Mary’s feelings just from chatroom texts, and I’ve got this hunch that things will get ugly if we don’t deal with it soon!

Kano: Then, isn’t it better to have Seto go?

Seto: I’m no good for that anymore. To think that Mary would look at me with eyes like that...

Konoha: Poor thing.

Shintarou: See, Seto can no longer take it. Besides, Kano, you’re used to making Mary angry, right?

Kano: I’m telling you I don’t wanna~. I’d just say something uncalled for and make piss her off again.

Shintarou: If you know that, make sure you don’t speak. No, wait. I see. How about you give her a letter with our plans for next time?

Kano: Well, if I just gotta hand over a letter, it’s okay.

Shintarou: Please write that we can go to the amusement park next Sunday!

Kano: Yes, yes. Next Sunday, amusement park it is.

Konoha: I want to go too.

Shintarou: Oh.

Seto: I’ll also be on a day off from my part-time job next Sunday.

Shintarou: Then how about we all go?

Kano: Seems good. We’re going through this trouble, so let’s go have fun all together for the first time in a while.

Shintarou: Mary would also be happier if there were more people.

Seto: Thinking that way, I’ve kind of started looking forward to it.

Shintarou: Summer has ended, but it’s not only during summer that we can all make merry, right?

Kano: That’s right, Shintarou-kun!

Seto: As expected, you say some good stuff.

Shintarou: Stop it; I’ll get bashful. ‘Ka~y, you guys, let’s have fun all together next Sunday in the amusement park!

#kagerou project #kagepro #mekakucity actors #kano shuuya #kisaragi shintaro #konoha #kokonose haruka #seto kousuke #amamiya hibiya #kisaragi shintarou #mekakucity talkers #kagerou daze #kagerou days #my translation #AMUSEMENT PARK CHAPTER IS COMING #IT'S RLY COMING #THIS IS NOT A DRILL

[jpat82]

Wade and Sister Woes

You were at the bakery, elbow deep in fondant when a text through. You wiped your hands off on a clean towel as you walked over to where phone lay. Upon reading the text your heart starter hammering, it was your sister. Evidently she had changed her flight plans and would be arriving in London soon then expected.

You: sweetheart my sister is on her way.

You saw the bubbles appear as Tom started to text, knowing you had just ruined his day in seven words.

Tom: it’s not April fools.

You bit your bottom lip, your sister and Tom got along as well as water and oil. It’s not that your sister didn’t like Tom, it’s the fact the she thought she was the better sister for marrying a high paid lawyer. The fact Tom was worth double or triple that is what bothered her. Also the fact that even though Tom was an A list actor and could take care of you yet you still choose to work.

You: sorry, she changed her flight and will be arriving before I get home.

Tom: can I pretend we moved?

You: ha ha Tom.

~~

Tom did a quick sweep of the house making sure it was tidy for when Kay arrived, that’s what you had always called your older sister. When you were growing up you were unable to pronounce her name and it stuck as the years rolled by. Wade waddle under Tom’s feet causing the man to trip more then once, the duck sensing something big was going on.

Tom’s head shot up as he heard the bell ring, Wade making a beeline for the door. He took a deep breath as he approached the door, opening it slowly as you sister walked in. She pulled her expensive sunglasses off as she walked in, setting her suit case and purse just inside the door. Two more were on the porch steps making the man wonder exactly how long she would be in town for. Her hair was perfect styled and the ten pounds of make up that went with it. Everything about her screamed money, just the way she liked it.

“Tommy boy, how ya doin’?” She asked, giving him a fake smile, chewing the wad of gum in her mouth. Wade nipped at her pant leg, quacking angrily at her lack of response to him. “Why is there duck in your house?”

She looked at the animal with disgust as Wade pecked at the shine on her black boot.

“Kay, we weren’t expecting you so soon.” Tom smiled at her, leaning down to pick up the molting bird from the floor. “And this is Wade the duck.”

“I know who it is, my sister sent us a ridiculous Christmas card with it in an elf costume. What I’m asking is, why is it in the house?” She asked again, the duck hissed at her, wanting the treat everyone always gave him when they entered the house.

“Why would he be outside? He’s part of our family, you wouldn’t force your children to stay outside all the time, why would we?” Tom replied, reaching over to the can of mealy worms on the book shelf behind him, the duck began wiggling in his arms, making a ruckus.

“Cause it’s a duck.” She rolled her eyes, Tom had to take deep breath, he set Wade back down on the floor.

“I’ll put your things in the guest room.” Tom told her grabbing her luggage and heading up stairs. He sent you text asking if you knew how long she was planning on staying, but you didn’t reply. He looked at his watch realizing that you were probably on your way home.

He was on his way down the stairs when he heard Kay scream, and took two at time hoping like hell Wade was okay. He rounded the edge of the stairs, Wade was perched in her purse, hissing again at her as she tried to get near it. Tom tried to hide his smile as he walked over and gingerly lift the angry bird out, setting him down a ways from it. Tom could see the insides were wet as he went to hand her the item, Wade had peed in her Coach leather purse.

“Sorry, Wade has accidents when he gets overly excited.” Tom smirked, you opened the front door just she was about to make a comment.

“Sister darling!” She exclaimed walking over to give you hug, however not before Wade rushed in front her, tripping her up. You stifled a laugh, picking him up off the ground. The duck nuzzled under your chin as you brought him up to your chest.

“Heyya, Kay.” You smiled, grabbing a bug from the tin and giving it to the content avian. “How long are you going to be staying? I thought you wouldn’t be here till like a month from now.”

“Well Matt agreed with me that I need to come celebrate my little sister getting married.” She gushed walking over and giving you a side hug.

“Lucky man.” Tom muttered under his breath, you looked over to him and he gave you a sweet smile.

“I see you’ve met Wade.” You said, placing the duck back to the ground.

“Yeah, it peed in my bag.” She replied tersely.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to, usually he pecks at the back door when he needs to go potty.” You explained, accentuating he every time you said it. You walked into the kitchen behind the slightly feathered animal, pulling out stuff to make dinner.

“We should go out for dinner.” She stated, you looked over your shoulder at her, giving her a sweet smile.

“Sis, we have the meat ready to grill, Tom and I don’t go out to eat as much as you and Matt do. Plus, going out for dinner is always hassle especially right after a movie he’s done has come out.” You explained, grabbing everything your needed before heading to the backdoor, Tom opening it as you neared. Wade waddling out ahead of you, head turning back and forth checking to make sure everything is as it should be.

The evening wore on, and you caught up with your sister. Which meant listening to her talk about the new vacation home her and her husband purchased. How well her kids were excelling in sports and music, and on and on about this that and the other. Meanwhile, Tom had taken Wade for a swim in the pool, and truth be told you were slightly jealous of them.

“I can’t believe Tommy hasn’t bought you an underground pool.” She remarked watching as Wade flapped his wings in the water as Tom pick him up.

“Kay, he hates being called Tommy, you know that. And I don’t want an underground pool, I like having a yard and we don’t get enough hot days to warrant one.” You replied looking back over to her.

“Still, I think the two of you should invest in one, it brings up the marketability of your home.” She smiled, you let out a heavy sigh.

“Look, I love this house and I’m not intending on moving anytime soon. It’s perfect for Tom, Wade and I.” You told her, she chuckled as she reached over and patted your hand.

“I know but one day it won’t be just you and Tom.” She replied, Tom came up just as you were about ready to snap, setting the slight damp towel wrapped duck in your lap.

“Darling, it’s getting late..” he leaned down giving you soft kiss. “I have a couple of things to run over with Luke in the morning. I’ll let you ladies talk, I wish you both a good night.”

You looked up at him with pleading eyes to rescue you, but all he did was wink before turning and walking back into the house. Wade curled up in your lap, keeping your sister in sight. He let out a quack directed at her, his remaining feathers bristling at her.

“It’s kind of cute.” She said looking at your grumpy companion.

“HE is massively cute.” You said, not bothering to smile as you stood cradling the bird.

“Anyway, I was thinking we could go over wedding plans while I’m here.” She remarked as she followed you into the house. That was the last thing you wanted was your sister taking over your wedding, if she had it her way everything would cost a fortune and still look cheap.

“I didn’t catch how long you were staying.” You told her looking over your shoulder at her as you set Wade in his dog bed.

“I don’t know, Matt said take as long as I want.” She perked up, grinning.

“Wonderful. Anyway, I am tired myself I had to get up early to be down at the bakery so I think I’ll head to bed as well.” You explained to her, your sister nodding as she headed up the stairs.

“I’ll see you in the morning, I can’t wait to go over some ideas.” She half yelled down the stairs as you entered your room. Tom was leaned up against the head board, bed side lamp on. His glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, he set the script he was reading down and looked up at you.

“Thought you were going to sleep mister, thanks for ditching me with my sister. What happened to the knight in shining armor?” You questioned, changed into pjs.

“There are not enough knights to slay that dragon.” He shot back, you giggled as you climbed in bed next to him. “Did she say how long she was in town for?”

“Matt told her to stay as long she likes.” You told him, laying your head on his chest.

“Looks like he gets a vacation.” Tom quipped earning another chuckle from you as you smack his chest.

“Thomas.”

About then a blood curling scream echoed through the house. Both you and your fiancé shot out of bed running to the stairs. Wade came running down the upstairs hall, wings straight back, mouth open, feathers trailing in his wake. You sister came barreling out of the room behind him, her face red, and brows cross. Tom scooped the bird up, folding him tight to his chest.

“That beast poop on me!” She screamed, it was then you noticed the dark slick stain on her night shirt.

“That’s my boy.” Tom whispered behind you, stroking the duck under the chin. “Let’s go get you a big fat bug for that.”

“Kay, I’m sorry Wade pooped on you but do not ever call him a beast. We don’t generally have people he doesn’t know stay the night.” You explained following her back into her room. “You haven’t exactly been kind of to him since you came and he is just expressing how upset he was.”

“Fine.” She replied tersely changing her shirt. “I’ll try to be nicer to it.”

“Him! Wade’s and a him!” You almost shouted through your frustrations.

“Look, y/n, I’m tired and don’t feel like being yelled at.” She said defeat in her voice. You turned and left her, knowing anything after this point would be useless to argue.

When you returned to your room you saw Tom laying on his back, Wade snuggled up on him. It was adorable to see them like that.

“Wade.” You sighed crawling in bed, you saw the duck peep open his eye and shut it tightly. “I know you’re awake.”

“Darling, You can’t be mad at him, look at that face.” Tom said, giving you a charming smile.

“Don’t think I didn’t hear you in the hall.” You remarked shutting the light off.

@kitkatkl @octobermermaid @ajosieface @10robins @instantnoodlese @coffeebooksandfandom @thisismysecrethappyplace @devilbat

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston fluff #tom hiddleston one shot #tom hiddleston x you #tom hiddleston x reader #wadetheduck

[shewhowantsmouseears]

Shattered, Chapter 5

Notes:As always, big thanks to my amazing editors Drucilla and BlueShifted!

Originally "Mother" was going to be Mortimer, but I decided that would be too creepy. Also, certain lines should give away who she is, eh?

Summary: As Minnie begins her journey, she discovers beautiful treasures, but may fall prey to the dangers beneath.

Minnie was cold, endlessly cold, and she couldn't move. She lay with her back on the ice, the cold eating up her toes, then her feet, her ankles, her legs... every nerve in her body screamed in agony before going completely numb. She searched for her voice to cry for help, but now she felt the cold in her lungs, pricking her insides, clawing its way up her throat, and then she felt a pair of hands on her neck , the Snow Queen -

“But you... just... wouldn't... learn... your... PLACE!”

She woke up with a shriek, startling Ratface so much he jumped into the air, flapping his wings erratically. “Oh, me, oh my!” He then alighted on the side of the boat, looking around for whatever enemy had suddenly approached. Once he realized it was nothing and no one, he sighed hard, rubbing his feathers on his chest. “Sheesh... you nearly gave me a heart attack, pretty girl! You intend to scare me to death?”

Minnie didn't say anything, breathing hard, trying to remember where she was and why she was here. Slowly she touched her neck, relieved that it had been a nightmare – and hoping it wasn't a prediction of things to come. “I-I'm sorry...” she murmured, taking a long look at her surroundings. “I have bad dreams every now and then.” The boat had stopped, nudged between several large rocks on a grassy shore. The water still kept churning, but the boat would go no further. “I think this is far as we can go.”

“'Every now and then',” Ratface repeated with a grumble as Minnie collected her satchel. “If you do this every time you sleep, I'll fly away right now, I swear it. Nightmares aren't supposed to last that long. You're supposed to be an adult. You ought to do something about it.”

Minnie hoisted her satchel over her shoulder before sparing him a look. “Like what?”

Ratface huffed. “Must I think of everything?”

Minnie quickly decided Ratface liked to complain for the sake of complaining. He'd never fit in if he lived in the village. She climbed out of the boat, and walked through the chilly water before making it to solid ground. It was a little painful, since she had no shoes. She almost called Ratface lucky for not having nightmares, but remembered his rage for that word, and tried to form the thought in a different way. “Do you have trouble sleeping, Ratface?”

“I don't like to sleep.” Ratface watched her until she was on dry land, and then flew to her shoulder, perching perfectly. He was a bit heavy, but Minnie didn't mind. “I find it to be terribly lazy. I bore easily.”

“But everyone needs to sleep. How do you get your rest if you don't sleep?”

“How do you mind your own business if you keep yapping on?”

Goodness gracious – talking with Ratface was like going two steps forward and one step back. No wonder the bird had been all by himself when Minnie came upon him. She wondered if anyone else could stand him if he kept going back and forth with his answers. She didn't want to think this way – she should be grateful for any help she had – but he could stand to be a little nicer. The old standard from the village kept her from saying so - What was the point? If she was grateful, then why make things bothersome? But the thought lingered on her mind, and bounced on her tongue without ever leaving her mouth.

They walked on the greenest grass Minnie had ever seen, and her eyes kept going down, marveling at its beauty. “Do you think anyone would mind if I took some of this grass with me? It's so nice to look at.”

“Maybe we'll need it in case a cow needs a gift,” Ratface said with a snicker.

Minnie bent down to snatch a handful. “That would be nice. It could give us some milk in exchange.”

Ratface stopped snickering. “You don't know what sarcasm is, do you?” When Minnie merely blinked at him, he ran his feathers down his face. “No wonder I can't get a rise out of you. How do you expect to survive in this world if you can't stand up for yourself? I bet I could smack your face and you'd apologize for it.”

Minnie placed the grass inside her satchel and continued walking. “I don't think you'd hurt me... at least, not unless you had a good reason for it.” She wished they never came upon such a reason, but one could never be entirely sure.

“And that's another thing. You trust far too easily. How do you know I'm not leading you into a trap?”

“I don't think you are. Are you?”

The raven made a frustrated “harrrumph” deep in his throat, which Minnie thought was kind of cute. It reminded her of when she first started feeding Figaro – he'd inch closer, then retreat if Minnie moved, trying to pretend he wasn't interested. Perhaps like the kitten, Ratface just needed to be won over with simple kindness. She moved to gently brush the top of his head with her finger.

“I am not a pet,” he growled, but he didn't stop her.

They walked on for what felt like many a mile, Minnie's feet aching terribly. Just as her legs would shake and she would wonder if she was fit to collapse, Ratface would suddenly complain that she was moving too fast and she needed to stop before he emptied his stomach. He demanded she sit so he could clean his feathers which she “ruffled up with her pigeon fingers”, which took some time. Funny how when she was able to walk again, her body felt better. This happened quite a few times.

At midday, with Minnie's stomach beginning to growl, she was about to stop to eat the vegetables she brought along, when the sight of something miraculous destroyed her hunger. “Oh!” she gasped, “Ratface, look at that!”

“Must I?” Ratface jumped off of her shoulder just as Minnie began to sprint forward, still amazed at what she was seeing.

There, in this endless green, lay a garden of hundreds of different colored flowers, the likes of which Minnie had never seen before. These were even beyond the boundaries of Mickey's books, with petals of varying shapes and mixed colors that blew her imagination way. They circled around a quaint house with a rusty red rooftop, and the windows were hidden by velvet red curtains. Minnie paid no mind to the house, going from flower to flower to marvel at their appearance. “I've never seen anything like these!” Minnie declared, running her fingers along soft purple buds. “Mickey would love these... Maybe I can take some of them with me.”

“We shouldn't be here, pretty girl,” Ratface said, now perched on the edge of the roof. “We must get going.”

Minnie knew he was right, but everywhere she turned there was a new flower to adore, and she found it difficult to tear herself away. “But they're all so beautiful! Are these kinds of flowers that we'll see as we go to the Snow Queen?”

“You won't know if you don't get moving,” Ratface replied, but his usual barbed demeanor had sharpened, and he paced along the edge, trying to urge Minnie along, his feathers tightly slicked. “Flowers are flowers, they're just plants, now stop planting yourself in one place and go!”

Was he being rude again for the sake of being rude? Minnie was getting tired of that attitude – and that's when the door began to loudly creak open. Minnie stopped where she was, as did Ratface, as a pale hand emerged from the darkness within.

“Is someone there?” the owner of the hand whispered.

Ratface jerked his head to the side urgently, trying to signal that Minnie should get out of there – but that would be so disrespectful! Minnie placed her hands together, hoping she hadn't disturbed the owner of the household. “I'm sorry, miss. We were just passing through.”

“Oh, my, my, my.” The door then opened all the way, and out stepped a lovely older woman, smiling serenely at Minnie. Her dark hair curled up around her shoulders, swaying with her as she walked out into the sunshine. Her dress was as red as the rose tucked behind Minnie's ear, with yellow trimmings along the sleeves and bottom. “It's been ages since I've had company. What's a little thing like you doing here all by your lonesome?”

“I'm not by my lonesome,” Minnie explained, pointing to the bird who slapped his wing to his face. “Ratface, come say hello.”

The woman's kind face instantly hardened, and when she glared at Ratface, Minnie nearly thought the raven would molt. “I despise birds,” she hissed, clutching her arms. “They're filthy creatures, rats with wings... what an appropriate name.” Ratface blew a raspberry, but didn't speak. The woman then instantly became all smiles again as she approached Minnie. “But enough about him. Who are you, who trespassed into my garden, dear one?”

Minnie felt a sting of guilt. “Oh, I... I'm Minnie, miss. I really didn't mean to trespass. I should get going...”

“Nonsense!” The woman placed her hand on Minnie's shoulder. “You just got here, why leave so soon?  Look at you, you have no shoes! Which I guess I should be grateful about, since you would have destroyed my garden otherwise with all your stomping around.” She laughed a bit, pushing Minnie. “It's a joke, dear.”

Was it? What was the punchline? “I... I guess it couldn't hurt to rest my feet a bit.”

“Exactly. Come inside, I'll make you some tea, we'll chat, you'll relax, and if you want to go, you'll feel much better about everything.” She didn't seem to be giving Minnie much choice about it, given how forcefully she was shoving Minnie into the house.

Minnie cast one more look at Ratface, whose emerald eyes seemed to be... sad? “What about my friend?”

“Friend? That's no friend,” the woman scoffed, shutting the door behind them. “What kind of friend treats you like that? I couldn't help but overhear you earlier. He's always insulting you, isn't he? I bet he was just using you, playing with his prey. What an awful animal.” The inside of the house was much larger than the outside should have been, and Minnie looked back and forth between the interior and the door, confused. There were many rooms, and the thin, red carpet led to each one like an arrow. Shelves lined every wall, and on each shelf was a porcelain doll. Each doll had a unique dress, and a unique style of hair, but they all wore the same dull, lifeless expression that stared into nothing.

“Let me get that for you,” the woman said as she slid Minnie's satchel off her back.

Minnie whipped around, surprised at how easily it came off. “B-But that's my-”

“Relax, dear! Do you think I'm a thief, after I've let you into my house out of the goodness of my heart?”

The younger girl felt herself shrinking. “N-No, of course not, miss, but... there are some very important things in there.”

“So we shall take very important care of them.” Which apparently meant hanging it on an empty coat rack. “And enough of this 'miss' stuff. You can call me Mother.”

“Mother?” Minnie repeated, perplexed by such a title. But it would be rude to say no, wouldn't it? “Thank you... Mother.”

Mother's smile grew, and she slid out a small trinket from her sleeve – a glass comb. “Much better. Now, stay still – if you're going to stay here, you can't look like too much of a mess.” She bent over and ran the comb through Minnie's hair. “There, now you don't look half as strange! Another joke, dear, do lighten up.”

Again, Minnie failed to see what was so funny, but... didn't seem to mind as much, this time. Perhaps Mother earned her name, because that was a very motherly touch. “Thank you, Mother.”

Mother tucked the comb back into her sleeve, and the two went into a modest dining room, where Minnie was encouraged to sit on a plush sofa where piping hot tea and strawberry scones were already waiting. To Minnie's weary stomach, it was like being at a fabulous banquet, and she sighed blissfully as the warm tea nestled in her body. “You have such a lovely house, Mother. None of the houses in my village look like this, not even the Mayor's.”

Mother went around the room, propping up any of the dolls that seemed to slide askew. “You must come from an incredibly ugly village. I can't stand to have ugly things in my house. If I were you, I'd never go back to such a disgusting place. I can't believe your mother would let you leave.”

Minnie looked down at her reflection in the tea. “I... I didn't tell her. I ran away from home.” Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Ratface at the window, but quickly looked away, not wanting to reveal his location to Mother. Her stomach tightened – it felt wrong to hide Ratface, but at the same time, she didn't want to upset this woman who opened her door to her. It was an odd series of conflicting thoughts. Why had been Ratface been so stubborn? Was he jealous?

“Oh, you poor thing.” Mother sat beside Minnie, taking out the comb again. “She must have been a terrible mother for you to leave without a single word.”

“She's...” Minnie's grip on the tea cup tightened. “She's not... I just didn't want to burden her. I don't think she'd understand what I'm trying to do.” Was it wrong to leave without saying anything? Would Mama and Papa have fought tooth and nail to keep her in the village? Or would they have let her go without any effort? She had been so sure about her choice when first making it, but now...?

Mother began to comb Minnie's hair again, over and over. “But for her not to even notice you were leaving? That's not a good mother. I'd never let my daughters leave.”

The comb felt so soothing in Minnie's hair, and Minnie was thankful to have someone attend to her so tenderly. Mother's daughters must have cared for her very much, so Minnie thought. Mother began to hum a light lullaby, and Minnie closed her eyes, not as hungry anymore. Yes, Mother was very good to her. When was the last time Mama did anything like this? When was the last time Mama reached out for her?

… Didn't... Mama reach out to her... once?

Marcus, open the door!

… Who was Marcus?

The tea cup felt heavy in Minnie's hands, and it spilled on her dress, waking her up. “Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry!” Thankfully it hadn't gotten on the couch or floor, but when Minnie tried to stand up, her legs felt rigid – she wobbled before finding balance, as if her knees were refusing to bend.

“Quite all right, dear.” Mother stood up. “Some people think clumsiness is cute. I'm not some people, but let's assume it was said.” She took the cup from Minnie's hand, placing it aside. “We'll get rid of your rags and dress you up in something nicer.”

Minnie looked up, taken aback by such generosity, and smiled. “You're too kind, Mother.”

“I am, aren't I? Don't worry about it. It's like I said – I hate having ugly things in my house, and this just works out, doesn't it?” Again, she held Minnie by the shoulder and pushed her into another room -  a walk-in closet full of shimmering dresses, of all the colors of the rainbow – just like the garden, Minnie mused, wondering if there was any connection. Her legs still felt funny, but maybe she'd just been sitting down for too long. There didn't seem to be any reason to worry about it.

“Let me see...” Mother went through the hanging dresses, trying to pick the right one. “Which one would be best for you?”

“I like red,” Minnie offered.

“Dear, it is so adorable when you offer an opinion no one asked for!” Mother laughed, lightly patting Minnie on the head as if she were a child. “You remind me of so many of my other daughters.  All of them so eager to please, always happy to do whatever I asked of them.” She resumed the dress hunt, going with green pastel with fluffy sleeves. “That's the great thing about being a mother. You give and you give without asking anything in return. Now, put this on.”

Minnie held out her hands to take it – but stopped. The dress, while nice, wasn't made for traveling. The long skirt would drag down in the dirt, and the giant sleeves would make sleeping difficult. Traveling – she couldn't afford to stay here that long, could she? “I... It's very lovely, Mother, but is it okay if I keep the clothes I have?”

Mother raised an eyebrow, still holding the dress up. “If you hate it that much, why don't you spit it on it?”

“No! No, no, no!” Minnie flailed, though her arms were starting to feel odd too. “I don't hate it! It's... I have to travel a long way, and I don't think it will help. You should save something that nice for your daughters.”

“Oh, I would, but they're so... terribly ungrateful.” Mother sighed as she hung it back up. “I give, and they take, I give, and they take... do I ask for so much? A little company, is that so selfish of me to want? It gets so lonely in this house of mine, so anyone who stops by is like a savior at my darkest hour.” Another sigh, longer and louder this time, an arm to her forehead. “Don't look at me that way. Now I'm the bad guy.”

“No, no, you're not, you're not the bad guy...” Minnie's stomach hurt. She didn't want the dress, but she didn't want to hurt Mother either. “What if I clean up my clothes myself? I'll do all the work.” She walked out the closet – and stumbled, because, surely, they just left the living room, but now they were in a room that contained nothing but dolls, floor to ceiling. Three square windows allowed sunshine to highlight their blank faces, and a single wooden step-stool sat in the middle. “Wasn't...?”

“I get it now.” Mother lightly pat Minnie's head. “You're so exhausted, you can't think straight! What am I doing, trying to dress you up when you can't even stand up? Have a seat, we'll make things right.”

Minnie sat down on the stool, feeling as if all the eyes in the room were on her. Her knees still wouldn't bend, and she felt awkward in this position, until she felt the comb in her hair again. “There, there,” said Mother. “Don't you feel better now?”

She did, really. Much better. “I'm sorry for making such a fuss, Mother.”

“At least you acknowledged it. So many of my daughters refused to apologize. I don't know where I went wrong.” Her hand stayed on Minnie's shoulder, the comb sliding through, over and over. “But we can always start over. A good mother never lets her daughter go.”

A good mother... Was Minnie's mother a good mother? … Didn't she call her mother something else..?

“And a good daughter never leaves her mother.”

… A good daughter... left... a place... where...?

“We'll just get rid of everything ugly, so the only thing that remains is beautiful.”

Minnie's eyelids felt heavy, and so did the rest of her body. Soon all she could feel was the tender comb, Mother's embrace, and the rigidness in her legs climbed up. She thought she heard banging on the window, which was impossible, because there wasn't... anyone else here... It was just... Minnie and Mother...

“For starters, we'll get rid of this vile weed.” Mother's bony fingers took the rose from Minnie's hair, and lightly tossed it to the floor -

“Will you be my bride?”

Like water bursting from a dam, everything flooded back into Minnie's brain at once, and she shrieked, “No!” diving into the floor to catch the flower with her hands, knocking the step-stool over. How could she have forgotten that important question? She tried to get up – and couldn't. “I can't... I can't feel my legs!”

The middle window burst open, glass falling to the floor, as Ratface had used his entire body as a battering ram. Ignoring the glass shards in his feathers, he flew at Mother, pecking at her face, “I won't let you do it, not again!”

Mother grabbed Ratface by the throat, and threw him to the floor as if he were nothing more than a rag-doll. “Stay out of my way, traitor! You made your peace! She's going to make a lovely addition to my collection.”

Minnie pushed herself onto her back, and was able to see that her legs had become – porcelain! Shiny and solid, and as her eyes flew to each doll, she saw what could be her fate. Here she thought the Snow Queen was the only frightening thing in this world – but no, the world had plenty of other horrors in store. How long had this gone on? How many girls had been in Minnie's place, their legs nearly gone as fear overcame their senses? “You... all of these girls! How could you?” How could Minnie? She nearly let it happen! What had she done?

“I'm assuming you mean morally, and not physically.” Mother scoffed, kicking her foot into Ratface's belly. “Don't try to fight it. My comb contains a shard from the Snow Queen... a little of my own magic, and it becomes the perfect tool to help me keep all my daughters. All of them tried to run away... but now they don't remember where they were running to. And why should they? The outside world is a dangerous place, and they're perfectly safe here. After all, Mother knows best.”

“It's not too late! You won't have her!” Ratface tried to get up, but Mother kicked him in the stomach, sending him rolling, laughing even harder at his attempt.

Hundreds of questions were flooding Minnie's mind, but she went deaf to them, compared to the fate of the injured bird in the corner. “Stop it!” But what could she do? Her legs were useless, and if that comb touched her again, she knew she'd lose the rest of her body – and even then, the next poor girl to stumble upon this place would be lost to the same fate. What could someone as weak and helpless as her do? Mother wasn't even looking at her, no doubt expecting her to give up.

… Would that... be such a bad thing? Minnie's eyes rested on the comb in Mother's fingers. Maybe...

Just as Mother was about to kick Ratface again, Minnie cried out once more, “I won't fight anymore! If you leave him alone, I'll do whatever you want!”

Now this got Mother's attention, just as she pulled back her foot again. She raised an eyebrow, and then smiled that same sweet, venomous smile as if all was right in the world. “There now, see? Everything is as it should be. Was there ever really a need for all this fuss?” She calmly walked to Minnie's side, and Ratface raised his head, his green eyes wide with horror, then closing them in despair. As if this was all too familiar.

Mother slowly helped Minnie sit up, running her fingers through Minnie's hair. “What a good girl you are. You'll be the shining jewel of my collection... until someone prettier comes along. And, let's face it, it's not exactly a reach, dear. Oh, I'm joking! None of you ever learn how to take a joke.” She tsked, and then held out the comb. “A few more strokes ought to do it... just relax...” Minnie felt the comb in her hair -

And with the remaining strength left in her body, she turned sharply, and snatched the comb with her teeth!

Mother shrieked - “What are you doing?!” - and smacked Minnie across the face, but even as Minnie fell, she would not let go of the comb. Ratface quickly lifted his head, shocked, and Minnie bit down on the comb, hard, hard, hard – her mouth ached, her teeth hurt, and Mother kept smacking her, screaming at her to stop – Minnie felt cracks forming in the comb, and saw cracks forming along Mother's lovely skin -

“STOP IT, YOU WRETCHED GIRL!” Mother's hands came around Minnie's neck, trying to strangle her, but her grip was weakening with every crack of the comb. “STOP IT NOW! YOU UGLY CHILD, YOU HORRIBLE DAUGHTER, NO ONE ELSE WILL TAKE YOU IN!” Yet for all the pain, Minnie wouldn't stop, - this was not her mother, this was not anyone's mother, this thing had to be stopped - until she heard and felt a terrible snap.

The comb split in two, and Minnie felt something sharp fall down her throat, spitting out the two broken halves. Mother gagged, and then clawed at the air, cracks covering her entire body until she shattered – crumbling into dust that settled silently on the floor, leaving nothing behind. Minnie fell to the floor, her legs flesh again, but as she breathed, there was a chill in her chest.

“Minnie!” Ratface scrambled to her side, trying to help her up, his eyes checking her all over. “Pretty girl, are you all right?”

“I...” Minnie touched her chest, the chill refusing to leave. Her eyes felt strange – she looked at Ratface, and his worry increased tenfold.

“Your eyes... they're blue,” he said softly, touching her cheek with his feathers. “You... you must have swallowed the shard that was in the comb.”

One shard to freeze your mind. That was what the Snow Queen had said. Minnie lifted her arm, but didn't see any blue veins on her skin, as when it had happened to Mickey. Was it because she had taken the shard a different way? “What... what will happen to me now?”

“I'm... not sure.” Ratface swallowed, backing up once. “My only guess is... it might consume you from the inside. We have to get to the Snow Queen, her power controls the shards. We have to get there as soon as possible, before we find out what else it does.”

Minnie certainly didn't want to stay, but as she climbed to her feet, she couldn't help but gaze at the trapped dolls. “What about them? I thought... if I broke the comb...”

“They were still affected by the shard...” Ratface shook his head sadly. “Like I said... she controls the shards. We might be able to free them, if we can make it to the Snow Queen.”

It hurt to look at all the lost girls, to know that she could do nothing more for them. Minnie wiped her face, and then turned around, trying to address “everyone” at once. “I'll... I'll do my best for you. I promise. I'm going to get Mickey back... and I'll get all of you back too.” If she was going to do one impossible thing, why not add another impossible thing to the list? Why couldn't they do both? “Please... just be patient a little while longer.” With one final bow to the dolls, Minnie picked up Ratface, and held him to her chest. “Are you hurt?”

Ratface lowered his head shamefully. “... No one's... ever come this far. I've... I've tried so many times to warn them, but they all... they give up, because the water won't flow, or the weather's too cold, or they end up like this... they all give up, one way or another.” What made Minnie so different? Or would there be an obstacle in her way that would make her give up too? Why did he keep trying?

Minnie held Ratface even closer, but the chill in her chest remained. She had a dreadful feeling it wouldn't leave for some time... then they had better get moving. “Let's see how far we get. Come along, Ratface.” There was still more she wanted to ask, to know, but she didn't want to push Ratface away by asking it too soon. If it was important, she'd find out. There was still quite a way to go.

She returned to the front of the house, picked up her satchel, and left. Ratface climbed onto her shoulder – strange, Minnie noted, how brutally Mother had hurt him, but within minutes he was perfectly all right -  and they both cast one more look at the house before walking on.

Minnie thought of Mama and Papa, and how they had done what they thought was best to protect her. Yet there were things they couldn't protect her from. If they had known this, would Papa had shoved her out into the frost that night so long ago? She thought of Mama's hysterical crying when she woke up, and the years of silence that followed.

“Ratface?”

“Mmm? What now?”

“I'm sorry for not listening to you.”

“Hmph.” He didn't look at her. “I suppose... if I do say things, I could stand to say them clearer, next time.”

“I would like that very much.”

“I said if. Don't get your hopes up, pretty girl.”

Hope... Minnie walked on through the bright green grass. She knew of the word, hoping for good weather, hoping for good grades, hoping to see Mickey's smile.

But those kinds of hopes felt much, much smaller compared to the warmth in Minnie's heart -  the warmth that, for now, kept the chill at bay.

#disney #fanfic #shattered #minnie mouse #ratface

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Howdy Clan! If you're still taking headcanon request would you mind doing one with the Android gals (North, Kara, Chloe, and of course the Traci girlfriends!) Helping their winged s/o (or friend) shed there feathers by gently running their hands through them? Like how do they react to their s/o soft wings or do they keep a few feathers after? Sorry if this is a bit odd I just really like the thought of a winged s/o... - 🐑 anon

Oh sure! I think this time instead of just having a list I’ll make like tiny little ficlets. This also gives me a chance to write their characters better :)

Tracis

“You sure this doesn’t hurt, [y/n]?” Tracy asked you as she carefully ran her fingers through your wings, watching the loose feathers fall into your lap.

“Nah,” you shook your head. “It just makes my arms ache a little, but you guys are definitely helping the molting process go by quicker.” Then you looked to Stacy, who was picking up a feather and studying it with curiosity. “You can keep it if you want. Make it into a nice necklace or something.”

The brown-haired android blinked in surprise, although she smiled at you and simply nodded. “In that case could I take a couple more so we have a feather necklace for each of us?”

“Sure. I think that would be nice.”

Kara

“Awh, Alice..you don’t have to do that.” With a tiny smile, you saw Alice run around the living room, picking up the feathers that had fallen to the floor and tossing them in the trash.

You felt a hand gently brush through your wings, and you looked to see Kara beside you. “They’re very soft. Almost like a fuzzy blanket,” she chuckled.

At her compliment your face heated up slightly, as you weren’t use to people saying such kind things about your wings. “Th-Thank you, honey. Sorry for leaving a mess around the house. I didn’t think my molting period was coming so soon.”

“That’s okay.” She plucked out a feather, holding it in her hands and feeling the tip of it. Even though it looked ugly in your eyes, you could tell that in hers..it was just as beautiful as your brand new feathers would be.

North

“..you’d rather stay here and listen to me mope about my feathers than go with the others?”

“Don’t think I’m gonna leave you to wallow in misery, sweetie,” North huffed as she ran her hand through your wings. “Besides it’s not like Markus will be gone the whole day. He’s just gonna have a couple boring talks with the humans.”

You smiled a bit, although you took note of her dull tone at the last statement. It was clear that she wanted to see less talk and more action when it came to rebuilding Detroit and granting androids the rights they fought so hard for.

With a soft chuckle you moved your other wing towards her arm, gently brushing her skin with the tip of one of your feather. “Hey, stop iiiit,” she whined, lightly pushing your wing away as she began blushing blue. But that just gave you even more encouragement to tickle her arm again.

Oh, you’ll be having a lot of fun with this.

Chloe

“I’m still amazed that this wasn’t something Elijah created,” Chloe remarked as she felt your wings, her fingertips gently gliding along the loose feathers as they fell onto the bed.

“Yep..you must be pretty stunned there are creatures besides humans, androids, and animals out there, huh?”

“It’s certainly intriguing.” Then she plucked out a feather, examining it for a few moments, before she looked up and smiled at you. “Would it be alright if I kept some of these in a vase?”

“Those?” You quirked an eyebrow. “But look at them..they’re all dull and messy and-”

“They look perfectly fine in my eyes,” she gently cut you off, leaning forward to kiss your cheek. “Just like every other part of you is, [y/n]~”

#clanask #sheep anon #dbh traci #dbh kara #dbh north #dbh chloe #dbh x reader #detroit become human x reader

[blind3dbylight]

Adventures in pest control: FINAL BATTLE

This time, I tell my horror stories about the worst little blood-feeders I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with: bed bugs. These little fuckers have given me numerous headaches in the three years I’ve worked in pest control, and I’ve killed thousands of the wretched little things. If they get good and dug in, they will get into fucking anything--wood, electronics, you own it, they’ll get into it, and it can take months before they are finally put down for good. They are some of the most elusive insects in this business and I hate them with nearly every fiber of my being.

So here’s some stories. Sleep tight!

Light vs. Bed Bugs: ROUND ONE

This was roughly 2.5 years ago, shortly after I got hired on full time.

It’s a six-unit apartment building. First apartment I walked into already nearly floored me--there were already thousands of dead bugs scattered everywhere. Sinks, bathtub, floors, I mean fucking everywhere from when we did the initial setup. I thankfully didn’t find any live ones, but goddamn--what happened here?

I only went back once after that, but the landlord was kind of a dick and was super picky about everything.

Light vs. Bed Bugs: ROUND TWO

This was around a year or two ago. I’d run that route for about a year before transferring to my current branch.

This is a set of buildings owned by one guy. Remember that town I said I wanted to forget? These fucking buildings are why. Half the time it wasn’t the landlord, it was the tenants being uncooperative. They never prepped properly and so there was always only so much I could do--and we were going back to every one of the buildings constantly. I wasted a lot of time trying to get the tenants to lift a goddamn finger without being a dick about it, and they always ended up with more bugs.

One building in particular took the cake. It was a nine or so unit building, and this one apartment had the little fuckers all the way up to the false ceiling. There were fecal spots all in the slats of the wall paneling, cast skins everywhere (bed bugs will molt as they grow through their nymphal stages), and everywhere I looked I seemed to just find more of the fuckers. I ended up going absolutely nuts with liquid crack-and-crevice, and blasting them with aerosol on sight. I almost single-handedly got them under control, though my former SM did go along with me occasionally to lend a hand.

But this wasn’t even the worst of it.

Light vs. Bed Bugs: ROUND THREE

This was a year and a half ago.

It’s another apartment building, kind of tucked out of the way near a school and some other small businesses. This is another case of “...something terrible has happened here”.

The tenant was apparently a bit troubled as it was, but when I got in, it was like a fucking bed bug death bomb had gone off. There were, again, thousands of dead bugs and cast skins littered everywhere--primarily under the bed, which had so much fecal spotting on it it was like large stains on the damn bed. All I could think was “how much fucking material did we basically dump into this place???” As with round one, I didn’t find anything live there and it was the result of the initial round of treatments, but goddamn.

Light vs. Bed Bugs: ROUND FOUR A CHALLENGER APPEARS !!

This was somewhat recent, within the past year: and it involves TWO different species.

It’s a large apartment building, middle of the town it was in. I was to go to the top floor left, where I was warned by the property manager that the tenant was a little old lady who wasn’t really all there.

Walking in, the first thing I noticed were our old pals, German roaches, in the kitchen. She didn’t really clean well, so not surprising that they were thriving in there.

That wasn’t the worst part. This woman’s bed was not only loaded with bed bugs--it had the fucking roaches living in it too. Bed bugs and roaches all living in the fucking bed at once. It’s one of the few times I’ve ever wanted so badly to loudly exclaim, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST”.

A quick roach lesson. Many species of cockroach, German roaches included, will actually prey on bed bugs occasionally. So what was likely going on here is that the bed bugs would feed on the tenant in her sleep--and then the roaches would feast on the bed bugs. Turtles all the way down.

She also got them spread to other units because she wouldn’t properly bag up her clothes and linens--I found the fuckers in the hallways because of this. Bed bugs won’t go too far away from where they feed on you, so I knew her dragging stuff around and not bagging things up right were why they were there.

Needless to say, this apartment building was quite a battle. But we got them under control eventually.

The property manager turned out to be one cool lady around my age and we’re still friends to this day. Almost dated her, actually.

Light vs. Bed Bugs: ROUND FIVE

This ran for a solid year and lasted until one final throwdown a year ago, prior to my transfer to my current branch.

This was a three-story apartment building that had been dealing with bed bugs in all three units. The top and bottom floors weren’t nearly as bad as the middle, which had a moderate level of activity.

That wasn’t the problem, though. The problem was that nobody could figure out where the hell they were travelling through or how they just kept coming back time and again.

This account was one of the most difficult I have ever been to, because I had to go back weekly just to be able to keep up with the fucking things. The upper tenants were also always loud and rude about it, though they would calm down when things were quiet.

But the bed bugs were persistent little fuckers and they’d just start showing up coming out of any stupid little crevice around the kitchen and bathroom areas in this and the bottom floor. The second floor would have em in their furniture because they either weren’t keeping an eye on them or since they didn’t have bed frames. They were lazy with prep too.

This went on for months, and I often had to go quite a bit out of my way to accommodate it, sometimes driving an hour from the main town I was in (the shithole I hated so much) to go do this one account, then an hour back to go try to finish up. I was miserable just from this one fucking account.

Eventually, our technical manager (and all around sharp motherfucker--nothing, and I do mean nothing, gets past this guy) took notice. I learned from reading the notes on the account one day that he saw my SM and I were on top of it, but that we’d been doing this for quite a while and still couldn’t get them out. He offered to send another guy from technical to help us get a third set of eyes on the issue and try to get more insight as to how the fuckers were still there.

And it was a fucking throwdown. Myself, my SM, the residential SM, and the technical guy all showed up, ready to fucking throw pest control hands with these little cocksuckers. We finally were able to remove a wall panel that led into the plumbing of the bathrooms--which I should mention connected all three units.

The little fuckers had been hiding in there the whole time, and had overwintered there. As it was newly spring at that time, they were out and moving again. We slammed them with everything we had in one big three-hour slugfest. Liquid, dust, aerosol, nothing was sacred at that point.

It paid off. After I transferred, I was later told by the guy who now services that account that our throwdown was the turning point. Activity had dropped severely after that until finally, they were gone. That account was the one that truly taught my just how tenacious bed bugs are.

But we have one more fight in store.

Light vs. Bed Bugs: A FINALE CHAOTIC

This one is quite recent--and a bit personal. Yes, the pest control guy got bed bugs in his own home. You can understand why this would strike a nerve.

When I moved into my current place, not a couple weeks in, my roommates and I noticed we were finding ourselves insect bitten. I immediately knew to start searching for the wee blood suckers, and sure enough, I found em. One of my roommates caught a sample of them and that’s how I knew something was fucked up. I’m still thinking they were here before we moved in, and the previous tenants had them and just never told my landlord about them. That happens quite frequently--people get afraid they’ll get evicted or something for it, when all they had to do was tell the landlord they needed to have things treated.

A bed bug lesson. If bed bugs are present, but there is nothing for them to feed on, they will enter a dormant state where they don’t really move, but are still alive in a low-energy state. They can stay like this for up to a year or until something starts residing where they are.

Well, we were that something. They had to have been bad here, because I was finding them already getting into everything. I’d find them on my desk, and even once in my tablet case. Strangely, they never got into my laptop, and considering I had my laptop all taken apart just earlier tonight, I would have found them if they did.

Anyway, we decided let’s just keep our cool and let the landlord know. He had either another company or an in-house treatment done two months in a row, in June and July.

It wasn’t enough. We were still finding them, and since whoever did the treatments hadn’t been doing bi-weekly follow ups (as my company would have done), I was doing it myself with liquid crack-and-crevice.

It was still not enough--my roommates haven’t complained, but I was still seeing them periodically. The little fuckers had to have been dug in good, because I regularly found them in several cracks in the floorboards--not surprising, as this is an older building.

I decided to take matters into my own hands and do things the way I damn well KNOW THEY OUGHT TO BE DONE. I put Arya and her food/water/litter out of the room, shut the door, and went to fucking town. I mean every single stupid little crack and crevice got fucking flooded with material. I watch several bugs writhe and die in the shit. I blasted them with aerosol on fucking sight. I was going to show these six-legged dickheads that I was not to be fucked with. I found I was able, by the product labels, to use the trick of tank-mixing traditional insecticide concentrate with the IGR from before, giving me more of an edge in getting ahead of their ability to breed. Eventually I started seeing almost no nymphs and all adults. Suffer not a bed bug to live.

I am 99.9% sure they’re gone now, but I’ve been doing weekly liquid runs in here until I can be 110% sure that they are fucking gone forever. And they WILL stay the fuck out, or be annihilated.

You blood sucking bastards fucked with the wrong dude.

#light says a thing #insects #bed bugs #adventures in pest control #if i must suffer #you will all suffer with me

[lisatelramor]

I’ve been reading homestuck fic for like the last week so apparently that’s enough for my brain to do weird things and so if anyone finds it interesting, thoughts on detective conan characters if they were trolls. Yeah. I... I don’t know where this came from either, and fuck no, I am not writing a fic for it. Just take these ramblings and amuse yourself with them.

Okay, so DCMK characters as homestuck trolls.

Shinichi’d be teal-cerulean range, obviously still a detective (detecterrrorist??) who was fairly well off and gaining a bit of a reputation before he investigated some adult trolls and got slipped something questionable. And then he ended up like just past grub-molt and (maybe) with a mutation. He has low key empathy psionics that help him on cases. Strife specibus is football-kind (or. Whatever the troll equivalent of soccer would be. I dunno) Sylladex is ‘casebook’ and required writing down descriptions of things to store them and concluding out loud what the item is to retrieve it.

Ran is rust-blood. Strife specibus—fist-kind and knife-shoe-kind. She and Shinichi are circling flush for each other but are terrible at getting anywhere. She’s moirails with Sonoko. It’s a bit of a caste difference between her and Shinichi and Sonoko but they’ve never made her feel like it mattered. She can and will kick the ass of people twice her size and way up the hemosystem. No psionics, but abnormally strong for a rust-blood.

Sonoko is purple-blood, not quite tyrian fuchsia but more on the pink end than the indigo. Very willing to throw her weight around if it means helping those in her hate-friend group. Tolerates Shinichi. Ran joked once that they had pitch feelings and upset both Shinichi and Sonoko so much she was apologizing for a week. It’s platonic dislike, geeze Ran. Fell for bronze-blood Makoto and honestly despite using her blood color to her advantage at times, she couldn’t give two shits about the hemosystem. God, what even would her strife specibus be?? Handbag-kind?? I dunno. She’d probably just go at you with her claws than use a specibus really. She doesn’t do highblood rage often tho.

Heiji’s olive-blood, sword-kind. He had a pitch crush on Shinichi when he heard of his existence because, damn, rivalry!! Fuck that teal guy, olives could be sweet detecterrorists too! But then he met Shinichi and was all fuck. Pale as SHIT for him once he realized the whole Conan situation. But there’s the whole awkward thing of the current age difference so he’s trying to be cool about it but. Yeah. He sometimes gets weird looks, like, the fuck you wanting a moirail a kid for, you’re almost adult molt?? That’s not cool?? He and Kazuha have a red/pale mess going on for years and at first Kazuha’s pissed about Kudo right up until she and Heiji start moving toward more red than pale. But she sometimes still flips. Heiji’s worried he’s coming on too strong with Shinichi but Shinichi’s a dense shit. He has too much going on in his head to notice Heiji’s pale crush flashing neon lights at him.

Kazuha’s a bronze-blood, and a mess over Heiji. She alternates between bare-hand fighting and knife-kind (apparently there is some weapon use in aikido? Or at least knowing how to use a weapon once you’ve disarmed someone if you can get your hands on it). She’s really possessive of Heiji’s red quadrants because he can’t seem to decide which he wants from her for the longest time—and she can’t decide either. But yeah, more flush than not. Hates Shinichi a lot longer than she did in canon and was threatened by Ran until it was clear Ran had ZERO interest, her flush being aimed toward Shinichi and already in a moirallegiance with Sonoko. Lower end of hemospectrum and a bit indignant about it, ready to fight. Ends up friends with Ran tho, she needs more friends.

Ok, so Kid. Kaito. Blah, what even is Kaito? Like Kid is this semi-mythic figure for sweeps and no one knows who he is or his blood type. Like lowblood mythos has him as being a goldblood with psionics that help him stick it to the highbloods. Mainline propaganda paints him as a mutant to be culled on sight. Meanwhile there’s also theories that he’s in the indigo range and has a variation of chuckle-voodoos that cloud awareness or heighten susceptibility to suggestion/misdirection (allowing Kid to more easily impersonate people, even in your own quadrants, how horrifying!!) As much as I love the idea of Kid as someone with psionics, I kind of think it would be hilarious if Kaito was indigo-range. He’s hemononymous. No one knows but Aoko what his blood color is. (blah, I could make an argument for any color, someone give me a good reason for one over the other) But he has his fear of fish from a bad encounter with a sea-dweller's lusus. Poor Kaito. Vacillates between red/pitch with Aoko, and has plenty of people wanting him for either of those quadrants. Because he just gives off either red vibes, or bite me in a sexy way vibes I guess. (So many people would punch him in the face with their face??) Kaito has a solitaire modus that also has a shuffle mode. His strife specibus is prank-kind when himself, and card-kind as Kid. He also has a huuuge pitch crush on Shinichi. Which is more or less reciprocated. It was kind of idly there when he thought Conan was practically a wiggler, but he realizes he’s actually about the same age as he is and yeeeah, they flirt pitch a lot. Though Shinichi’s a bit dense on that too. Granted there’s only so many times a guy throws a heist with you in mind before you catch on. Hakuba’s freaked out by it. NO! HE IS A CHILD!!!! And sort of goes ashen for them which pisses Kaito off. All the more so because Hakuba pitch flirts with Kaito sometimes when Kaito is Kaito and just. Stop quadrant smearing black feelings in Kaito’s direction!! (Hakuba is going down with this ashen ship. He won’t put a name to it because fuck, it’d be ILLEGAL to be in quadrant with a criminal. But he wouldn’t say no to privately showing up and interrupting one of Shinichi and Kaito’s pitch moments)

Aoko’s blueblood. Could be something else, but. Yeah. She’s blue because Aoko. Strife specibus is mop-kind. She really can’t decide if she’s pitch or flush for Kaito. Because one moment he’s filling her with pity and good and the next he’s such an ASS. Yeah. Shit’s hard when you’re in the middle of your puberty cycle. She platonically hates Kid with a passion. She’s all for the law but couldn’t give a shit about the hemospectrum. Testing waters for a moirail relationship with Keiko, but sometimes has a pale crush on Saguru which baffles Kaito. Saguru’s so awkward though that she can’t help it.

Saguru’s also a blueblood, but unlike Aoko, he’s big on both letter of the law and hemospectrum. He likes to see himself as enlightened, but he’s the sort to make backhanded insults without meaning to based on blood type stereotypes. Kaito’s hemonymity is annoying as hell to him. He has SUCH a pitch crush on Kid, but he’s too rigid in his beliefs to ever consider pursuing it, so it sort of sublimates to extremely intense efforts to catch Kid that frankly unsettle Kaito. But then he meets Heiji. And bam, pitch crush. He can see how Heiji would be such a good detective! But his methods!!! Are sloppy!!! (Meanwhile Heiji’s the same way back but has no emotional awareness and is just going on rants about how Hakuba’s such an ass and how he hates him and Shinichi’s just listening to it all with complete embarrassment like, oh my god Heiji. OH MY GOD STOP TELLING ME THIS!!) Hakuba and Heiji’s pitch clicks so well that Hakuba practically sees them as an item and is already drafting hate-date ideas. Only Heiji finally gets the memo that people think he’s pitch for Hakuba and rather than putting two and two together with his own emotions goes WTF?? And breaks Hakuba’s spade. How insensitive. He made Kazuha have to flip pale to deal with that fallout. How dare? Hakuba may or may not end up having a spade fling with Kaito in a rebound attempt. Which goes about as bad as could be expected. Eventually Heiji figures his shit out though. Heiji’s bad with emotional wisdom. Hell, give him gun-kind as a specibus, but he’s good at hand to hand too.

Akako’s a rust-blood, scepter-kind strife specibus. She has psionics that make people attracted to her and manipulates the shit out of them. Kaito, by miracle of mutation or blood color, is immune. And a little annoyed at how she’s like a walking rust hemonormative stereotype with her sexy vibe. She pisses him off in a platonic way and yet she keeps trying to get him in a quadrant. Flush fails, then pitch fails, so she tries for pale and that freaks Kaito out even more than the other attempts. Stop caring!! No! (She keeps on the pale route eventually because that boy’s a disaster and needs someone watching his back. Though it’s fun to flirt with him concupiscent. )

Ai’s hmm. Not sure what Ai would be. She’s poison-kind for strife specibus, though she can use gun-kind in a pinch. The reason her poison worked to turn back the clock on her and Shinichi is a rare mutagen that they both have. Woo. Troll genetic bullshit. Has the same low-key empathy psionics Shinichi has and it lets her sense hostility directed at her. Her moirail got killed (her sister in canon?) and that kind of pushed her over the edge. She’s ruthless and will flat out cull you no mercy. As much as Heiji WANTS to be Shinichi’s moirail, she functionally is one more to him more often than not. But in her words she doesn’t do quadrants these days and so she’s not going to label anything. It’s survival, nothing else. (Shinichi doesn’t buy this. But he’s fine not labeling things)

 Ayumi=>olive, Mitsuhiko => gold, Genta => bronze. All three are barely old enough to be outside of their hives without lusus care for goodness sake. They haven’t settled on strife specibi yet or even proper modus types. Since meeting Conan, they’ve taken an interest in detecterrorism. :P  The boys are having pale/flush crushes on Ayumi but she only has eyes for Conan flush, and it’s a shitshow but they’re too young for it to matter much yet.

 I don’t think adults would be in here the same way. Like. Maybe as ancestors? Mentor figures? I dunno. I don’t really care to figure it out. Still this was a fun thought exercise. I think what I love about Homestuck is the quadrant fuckery the trolls brought to the table. That just lends itself to so much. The drama ^_^

#detective conan #homestuck #kind of #i don't know #it was a slow day at work the other day #and apparently that meant my brain went weird places #and because i like the quadrant system #this is a mess and literally just thought spewing on a page

[throughtheglassdarkly]

Missing Pieces, part 3

Welcome back. When last you were here, I was molting and got framed for petty theft. Onward.

After we got the crystal swan back from Charlie, we brought it back to the Autumn Court and told the freehold as a whole about Charlie and what he was doing. The Autumn Court was super grateful that we got the Token back and they all started treating us more warmly afterwards. It was a good feeling – I’d been really unhappy about the whole framed-for-theft thing, but getting the swan back was a way to prove myself to the Court I planned on pledging loyalty to. The Dagda also re-scheduled our pledging ceremony for the next major event, which was going to be the Winter Formal. No, I’m not joking. That’s actually what it’s called.

At any rate, about a week after we got the swan back, Yova came up with an idea that we were all on board with: namely, throwing a surprise belated birthday party for Pam. Pam had had a bit of a rough patch getting back to the mortal world and had been throwing herself into her work at the restaurant, and we hadn’t had much of a chance to see her. We all split up the responsibilities: Bella got some flowers for decorating, Day got the booze, Yova called in some favors to get catering done, and I handled the cake and offered to host. We also all got some presents for Pam: Yova and I went in on a specialty stand mixer for her and Day, much to my surprise, asked me to come with him to help him pick out some gifts. He got her a really nice apron and oven mitt set and a hardy African violet, something that could make it through the upstate winters. It was actually kind of nice spending some time with Day. He was so worried about getting something nice for Pam and I was pleasantly surprised that he trusted my taste enough to help him. (His first instinct was to get Pam a fifth of Wild Turkey and a pack of Virginia Slims. I had to gently tell him that something that was good enough for his mom wasn’t good enough for Pam.)

A couple of days before the party, Bella started feeling sick and ended up not able to make it. A couple of years in Arcadia didn’t do much for our immune systems and each of us got laid up with a cold or two in the month we got back, but Bella ended up with full-on influenza. She sent the flowers over along with about eighty thousand million bajillion sad emojis. Day and Yova came over to my apartment about an hour before showtime. Yova dropped off the catering and started decorating with a ton of fairy lights. Day plunked his ample behind down on my poor secondhand sofa and tried (and failed miserably) to fold napkins. Yova decided that it would be a better use of his time to sample the mocktails she was making and tried to get him to keep his damn socks off of my coffee table. I had no time for any of this because I was racing the clock to get the cake ready before Day went to pick up Pam.

At her place, Pam was just settling in and trying to relax after a long day of work. She was reading up on some chemistry articles that she’d been meaning to take a look at, but as she did, she felt something nudging at the back of her head, an intrusive thought. She managed to keep it at bay, at least until Day picked her up (leaning on the horn of Yova’s crappy pickup) and took her back to my place. She’d been told we were just going to be watching The Great British Baking Show (shut up, it’s awesome and you know it) and having some snacks, so she was pretty gobsmacked when we all yelled, “Surprise!”

Now, this next part I’m going to chalk up to ignorance. You see, it’s hard to understand, even looking the way we do, that we’re not human anymore and things that we wouldn’t normally struggle with can cause serious moments of reckoning. For me as a Beast, it’s if I accidentally hurt somebody without thinking about it. Yova as a Fairest can’t handle it if she leads somebody into danger or if her inaction causes somebody problems. Day as an Ogre gets very upset if somebody who he doesn’t think is an enemy runs from him or is very scared by him. Bella as a Darkling goes bonkers when she finds out something she previously thought was true isn’t. And Pam? Well. Wizened really, really, really don’t like being surprised.

To Pam’s credit, she managed to hold it together pretty well, even though I could see that her smile was a little tighter than I was used to seeing. It turns out that she wasn’t really focused on us. The thought she was trying to push back from earlier got through and was taking over her whole conscious. All she kept seeing was a red ribbon with a silver bell hanging over her daughter’s bed. After she managed to clear that from her head, she was touched when we told her that we wanted to celebrate her birthday because of everything she did for us. I pulled out the cake and Yova pulled out the crappy guitar she’d managed to bring back from Arcadia in true battle-bard style and we all did our best to not make “Happy Birthday to You” sound like the funeral dirge it is.

About halfway through singing, however, I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out and saw Evain was calling me. I ducked into the kitchen as Pam was blowing out the candles on her cake (lit courtesy of Paisley, natch) and answered, asking what was up. It wasn’t Evain on the other end, however – I heard a very annoyed woman saying, “I can’t deal with him right now, you’re going to need to babysit him. I’m outside your apartment,” and she hung up. I trusted Yova with cutting the cake and slipped out and down the stairs.

When I got there, I saw a very annoyed Stella (the grouchy Autumn courtier we all saw when we got to the B&B), holding up a drunk-looking Evain. She practically threw him at me and said, “Apologies, but I have neither the time nor inclination to deal with him now. He’s your problem,” and off she sped. Evain was clearly not in a good way and I started helping him up the stairs while I texted Yova in all caps, “DISTRACT DAY. DISTRACT DAY.”

As I was helping Evain up to the second floor where my apartment was, I realized he actually wasn’t as drunk as I thought. He was drunk, for sure, but he seemed more upset than anything. I asked him what was going on and he let out a deep sigh, telling me that he couldn’t find his daughter’s picture. “It’s the last thing I had of my baby girl and it’s gone.” I told him that we could try and figure out where it went once he sobered up and he nodded.

When we got back to my apartment, I peeked inside to see what was going on. Day was crouched in front of my TV, fiddling with the Wii U to try and get Netflix going, Yova was standing between him and the door and Pam was on the couch. I brought Evain in, giving Pam a pleading look to not say anything. Then I tried to pick Evain up and slip him past the living room. I managed to pick him up easy enough, but the dumbass decided he was going to try to squirm out of my arms. I was trying desperately to fight him and keep him from making a scene, but he tumbled out of my arms and I ended up going over the back of the couch with him, ending up in a pile of feathers and bark, right as Day looked over.

“What the hell is he doing here?!” Day asked, standing up and glaring. I tried to explain how Stella had just dropped Evain off with no warning and I was just planning to have him sleep off the booze in my room. Day snorted and said, “Whatever. Just keep him out of my sight.” Evain was trying to figure out what was going on and what we were celebrating. “It’s Pam’s birthday. Well, belated birthday,” I told him. “Oh. Happy birthday,” he told Pam. “Thank you!” she said.

I got Evain settled in the bedroom and got a glass of water for him. Day went out on the balcony to sulk with a platter of noshes and a beer. Paisley, sweet girl that she is, went out to sit on his shoulder and nuzzle him. Around this time, Yova noticed that there was a scrap of fabric wedged in between the couch cushions where Evain fell and she pulled it out. She and Pam both saw it was a tarnished silver bell tied at the end of a red ribbon. Pam, as you might imagine, was pretty keen on trying to find out where Evain got this, given the vision she saw earlier. She and Yova marched into my room just as I was about to head back out.

Pam asked Evain if the ribbon was his. As soon as he saw it, he about leapt over the side of the bed to grab it and shove it in his pocket. All he admitted was that it was a keepsake, but when I asked him if it had to do with why he was upset (and Yova leaned on him a bit), he wasn’t able to keep it together. “It’s all I have left of my baby girl. When I got back, I was at Wal-Mart. Trying to buy some clothes or something, I don’t even remember. And I saw her on a missing person poster. I went to her foster parents’ house and found that ribbon out in the back yard.” He told us that it was perfect that we were having a party, because the day before would have been his daughter’s twenty-fifth birthday. We were quiet for a moment, but then Pam told us about the vision she had. It seemed like it was way too much to be a coincidence.

I pulled out the refurbished laptop I’d bought off Craigslist and started trying to find any significance of red ribbons and silver bells. At first I thought about looking at fairy tales and trying to see if there was anything there. But then I stumbled across an old forum that was attached to an online game designed for pre-teens, like Neopets.

…shit. I just remembered my Neopets.

Okay, back. They were happy to see me, which is always good. Anyway, the forum thread I found was actually pretty creepy. It was for kids who were having some trouble, either because their parents were going through a divorce or they were in foster care, or something else was causing them some pain at home. The post that caught my eye was one that told other kids about a ritual where if you take a white silk ribbon and soak it in your own blood, put a silver bell on it, and ring it before you go to sleep, it will start a spell that can bring your parents back.

When I finished reading that out loud, I looked up and the other three all had the expression of horror that I’m sure was on my own face. Evain was visibly agitated and Pam started texting her Fetch on red alert. The two of them quickly started planning how they might help Pam’s daughter. At least, Evain was offering some ideas – when he tried to get up, he winced and fell back on the bed. “Listen, I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but the one of us who’s probably going to be the best at figuring out how to get to the bottom of this is Day,” I told Evain. He gave another one of those unpleasant laughs and said, “Oh, that’s rich. It’s his fault she’s gone.” We asked him what he meant and he said, “If he hadn’t arrested me, she would never have been in foster care.” Yova and I exchanged a flat look and we stepped out. “You know, just when he had me feeling sorry for him…” she said.

Pam told Yova and me that she would take care of Evain in the meantime, which meant Yova and I had to go convince Day to help us figure this out. I cut a giant slice of cake and put a couple scoops of ice cream on it and Yova grabbed a new beer out of the fridge. Yova sidled out onto the balcony and held out the beer while I held out the plate from inside the apartment (I wasn’t going to trust that ancient balcony to hold three people on it). He took one look at us and said, “Ohhhh, no. Nope, I am not taking any bribe to help him out.” Yova and I exchanged another look. “It’s not Evain we’re asking you to help…” Yova began. “It’s Pam,” I finished. That got his attention.

We went over the vision Pam had, the ribbon Evain had found where his daughter last lived, and the forum post I found. Day grabbed the cake from me and unhinged his jaw, swallowing it all in one bite. “I’ll do it, but just to help Pam,” he said. Yova looked pleased as punch and I barely got out, “It took me six hours to make that cake. Six. Hours.” “And it was well worth it,” Day said with no small amount of glee. “You didn’t even taste it! It just went straight down your gullet!” I said.

While Day and I were bickering over the etiquette of not chewing the cake your host proffers, Pam managed to get in touch with her Fetch. The Fetch said she’d confiscated the ribbon, but found something burned in an ashtray in Sierra’s room that smelled like rosemary. Pam told her Fetch about the ribbon and they agreed to keep each other filled in on everything. (A few days later, Pam got an envelope from her Fetch filled with clippings about the things that those teenagers get up to these days, don’tcha know.)

Yova suggested that we go talk with the Autumn Court about it, which was definitely the best idea any of us came up with (we won’t mention who came up with the suggestion of finding a kid in foster care and trying out the ritual with that kid). I texted Stella to let her know that we were on our way and that Evain was sleeping off the drink. I held out my hand to Paisley and told her, “Come on, girl, we’re going on a field trip.” She flittered up and settled on my shoulder with delight. I gathered everybody in my bathroom and cut open my finger, smearing some blood on the mirror. I activated my Mirror Walk contract, the same one Evain did when he took me to the Autumn Court’s lodge in the first place. The four of us linked hands and crawled through the mirror, coming out in the foyer of the lodge.

I have to admit, I felt pretty proud showing off the place to my motley. It was the first time any of them had been there and I could see they were impressed, even Day. I gave them a brief tour on the way to the library. Once there, Day, Pam, and I hit the stacks, trying to track down anything that we might be able to find about any ritual or creature that sounded like this. Yova, however, decided that turning on the charm was the right course of action. She turned the full force of her schmoozing onto Marigold, a mousey Darkling intern with Coke bottle glasses who I’d seen before but hadn’t been introduced to. Marigold was absolutely taken with Yova and Yova slipped Marigold her number, promising to take her out for coffee if she could help us with our research problem.

Marigold took Yova directly over to the stack that Day was already thumbing through. With the five of us working together, it wasn’t long until we managed to find an older file labeled “The Shepherd of Lonely Roads.” It was dusty as hell and had obviously been there a while without anyone touching it. The name of the changeling who’d compiled the report was “Creighton,” which I didn’t recognize. The file said that the Shepherd was an unknown creature – it could be fae, goblin, hedge ghost, nobody was sure. Surprisingly, the file said that the Shepherd didn’t seem antagonistic and did show some degree of empathy.

The problem we came across was that all of the information in the file was secondhand. The Shepherd only dealt with children, and even though the first portion of the rules for summoning it were in the file, nobody in the Autumn Court who’d tried was able to get it to reveal the rest of the summoning spell. What we learned was that the ribbon had to be soaked in the blood of the person wanting to summon the Shepherd and left out to dry in the full moon. You were to then tie the bell to it, hang the ribbon over your bed, and ring it once before going to sleep every night for seven nights. Some Autumn courtiers had managed to summon the Shepherd on the second night, but it always refused to answer any questions or deal with them in any way; it claimed it would only come to children who need it.

After we got that info, we talked about what we might do. Pam suggested that if it dealt with children who were missing their parents, it might be willing to at least talk to a mother who was missing her children. We figured it couldn’t hurt to try the ritual and went back through the mirror to my apartment. Evain was sitting on the couch in the living room, looking a little better, and I saw there was some food and cake missing. He thanked me for letting him crash and got up to go. Before he did, I asked him if he wanted us to help him find the picture. He says that the picture itself wasn’t anything special, just the last missing persons poster. “As long as it was up there, I figured there was somebody who still cared about her and wanted her to come home,” he said. I thought for a second and told him we could probably pull up the missing poster online and print out a copy for him to have. I went in my bedroom and got my laptop, then pulled up Google. “Okay, so what’s your daughter’s name?” I asked him. He took in a breath and said, “Cassi. Cassi Rodriguez.”

I about fell off the back of the couch where I was sitting, and from the look on Pam, Yova, and Day’s faces, they felt the same. “Um, Cassi with one I?” I asked. “Yeah,” Evain said. Yova asked, “Was her favorite movie Cinderella?” “Yeah… okay, this is getting creepy,” Evain said, looking at us with slightly narrowed eyes. “Um. Well, the good news is she’s still alive,” I said. “SHE’S WHAT?!” Evain asked, stumbling. “The bad news is she’s the right-hand changeling to a changeling gone mad with power who’s fighting the True Fae,” Yova said.

We explained to him how we knew Cassi and Yova brought us upstairs to her apartment where she’d kept the poster she’d taken with Cassi’s image on it (I did mention Yova lives in my building, right?). He took the frame and stared at it for a minute before he put the whole thing in his pocket. I could tell Yova wanted to protest, but she decided against it. I was mostly looking around at the antique shop that had thrown up in her flat and asked her, “Yova, when did you get all this crap in here? I live downstairs!” She gave me one of her damnably zen smiles and said, “Sunday is for DIY.”

Evain looked like he was feeling a lot better and told us he was going to go home and get drunk, but to celebrate the fact that his daughter was still alive and sticking it to the Gentry. “If you ever need anything, you know where to find me,” he told us before he left. And, I noticed, he and Day exchanged a nod in each other’s direction. Progress!

With Evain gone, the four of us decided to try out the ritual. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the benefits to becoming a changeling is that you become a lucid dreamer: you can basically craft your dreams into what you want them to be, and even enter each other’s dreams with permission. We made a quick pledge to all protect Pam’s dreams and I witnessed it. Yova produced a mostly silk ribbon from her sewing basket and I used my Trivial Reworkings contract to turn it pure white. Pam took it and a silver bell that Yova got out of her applique basket. She cut her arm and bled into a basin, then soaked the ribbon in it and let it out to dry. I went downstairs for some pillows and blankets and Paisley and we all set up in Yova’s living room, waiting to fall asleep.

The first night, nothing happened. We all got into Pam’s dream, which to be honest looked like Audrey’s fantasy home from Little Shop of Horrors. We mostly sat around in the living room watching old game shows on the TV and awkwardly attempting conversation. The second night, however, was completely different. It started out the same, with things nice if a little awkward, but then the television went weird. The Wheel of Fortune puzzle started spelling out “TURN AROUND.” When we did, we saw that the rest of the house was gone: it was just void left. A tiny, faint green light was coming toward us. As it got closer, we could see a pale figure stepping forward slowly and with every step a viney path appeared before it.

When the Shepherd eventually reached us, it looked almost translucent, a figure of indeterminate gender wrapped in robes and carrying a crook. It looked around to the four of us. It didn’t move its lips, but we could all hear in our heads, “I see no child here.” Pam explained the situation and the Shepherd suggested that she go to her daughter. “If you do that, she’ll have no need of me.” It told us that once things were set in motion, they couldn’t be stopped. It didn’t seem like the Shepherd was interested in causing any harm: it told us that all it did was create a path between the child and its parents, but it had no control of what happened once the child entered the path.

Pam asked if it had a lot of contracts open or started and it admitted that it didn’t. “You must understand that these contracts are how I sustain myself. I cannot break them because if I did, I would cease to be. If I cease to be, then I cannot help,” it said. When she asked what the child’s end of the contract was, the Shepherd told her that the children who asked for its help made it offerings: each offering has some Glamour, and when the Shepherd got enough, it could open the way. The opening didn’t require much Glamour, so it could keep the rest for itself.

Yova brought up the point that we weren’t sure if Sierra’s path would even lead back to Pam, since Sierra was adopted. She asked the Shepherd, “When you say you get them back to their parents, is it who the child considers their parents or by blood?” “It is not always the case that they look for the one to whom they are bound by blood. I promise a way for them to know the touch of their parents once more, and in exchange, they provide me offerings,” the Shepherd told her. Yova, against all logic, decided that trying to act all dreamy to the Shepherd to get it to help us was a good idea. It just looked confused for a second before it said, “Ah. Seduction.” Dammit, Yova.

Yova at least had the good sense to change gears and she and Pam both started talking with the Shepherd, asking it for help. Pam brought up her work with the foster kids she was volunteering with and started talking to it about wanting to help. It told us about some of the children it came into contact with and how they would share their feelings and worries with it. “Even if I cannot understand human sentiment the ways you do, I still feel like I am doing something worthwhile,” it said. It seemed to consider for a moment, then said, “I promise children a way to feel their parents’ touch. Can you give me that?” Pam asked what it meant and it clarified that if she could provide it with a touch that it could deliver to Sierra, it could do so without opening the path.

Yova had an idea about sending Sierra an invitation to a theater program for kids and that Yova could give Pam a spot as a volunteer. “Thanksgiving Break is coming up. I can put some feelers out. Kids from all over the country come to those camps,” Yova told her. Pam was completely overjoyed and hugged Yova tight. Yova asked the Shepherd if that would suffice and it told her it would, but that it still had to deliver a message. At that, I tore out a page from my journal where I was taking all of the notes and handed it to Yova along with my pen, telling her to engrave an invitation. She did so with her fanciest handwriting and Pam signed off, including a reference to a nickname she had for Sierra. The Shepherd took it and – seemed pleased? It’s hard to get a read on an extraplanar being, but it did seem to approve of what we were doing. It said it would deliver the invitation to Sierra and wouldn’t open its own way for her before it departed.

Shortly after that, we all woke up and Yova told us that she loved us dearly but that we had to get the hell out of her apartment. And so I think I’ll wrap it here for now. When next we come back, Bella’d recovered from her bout with the flu and you’ll find out what further messes we managed to get ourselves embroiled in. Until then, stay safe, and if an Ogre is coming for a party, may you invest in one of those giant ten-pound tubs of Cheeto balls.

#Changeling: The Lost #changeling #CTL #recap #ic #but seriously though cheeto balls are awesome