lightsblooming - Tumblr blog

[lightsblooming]

"i got you!" mary says, with all the accomplishment and none of the voice; just an adorably high-pitched squeak that matches her smile, the roundness of her cheeks.

she sits comfortably on top of him, watching his pretend performance like she's making sure he's pretending correctly—then starts poking at his sides to fulfill her role as a tickle monster.

august tumbles onto his back with an ‘oof!’ of hyperbolic proportions. and then, naturally, he throws his scarred hands over his face. through the cracks in his fingers: “ ‘m hidin’ from you, monster. ” look, the kid has a pivotal role to execute. (make-believe ain’t make-believe if you don’t play your part.)

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Toy tea set

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mary drops down to her knees, sits on her legs as she watches him curiously. as if trying to imagine a younger auggie, one scared of monsters. after all, everyone is always much braver than her, especially older kids. its hard to imagine it, harder to hold her attention from the restlessness still lingering from their chase.

she hops back up on her feet, pitter-pattering closer to him with raised arms—then jumps on him.

"rahh! i'm monster!"

her burgeoning defensive streak does smother his giggling. the plush toy thunks him on the head. and august draws knees to chest, almond eyes finding hers. “ aww, c’mon. ” he mumbles, voice gentled. “ monsters scared me when i was your age. ”

to be honest, monsters still scared the boy. (monsters of a different, abstract caliber. monsters manifested into complex concepts like violence and grief and stranger danger.)

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🔴🟡 ~ B a l l p i t ~ 🟢🔵 (walter santi)

(Credit if you use please ☕)

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free from the shadow of the under-bed, mary uncurls, stands upright at a safe enough distance and focuses on catching her breath. there's a smile on her face as she watches him sprawled on the floor with laughter, but there's also a budding defensiveness there; childish.

"nuh uh!" she says, pitch squeaked, "i not scared of monsters." she is. maybe not this kind ( at least not as much ) - but she is.

she grabs up a tiny stuffed toy nearby and throws it at him.

the boy was gonna hop to his feet and chase after. (but mary’s startled reaction throws him into a flurry of laughter.) falling upon floorboards with reverberating flunk, their game completely forgotten.

his finger juts toward his half-pint friend. between uproarious giggles, “ s-scared ya good, huh? ” and, slowly, his laughter dies down. an amused smile tugs at his lips.

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Fuzzy peach stickers by Sandylion, 1980s.

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mary watches in suspense as auggie enters the room, her breath held between two tiny hands clamped over her mouth. her eyes widen as she follows his movement, lulled into a false sense of security as he searches the closet and drawer.

for a moment, she thinks he actually won't find her here. that he'll slink out of the room and go elsewhere, giving her time to escape—but his drop to the floor is so sudden that mary lets out a started scream.

" ah!!! " immediately, she starts crawling the opposite way, trying to get out from under the bed from the clearing at the other end.

a ‘thump’ pulls his head toward adjacent room. step-by-step, tickle monster trudges in. (eyes squint at bed. camouflage coverage for a hideaway tot.)

however, the boy reckons some suspense would be warranted. and he ambles about. searches a closet, a wooden drawer.

august stoops onto floor beside bed, an “ a-ha! ” slicing tense quiet.

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it feels like any minute now he'll be at the back of her heels, and the fear of looking back has mary running faster with a trail of playful screams.

she ducks into the next room and drops on all fours with a hasty thump so she can crawl underneath the bed. from the shadowed corner against the wall, she can view the entry to the doorway. waits, curled up with her knees to her chest, for him to show up.

the putter, putter of toddler footfalls. it was through doorway and into a confined hall. august laughs, privately, at blessed commotion. pure fun and games. (his shoes thunk past room threshold. floorboards wail beneath battered undersides of sneakers.) toward hall, ears honed in, boy seeker prowls.

“ lil’ bit, ” cartoonish monster imitation, “ where you at? ” he lurches forward – stamp, stamp, stamp, stamp – to liven up the search. and keep mary upon her toes.

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mary is quiet as she listens to the sound of his foosteps creaking closer across the floorboards. her breath hitches when he stops, the tiniest peak from around the chair to see how much distance has closed between them. the thought of moving from her hiding spot scares her, but the thought of being caught grants her a little more motivation to take the chance.

as soon as he looks away, she takes off running—out of the room and down the hallway—tiny footfalls that patter in quick succession and end in a barey contained giggle.

@lightsblooming, cont.

it was a snail slow lumber toward chair, arms outstretched, fingers wiggling. the boy wanders to the left. copper eyes fixed upon the suspicious sock-clad feet behind chair.

but august pauses in his tickle hunt, cheek pressed into textile hill of hoodie. (a glimpse over his shoulder. away from the chair.) pretending he’d heard something in opposite direction.

“ some tickle monster i am. i’ve lost my victim. ”

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Bartholomew Bear and Bashful Bunny

For everyone in need of a hug today💕

Ko-fi / Instagram

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“My tenderness is of fragile stuff.”

— Jean Genet | The Thief’s Journal

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mary watches as he pulls the fruit away from his mouth, and the brief confusion it gives her leaves the both of them in a silence that has her smile falter. there's a dot he's not connecting here—complicating an age-appropriate concept of sharing into something less simple for her to understand. all she learns from this is that she's trying to bond with him, but he's rejecting her.

a little less confident, mary tries again, the mushed apple pressed against his mouth as squishy and vulnerable as her own heart.

"... you can have."

"That right?" He grins against the pastry remains shoved against his mouth, syrup sweets seeping in between his lips, plastered all over his beard in reckless puppy paw prints. laughter grips him by the crow's feet, fumes a rumble that runs a thunder's drawl against his chest, against the apple slice. He pinches the fruit by the corner from Mary's offered hands, redirects it so there's space to speak - "How 'bout I let you finish this piece? Seems there's plenty t'go around."

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mary can't see anything but the darkness behind her eyes, but he's so close... so so so close—that even the thought of opening her eyes is too frightening to bear. she has to stay still or he'll find her, has to refrain from screaming as the weight of his hand brings a low rumble against the mattress, inching closer to her curled-up form.

she squeezes her eyes tighter, just pretending to be an unsuspecting bundle of blankets.

toddler logic gives her the understanding that if she can't see him, then he obviously can't see her. which means that if she also tells him she's not under the blanket, she doesn't see any reason why he wouldn't believe it.

his question hangs suspenseful in the quiet for a moment, and then softly, " ... it's not me."

a small gasp breaks from behind him, staccato-sharp and mousey, muffled beneath the mussy mound of bed cover fabrics. Cole turns his head slight, gaze thrown over the shoulder, but she makes no other noise, milk and cookies confronted with brave-faced nothings and rumpled blankets. He lurches to a turn, menacing the distance to her bed.

"Lil Miss? That you under there?" He pats the fabrics with flat palms and sprawled fingers, "You let me in, or I might just blow this lil' house of your's down."

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anticipation keeps mary still, her breath quiet. but each heavy step inching closer and closer to her has left some indecipherable noise barely contained behind her clamped mouth; it feels like she'll yelp at any moment, but she does good on being an expert hider until he speaks—to which, mary gasps.

milk and cookies? she wants milk and cookies... but he's a bad guy that would never share with a good girl like her, which means he's lying! and it's not nice to lie.

mary swallows down the false promises of snacks to stay true to the narrative. she muffles herself against the top of her baby doll's head and squeezes her eyes shut. she's going to stay strong and do what's best to protect herself and her baby doll—it's what her husband would want.

Cole lumbers to the top, knee-caps creaking a protest as he nears the summit. He huffs as he broaches the second floor landing, palming an old tendon, and squints down at the few closed doors littering the hallway. His weight sinks into the floorboards, slow. The wood rattles out an echo after each step, chases him.

He checks the bathroom and closet on the way to Mary's room, calls out "Lil Miss?" every few paces in some one-sided version of marco-polo; but it's all vacancies from sink cabinets to bottom shelves: Nobody here, nobody there. Her room is bathed in sunlight when he gets to it, her bedroom canopy curtains drenched golden. Lumpy shapes of what he assumes to be rumpled blankets and piled pillows carves shadow puppets along the fabric. He steps around her plushies, paused and sleeping in a bygone play-time, and creaks open the children's armoire and jostles around its contents.

He hums, loud, to any eaves-dropping second ears and scratches fingernails absentmindedly at his nape, "Gone and lost her. Who's a mean bastard like me s'pposed to share milk and cookies with now?"

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『トイザらス』で見つけたゾウのじょうろ　１つだけ…「笑った」「お迎え確定」

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anxiety and sleepiness wrestle for first place in mary's little body. it would be so easy to curl under the blankets and fall back asleep, to retreat back into dreamland where everything is soft and whimsical. instead she sits up, eyes wide, gripping the couch cushion as he braids her hair.

school isn't something she's excited for, not when something wrong could happen at any time; how many big, dangerous bad guys could come for her while she was away from home?

mary nods at the question, slides off the couch to get her shoes. it's a single shoe, which she holds out for him. she doesn't know where the other one is, but he'd only asked about the ones she found.

"here," she says, eyes half-lid towards the floor, tired.

21. for an urgent starter . - @lightsblooming

It was becoming more and more obvious that Manny? Really didn’t know shit about anything. 

Today’s specific brand of anything seemed to be the enrollment process for school. Actually visiting the school? Paperwork? He couldn’t just talk to someone over the phone and have this all done via email by lunch?  

Even getting Mary dressed so early made him honestly feel just a bit bad. Seriously, who the hell thought kids needed to be anywhere at 8am? 

“It’s just for an hour, okay? Then we’ll go t’ the Pigpot for lunch and you can get the apple pie.” Spoken between a mouthful of bobby pins as he wrestled wavy hair into a pair of simple box braids. Hey, at least he was getting better at it. 

“Y' found your shoes, yeah?”