#i have a vague notion of checking in on her down the line but we'll see if it ends up fitting or not

[thebramblewood]

There's no handbook for how to break it to your ex-girlfriend that you can't stay friends because you're about to become a bloodthirsty vampire who may or may not kill her on the spot.

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Ulrike: Are you sure you're up for this?

Helena: Stop asking me that! We'll be done faster if we work together.

Ulrike: I don't know how you can stand to wear that hoodie. It's been like summer the past few days.

Helena: Just shut up and keep this thing moving.

Ulrike: Yes, ma'am.

-

Ulrike: Really? You guys move one mattress and already need a cupcake break?

Isaiah: We've earned it.

Ange: There's been a real dearth of quality baked goods in our lives lately.

Ulrike: Get your asses back to work!

-

Ulrike: What is that on your neck? Is that a hickey?

Helena: What? God, no, it - it’s nothing. Why are you being so nosy?

Ulrike: [smirks] Because it’s fun to see you squirm.

-

Ulrike: Come on! You call to brag about meeting the hottest girl alive - must be, if she beats me - and now you’re going to leave me hanging?

Helena: [cringes] Did I really say that? I was so drunk that night.

Ulrike: Obviously.

Helena: There’s nothing to say because it’s not going anywhere. I’ll probably never see her again.

Ulrike: Ah. She was too good to be true?

Helena: Something like that.

Ulrike: Eat up, Zhao. You look like you could use the nutrients.

Helena: I do feel awfully hungry…

-

Ulrike: It’s the end of an era, huh?

Helena: Yeah, it really is.

Ulrike: You’ve got someplace to stay?

Helena: Oh, yeah. I’ll be fine. [laughs weakly] My turn to borrow a spare couch.

Ulrike: Then where are you headed?

Helena: Home, I guess. [under breath] That should be far enough for now.

Ulrike: Far enough from what?

Helena: I don’t know. [hesitates] Everything? I just need a break.

Ulrike: Well, you could always come visit me in Windenburg. I’d like us to stay friends, you know?

Helena: Yeah, maybe… [doubles over in sudden blinding pain]

Ulrike: You’re really okay?

Helena: [dismissively] It’s just cramps. Can you believe I’ve got my period on top of everything else?

Ulrike: Take care, Zhao. And keep the tarps. Seems like you need them more than I do.

[forgottenroisin]

Brigit x Rosie “It could be worse.”

FLASHBACK

"The important thing," said Brigit. "Is that we remain calm. It could be worse."

"I don't see how!"

It had been a sweet notion. First, Brigit, Aoife, and Rosie had arranged for Eithne to take the day off, it being her birthday, by claiming to Valentina (who had no earthly notion when any of her stepdaughter's feast days fell) that she had a 'pox,' and vague and ill-defined malady which they had cobbled together expressly for the occasion (having lain some foreshadowing of the illness down in the previous fortnight, saying about how Farmer Tom's wife and boy had it and how it was said in town everyone in the are would have had it at some point, come the summer, and knowing well and good that Valentina would never fact check them as it would require stooping to speak to such 'low' personages as Farmer Tom). Second, Aoife and Cillian would take Eithne out to town on a few fun-filled errands while, thirdly, Brigit and Rosie prepared the cake.

While the first two parts of the plan had gone smashingly, it was the third for which them were proving not entirely prepared, a fact which stung all the more when one considered how both Aoife and Cillian had expressed doubts on this point while Brigit and Rosie had insisted up and down that they could certainly handle something so simple as a cake and that really the other two ought to have more faith in them as people than to hold such appalling doubts that, Rosie had added -- an argument which had finally convinced them -- were so rude as to nearly border on exposing a doubt Aoife and Cillian clearly held about their characters!

And, with their characters now on the line, Rosie and Brigit now stood side by side, gazing at their creation. The dazzlingly white confection sloped, slumping to one side like a wounded soldier. On the other side, it did stand up (somewhat), but this effect was marred by the attempt at decoration the sisters had effected. In attempting to pipe flowers and vines onto the side, they'd somehow managed to make it look rather as if the poor thing were bleeding AND wounded.

"We've created an abomination," said Brigit.

"I feel like a monster! We should put it out of its misery."

"Put it out of its misery? How?!"

Rosie pressed a knife into her sister's hand. "It's for the greater good."

"What do you want me to do? Stab it to death?"

"Cut it up! It's edible...I think...It can just be ready to be served when she arrives!"

"We can't cut Eithne's cake!" cried Brigit. "It's her feast day, not ours! It's not what's done! She has to make the offering to the guardians, and that starts with the cutting of the cake!"

"Would you prefer her to have to see this ghastly horror we've created? We'll give her nightmares. On her feast day!"

"No. We can salvage this."

"How?!"

Brigit grinned. "I have an idea."

***

"Are you ready?" hissed Cillian, rushing into the kitchen. "I ran ahead but, they're almost here and -- Amestris' head! Why is there a bush in the kitchen?"

"It's not a bush!"

"It's a cake."

"No, that--That, my dear ladies, is a bush."

It was certainly botanical. The kitchen island had been scrubbed entirely clean of the chaotic efforts lately put into crafting the cake by Eithne's sisters, and in its place, stood the mishapen lump they had crafted, disguised under an array of looping vines and flowers that seemed now to grow in effortless coils from a sweetly sloping mountainside.

"It's all edible vegetation," said Brigit.

"Don't you recognize it, Cillian?"

"What?"

"Don't you see?" asked Brigit. "It's the mountainside where our father asked our mother to marry him. Perfectly recreated, even now to the spot where trees and shrubs grow!"

"O--oh," Cillian's brows rose. "I...I do see it. That's genius! She'll love it. But...how did you recreate the exact slope of the hillside so perfectly?"

Exchanging a glance, Brigit and Rosie grinned. "Bakers' secret."