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moonlightchess · 3 years

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a brief interlude in which a young mortician finally meets his patron saint.

(Diaphanous).

Around five years old, when he first started hearing them. Soft, muted weeping echoing lightly through the cavernous halls just beyond his bedroom door, and by ten he was accustomed to sliding out of bed, yawning, padding to his doorway to step out into the endlessly shadowed maw veining through the upstairs of his family’s home. The moaning creak of the floorboards was easily avoidable if you knew where to slide your feet, which by then he did, and he’d whisper into the dark: “You’re okay. It’s all over now, but stay as long as you need to. You’ll be getting along when you’re ready.” And even then, there was something profoundly tender and melancholy wrapping itself around little Theodore like an aura, to which the ghosts usually responded favorably. On occasion, they’d even slip into his bedroom after he climbed back into bed, gently tugging his duvet over him in thanks.

Sixteen, and Pere introduced him to the family business in the most definitive sense yet, bringing him down into the embalming room. There, he was shown how to drain the bodies, to sew their gums securely closed, to carefully apply powders and lotions to suggest sleep despite death. Pere helped him to remove the heart and lungs of a corpse in the preparation process of the old fashion, despite it having fallen out of favor in more recent years. Bellefontaine, Louisiana, lingered a decade or two behind much of the nation, in every way from embalming practices to racial sensitivity, both topics having already been addressed with young Theodore. “A person is a person, deserving of respect and love and dignity regardless of their skin, wealth, or any other such thing that the ignorant might think defines them,” Theodore senior had informed his small son firmly, long ago, meeting his midnight-blue eyes that were so solemn and sympathetic even then. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Pere.” Theodore had not understood, not entirely, back then. But at sixteen, hunched over the dead body of a local bait shop owner whose wife made the softest, sweetest beignets he’d ever tasted, clarity rose sharp and bitter. “Monsieur Dumonde,” had escaped him before he could swallow the words in the interest of professionalism. “I knew him. Used to buy worms from him when the boys wanted to go fishing, but it’s been so long. I didn’t know he was sick.”

“Everyone dies, ti-Theodore,” and he’d been in love with the way his name rolled from his father’s tongue in a thicker cajun accent than his own - tee-tay-oh-doure, Theodore junior. It was enormously soothing, even now as he considered shaving Monsieur Dumonde’s thick mustache away for his funeral - but in the end, he placed the straight razor back onto his father’s table of sharp tools, aware that his decision had been a test. “No. We leave the mustache, he always had one when he was alive. He used to tug on it and laugh at our homemade fishing poles whenever we went into his shop. His mustache was a part of him, and it’s important that we send him to the next with as much of the man he was intact as we can.” He’d been a little nervous, meeting the dusk-colored eyes that he’d inherited from his beloved father, holding his breath.

“Good boy,” and he’d exhaled. “There are many who would have shaved him, cut his hair, put on some strange new clothes he never would have chosen himself. But you, my sweet and quiet boy, you understand.”

Mere had been a dancer, once. Ballet had been her life, her identity, until a careless would-be principal prince had stumbled into her leap - during a rehearsal no less, she’d been denied even the dignity of a grand disaster to end her career in the middle of a soaringly tragic performance - and her ankle had snapped, had never healed properly. She limped a touch even then, bringing sweet tea out to their wraparound porch thick with creeping ivy and heavy flowers bursting open at random, studding the lush green like jewels in a necklace, where her teenage son sat cross-legged on a battered loveseat long since dragged out to face the elements of the swampland. Together, they would count the darting fireflies, tiny pinpricks of golden light waging a valiant war against the encroaching southern dark. “I was beautiful once,” she’d said to him. “They all used to come watch me dance, in the city.”

“You’re still beautiful, Mere.”

She’d only sighed, slipping a hand into the pocket of her pea-green silk skirt to retrieve a shot bottle of bourbon, hoarded from the liquor store in town, and poured it into her tea.

They were both gone now, six, seven years proper. He’d prepared their bodies, and in death all of his mother’s pain and longing had been exposed to him with the first incision into her cold and rigid flesh for the draining, sixty-two years of ballet and resentment filling up the glass reservoir of the tubing’s end, dark red. She’d always done up her soft, honey-colored hair into elaborate braids, draped over one shoulder or both or trailing down her back or even wound up into a twisted crown if she was in a happier mood than usual. Theodore had sat beside her, holding her stiff milky hand with his own and with the other, scrolling through youtube tutorials on how to create the perfect fishtail braid until he was confident.

Pere had gone five years after, the light in him having drained out as clear and real as every fluid in his wife’s body had eventually found its way into the belly of their aspirator in the basement. Pneumonia had taken his mother - she’d always had a poor and fragile immune system - but his father had been just shy of seventy and to this day, at thirty-two years old, Theodore had never been offered a satisfying cause of death for him. “Just his time, sug,” a nurse in powder blue scrubs had tried, patting his hand soothingly and because this was the south, “I’ll be praying for y’all - well, just you I suppose. Oh lord, you’re the only Bissonette left now, ain’tcha?”

He was. They’d left the entire mortuary to him, and with it all the responsibilities of being the local mortician and funeral director at such a tender age, and his head had at first swum dizzily with all the pressure and expectations. Theodore senior and his wife Lisette had been fixtures of their country community, familiar and comforting, always there whenever someone had passed on to arrange flowers and platters of cold cuts, to deliver gentle words to cushion the grief. They’d been known, trusted, but Theodore junior, well. Ti-Theodore Bissonette, so young to be running the whole house himself, and the folk of Bellefontaine just weren’t sure. Until the death of little Suzette Marchande.

Hit by a car, she’d been, some hideous beast driving drunk through the winding access road circling their little cajun town and pointed out toward Nola proper. He was in prison now, but Suzette remained dead, and in his huge, capable hands Theodore had poured every bit of his father’s knowledge and sensitivity into that girl. He’d dressed her in yellow, one of her own dresses supplied by her mother, but he’d also remembered that she’d loved frogs. She’d catch them in the swamp and hold them in both hands, laughing at their croaky sounds, but then she’d carefully deposit them onto some leaf somewhere. “They got big ones, in the jungle. The Amazon,” he remembered her saying when the Bissonettes had run into she and her parents in town once, years ago. “Big as cars, they are. I’m gonna go there someday and study ‘em.”

So he’d bought sparkly little green frog clips for her hair online, pinning it back from her freckled face. Her favorite stuffed froggie, named Monsieur Ourauron, Mister Ribbitt, had been lost in the crash, but he’d found one in the Amazon - or at least on amazon - that looked largely the same. When her parents had seen her during the open-casket service, they’d wept and clutched his hands, thanking him in a babbling blend of French, English and grief. That day had declared the end of one life and the beginning of another, as little Suzette had been delivered unto whatever waited after, but thirty-year-old ti-tay-oh-doure had been manifest and confirmed.

There was something to be said for how tall he was. He would have thought some would find it intimidating, difficult to relate to considering that he was six-seven or perhaps a touch over, impossibly long limbs and a hawkish nose, soft mouth borne of his Mere and his father’s nearly indigo eyes the color of a sky five minutes before the moonrise. His was soft, floppy, peanut-brown hair and a quiet timbre resonating in his voice that was immediately associated with the unthreatening sense of calm authority that his father had once carried around easy as an old sweater. Theodore would take care of everything, Bellefontaine knew. They’d be left free to grieve their lost, because he was here with his huge hands and endless legs and fleeting smile.

He lived alone, now. There had been flings, lovers, Audrey from Nola with her autumn-brown skin and fox-gold eyes, elegant and sure, but she hadn’t stayed long. “This place is charming, but you can’t actually expect to stay here all your life, can you?” she’d told him once, after the sex, the two of them naked and wrapped around each other in his sprawling bed with a gentle breeze from outside floating through his open window. She didn’t understand, and neither did the men, not even sweet Peter with his auburn curls and dimples.

“You’re all alone out here, doesn’t it get boring? Lonely? My god, you live in a mortuary.” His shiver had been all that Theodore had needed to kiss him tenderly and send him on his way. His father had been extraordinarily lucky to find Mere, he knew - so few understood, the nature of a curator of death. The ancient contract they’d signed, the tradition they’d inherited. It was sacred but horrifying to most, because everyone wanted the convenience of their holy order at the end of all things, but no one actually wanted to have to think about dying. About the fact that literally all of them, rich or poor, pious or skeptical, afraid or unafraid, was going to die. The repulsion, he understood, was instinctive, and he’d only made his lovers breakfast in the morning and never called any of them back.

Some of the ghosts never left, as it was, and there were mornings in which he’d make his way into the kitchen to find his black tea already steaming, his chair already pulled away from the table. Some of them had found their peace here with him, and so he’d leave his cello out on occasion so that they could pluck the strings or plink a few keys on his mother’s old baby grand in the living room. He was happy too, his natural introversion leaving him largely content in his solitary life. There were those who sought comfort in his touch after the funerals of their loved ones, holding onto his hands a beat too long as he bade them goodbye, meeting his eyes meaningfully, but he always released them to the hazy swamp air outside. They were hurting, vulnerable, and he was a gentleman.

It rained the night the stranger arrived, or stormed rather - Theodore’s lights had been flickering throughout the manor all night. He’d collected candles and charged his phone, but his power had soldiered on even as the thunder crashed and jagged needles of lightning slashed open the churning charcoal sky outside. He’d yanked open the heavy oak door in response to some insistent knocking, only to find a man roughly his age standing there on the porch. He was oddly untouched by the rain despite no car present behind him, moon-pale, spilled-ink hair thick and soft over limpid, silver-mirror eyes, colorless as a deep-sea creature’s, slicing through the dark.

“Saints alive, are you lost? Are you all right?” The man, he didn’t know personally, but a truth and clarity rolled from him like steam off the swamp, and he felt enormously familiar somehow.

“I wouldn’t say lost, no. May I come in?” His voice, soft and polite, still clear and steady over the storm.

“Yes, forgive me. Please.” He stepped aside, watching him enter, translucent eyes sweeping over the yawning, shadowed maw of the grand old manor’s entryway. “Who are you? I’m sorry, but I’m not taking in any bodies until morning.”

“I understand. Terribly sorry to intrude upon your evening like this, but you and I, we have a matter to discuss.” His accent was not local, nor was it unfamiliar. It felt like a forgotten dream, abruptly remembered, an old song once loved playing on the radio years later.

“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, Sir. Have you been to one of my funerals?”

“Sweet Theodore, I have been to all of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

The stranger clasped his hands behind his back, idle as a museum patron, gazing thoughtfully up to the enormous and heavily framed oil paintings of Bissonettes past lining the walls of the entryway. “It’s my fault for allowing myself to become so fond of you, but you’ve never really understood just how rare a person you are, have you Theodore? I shouldn’t have come here, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let you leave here tonight, that tree would have rendered your car to a smoking wreck and your body to worse. And you, sweet Theodore, you deserve so much better. After all the respect and care and compassion you have shown so unfailingly to myself and my vocation over the years - I’ve come to love you, and you deserve a soft and quiet end. So much sweeter than the one planned for you, I had to make sure you didn’t die in that crash. I had to come here, on this night. For all your kindness, tonight I will be kind to you.”

Drunk, perhaps. Some sauced-up tourist stumbling through the bayou after a bar crawl, but - this far from the city proper? “I’m afraid that you’re still losing me, will you please tell me who you are?”

He turned then, colorless gaze meeting Theodore’s, an echo of sorrow in his faint smile.

“You know who I am.”

In the end, it was true. He supposed at least a part of him had known from the moment he’d opened the door.

“I do. I didn’t think I’d meet you this young in life, but I’m pleased to find you a gentleman, Sir. I can only hope that in the time you’ve allowed me, I’ve done you proud.”

“You and your whole dear family. You don’t know how much I owe you, all of you. You would have lingered, in pain, on life support, for months. It was unbearable, unacceptable. Not you, not my Theodore who has served me so gently and so diligently for so much of your life.”

“I suppose it’s time, then.” He was not afraid. Death, he knew. He’d existed out here in a kind of stasis for years, honoring his patron saint, the man standing before him in a soft black sweater and reaching out to slip an arm through his.

“It is. But I think the storm is winding to a close, and the mists are always so lovely. Why don’t we go see.”

Nodding, Theodore allowed himself to be led to the door, turning briefly to look back just one last time into his beautiful old house, his shrine to a softer death than most knew existed. He’d always done his best, to make the transition as easy as possible for those on their way to some other place, and now it was time to go.

“Will it hurt?”

“Not for you, no.” The stranger opened the door then, and Theodore couldn’t be sure that the new world laid before him looked the same to both of them, but he smiled at what he saw.

“You were right. It’s beautiful.”

The house and the ghosts left wandering its halls signed in unison with the departure of their beloved Theodore, but the rain had slowed and the moon had risen and they were patient enough to wait a while. Someone would come, someone as warm and bright as him, someone who would take care of them as tenderly as he had, some new Theodore born. In the end, after all, nothing ever really died, and daylight was coming on soon, sure as a promise.

#writeblr #writing #my writing #fantasy #death #louisiana #i'm still feeling shy about my writing but i'm completely obsessed with this character right now #just a little something i hope y'all like it

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comicgoth666 · 4 years

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How would Toad handle his beloved expecting their kid (Bonus points if the kid hates Magneto's guts as a baby and the rest of their life)

"Mort?" They'd spoke softly as they floated around the kitchen, working on dinner for the lot of them. Some Italian dish Mort hasn't had yet.

"Yes, luv?" He answered, feeling like he was on cloud nine, thinking of how lucky he was to have such a beloved. One who held him during nightmares. One who looked at him with love in their eyes. Just him and his beloved.

"I was wondering, how do you feel about kids?" Kids? Thought they were gross grubby little things once upon a time. He recalled when Wanda was pregnant. Fatter than a doe eyed sow. Sweating and swollen. Then the brats came and he was put in charge of them for a week until Pietro came to get them. Smelly and loud and annoying.

Then, Billy smiled at him. Tommy held his finger. The little brats slept with him on the couch for hours. Laughed when he tried to play with them. Clung to him when they were awake. Pietro eventually got back and picked fun at him for an hour before leaving with them with Luna in tow.

His relationship with children was now... complicated.

"Depends, luv. Different chil'ren. Different reaction. Wha'? Yew baby si'in' again? Nee' my 'elp? Nee' me ta leave?" They hummed a no in response and set a glass in his hand. Flavored whiskey. A recent obsession of his.

"Not exactly, dear."

"Wazzat mean?" They floated easily around before continuing dinner.

"Well... I'm..... pregnant."

Panic. His first thought is panic. Pregnant. With a baby? His baby? His beloved was simply walking around in the compound kitchen, like nothing was wrong. Like they hadn't just verbally rocked his shit.

"... wot?" His throat was dry. His tongue was heavy. Was his heart beating to fast? Is this a heart attack. Aren't these symptoms of that? "W... wha... re... really?" Another hum. Affirmation. Baby... a baby... his baby. Their baby. What if they have his mutation? What if they have his issues? What if-?!

"Dearest... you'll do great. I know it." A peck and off they went again.

The brotherhood was ecstatic to hear the news. His beloved wouldn't be able to fight for a bit to take care of the baby and he'd see to it. He definitely wasn't going back into the field for a bit. Building and planning, sure. No field work.

First, came the crib, long before the bump started to show. Built by hand and carved beautifully. Stress building toys while they sat around and tried to help before he'd panic and tell them to just sit down. Please, luv. Leave it to me. Let me take care of it. Don't have to lift a finger.

Baby books that his beloved picked out, baby clothes given by teammates. Frog and Toad (haw haw Mystique), guess how much I love you, where the wild things are. He never read those growing up. Never had them read to him. His goal was to do what he needed growing up.

The Brotherhood quickly found out that some people weren't aloud near them as their belly got larger. Freddy was aloud by them by himself, as was Neena, Dom, Irene and Wanda when she came to visit. Sauron was aloud, as he was their doctor at the moment. Raven, Peitro and St John had to be supervised by Mort or someone he trusted to be around them. Victor and Magneto were not aloud in any capacity if it could be avoided.

But, even then, he was croaking and clinging to his beloved when they came near. Magneto was curious about a second generation mutant, wanted to see what this mixture could produce. His child wasn't about to become his new science project. And Victor was... Victor. Picking fights by getting closer then he needs to be. He knows what a animal like mutant can do, and yet...

Once the time came for the child to come, Freddy had to hold the poor man to keep him from attacking Sauron. Their screaming and pain was to much for him to handle. Maybe he could drag them away to the lake nearby. Dig a hole. Hide themselves away and lay low for a bit till it was over. But, he knew realistically, this was what they needed. A doctor, a hospital (the compound counted, he supposed).

The panic had been building the entire nine and a half months. What if the baby died? What if they died? What if they and the baby died? What if his kid hated him? What if-?

"Mort." Carl, in his human form, called from the hallway. Freddy slowly released the Brit punk and he ran with wings on his feet through the doorway.

Tiny. It was so... tiny. Tiny hands. Tiny head. Tiny body. It could be crushed so... easy. If this were a fight, he'd feel grateful for the upper hand. But... this was his baby. All he felt was and overwhelming fear and love.

The only person, aside from the doc, to enter the makeshift hospital was Wanda. She was cooing and keeping her distance while his beloved slept, regaining strength.

The next few weeks were difficult, but do-able. He's taken on giant robots. He's fought the X-Men head on. A baby was small beans compared to that. His beloved had the patience of a saint. Arranging and rearranging toys nervously as they feed them. Teddy Bear next to stuffed Frog with a toy Bat by the foot of the crib. Froggy covers tucked and untucked and tucked again. It had to be right. Couldn't risk suffocation by rolling over wrong... or worse. Was he over reacting?

"Oh! Erik... hello." His beloved rocked back and forth in the chair as their boss entered the baby room, toy in hand. A stuffed doll with red yarn hair and a velvet green dress and black button eyes. His helmet gleamed in the soft lamp light. Wanda and Pietro stood behind him with a book and a stuffed black cat respectively.

"What do you want, Erik?" He allowed the twins to enter and coo at the small bundle in his beloved's arms, but blocked Erik at the door. He had simmered a bit, but still didn't allow him anywhere near the two.

"I can't say hello to the newest member?" Heat rose to his face.

"They will never work for you." He growled.

"Mort... it's fine." They held his eyes and silently beat his resolve down. He sighed and moved behind them, hands on their shoulders, teeth clenched, muscles tight.

"Hello, dear." Arms outstretched, silently asking to hold the child. Mort's breath hitched and heavy. His beloved slowly placed the child in his gloved hands. Large hands with blood on them from years of violence. He shouldn't be holding them. He shouldn't be here. Mort should take his beloved up on their plan to run. A cabin. No Magneto. They most certainly will not work for him.

Silence befell the room as he arranged the babe in his arms and once settled... a loud cry came from them. Screaming and fussing as they flailed in his hands. Mort moved fast enough to make Quicksilver proud while carefully and quickly scooping his child up and away from him. Shushing and rocking as his beloved apologised. Mort smiled to himself for the small victory. It wasn't much, but it worked for him.

Several times over the next two months, Magneto tried again and again to hold the infant, and Mort let him try. It had become entertaining to watch as he became flustered at the sudden cry of the child. Victor, he'd found, only had to get within their eyesight for them to cry and fuss. He was pretty much blacklisted from being near the child and he seemed just fine with that. Small victories for Mort. Animals and babies were notorious for sussing out bad people. It made him happy to know Erik would eventually give up on holding the child.

Wanda had begun helping him and his new family find a home and life away from this life after she'd left a month prior with her brother to work with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Peace. Quiet. And no more orders. It truly was everything he never knew he needed.

#mortimer toynbee #the terrible toad king #toad #todd tolanski #todd tolansky #marvel #xmen #x-men #x men

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broken-clover · 4 years

Text

AU-gust Day 11- Farm

I return with more ridiculousness!

I will admit I am not a total expert on Sonic Lore, but I played Sonic Heroes growing up and I love Big the Cat (I mean, dude loves frogs, it’s only natural) so this might be a bit bizarre compared to the rest of what I have so far, but here’s a quick Sonic fic with team Rose being good buddies!

Amy hadn’t been expecting to spot a familiar face on the train, but it was a delightful surprise to spot a familiar pair of floppy tan ears, with an upbeat chao circling around them.

“Hey, Cream!” She stuck a hand up in the air and waved as she approached the younger girl. “Long time no see!”

“Miss Amy? Hello!” After a brief moment of confusion, Cream smiled and waved back, with Cheese bobbing excitedly and kicking his little feet. “Are you heading to Mystic Ruins, too?”

“Huh? Yeah, that’s exactly where I’m headed, how did you know?” Amy tilted her head and pulled an envelope from her bag. “I got this invitation…”

“Me too!” Cream smiled, pulling out an identical one. “How exciting! Yours is from Mr. Big as well, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. I wonder what he’s up to? It sounded like he was excited to show us whatever it was that he’s been working on.”

Amy pulled the letter out of its sleeve and unfolded it so she could read it again. She had seen his handwriting before, so it was clear to her that he had been insistent on writing their letters slowly and carefully to make them look nice. It seemed that this, whatever it was, was very important to him, and he wanted his friends to see it.

‘Dear Amy, it read, in thick black letters. ’I’ve been working on something very cool! And you are a very good friend. I want you to come see it, please! Please come to Mystic Ruins next tuesday, I will wait at the train station so I can show you! I hope you like it!

-Big the Cat’

“Any ideas what his ‘something cool’ might be, Cream?”

“Hmm…” The rabbit tapped at her chin, with Cheese mimicking her. “He’s a fisherman, maybe he caught a very large fish that he wants to show us?”

“That might be it. Maybe he’s gonna make dinner out of it!”

“I suppose we’ll find out very soon, won’t we? It shouldn’t be much longer to the station.”

The two girls spent the rest of their short trip chatting about what they’d been up to. It didn’t feel like there had been much of a wait when an announcement came over the intercom.

“Mystic Ruins station, we are approaching Mystic Ruins station. Please do not attempt to exit the train until it has come to a complete stop and the doors have been fully opened. Have a nice day!”

“Oh! Cream, this is our stop!” Amy took her smaller companion by the hand and led her out onto the platform once the train had stopped. As soon as they did, both girls spotted a familiar figure at the bottom of the stairs.

“Mr. Big!” Cream fluttered down, trailed by Cheese and Amy.

“Nice to see ya!” Amy flashed him a smile and a wave. “Glad we didn’t show up too early.”

“You came!!” Big threw his arms around the girls and pulled them into a tight, warm hug. In one hand, he held what appeared to be a pile of straw tangled together.

“Of course we came!” Replied Amy. “We’re excited to see that big surprise you were talking about!”

“Daw, well I’m super excited to show you! I’ve been working really hard on it!” When he finally let them go, he dropped the strange thing in his hands on their heads.

“Huh? What’s this?” The hedgehog pulled the object off to get a better look at it. “Is this a hat?”

“Yeah-huh! Straw hats are super important!” Big’s tail wagged behind him in excitement. “Let’s go! I really want to show you!”

The two obliged, though they were undeniably curious, both regarding their destination and the peculiar straw hats. They had to have some sort of relevance, but nothing came to mind- well, maybe that wasn’t necessarily true. As they began to wander a beaten path into the thickets, the waxy leaves dripped moisture, and Amy noticed that she never noticed any water fall down her back with the hat’s brim in the way. Maybe that was it?

“Are we going to your house, Big?” Amy asked, realizing that the route was familiar.

“Sorta!” He replied with a good-natured chuckle. “It’s right by it.”

Cream bounded up to him, with little flaps to help her jump. “Mr. Big, can I ask a question?”

“Yuh-huh!”

“Where is Froggy? Isn’t he usually with you?”

Amy couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed. They both knew how much Big absolutely adored his small friend. Why wasn’t Froggy with him?

For a moment, both girls wondered if their companion’s bright mood was going to be immediately soured by the fact that he’d misplaced his beloved friend again. But to their surprise, Big continued to smile, and laughed once again.

“You’re really good at guessing, Cream! Really good!”

Neither of them were entirely sure what he was trying to convey. Especially with the steadily increasing sounds of something in the distance. But it wasn’t a confusion that lasted long. The tall plants gave way to a neat little clearing where the man’s humble shack stood- but it was immediately apparent that some renovations had been made. A little barnhouse had been built into it, and neat little fences had been erected around a couple of nearby ponds.

“A farm!” Cream chirped with glee. “Mr. Big, your house is a farm!”

Well, that sort of explained the hats. Amy suddenly realized what the odd noises were. “Not just any farm...it’s a frog farm!”

“Heehee!” Big seemed equally excited. “Surprise! I was making a little house for Froggy, but then it kept getting bigger and bigger!”

He led them to the small barnhouse. A good portion of it was devoted to another small pond, where several frogs relaxed on lilypads and let out melodic croaks. “Froggy! Hello!” Big scooped up a familiar specimen and held it out to his guests. “Froggy has a lot of friends now. An’ I feed them and take good care of them!”

“They’re soooo cute!” Cream said. “I used to think frogs were a little creepy, but you really showed me how cute they can be, Mr. Big!”

“All frogs are good frogs.” Big nodded. “You two can hold them, but wash your hands first! Dirty hands are bad for frogs and it makes them sick!”

There were a pair of spigots built into the wall over a little basin. “I guess it makes sense for a lot of frogs to live here.” Said Amy, as she began scrubbing her hands clean. “It’s so damp out in Mystic Ruins, they probably like it here!”

“I can’t imagine what it would be like, being wet all the time.” Said Cream. “But I guess I’m not a frog. They probably don’t know what it’s like having fur all over them, either.”

“There is a kind of frog that has hair!” Big piped up from the other end of the barn, where he was sitting with Froggy. “It’s not really hair, though. Just looks like it. It also has tiny claws!” When the girls came back, he stood back up and ushered them towards the water. “Holding frogs is kinda hard the first couple times, but I’ll help you!”

Big scooped one off of a lilypad. The animal seemed completely unfazed by it, and simply let itself be held. He offered it to Cream. “Here! This one is very calm, he will sit still for you!”

“Woah, they really are all smooth and slimy…” Cream’s expression was a mix of fascination and faint unease. “Am I holding him right?”

“Yeah-huh! Keep up the good work!” After making sure the frog was secure, Big bent over the water again and scooped up another frog. “Amy, here’s one for you!”

She had gone in expecting to be completely fine with the whole thing, but as soon as she felt the wet stickiness of it, she squeaked in panic and flinched back. “It feels weird!”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Big said, though he still looked disappointed.

Amy steeled herself. “No, I can do it! I can do it.”

“Okay.” He tried holding it out to her again. Amy lifted her hands to accept the frog...only for it to jump and stick to her face.

“EEK!” She shrieked, only barely stopping herself from swatting the thing clean off. “It’s on me! It’s on me!”

“Hold still! I’ve got it.” With a couple of attempts, Big managed to take it off, and he held onto the frog carefully to keep it from hopping off.

Cream gave an empathetic wince. “Sorry, Miss Amy. Are you okay?”

“M’sorry about that.” Said Big, placing the frog back in the water. “That doesn’t usually happen.”

Amy’s expression was blank and unreadable. A bit of slime plastered the bangs to her eyes. After a moment, a faint smile twitched at the end of her lip.

“Heh...ehehe...hahahaha!” Despite the mess, Amy began to laugh, smiling brightly. “I guess that means it likes me!”

#AU-gust #writing #sonic the hedgehog #big the cat #Amy Rose #cream the rabbit

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