#so when you see the wd! then i write someones name they are part of my story called watchdogs

[baby-stay92]

Love At First Sight - Part 2

Pairing: Idol!Han x Fem!STAY Reader

FLUFF

Warnings: Anxiety

WD: 1.637

Credit: baby-stay92

Part 1 can be found >here<

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had been 12 hours since Han had arrived back at the dorms, and besides the time he spent on sleeping, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the girl from last night. He was currently seated at a long table along with his brothers in arms, eating breakfast. Han was sitting between Minnie and Jinnie, with his head resting in one hand and feeding himself some grapes with the other. He couldn’t stop thinking about thinking about her, causing him to completely zone out and not pay attention to the boys talking around him. It wasn’t till someone very suddenly stood up and bumped the table that he snapped back to reality. It was Binnie who had stood up out of nowhere with his phone in hand. “What the hell?!” Minho shouted out in shock, as he nearly choked on his breakfast.

“HAN! You need to see this!” Binnie said, ignoring Minhos words as he walked around the table to where Han was sitting. Binnie nearly shoved his phone into Han’s face, it was so close to Han’s face that he had to push Binnie's arm away from his face in order to see the screen.

“Oh my god!” Han exclaimed and grabbed the phone from Binnie's hand. “IT’S HER?!” he said and quickly whipped his own phone to go find her on Instagram.

“Damn, she’s cute, Han!” Binnie said once Han was done with his phone. “She has some nice pictures on here.” He added walking back to his seat.

“Hands off!” Han said rather aggressively as he quickly left the table to go to his room. Once inside, he closed the door and threw himself on his bed and quickly opened up instagram again, still on her profile. He anxiously pressed the ‘follow’ button, liked the picture of him and anxiously went to send her a DM. He stared at the screen for a while trying to think of what to write but after a while he decided to go with something simple.

“Hi you. I know that this is really random BUT I just wanted to say hi after I saw you at the concert last night.” He read the message through a few times before finally deciding to press send. He quickly closed down the app and tossed the phone down on the bed, anxiety hitting him hard. He had no idea how long he had been laying there, frozen by fear when suddenly he heard a notification sound. He ripped his phone from the sheets and checked it instantly. It was instagram - she had answered him.

“Omg hi! I never imagined that you, of all people, would DM me! But I’m so glad and honoured you did!” The message read and Han felt a huge smile spread across his face as he read the message over and over again before finally answering her back.

“The honour is all mine lol! I hope you enjoyed the concert!” He typed quickly and once again he put the phone down next to him, waiting impatiently whilst trying to calm his anxiety. She answered again and for the next hour or so they messaged back and forth to a point where they ended up exchanging phone numbers. Han had no sense of the time as he was now laying on his stomach, phone in hand, still messaging her. He nearly jumped out of his skin when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in” he called out and set up to face the door. Channie came in smiling.

“So? What’s going on?” Channie chimed as he sat down on Hans bed, a smile never leaving his face.

“It’s going well, I think. We’ve been talking all this time and we’ve now exchanged phone numbers.” Han said, looking down at the bedsheets, talking in a quiet voice.

“No way! That’s amazing!” Chan smiled even broader, if that was even possible and hugged Hannie tight.

“Y-you really think so? I was afraid you’d tell me it was a bad idea, and that I had to cut all contact or something crazy like that.” Han smiled back, once he had been released from Channie's big hug.

“What! No way! I think it’s wonderful that you managed to find your mystery girl! So, what’s her name?” Chan asked, clearly happy on Han’s behalf.

“Yeah her name is L/n Y/n” Han smiled, “she’s the same age as me and her birthday is July 28th - oh and she confessed to me that I’m her bias” Han rambled, never stopping smiling. 

“Wow, you’ve already learned a lot about her, huh?” Chan laughed lightly. “I guess the next step could be for you to ask her out?” He added, seeing how his word made Hannie turn white as a ghost.

“W-what…?” Han said weakly, his anxiety blooming once again.

“Hey, hey! Calm down” Chan smiled softly and put a hand on Han’s knee “It was merely a suggestion. You can wait if you feel it’s best.” He reassured the anxious Han in front of him.

“Can you maybe help me put it in writing?” Han asked sheepishly, not meeting Chan's gaze.

“Sure thing!” Chan smiled and grabbed Han’s phone, where he typed a message for Y/n. Before sending it, he showed Han the message for approval which Han gave by nodding. Chan sent the message and gave Hannie the phone back.

“Now, remember that you can always come to me if you need to talk okay?” Chan said softly, standing from the bed and making his way to the door.

“I know, Channie, thank you for.” Han said, smiling softly at Chan as he closed the door, leaving Han alone again. Not long after Han’s phone went off, indicating that Y/n had answered. He paused a moment before looking at the screen, a smile growing on his face as he read the message. Y/n had agreed to go on a date with him the very next day. Han smiled from ear to ear as he quickly messaged her back, confirming the time and place. That night Han barely slept due to a mix of late night messaging and anxiety. It had been years since he had last been on a date, and he was innerly scared he’d screw it up, like badly. 

The next morning Han got dressed, a huge smile never leaving his face. He had called innie to help put together a good outfit for a coffee date and a walk around the nearby park. Innie easily picked out some simple black ripped jeans, some read sneakers to match the red hoodie he had picked first. Han was sitting on his bed, waiting for Innie to give him the clothes so he could get dressed. Half an hour later, Han was dressed, combed and had his teeth brushed, all ready for him to meet up with Y/n. He walked down the street, phone in hand, listening to music as he made his way to the cosy little coffee shop that you had suggested. He entered through the front door as he took out his earpods and looked around for Y/n, he finally saw standing by one of the windows waiting. She was wearing knee long white socks, a small pastel-purple skirt, a white slightly cropped top and the very same platform boots that she had worn to the concert. Her hair hung loosely around her gorgeous face, which she had added some light everyday makeup to.

“Hi!” Han smiled once he had walked closer to her.

“Hi yourself.” She smiled and pulled him into a hug and before he could even think, he found himself hugging her back. Her hair smelled amazingly of strawberries which mixed with her flowery perfume in his nose.

“You wanna order? My treat.” He smiled after the hug had ended.

“Yeah, that’d be great - thank you Hannie” She smiled back at him before following him to the counter. Hearing her already calling him Hannie, made him smile even more, and he swore that his heart skipped a beat. After having received their coffees, they left the shop together making their way to the park. Along the way they talked about anything, everything and nothing. She asked into his line of work and he returned the favour, making him learn that she was part of a local dance crew. She told him about some of the shows she had been part of and how she had even been part of a few flash mobs. He listened happily to her talk about her passion and Y/n clearly did the same when talked about concerts, recording sessions and his relationship to the rest of Stray Kids. They walked around the park for hours, sitting down on a few benches along the way. At the end of their date Han walked Y/n to the subway, where he waited with her for the train that would take her home.

“Thank you so much for an amazing afternoon.” Y/n smiled at Han holding her hands in front of her.

“It was my pleasure!” Han smiled back and found himself wanting to kiss her - badly. But before he could do anything, her train arrived. He turned his head towards the train and his eyes went wide as he felt her lips on his cheek.

“Let’s do this again!” She mused as she ran off to enter the train.

“Yeah, let’s!” He called after her. Once Y/n was inside the train she turned around to face him and Han quickly blew her a kiss in return to the one she had planted on his cheek. The train doors closed and the train drove off, leaving Hannie standing there for a few minutes before he started walking back to the dorms.

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[cherrycolored-punk]

WD - Chapter Two🦇

Masterlist

summary: is it possible to be haunted by a town? for it to sink its claws into you, and be felt whenever you close your eyes?

author's note: I’m a few hours late but here it is! I really enjoyed writing this chapter so I hope you love reading it. Please comment or reblog if you did! Support is always so appreciated 🖤

w/c: 2.5k

warnings: nightmares, mention of blood and injuries. please let me know if I missed anything!

The road into Hawkins is quiet except for the faint noise of cicadas in the distance. Their song plays low, a soft hum in the cool air. 

The only light is the full moon hanging in the night sky, illuminating everything with a white glow. It follows you, a quiet passenger, as you approach the Hideout—hesitant, heavy feet carrying you forward.

The building isn’t as it was before when you first saw it. 

The wood is all but rotted through, the thin boards warped and bent out of shape. Looking as though it could collapse in on itself. Cobwebs hang on nearly every surface, thick and dotted with corpses of bugs. Spiders crawl in and out of the crevices in the wood, searching for more sustenance. 

There is an unnerving silence that envelops you, the cicadas no longer singing. The wind still and heavy.

You take a shaky breath. 

It’s cold despite being the middle of summer, and you can see the evidence of your unease puffing out in white clouds in front of you.

You step through the front door, just as you had before. The space is dimly lit, and the red of the Coors Light sign creates an eerie glow in the otherwise pitch-black room.

Shadows dance in your peripheral, moving on the bar's edge, closing in on you until you can feel their presence like a whisper above your skin.

Dominating and suffocating.

You walk further into the Hideout, your legs feeling like they’re made of lead. 

A chill runs up your spine as your head whips around the space. 

“Eddie?” you whisper for the only person you know, but your voice echoes across the empty space.

The squeak of a floorboard makes your neck snap to the right. Listening, waiting. Trying to steady your breathing.

You are not alone.

The hairs on your arms stand on end, and your heart picks up pace. The same strange feeling that someone is watching you growing by the second.

You can feel them with you, their eyes following your frame.

Fingers dance across the back of your head and you turn around, breaths coming in unsteady gasps - finding no one behind you.

“H-hello?” You stammer, but you’re only met with silence. A never-ending quiet that feels like it consumes you.

A shiver runs up your spine as warm breath fans across your neck, and you feel something sharp run down your back.

The voice is loud as it calls your name. Haunting and overwhelming. A little hypnotizing, but you don’t dare turn around, eyes trained on the darkness as it steadily approaches. The red glow of the neon sign disappears.

The stench of rotting flesh fills your senses, making you dizzy with nausea, and you about fall to your knees when sharp fingers wrap around your neck. Their grasp cuts off your breath, digging into your throat.

The voice repeats your name. 

Closer. 

Louder.  

Angrier.

You feel your eyes begin to close as you drift into unconsciousness. Unable to breathe, unable to see. 

All you feel is darkness.

–

The alarm on your phone blares, the catchy pop tune a stark contrast to how you gasp awake, fingers clawing at your throat as your legs thrash beneath your sheets.

You sit up in bed, wide eyes dancing around the room, wondering if what you’re seeing is real or part of the dream.

A layer of cold sweat coats your skin, making the fabric of your t-shirt cling to your skin uncomfortably. Your chest heaves as you try to draw more air into your lungs, a disbelieving gaze searching for signs that you’re still stuck in your nightmare.

But the loud noise of the busy streets below your apartment reminds you that you’re home. You reach over to your nightstand, an absent finger tapping away until finally, the alarm quiets, and all you can hear is the white noise of the city.

A sigh of relief leaves your lips as your shoulders shrink from your ears, but your hand is still pressed to your throat. You can still feel its grasp, its nails clawing into your skin. The stench of its dead flesh still stuck in your nose, making your stomach turn.

You throw the comforter off your body, swinging your legs over the side of your bed and ignoring the way the cool air of the fan meeting your sweat slicked skin sends a shiver up your spine. Making your nausea that much worse. 

Your arms stretch over your head, but a sharp pain makes you freeze, face twist in growing agony. Automatically, your hand reaches for your back searching for the source of it all. Your fingers push under the fabric of your shirt, and you wince, a gnawing pain shooting through your body when your fingertips connect with a jagged mark starting at the bottom of your back.

What the fuck?

You rush off the bed, pulling your shirt above your head and turning your back towards the full-length mirror that leans against the wall near your closet.

For a moment, you’re scared to turn around. Already knowing what the mirror will reflect.

You take a steadying breath and place a hesitant chin on your shoulder, chancing a look down. 

Every muscle in your body tightens, your heart hammering against your ribs when you see the long gash that lines your spine. The blood is already crusted over, a deep maroon that stares back at you.

Flashes of your nightmare spring forward and you quickly pull your shirt back down, gaze trained on your hardwood floor.

Questions flooded your mind, none of which you had answers to.

What happened in Hawkins forty years ago?

Who or what was Eddie?

And what was the thing in your dream?

Matthew had mentioned an earthquake that decimated the town, but it felt like there was something more.

All you knew for sure was that there was something strange about the small town, something that lurked in the shadows, and for some reason, you could feel its malice. The evidence of which was marred into your skin.

You sat in front of your laptop and stared at the screen, the cursor blinking back at you as you debated what to search for first.

The easiest place to start was with Hawkins itself. Hurried fingers rush over the keys as you type into the search bar. 

Dozens of links loaded onto the screen. Headlines that gave a glimpse into the destruction, the loss that the town felt.

“Hell Is Upon Us”

“The Devil’s Gate”

“Nearly All Presumed Dead”

You read through each one, all of them containing the same details. An unprecedented earthquake, a death toll that only climbed as the days dragged on, and missing people who were never found presumed to be amongst the carnage.

“The town appears nearly split in half, a massive hole in the ground like a portal to hell.”

Pictures were attached, blurry images that showed the state of destruction from when it first occurred. Your eyes pour over the scene, widening when you see the giant crater that was once Hawkins. 

You scroll further and read through the names of those missing and presumed dead. 

Dustin Henderson.

Lucas Sinclair.

Steve Harrington.

Robin Buckley.

Ted Wheeler.

Karen Wheeler.

Nancy Wheeler.

Michael Wheeler.

Holly Wheeler.

Jesus, the whole family.

The list dragged on.

The few who survived relocated or were never heard from again.

And it was only when you saw his face that you knew it wasn’t a dream.

Eddie Munson stared back at you through your screen, a picture of him in black in white but with the same vivid gaze. The flyer detailed his appearance, height and weight—the color of his hair, the shade of his eyes. But you could still smell his cologne. 

You gulp, mind unable to grapple with the reality. Because you know you saw Eddie. Talked to him, flirted with him, but he was…a ghost? 

It didn’t make sense.

It was almost worse than him being a figment of your imagination because he was real, but he was dead.

You swallow the bile that rises in your throat and click the back arrowing, Eddie’s face disappearing when you do but stained on your vision.

You continue to scroll down the list of articles.

One link in particular catches your eye.

“No Return: Some Who Visit Hawkins Don’t Come Back.”

You click the link and are taken to a LiveJournal blog.

Above the title is a collage of missing faces, and amongst them are newer pictures of those who recently went missing. 

The blog entry details their disappearances with one common denominator: they all had ventured beyond Hawkins’ city limits and were never seen again.

You read through the accounts of their family and friends. The details the missing had once shared before they disappeared. 

A broken-down car on the edge of the town, an abandoned bar or store, ghostly encounters, and recurring nightmares. 

Your heart thuds against your chest, and you click on another blog entry. 

It’s a list of links, one of which leads to a YouTube channel. You click it curiously, recognizing the face of the narrator from the banner on the blog—one of the people who was now missing. 

Ryan Lancaster.

The video is dated two years ago and starts with a recounting of Hawkins’ history with a montage of the photos you’d seen in the articles you read before it cuts to a video of Ryan talking about his experience.

He’d entered on the opposite side of town as you, but not two miles in, his car broke down. His cell had no service, so he began to walk into town, hoping to find someone who could help or direct him to a mechanic shop.

He talked about how he wandered into a video store, excited because those were obsolete. Replaced with streaming.

The inside felt like stepping into a time capsule. He expected DVDs, but he found VHS tapes and two workers who he thought were pretending not to know what discs were. 

Ryan swears he wasn’t inside for over thirty minutes, but the sun had already gone down when he left. 

When he turned back around, the store was abandoned. There was no one in sight. No Robin or Steve, the two he’d just met.

An eerie feeling settles over you as you continue to watch the video.

He walked until his phone regained signal on the outskirts of town and called a tow service. 

The nightmares started two days later, and you can see the terrified look in his eyes. The way he stares off into space as he recalls the presence he can still feel.

It sends a shiver through your spine, a sense of dread pulling in your stomach.

He only found out about the town’s history when he searched online. Horrified to find that Robin and Steve were presumed dead for nearly forty years. 

So he was set on exploring the town, convinced that it was an undiscovered gem. Possibly one of America’s most haunted.

The video ends with him inviting viewers to continue to watch as he documents what he uncovers. 

You click on his page, and your heart stops when you read the next title. 

Six days after the first video is one titled Ryan is Missing…

You slam your computer shut and press your fingers into your temples, trying to massage the growing headache that throbbed against your skull.

None of it made sense; it felt like you were losing your mind.

There wasn’t a logical explanation for any of it, but you couldn’t ignore how you were drawn in. Like the town had a vice grip on you and refused to let you go. 

And part of you wants to reach back. To be dragged in. 

—-

The Hideout is busy…as busy as it can be for a Wednesday night. 

A haze of cigarette smoke clouds the space, making the light of the neon bar signs all the brighter—a red glow cast over the otherwise dimly lit bar.

Madonna’s Like a Prayer plays on the jukebox, and Eddie tries to hide how he bobs his head as he pours another beer. He has heard this one at least once a night since it came out.

Customers are scattered around the Hideout; a couple dancing, gazing at each other with drunken smiles. The same few drunks plopped into stools before him, downcast eyes staring into their drinks, watching how bubbles form and burst at its surface. Some pressed into the red vinyl seats that needed to be replaced. Making out or in deep conversation.

It is a typical Wednesday night, and Eddie is bored out of his mind. Praying for some excitement. A pretty girl, a funny drunk, a gnarly bar fight. Anything.

He huffs and stares at the ceiling, absently wiping circles into the wood surface of the bar—persistent rings threatening to break down the varnish. 

He is tempted to begin ripping dollar bills from where they are pinned to the ceiling, betting that there’s at least two hundred dollars there. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to get him the hell out of Hawkins. 

“Munson,” one of the regulars grumbles and breaks his trance. 

Eddie points his bored, hooded gaze in the man’s direction. His chin resting on the palm of his hand.

“Another?” He asks, already pushing off his elbows and reaching for the man’s mug.

“You know me,” the man chuckles, hiccuping and tilting back in his seat. 

Eddie fills the glass to the brim with the cool, amber liquid. 

“That I do, Roy,” but Eddie can’t give him a full smile as he slides the filled mug in front of the man. 

Roy pushes a five-dollar bill towards the curly-haired bartender.

“Towards your tab?” Munson asks, holding up the money, but the man shakes his head.

“A tip,” the man holds up his mug in cheers, and Eddie tilts an appreciative chin in his direction before reaching for his wallet.

He pulls the black leather from the back pocket of his jeans and unfolds it to push the five into the bill hold. 

His hands freeze, his gaze trained on a bill he’d never seen before. 

Where did you come from?

Eddie pulls it from his wallet, dropping the leather onto the bar top as he examines the money. 

The note is so different from the one he was just given; a bigger portrait of Lincoln, the bald eagle situated behind the president, and the money far more colorful.

His eyes turn to slits as he peers closer, looking for signs of forgery because there is no way it is real. 

And then he sees it, the small writing right next to Good Ol’ Abe—series 2024.

No fucking way.

How did you get here?

His heart thunders against his ribs, and he shakes his head as he closes his eyes—images of a girl, her smile, the smell of her perfume. The way she looked up at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

Why do you look so familiar?

It feels like he’s grasping for a memory that feels more like a dream because he would’ve remembered you.  

Eddie swallows hard and opens his eyes, his gaze darting around the bar.

The scene is just like any other Wednesday, but why does he feel like he’s lived this moment before?

-

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[mrfandomgage]

*Jevil walks up a hill of red and blue grass to see Gage sitting at the top of the hill*

Jevil: this is a strange new development? What have ya been working on?

Gage: just this hill

Jevil: I never really understood. Why is the writer in the world he brings life?

Gage: I just... I like being part of the worlds I see, I like being around all these oddities. I like seeing what worlds I can combine and what worlds I can write stories for... and when it comes down to it, even with the infinite possibilities, I just can't get what I want out.

Jevil, slav squatting: So you've written yourself in here. What do you mean about that last part?

Gage: Well. I thought I had a really good idea for an alternate universe. However with missing puzzle pieces, I'd have to make it a little odd. See, I wanted to make it so that Kris, Susie, and Ralsei would have to fight "The Titans". I thought it'd be fun and Ralsei would "die" and good times would be had by all. I don't know if I even want to try telling that tale. Then I had a dream. All I remember is that while I was asleep it was from Kris' point of view. Papyrus had a robot version of himself and in the middle of a vast beautiful ocean, WD Gaster was there and scanned my mind, and I knew he was trying to learn more on Noelle so I tried protecting her by forcing my thoughts to focus on other things. I uh... I can't remember the dream too well, but the Papyrus bot was freaking out by having less and less a name... I can't remember it too well.

Jevil, nodding intently as if he knows what a Papyrus is: that does sound pretty interesting

Gage: I was walking around with someone important to me, and I joked about a "scenic route" where everyone is friendly and you get around by doing chores and little games. The other person made that up at the start but we both expanded on it... then it went nowhere like everything else.

Jevil: why not start one of these? You sound like you'd have fun.

Gage: I want to, but I just don't know how. I want others to see it, I want to tell my tales. It doesn't feel worth it.

Jevil: you should at least get around to it. It sounds like it bothers you that you haven't.

[sheerfreesia007]

Finding Love In Legacy Oaks pt. 6

Title: Finding Love In Legacy Oaks pt. 6

Fandom: Kingsman

Pairing: Agent Whiskey x Reader

Author: @sheerfreesia007

Words: 23,186 (Am I insane? Yes, yes I am.)

Warnings: Fluff, Bullying

Permanent Tag List: @paintballkid711, @fioccodineveautunnale​, @phoenixhalliwell, @synystersilenceinblacknwhite, @linkpk88, @weirdowithnobeardo

Author Notes: I have no words to describe how happy I am that I’ve finally finished this chapter. This will be the longest chapter I will EVER write. So this spans over a whole work week, hence why it’s so long. I absolutely loved and hated this chapter haha, I love the slow soft relationship I’ve created between these two wonderful women. I hope you all enjoy! I need a drink. Also don’t come for me for the pirate names I used a generator because my brain was broken by the end of this. Feedback is welcome.

Gif Credit: Google

Bunny walked back into the kitchen after she shut the front door letting Jack out of the house. Stepping into the bright kitchen her eyes were immediately drawn to Butter who excitedly rolled from his back to his front in his dark brown fluffy dog bed. Bunny burst out laughing as she watched the little dog roll over too much and have to correct himself. His body twisting and turning as he tried to right himself and he let out a little yip when he finally got it right and laid upright in the bed looking up at her excitedly.

   “You’re a bit of a mess aren’t you?” She asked fondly and watched as his tongue lolled out of his mouth and he began to pant softly. Bunny turned to the cabinet under the counter at the corner and the sound of nails on the floor rang out. She grabbed the dog treat jar she had stored in there and turned around to see Butter trying to run over to her hurriedly but his feet got caught up underneath him and he belly flopped on the floor and slid across to her feet where he came to a stop. Bunny chuckled softly and shook her head at him. “Such a mess.”

She then pulled out a dog biscuit and held it out in front of him. Butter obediently sat and waited as she placed the biscuit on his nose balancing it perfectly. “Wait.” she told him softly as she then stood to her full height and he didn’t move an inch. “Alright get it.” she said happily. Butter snapped his nose upward and the treat flew in the air a few inches above his nose. He twisted his face and quickly caught the treat in his mouth and Bunny clapped her hands proudly. “Very good!” she cheered proudly. Butter stomped his little feet in excitement and Bunny laughed at his antics.

   Turning from Butter she turned back to the fridge and peered inside of it surveying to see what she had grocery wise for dinner for her and Esme. Spotting the thawing chicken she had in the fridge she smiled and turned to walk to her pantry to check she had all the ingredients she needed for what she had planned.

   “Alright I’ve got everything I need for dinner so I’m gonna catch up on some more work before we have to go get Esme from the bus stop in a few hours. Don’t make too much trouble go it?” she called out as she walked across the hall to her office. When she turned and looked back into the kitchen Butter was already sprawled out in his bed again on his back with his tongue hanging out of his mouth once more. “Such a mess.” she chided softly with a chuckle and a shake of her head.

———

   Bunny rubbed her eyes when she heard the front screen door of Mrs. Parker’s house squeaked loudly on its hinges, I really need to get them some WD-40 for that door. Blinking rapidly she sighed softly, she had been working hours on this one client’s website trying to make the dimensions and what the client wanted work together cohesively. Unfortunately she hadn’t been able to get it to work and a headache had begun to form behind her eyes. Sighing softly she saved her progress on the website and quickly shut her laptop.

   Looking down at her phone she pressed the power button she saw that she had just five more minutes before her and Butter had to start heading to the bus stop to pick up Esme. Standing from her chair she lifted her arms and stretched wide letting out a large yawn. Running her hands into her hair she scratched at her scalp and groaned lowly at the pleasure it brought her before she shook her hair out and let it fall behind her.

   Grabbing her oversized navy blue knit sweater from the back of the desk chair where she had put it hours ago, she pulled it back over her head and let it fall to cover her white tank top. Then moving around her desk she grabs a knit scarf and a pair of fingerless gloves, while it was the beginning of the year it was still chilly enough to require some extra clothing for warmth.

   Walking out of the office she whistled softly for Butter as she made her way down the main hallway towards the front door. She effortlessly slipped her feet into her trusty black combat boots and zipped up the sides. When she stood tall in front of the mirror she smiled at herself before she grabbed Butter’s leash from the hook next to the door and her keys from the mosaic key bowl on her little table. She laughed as she heard the skittering of nails on the floor as she jingled the dog leash in her hand.

   “So good of you to wake up sleeping beauty.” She teased softly as she bent down and held out the harness for the little dog to step into. Butter licked her chin excitedly as she finally clasped the buckle on the harness. “C’mon you wanna go get Esme at the bus stop bud?” Butter began to prance around her feet as she stood tall again and then opened the front door.

   Holding the leash loosely in her hand she turned and quickly locked the door before skipping down the front steps. Butter quickly tried to dart ahead of her but was jerked back by the leash and Bunny burst out in laughter as the little dog tumbled backwards clumsily. Shaking her head at him she tried to calm her laughter.

   “When are you gonna learn Butter? The leash doesn’t retract buddy.” She said softly to the little dog still shaking her head at him. He yipped at her and she grinned at his response. “C’mon we can’t be late for Esme.”

Walking down the block Bunny silently looked around her neighborhood and admired how quaint it looked. The trees were slowly losing the frost that had swept in last month and looked as if they were finally thawing out. She knew next month the trees should start budding as they got ready for spring to arrive. The flowers would soon need to be planned out for when the neighborhood would help with planting them. Hopefully Sarah would have some ideas that they could bounce off each other.

Bunny waved at Mrs. Carter as she passed in her Volkswagen Golf on her way home after work. The walk to the corner bus stop wasn’t very long and as Bunny came to a stop on the sidewalk Butter looked back at her confused as to why she stopped when normally they would walk all the way to the dog park so that he could get his exercise in.

“We gotta wait for Esme bud. I told you this.” Bunny said easily. Just then she heard the loud squeaky brakes of the school bus as that bus made the turn into the neighborhood. Bunny smiled and waved her hand at the bus driver as he pulled to the curb and opened the door waiting for the kids to pile out.

There were the older two girls that Bunny had seen last time she saw Esme at the bus stop walk off the bus and then Esme appeared at the top of the bus stairs. Bunny watched as the little girl tilt her head at her for a second before a bright smile spread across her face as she remembered that she’d be staying with Bunny for the week.

“Bunny!” Cried Esme happily before she bounced down the stairs to the pavement.

“Hey Esme!” Bunny called out happily and Butter began jumping around excitedly as he barked catching onto the little girl’s happiness easily. Bunny watched fondly as the little girl kneeled down and began petting Butter and hugged him around his neck softly. “So I was told you put in a request to go visit the playground before doing homework and I am here to make that request a reality.” Bunny explained easily.

“Really?!” Esme cheered excitedly as she quickly stood from the pavement.

“Yeah I gotta take Butter for a walk anyway. Would you like to go to the big playground or the little one?” Bunny asked, smiling down at Esme. “The big playground is closer and usually more busy now but if you’re up for a little bit of a longer walk there’s a smaller playground that not a lot of kids go to.” Bunny explains as they begin to start their walk down the sidewalk towards where the main part of the community is.

“Can we go to the little playground? I don’t really want to play with anyone else right now.” Esme asked.

“Of course.” Bunny answered before nodding her head.

“Can I hold Butter’s leash?” Esme asked softly as she twisted and turned unsurely while she walked next to Bunny on the sidewalk. Bunny looked down at her with a kind smile on her face.

“Of course Es. Just hold him tight and if he pulls you you have to tell him no and stop walking immediately. That’s how I taught him when he was a puppy, but when it’s someone else walking him he’ll try to pull ahead. And let me hold your backpack so you don’t have to worry about it.” Bunny explained as she looped the leash handle around Esme’s wrist and showed her how to hold the leash and took Esme’s backpack from her casually tossing it over one shoulder before they started walking again.

Once they had crossed the main road running through the community Bunny directed Esme to walk past the big playground and then follow the winding cobblestone walkway. They were quiet for a bit just taking in the scenery before Bunny spoke up.

“So how was school today?” Bunny asked curiously as she watched Esme focus on walking Butter properly. At her question Esme turned her head to look at Bunny with a bright smile.

“It was fun. We did a lot of arts and crafts today and not that many sports.” Esme said happily as she began to skip down the sidewalk.

“You like doing a lot of arts and crafts?” Bunny asked, wanting to gather some ideas on what she could do with Esme during the week when she got home from school.

“Oh yeah my favorite is drawing and painting but today in art class we did some sculpting with clay which was really cool!” Esme said excited as she continued to bounce.

“What about bead bracelets? Do you know how to make those?” Bunny asked curiously as she silently stored away that information about Esme.

“No, not really I know how to braid a lanyard though. I did that in summer camp one year.” Esme said distractedly as the two of them continued walking along the path. Soon the trees began to grow closer and closer along the sidewalk and Bunny smiled as she began to walk slower taking in the imagery of the trees looming over the sidewalk created. She pulled her phone out and lined up the shot of Esme walking along with Butter looking up at the trees. Smiling she snapped the shot and admired the picture before she sent it off to Jack in a text message.

She then quickly caught up to the two of them and they finally came across the smaller playground. Esme squealed in delight and Bunny held her hand out to take the leash from her before she quickly ran towards the playground. Slowly walking Butter in the grass before the playground Bunny kept an eye on Esme as she made it to the fort and began to climb. Her eyes easily took in the way that Esme would take a moment to catch her breath when she climbed too quickly. She wondered quietly how severe her asthma was and soon ideas started to begin to form in her head on ways to help Esme through that.

Bunny walked closer to the playground and leaned against one of the poles of the swing set while she kept her eyes on Esme. She watched as the little girl happily made her way up and down the playground. When she slid down the slide for the fifth time she came racing over to where she stood and sat down on one of the swings and began to swing herself. Bunny smiled and set the backpack against the pole before she took a seat on the other swing and lazily began to swing back and forth. Butter danced around her legs and happily barked as Bunny tapped his behind with her shoe. Esme burst out into happy laughter as Butter then began chasing Bunny’s shoes as she lazily swung them in the air.

“So why did you name your dog Butter?” Esme asked as she slowed her swinging so that she wasn’t so high. Bunny let out a loud laugh at the question and turned her head to look at Esme as she stopped swinging.

“I didn’t mean to name him Butter. His first name was Butterscotch because he has the same colors as butterscotch. But when I first adopted him I brought him over to show him to my nephew.” Bunny began to explain happily as she remembered the day she adopted Butter. “My nephew Henry was only three at the time and was only talking a little bit. You know when little babies are just learning how to talk and only know how to say certain words?”

“Yeah.” Esme responded nodding her head in thought at Bunny’s words.

“Well when I introduced Butterscotch to him Henry couldn’t say the word butterscotch so he kept saying ‘Budder’. And it was really cute so his name changed from Butterscotch to just Butter.” Bunny explained easily as she laughed softly at the memory.

Esme burst out into laughter at the story and Bunny smiled warmly at the little girl. She watched amused as the little girl bent over on her swing as she continued to laugh happily.

“That’s so silly!” Cried Esme happily as she still laughed. Bunny nodded her head at Esme’s words and watched as she slid off the swing and began to pet Butter as she giggled. “Do you like your name Butter or do you like Butterscotch?” Esme asked still giggling and Butter began to bark loudly and jumped around the little girl in excitement making her laugh harder at his antics.

“Alright kiddo, what do you say we start heading back so I can make us some yummy dinner and we tackle your homework while I cook?” Bunny suggested softly as she smiled down at Butter and Esme.

“What are we having for dinner?” Esme asked curiously as she nodded her head and picked up Butter’s leash. Bunny stood and grabbed Esme’s backpack and slung it over her back again.

“I was thinking chicken parmesan with linguine and pasta sauce. How does that sound?” Bunny asked.

“Oh! Can I help after I finish my homework?” Esme asked eagerly as she turned to face Bunny as they all began walking down the sidewalk once more.

“Yeah of course.” Bunny said nodding her head amenably. Esme cheered loudly throwing one of her fists into the air and Butter barked loudly in excitement as he jumped around not knowing what was going on. Esme and Bunny burst out laughing when Butter tripped on his own feet and did a faceplant into the sidewalk. “You alright Butter?” Bunny asked fondly as she bent down and brushed the dirt off his face and kissed his head. Butter made a happy grumbling sound and butted his head against her shin gently making Esme laugh and Bunny smile at him.

———

After the three of them had gotten back to Bunny’s house she had told Esme to go wash her hands after playing on the playground before starting her homework. Bunny had unhooked Butter’s leash and turned on the lights in the house so that they would all have enough light to be able to do what they needed to for the night.

Bunny moves about the kitchen effortlessly pulling out pots and pans and all the ingredients she needs to be able to cook dinner. She turns on her music player on her phone and hooks it up to the bluetooth speakers that she had installed into the house about a year ago, turning down the volume to a background noise level, and she begins to start dinner. She’s already salted the pot of water she needs to boil for the linguine and set up her dredging stations for the chicken parmesan before Esme reemerges from the bathroom all clean. Bunny points to one of the stools where she set down Esme’s backpack for her.

“Are you alright to sit at the island while I cook? Or do you want to go to the dinner table over there?” Bunny asks curiously as she begins to chop up some onions and garlic to add to the pasta sauce she’s making.

“No, I can do it here.” Esme says confidently and Bunny nods as she continues to chop.

“So how much homework do you have tonight?” Bunny asks idly as she looks over to Esme as the little girl pulls out a sparkly navy blue folder with a white label that says homework on it.

“I only have vocabulary and math to do tonight. And they’re only two worksheets.” Esme says with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Ok, do you want to try and do it yourself and if you get stuck you can ask me for help? I don’t know how your dad does homework with you.” Bunny says softly at a loss for words or direction. She looks over at Esme and sees the little girl smiling brightly at her.

“I usually do it myself but Daddy helps me if I get stuck.” Esme says nodding her head as she pulls out a pencil case that is also sparkly and purple. Bunny nods and smiles warmly at the little girl.

“Ok, that works for me.” Bunny says nodding as she turns and adds the chopped onions and garlic to the large pot on her stove. Stirring the onions and garlic she smiles when the scent of them cooking together enters her nose.

It’s not much longer before Bunny is adding the jar of pureed tomatoes to the pot with the onions and garlic and she begins to season the sauce with oregano and basil.

“Hey Bunny, I need help with my nine times table. I keep getting stuck on that one.” Esme says from behind Bunny and she turns to face the little girl.

“Ok what are you having trouble with?” Bunny asks as she moves to lean over the kitchen island to look at the little girl’s math worksheet.

“It’s the only times table that I have trouble remembering.” Esme said dejectedly as she huffed down at her worksheet.

“Okay, do you have a piece of scrap paper?” Bunny asked and Esme nodded handing her a piece of spare paper. Bunny easily picked up Esme’s pencil and began to write out the nine times table for the little girl. When she was done writing it out she turned it around to show Esme. “So the way that I was taught was that each number in your answer for the nine times table will add up to nine. This only works for up to nine times ten though.” Bunny began to explain to Esme. She points to show the little girl that if she adds each number in the answer it will add up to nine. “Also the first column of the answer goes from zero to nine and the second column goes the opposite nine to zero.” she explains as she shows that little girl. “Does that help you?” she asks, worried that she might have confused the little girl even more.

“It did. Thank you.” Esme says nodding quickly as she begins to fill in the answers for the worksheet. “So if I add nine to this answer I will get the next one right?”

“Yes that’s right.” Bunny says relieved that Esme seems to understand it.

“Cool thanks!” Esme said happily as she quickly finished her worksheet. “So can I help with dinner now?” Esme asked as she began to pack away her homework.

“Sure thing kiddo. Pull up a chair and I’ll let you dredge the chicken so I can fry them.” Bunny explains as she begins to set out plates on the kitchen island for the dredging. Cracking two eggs she beat them until the yolks and egg whites were mixed on one of the plates and then poured out some breadcrumbs on the other plate.  Esme pulled a chair around the side of the island and climbed up onto it. Bunny easily flattened the chicken breasts and handed them to Esme to dip into the egg mixture and then into the breadcrumbs before laying them on a plate for Bunny. “So I was thinking maybe tonight we could watch some Pirates of the Caribbean? And then maybe tomorrow we could watch The Mummy?” Bunny suggested as she laid the coated chicken breasts in the pan of heated oil.

“I love pirates!” cheered Esme excitedly. Bunny smiled over her shoulder at the little girl who was still standing on the chair at the kitchen island. “I’ve never seen The Mummy though.” Bunny gasps loudly and presses a hand to her chest in mock outrage.

“You’ve never seen The Mummy? Oh I’m gonna show you all of my favorite movies. This is gonna be fun! What kind of movies do you like? Are there certain ones that you like?” Bunny asked over her shoulder as she would periodically look over it to Esme.

“I watch a lot of Disney movies. Dad doesn’t really know anything besides Disney.” Esme said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Oh well that’s good because I have a ton of Disney movies that we could watch. What about Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter? Do you like those too?” Bunny asked curiously.

“You love Disney too?!” Esme cried as she bounced a little bit on the chair. Bunny laughs softly as she nods her head.

“Oh yeah I grew up on Disney kiddo. I’m like a Disney guru.” Bunny said making a silly face at Esme over her shoulder making the little girl laugh.

As dinner continued to cook the two of them continued to talk about movies that they could watch together during the week that Esme would be here. Once dinner was done Bunny easily made two plates and walked them over to the coffee table in her living room and turned on the tv pulling up the Pirates movie. She quickly then got Esme situated on the floor before going back to the kitchen to grab silverware and their drinks. Before she walked back into the living room she grabbed her phone and checked to see if she had any messages from Jack. When she saw that there weren’t any she quickly headed into the living room figuring that he was still busy with work.

———

“I love that movie!” Gushed Esme as the credits rolled for the first pirates movie on the tv screen. Bunny laughed and nodded her head. The two of them had finished their dinner about halfway through the film and just wound up slouched on the floor leaning back against the couch.

Bunny sat half slouched against the couch with one knee bent in front of her and one leg splayed out. Butter laid draped between her legs with his head resting on her thigh. He was snoring loudly with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Bunny looked down at the snoozing dog and laughed softly at him.

“I do too. It’s a really good movie.” Bunny said easily as her hand came down to rest in Butter’s fur and she began to pet him softly along his body.

“So we’ll be able to do that every night? Watch one of the movies you have?” Esme asked as she rested her head back on the cushion of the couch and rolled it to look over at Bunny. Bunny turned her head and smiled warmly at the little girl. She looked so at peace with where she was right now. Her eyes were sparkling, her smile was lazy, she looked satisfied.

“Of course I’ve got tons of movies that we could watch. I’ve got The Mummy we could watch tomorrow. There’s also some girlie movies likes 13 Going On 30 or Pipi Longstocking.” Bunny told Esme. Esme nodded her head eagerly at all the movies that Bunny was naming off. “Alright how about this we watch one more pirate movie before bed and to relax we’ll do some face masks?” Bunny suggests as she nudges Butter who wakes with a start and yelp as he twists his body until he’s standing on his little legs making Esme giggle next to the two of them. Bunny shakes her head at the dog and sighs. “Always such a hot mess.”

“What’s a face mask?” Esme asked softly and Bunny whipped her head around to her with a delighted gasp and wide eyes.

———

Bunny was finishing up smearing the lumpy light green avocado mixture onto Esme’s face. Just then Bunny heard her phone chime and not moving from her spot in front of Esme she quickly finished applying the face mask to her face.

Once done she set the bowl of the face mask down and grabbed her phone quickly. Seeing that she had a message from Jack she opened it and read it.

Is it alright to video call now?

She smiled as she read the message knowing that Jack was probably anxious to talk to his little girl. He hadn’t sent her a message besides when they were on their way to the park. Typing out a message she turned to see Esme admiring herself in the mirror that Bunny had brought out.

“Hey Es, wanna video call your dad?” She asked kindly and the little girl quickly turned to her nodding her head rapidly.

“Yes can we call him?” She asked hurriedly. Bunny smiled and tapped the video call button on Jack’s contact and handed the phone to Esme. Bunny then began applying her own face mask to her face while the two of them waited for Jack to pick up, which he did after only a few rings.

“Oh my god! What did you get into?” Came Jack’s worried cry and Bunny jolted at his loud tone. She quickly walked behind Esme to look into the phone as well.

“It’s nothing bad, it’s just a face mask. Perfectly fine and safe I swear. We’re doing a little girl spa night.” Bunny said quickly and watched as Jack stare at the two of them with concern for a moment.

Just then Bunny watched as another man peered over Jack’s shoulder and she shrieked loudly making Esme whip around to look at her as she retreated from the screen. The words from the man not resonating with Bunny at all as she quickly moved away from the phone. Esme watched her shrewdly for a moment until a bright happy grin spread across her face.

“Hi Uncle Tequila! I don’t think Bunny wants you to see her in her avocado face mask.” Esme teased happily as she giggled. Bunny shook her head at the little girl who grinned over at her from her spot on the chair.

“Oh and I can?” Came Jack’s question over the phone and Bunny rolled her eyes at Esme who giggled loudly again. Huffing out a soft breath Bunny spoke up so that Jack could hear her.

“Jack we’re friends of course you can see me in a face mask. I’m watching your daughter. Uncle Tequila is a literal stranger.” Bunny said loud enough for Jack to hear. She rolled her eyes and felt her face warm at having been seen in a face mask by someone other than Jack and Esme. Not to mention now that she thought about it she was quite embarrassed that Jack had seen her in her face mask as well.

“Bunny’s embarrassed.” Esme sang teasingly as she grinned into the phone at her father. Bunny scoffed softly at the little girl before a grin of her own spread across her face.

“Just wait until you’re a teenager little one. You’ll know all about being embarrassed.” Bunny grumbled out and Esme giggled again. Bunny shook her head and began cleaning up the bowl and other things that they had taken out to do face masks giving Esme and Jack some privacy to talk.

———

It wasn’t too long before Esme was walking into the living room from the kitchen still on the phone with Jack. She had a happy sparkle in her eye and as Bunny looked up from the book she was reading she was glad that she was able to give Esme and Jack this little reassurance that things were alright here.

“Hey Bunny, Daddy wants to talk to ya before he hangs up.” Esme said as she let out a big yawn.

“Alright, just give a minute and I’ll help you wash of your face mask. Did you say goodnight to him?” Bunny instructed warmly.

“Yeah. He just wants t’say goodnight to you.” Esme said with a bright smile and Bunny instantly felt her cheeks warm at the thought. Taking the phone from Esme she nodded her head to the little to go down the hallway.

“Meet ya in the bathroom?” She suggested lightly and Esme nodded before walking away down the hallway. Turning back to the phone she smiled at Jack who grinned and chuckled lightly at her.

“Still can’t get over that green stuff on your face.” He said softly.

“I’ll have you know it does wonders for the skin.” Bunny defended with a laugh and Jack grinned at her.

“I just wanna say thanks again Bunny. You’re doin’ me a real favor here.” Jack said warmly and for a second there Bunny thought she heard a warm southern accent in his voice that made her head tilt a little bit. Odd. Shaking her head lightly she immediately pushed the thought away.

“Jack I told you I don’t mind watching Esme. She’s been a sweetheart. There’s nothing for you to worry about I promise.” Bunny said earnestly as she stared into the phone at Jack.

“Alright, alright. I just I really appreciate it.” Jack said again and Bunny smiled at his almost pleading tone.

“What do I gotta do to get you to stop thanking me?” Bunny asked teasingly and watched as Jack’s eyes dart away from the phone and then back to her. Was that a blush she saw creeping onto his cheeks? Before Jack could become even more embarrassed Bunny spoke up again. “Don’t mention it Jack. Seriously don’t.” She teased him and he chuckled and shook his head. Just then Bunny let out a wide yawn and Jack chuckled again as her hand came up to try and hide the yawn from him.

“Alright I’ll let ya go. I’ll text you tomorrow morning.” He said with a nod and Bunny nodded along with him.

“Sounds good to me. Goodnight.” She said starting to feel the drowsiness creep into her body.

“Goodnight Bunny.” He responded and Bunny smiled before pressing the red button on the bottom of the screen. With the call ended Bunny set her book aside and stood up stretching. Yawning again she began to walk down the hallway towards the bathroom. When she saw Esme sitting up on the counter she grinned at the little girl.

“Alright girlie let’s get these masks off and you tucked up into bed.” Bunny said warmly and set about cleaning off Esme’s face first.

———

Bunny jolted awake suddenly and sat straight up in bed. Her hand came up to her chest where she felt her heart racing so fast underneath her skin. Taking a moment to look around the dark room she wondered what had woken her up so suddenly when she heard it. A loud piercing scream rang through the air and Bunny was instantly moving.

Throwing off the covers Bunny scrambled out of bed a little unceremoniously and almost fell when her feet got stuck in the blanket. But she was able to get to her feet and rushed out of the room. She grabbed the doorknob to the guest bedroom across the hallway from her and opened the door quickly. Her hand slid along the wall for the light switch and when she finally found it she clicked the light on.

Her heart clenched tightly in her chest when her eyes adjusted to see a bed head wild eyed Esme sitting straight up in bed shaking. Moving to the side of the bed Bunny sat down on it and peered at the little girl who was whimpering and shaking as she sat in the bed.

Bunny gently placed a  hand on Esme’s back and began to gently rub circles trying to soothe the girl. Slowly catching her breath Bunny watched as Esme’s eyes slowed their wild and crazed darting around the room. Her breaths began to slow and her trembling also eased. Suddenly her body slumped forward and Bunny quickly wrapped the girl in her arms where Esme curled into her and buried her face in Bunny’s neck.

“I had a nightmare. Daddy didn’t come home. And then I woke up and it wasn’t my room.” Esme cried softly and Bunny tightened her arms around the little girl.

“It’s ok, your Dad is fine. Remember we just talked to him a few hours ago. And when you get in the morning he’s gonna call again. He told me he was gonna call again.” Bunny tried to reassure the little girl softly.

“I miss him.” Esme whimpered softly and Bunny rested her head on top of the girl’s.

“I know sweetheart. It’s a big change for the two of you. I know he was very worried about you when he had to leave and I know he still worries about you. But I’ll get you through it and soon enough he’ll be home.” Bunny reassured.

“Can you stay until I fall back asleep?” Esme asked quietly.

“Of course, let me just grab my phone for my alarm in case I fall asleep ok?” Bunny said softly. Esme nodded and Bunny quickly left the room only to return moments later with her phone and phone charger. She pulled it into the wall and set the phone on the end table next Esme’s bed.

The little girl then scooted over and Bunny climbed on top of the covers next to the little girl. She opened up her arms and Esme quickly rushed to snuggle herself against the woman. Bunny lay there holding Esme and let her hand gently trail up and down the girl’s back hoping to ease her back into sleep.

Not long after Bunny heard Esme’s soft snores as the little girl fell back asleep. Bunny tried her hardest to keep her eyes open but soon she found herself falling asleep next to the little girl.

———

The loud blaring of Bunny’s alarm had both Bunny and Esme groaning and trying to bury their heads back into the pillows beneath them. Bunny chuckled softly as her hand reached out blindly to grab her phone and shut off the alarm. When it finally ended she sighed softly and began to snuggle back into the bed.

Just then the loud chiming of a video call came through on the phone and Bunny groaned again and rolled over to grab the phone. She yawned widely as she sat up in bed and accepted the video call not bothering to look at it.

“Well good morning sleepyhead!” Came the chipper voice of Jack and Bunny’s whole body seemed to jerk in it’s spot as her eyes opened wide to stare at his smiling face on her phone.

“Is that Daddy?” Asked Esme suddenly wide awake. She sat up and then clambered behind Bunny to peer over her shoulder.

“There’s my sleeping beauty.” Jack said happily as he smiled. Bunny smiled as she began to rub sleep out of her eyes. “Hey is everything ok? You look like you didn’t get much sleep.” Jack said concerned and Bunny realized he was talking to her and not Esme.

“Geeze Whisk, have you forgotten how to talk to women after all this time?” Came a snarky voice in the background of Jack’s phone. Bunny burst out laughing when she heard the voice and shook her head as she watched Jack’s cheeks heat up again. “Nothin’ more than a woman wants to hear is that she looks like she needs more sleep.” Came the voice again and Bunny chuckled as she titled her head to the side and pursed her lips.

“He’s not wrong.” She teased Jack and he made a face at her making both her and Esme laugh at him. Turning to Esme she began to hand over the phone to the little girl. “Here talk to your Dad while you pick out your clothes for school. I’m gonna go get dressed alright?” Bunny suggested and Esme nodded thankfully up at her.

“Thanks Bunny.” Esme said warmly and Bunny nodded knowing that the little girl meant more than just this. Standing from the bed Bunny stretched and tuned out the conversation that Esme and Jack were having before she walked out of the room and across the hall to her own room.

Dressing quickly she walked back out of the room and down to the kitchen so that she could wake Butter up and let him out before she started breakfast.

“C’mon Butter, let’s get you out in the backyard.” Bunny called out to the dog who was laying in his bed waiting for her. She laughed as he launched himself out of the dog bed and began booking it down the hallway to the back door. “Alright, alright hold your horses.” He grumbled out as he began to bounce on his feet at the back door barking happily. Opening the door for him she watched as he quickly ran for the squirrels that had congregated under her bird feeders. She chuckled softly and shook her head as she watched him try in vain to get to the squirrels. “Crazy dog.” She scoffed softly and turned back to the hallway after shutting the door.

Walking back down the hallway she meets Esme at the bottom of the stairs still talking to Jack. Bunny smiles and walks into the kitchen and pulls out a pan as well as some eggs and bacon for their breakfast.

“Hey Esme, how does eggs and bacon sound for breakfast?” Bunny asks warmly.

“That sounds good to me.” Esme says happily as she climbs onto one of the stools at the kitchen island.

“Sounds good to me too.” Jack says over the phone and Bunny laughs softly at him.

“Me too!” Chimes in another voice and Bunny grins as she shakes her head.

“Daddy! Uncle Tequila you’re not here you can’t have any.” Esme scolds them and Bunny laughs happily as she begins breakfast. They all happily chat as Bunny cooks and soon enough her and Esme are sitting down at the dining table to eat. Bunny sets the plates down and hears Butter barking at the back door. She quickly lets him back inside and then comes back to the kitchen to eat with Esme.

“So Esme tells me that you two had a rough night last night?” Jack asks softly from the phone that Esme had propped up against the jug of milk in the middle of the table. Bunny shrugs her shoulders as she finishes chewing her bite of eggs.

“It wasn’t too bad. She just missed you that’s all.” Bunny said truthfully and Jack nodded before opening his mouth. Bunny held up a finger to him and narrowed her eyes at him. “I swear Jack if you thank me one more time.” She threatened softly pointing her fork at him through the phone, Jack quickly shut his mouth and Bunny nodded her head. “It’s no big deal. It’s gonna take some adjusting but we’ll get through it.” Jack nodded his head at her and smiled warmly.

“Alright well me and Tequila are gonna’ head out to grab some breakfast. I’ll text ya later alright?” He said and Bunny nodded her head as she took another bite of eggs.

“Sounds good.” Bunny said easily and Jack smiled at her.

“Bye Es. Love ya!” Jack said lovingly to his daughter and she easily returned the sentiment.

“Love you Daddy. Bye!” Esme called out before pressing the end button. The two of them easily fell into a comfortable silence as they finished eating their breakfast.

“So I’ve noticed you and your Dad have accents but not all the time?” Bunny asked curiously as she picked up both plates from the table and began walking them over to the sink.

“Oh yeah Daddy and I are from Kentucky.” Esme said proudly and Bunny smiled as she nodded her head at the little girl. “I’ve got a little accent but Daddy’s got a bigger one. But ever since Mommy died he doesn’t use it.” Esme explained softly and Bunny stopped what she was doing and turned swiftly to the little girl.

“I’m so sorry Esme. I didn’t mean to bring this up.” Bunny said truthfully watching the little girl.

“It’s okay. It happened awhile ago. Daddy still gets sad sometimes but not as much anymore.” Esme said softly. Bunny knelt down and held her arms open for the little girl who quickly rushed into them and hugged Bunny tightly.

“It’s okay for him to be sad. And you too. It’s okay for that.” Bunny said softly as she held the little girl tightly. “If you ever wanna talk about your Mom you let me know and I’ll sit and listen ok?”

“Ok.” Esme said nodding her head.

“Good. Ok, go brush your teeth and I’ll pack a lunch for ya.” Bunny said easily as they pulled away from each other and the little girl ran up the stairs to her bedroom to finish getting ready for school.

Standing Bunny turned back to the sink and sighed softly. She was still learning things about Jack and Esme and truly didn’t mean to bring up her Mom at all. Now the accent she’d been hearing over the phone made sense.

———

The day progressed like normal if albeit a little more sluggish than it usually did. There was a sleepy haze hovering over Bunny since she woke up this morning to Esme screaming. But she pushed through it and went about her work day. She idly wondered if Esme was having as much trouble today staying awake as she was.

Soon the alarm on her phone went off and Bunny powered down her computer. She was still having difficulty with one client’s website design and hadn’t made any leeway unfortunately. Hopefully soon she’d find the inspiration to get the way the client wanted it.

Walking to the front door she grabbed onto Butter’s leash and whistled for him. His little pitter patter of feet on the hardwood floors filled the house and he came running into the front entryway. When she opened up the front door after putting the leash on Butter she could see that it was much foggier than it had been this morning. Making a quick decision on what they would have for dinner she smiled widely and the two of them set off towards the bus stop.

Once they had gotten to the bus stop Bunny stood there waiting with Butter who sat down at her feet and began to pant for air with his tongue hanging out. It wasn’t that long of a wait but as Bunny stood there she could feel the chill starting to creep into her bones and shivered slightly at it. Her phone chimed from in her pocket and pulling it out she saw that she had a message from Jack.

How are you guys doing? You smiled down at the phone and began typing out a response. It was sweet that he was checking in with her and Esme already.

Sleepy but good. Waiting for Es to get home. Bunny shook her head softly as her eyes darted over to see Butter rolling on the sidewalk on his back.

Are you alright? Came the next message and Bunny felt a warmth envelope her chest at his worry and concern for her.

I’m fine. I planned an exciting adventure to the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner. Hopefully it’ll wake us both up. Bunny heard the loud brakes of the bus squeaking behind her and she looked up from her phone to see the bus pulling up to the curb.

Esme slowly walked down the steps of the bus with a tired look in her eyes and Bunny could feel her heart melt at the way Esme’s shoulders slumped forward as she walked along the sidewalk towards her and Butter. She looked up at Bunny once she was in front of her and let out a big wide yawn that made Bunny start to yawn before she quickly covered her mouth to hide it. Esme giggled brightly at her and Bunny couldn’t help but grin at the little girl.

“So what do you say to a walk around the block and then head to the grocery store to get some stuff for dinner I had planned? I think it’s a little too cold for the park today.” Bunny suggested softly as she watched Esme tilt her head to the side tiredly.

“That sounds good.” Esme said with a sleepy nod of her head. “What’s for dinner?”

“It’s a surprise but we’re gonna make it fun.” Bunny said a little cryptically and she grinned as Esme looked up at her with a squinted look. “C’mon let’s get this butterball walking and home, then we can head out to the grocery store.” Bunny said hurriedly as she began ushering Esme and Butter around the block.

———

It took a little bit longer for the three of them to get around the block because half way around the block Butter spotted his nemesis, Mr. Squirrel and had to take a good few moments to continuously bark at his rival. But finally Bunny was opening the front door and everyone was piling into the front hallway. Quickly unhooking Butter’s leash Bunny hung it up on the hook and then walked farther into the house.

“Alright kiddo, how much homework do you have tonight?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked down the hallway to the craft room at the back of her house.

“Only one worksheet for vocabulary.” Esme said happily as she stood watching Bunny curiously.

“Good, set your backpack in the kitchen and then come help me.” Came Bunny’s voice from the craft room that she had walked into.

Esme did as she was told and then walked down the hallway to the room at the end of the hallway. Stepping into the room Esme let out a soft gasp at all the craft material on display. Her eyes danced around the room with excitement, there was a small square table in the middle of the room that many different labeled containers stored underneath it that held different craft materials. On the walls were different inspirational posters and other craft tools stored in different odd puzzle like configurations. There was a long desk along one side of the room with a computer monitor and printer on one section of it and right next to it was a sewing machine. The room was brightly decorated with rainbow colored posters and wall decorations around the craft storage. Esme could feel herself starting to grow excited at the possibilities that she would be to make with all of these materials.

Just then there was a loud grunt on the other side of the room and Esme walked over to see Bunny bent over a very large chest that looked like a pirate’s treasure chest. Esme bounced over with excitement building up inside her.

“Is this your treasure chest?” Esme asked excited and Bunny laughed happily at the little girl’s excitement.

“Oh yeah, but it’s a different type of treasure.” Bunny said conspiratorially. She opened the lid of the chest and let it fall gently back to reveal what was stored inside. Esme gasped as she spotted all the clothes that were folded and laid inside. Reaching out she let her hand gently graze the clothes and grinned up at Bunny.

         “Are these costumes?” Esme asked as she practically vibrated next to Bunny.

         “Sure are. I have a friend at the local stage theater who lets me pick out any of the costumes that they are getting rid of after they no longer need the costumes. Plus I’ve sewn a few of these, nothing crazy or anything.” Bunny explained. ��But for our dinner tonight we have to dress up to go get it. It’s the only way that you should go out and get these ingredients. Are you down for that?” Bunny asked seriously as she stood next to Esme folding her arms over her chest.

         “Yes! Yes! What are we dressing up as?” Esme asked excitedly. Bunny plucked out two large sombreros from the chest and set one on top of Esme’s head making her giggle as it slid down over her eyes. Bunny bent down and tilted the sombrero back so that Esme could see clearly and grinned at the little girl.

         “You look absolutely perfect.” Bunny said happily. “I figured we need a little pick me up for dinner tonight since we’re both tired. What better way than dressing up to go get ingredients for Taco Tuesday!” she cheered the end of the sentence loudly and Esme squealed with delight and bounced on her toes making the sombrero bob and sway with her movements. “Alright what do you say to take a few pictures for your Dad so we can send them to him?” Bunny asked then and Esme grinned up at her nodding her head eagerly. Bunny laughed softly and placed her own sombrero on her head and knelt down next to Esme.

   “Do you have a selfie stick?” Esme asked softly and Bunny tilted her head for a second trying to remember if she did have one.

   “Oh! Yes hold on!” Bunny said, suddenly remembering. She clambered up onto her feet and moved to the closet in the room and opened the door. Esme squealed as she saw what was inside the closet making Bunny whirl back around to her in surprise. “What? What is it?” she asked hurriedly before Esme rushed into the closet.

   “You have pirate swords!” Esme cheered loudly and Bunny laughed relieved as Esme pulled out the fake pirate sword from the closet.

   “Yeah, I forgot I had all these props for when the community does photo booths. Jeremy the guard bought me a selfie stick at one of the parties that the community threw and I completely forgot about it.” Bunny explained as she looked for the selfie stick in the closet. “Got it!” she called and pulled it out of the closet triumphantly.

   “Can we dress up as pirates one day after school?” Esme asked sweetly and Bunny smiled nodding her head at the little girl who cheered happily and jumped on her toes.

   “Okay go ahead and put that back for now. We will definitely dress up as pirates one day. I promise.” Bunny promised as she nodded her head over to the closet for Esme. Esme did as she was told and then came back to stand next to a kneeling Bunny. They both smiled for the first picture and Bunny snapped a few shots.

   “Can we do a silly face one?” Esme asked as she giggled happily. Bunny nodded and lined up the phone again and the two of them laughed and giggled as they made funny faces for the pictures.

   “Alright let’s pick which ones to send to your dad and then we’ll head to the grocery store.” Bunny said as she pulled her phone from the selfie stick and showed Esme all of the pictures that she took. She let Esme pick a handful of them and sent them off to Jack with a smile. “Ok kiddo let’s get going so we can get the ingredients.” Bunny said smiling as she put away the selfie stick before ushering Esme out of the room as they both still wear the sombreros on their heads.

———

   While they’re walking up and down the aisles Bunny is laughing as Esme bounces around making her sombrero flop around her head. Just then Bunny hears her cellphone start ringing and she pulls it out seeing that Jack is video calling her. She grins and looks over at Esme showing her the phone to the little girl. Esme bounced over and giggle as she took the phone from Bunny and quickly answered the call from her Dad.

   “Daddy! Happy Taco Tuesday!” She cheered happily as she saw her father show up on the phone screen. Jack’s laugh sounded from the phone and Bunny smiled at the sound. It was a sound that she knew she was starting to get used to hearing and looked forward to it whenever he called. Shaking her head she continued down the aisle and picked out taco shells that she would need for dinner.

   “Hey Es, do you want hard taco shells? Or do you want to do soft tortillas?” Bunny asked over her shoulder to the little girl. She came bounding over to her with the phone with happiness just emitting from her in waves. Bunny smiles at Jack as she sees him on the screen as a feeling of relief and gratitude fills her that Esme is able to see her father even if it’s just on a video call.

   “I want hard taco shells.” Esme says in response and Bunny nods her head before picking up a package of the taco shells. She continues down the aisle with Esme walking next to her talking animated to her dad.

   “So I really liked those pictures you sent him girls.” Came Jack’s voice sounding a little teasing and Bunny laughed happily at that.

   “Oh yeah it’s part of my plan to wake us up. It is Taco Tuesday and we have to celebrate. What better way than to wear sombreros as we pick out taco ingredients for dinner.” Bunny said with a shrug of her shoulders. “Plus it’s always fun cooking together and I figured Esme would enjoy it.”

   “Oh I think it’s a great idea and it looks like you guys are having a ton of fun.” Jack said warmly and Esme giggled as she nodded her head making the sombrero to fall over her eyes. Bunny laughed and helped adjust the hat on her head.

   “Having a lot of fun Daddy. I really like being with Bunny.” Esme said happily and Bunny felt her heart melt at the little girl’s words. She wrapped one arm around the little girl and cuddled her into her side smiling down at Esme.

   “And it definitely looks like Bunny enjoys having you around.” Jack said fondly and Bunny looked over at him as she still held Esme close to her. She smiled brightly at the man on the phone screen and watched as his own smile grew and his breath stuttered in his chest.

   “Alright kiddo let’s get going and finish up our shopping so that we can get cooking. I’m getting hungry.” Bunny said as she continued down the aisle letting Esme time to talk with her dad.

———

   It was later that night that Bunny and Esme are sitting on the floor in the living room as 13 Going On 30 is playing on the t.v. Dinner was done and cleaned away already and the two of them are sitting with their backs against the couch and the coffee table in front of them. Bunny has a wide array of nail polishes laid out on the coffee table in front of them.

   “Alright so I figured we could do something special tonight by doing manicures and pedicures.” Bunny suggested kindly. “I can paint your nails and do anything you want on them.”

   “Oooh, really?” Esme asked excitedly as she looked over the many bottles of nail polish. “What do you normally do?” Esme asked curiously.

   “Well I usually do two different colors unless I find something on Pinterest that I’d like to try out. I find different patterns that I like to try sometimes. But it’s up to you if I can do it I’ll do it. Let me show you some of the stuff I’ve found on Pinterest that I’ve done.” Bunny explained as she pulled up her Pinterest on her phone and began showing Esme some of the nail painting ideas that she’s been able to do.

   Esme took a few minutes to look over the Pinterest board that Bunny had created. Bunny watched as she scrolled through the pictures and then smiled when Esme turned the phone back to show her the nail polish design she would like done on her nails. It was a simple design of black nails with rainbow dots.

   “Ok, go wash your hands first and then we’ll get started.” Bunny said excitedly as she too got up from the floor pausing the movie. Esme rushed off to the bathroom to wash her hands and Bunny went into the kitchen and washed her hands as well before coming back to the living room. “Alright so first things first, pick a hand lotion you would like to wear once I’m done. Once your nails are dry I’ll put the lotion on your hands to make them smell good.” Bunny explained as she showed Esme her collection of hand lotions.

   “Why do you have so many hand lotions?” Esme asked as she began to sniff each other trying to figure out which one she would like to wear.

   “I have dry skin and the skin on my hands crack and dries out very quickly if I don’t use hand lotion.” Bunny explained as she smiled at Esme. “I also like the smell of the lotions so I buy a bunch of different ones to try out.”

   “I like this purple flower one.” Esme says as she shows Bunny a container of lavender hand lotion. Bunny nods her head and sets aside the hand lotion. Bunny then started setting up the nail polish she would need to be able to paint Esme’s nails.

   “Ok so we’ll use that at the end. That’s a good smell, it should help you relax. Lavender is a relaxing scent.” Bunny said as she continued to set up everything. “Alright so first what I’m gonna do is a cuticle oil that’s going to moisturize your nails and cuticles. It’s gonna help your nails grow too because I’m going to rub it into your skin. Then I’ll begin painting your nails ok?” Bunny explained to the little girl with a smile.

   “Ok, can we still watch the movie while we do this?” Esme asked eagerly and Bunny nodded her head.

   “Of course. We have to see how the movie ends, duh.” Bunny says like it’s a no brainer and grins at the excited girl.

   Soon Bunny began applying the cuticle oil around each nail on the girls’ hands and began to rub it into the skin. The little girl watched for a little bit before her attention was pulled back to the movie playing on the t.v.

   “Are you going to paint your nails too?” Esme asked curiously as she looked back at what Bunny was doing.

   “Yeah I’ll even let you pick out my nail polish and design.” Said Bunny as she continued to massage Esme’s fingers.

   “Could we match?” Esme asked, sounding unsure and insecure. Bunny looked up suddenly at the little girl and saw her avoiding her eye. She saw the little girl bite her bottom lip in concern and Bunny couldn’t help but feel for the little girl. She wonders if the little girl is looking for a motherly figure to look up to and Bunny realizes that she doesn’t want to overstep but she would love to step up and be that person for Esme.

   “Of course we could match. I think that’d be really cool to do.” Bunny gushed happily. She knew that she would have to tread lightly with wanting to be there for Esme, she didn’t want to step on any boundaries that the girl had or any parenting that Jack had for her. So Bunny knew she would be there for Esme whenever she could be and would look out for her. She wouldn’t push but she’d always try to be there for her. “So what’s going on with school? Anything exciting?” Bunny asked as she began to paint Esme’s nails.

   “Well I made a new friend named Nadia. She’s really cool. She’s a lot of fun.” Esme said happily.

“That’s great Es! I’m glad you made a new friend. Does she live far from here?” Bunny said excitedly as she swiped base coat onto her nails. Blowing softly on her nails Bunny looking up at Esme and saw the slightly saddened look on her face.

“No, she lives over by the library.” Esme replied a little downtrodden and Bunny nodded her head at the little girl.

“Well that’s not too far from here. If the two of you ever wanted to hang out after school like on the weekends I don’t think it would be too far of a drive for your Dad.” Bunny said knowingly and Esme seemed to perk up at that.

“Do you think he’d let us have sleepovers?” Esme asked as she bounced slightly in her seat. Bunny smiled as she set aside the base coat bottle and picked up the black nail polish bottle.

“It’s up to him sweetheart I don’t know what he would say.” Bunny said truthfully not wanting to get the girl’s hopes up to only be crushed when her Dad said no. Esme nodded her head at what Bunny said and Bunny began to focus on painting the first layer of black nail polish.

“Nadia said she’s going to introduce me to her other friends too. Said I should make more friends who will be nice to me.” Esme said easily and Bunny furrowed her eyebrows at that.

“What do you mean friend who will be nice to you? Is there someone not being nice to you at school?” Bunny asked as she felt her body tense at the idea that there were kids who weren’t being nice to Esme. Esme was such a sweet girl in her eyes she couldn’t imagine anyone finding anything to tease Esme about. And then suddenly it clicked. Bunny looked up to see Esme trying to avoid her eyes once again. “Es, are you still being bullied?” She asked softly as she stopped painting her nails and looked up at her giving her her full attention.

Esme shrugged her shoulders and kept trying to avoid Bunny’s eyes. Bunny tilted her head down to try and catch Esme’s line of sight. When she wasn’t able to Bunny sighed softly.

“You know, I was bullied when I was a little bit older than you.” Bunny said softly and saw out of the corner of her eye that Esme was now looking up at her surprised.

“Really?” Esme asked in shock. “But you’re so cool.” She said softly and Bunny laughed loudly at that.

“Thank you. I didn’t used to be when I was a kid though. The kids at my school made fun of me because I was always reading. Anytime I had spare time while at school I had my face buried in a book. I had some friends but we weren’t popular. We didn’t do a lot of sports, just what was required in gym class. I was more interested in books and doing crafts than sports and going to parties like a lot of the other kids at my school. So I got picked on a lot at school. Oh! And I loved to swim, my family had a swimming pool and I was in it all summer from sun up to sun down pretty much. The chlorine in the pool started to change the color of my hair and when I went back to school I got teased for that by the kids at my school.” Bunny explained about her experience in school. Esme watched her silently as she listened to what Bunny said.

“How did you get rid of the bullies?” Esme asked softly. Bunny sat there for a moment and thought back to how she got the bullies to stop teasing her.

“I showed them that I didn’t care about what they said. The bullies are looking for a reaction from you. They want to see you cry and get upset. If you don’t cry or get upset they could stop. Or you can stand up to them and tell them to stop.” Bunny said truthfully.

“Like Nadia did the other day when the girls were teasing me about not playing in gym.” Esme said matter of factly. Bunny nodded her head.

“Did the girls stop teasing you after Nadia told them to stop?” Bunny asked curiously.

“They did.” Esme said nodding her head.

“Ok so maybe when they start teasing you again tell them no and stop. If they don’t stop you go to a teacher and tell the teacher what’s going on. They shouldn’t be teasing you for not being in gym.” Bunny said honestly.

“I don’t want to get in trouble.” Esme said dejectedly as she looked down at the floor.

“You won’t get in trouble for telling someone to stop teasing you. Or telling the teacher what’s going on.” Bunny said emphatically. “If someone is bothering you and making trouble for you, you have to say something otherwise people can’t help you sweetheart.”

“Ok. If they start teasing me again I’ll say something.” Esme said as she nodded.

“So maybe we need to find you something that you would be able to do instead of gym. Something that your asthma wouldn’t be aggravated. Let me talk to your Dad later and see if we can try something this weekend before he comes home.” Bunny suggested as she began to paint Esme’s nails again.

“You think there’s something that I can do that’s a sport?” Esme asked.

“There’s definitely a possibility. We’ll start off easy though and do something that’s not a sport. We’ll see how you do and then go from there.” Bunny said, trying to caution the little girl. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up too high. We have to see how you do with this first one.” Bunny said softly as she looked at Esme. Esme nodded her head slowly at Bunny and she responded with a soft smile and ruffling the little girl's hair on her head which made her squeal and try to get away without messing up her freshly painted nails.

———

“Dad! Look at my nails! Bunny painted them for me. And she painted her nails the same way so that we match!” Esme said excitedly as she showed Jack her painted nails as she sat up in her bed. Bunny was in her own room getting changed for bed and could hear the conversation going on between the two of them. She tuned it out a little bit to give the two of them some privacy but kept an ear out for anytime Esme would call out her name.

It was probably a good ten minutes later that Esme called out to Bunny from across the hall. Placing her bookmark in the science fiction novel that she was reading she set the book on the bed side table and got up from the bed. Walking across the hall she smiled as she pushed the door open and saw Esme lounging back on her pillows as she held the phone up to still look at her Dad. Her eyes were drooping and she had a sleepy smile on her face when she noticed Bunny.

“Dad said he wanted to say goodnight to you.” Esme said softly and Bunny nodded her head at the little girl.

“Sure thing, did you finish saying goodnight? I’d like to talk to your Dad for a quick second.” Bunny explained as Esme handed her the phone.

“Yeah. Can you read me a story once you’re done?” Esme asked as she yawned widely. Bunny laughed softly and nodded her head at Esme.

“Of course I can. Once I’m done I’ll come back in okay?” she said easily to Esme and Esme just nodded as she snuggled further into the bed.

Turning back to the phone Bunny walked out of Esme’s room and into her own. Bunny smiled softly at herself as she realized it was only day two with the little girl and she already thought of the spare room as Esme’s room.

“What’s the smile on your face for?” asked Jack and Bunny looked back at her phone letting the smile widen.

“I was just thinking that that’s Esme’s room already.” she said fondly and Jack grinned at her through the phone. “So I wanted to talk to you about possibly enrolling Esme in a dog yoga class that the community holds on the weekend.” Bunny explained confidently to Jack. “She mentioned that she’s still being bullied and teased at school for not being able to do gym or sports. I did a little bit of research and I have a friend in the dog yoga class who has asthma. Yoga is something that Esme could be able to do even with her asthma. It’s a slow class and very low key, I’ve gone a few times and maybe it’ll help with her asthma.” Bunny began to ramble again, she grimaced slightly as the words left her mouth and she felt herself falling farther and farther down the rabbit hole of trying to convince Jack to let Esme go to yoga. She had even begun to pace as she talked about what she wanted to do for Esme without even being aware of it. “I’ll be with her there the whole time. I’ll make sure I have her inhaler. I don’t want to overstep but she wants to do sports and she’s been upset about the teasing and bullying.”

“Easy Bunny, easy.” Jack said lowly with a little bit of an accent and Bunny took in a deep breath after stopping the word flow coming from her mouth. She shivered a little bit as the low easy comforting tone of Jack’s voice embraced her through the phone. His voice was so soothing and the accent that her ears now tried to catch and pick up was something that she knew she would love to listen to for hours. Feeling a flush grace her cheeks she grimaced slightly at the phone. “Let me call her doctor tomorrow morning and ask if that would be alright. To me it sounds fine, I know you’ll take care of her. I couldn’t ask for a better guardian to Esme than you.” Jack said softly and Bunny felt her heart thud heavily in her chest.

“Thanks Jack.” Bunny said softly as tears began to prick her eyes. She didn’t know why his words were affecting her like this. Yeah, she cared about Esme and wanted the best for the little girl but was just two days long enough to make her so invested in the girl? Bunny stood in the middle of her room where she had stopped her pacing. She stared off into her room and tried to gather her thoughts and found that all she wanted for Esme was her to feel good about herself. She didn’t want Esme to feel bad that the other kids teased her about her asthma. She felt connected to the little girl because of her own childhood past of being bullied and teased. She had wished that there was someone in her life back then who had stood up for her like Nadia was doing for Esme now. Or someone to help make her feel better about herself like she was trying to do for Esme.

“Did I lose ya Bunny?” asked Jack suddenly and Bunny was pulled from her thoughts suddenly. She turned her eyes back to the phone and smiled before letting out a big yawn trying to cover it quickly with her free hand. Jack laughed softly at the sight and Bunny flushed brightly.

“Sorry just got lost in thought for a moment.” she said sheepishly and he shook his head at her.

“No worries Bunny. I’ll let you get to sleep. I’ll let you know what the doctor says after I call her okay?” he says warmly as he grins at her from her phone screen.

“Alright sounds good to me.” she said easily. “Goodnight Jack.”

“Goodnight Bunny.” he responded and Bunny smiled again before hanging up the video call. Feeling her stomach fluttering a little she tried to push it down. She knew it would be dangerous to start developing feelings for her new neighbor so soon. But she couldn’t help but feel happy that he thought she was a good guardian for Esme.

Walking back across the hall to Esme’s room she peeked in and saw the little girl was already asleep snuggled in her bed. A medium sized stuffed octopus clutched tightly in her arms as she snored softly in her sleep. Bunny sighed softly as she leant against the doorframe and watched Esme sleeping. Shaking her head softly she smiled at herself, who knew her new neighbors would manage to weasel their way into her life so easily.

———

The next morning Bunny’s alarm blared her ‘Hype Music’ playlist waking her up from a deep peaceful sleep. She blearily blinked as she noticed the soft gray light filtering into her bedroom. Esme slept through the night! Sitting upright from the bed Bunny silently fist pumped into the air and gasped happily as she swiped her phone from the end table turning off the alarm. She had to tell Jack.

Quickly pulling up Jack’s text message thread she typed out a quick message to him.

Taco Tuesday was a success and Esme slept through the night!

Not waiting for a response she set her phone back down and got up from the bed. Changing easily into a pair of gray baggy sweatpants and a hunter green long sleeved shirt Bunny quickly tied up her hair out of her face and grabbed her phone before exiting her room. She peeked into Esme’s room quickly to see the girl still sound asleep and she grinned from ear to ear before she bounded down the stairs to the kitchen.

“C’mon Butter let’s get you outside to pee.” Bunny said softly as she walked into the kitchen stretching widely feeling more refreshed and accomplished than ever before. She patted her thighs and whistled for Butter who was still snoozing himself on his back half in his dog bed and half out of it.

When he heard her whistle his little body twisted and flipped in such a way that had Bunny groaning in sympathetic pain. But the little dog quickly got to his feet and slid across the floor towards her. She laughed softly and walked him down the back hallway to the back door.

“Go on. Get it done quick so you can come back into the warmth.” she told the dog as he leapt from the back steps and made a mad dash for his arch rival who was once again taunting him with his tittering fluffy tail. Shaking her head Bunny shut the back door and watched for a moment as Butter rushed the squirrel who quickly broke away from the discarded birdseed on the ground.

Turning back around Bunny walked back into the kitchen and set up her phone to begin playing her playlist on the downstairs speakers. She hummed and swayed her hips to the upbeat song and began setting out the ingredients for an egg and veggie omelet. She was cutting up the veggies that she wanted to put in the omelet when she heard the spare bathroom door close from upstairs and she smiled.

She let Butter back into the house and was just plating up one of the omelets when Esme walked into the kitchen already dressed in a pretty light purple shirt and dark wash bootcut blue jeans, her hair was in disarray and she looked crestfallen at that fact as she tried to pull it up into a ponytail.

“Here, eat your omelet and I’ll take care of your hair ok?” Bunny offered as she set the plate of the omelet in front of Esme. Esme looked up at her gratefully and nodded her head.

“Thank you.” she said softly before she began digging into her breakfast.

“No problem, do you want a ponytail or a braid? Two braids?” Bunny asked as she walked around Esme and grabbed the brush that was sitting on the kitchen island.

“Oooh! Can you do two braids? Or two braids that go into one?” Esme asked eagerly.

“I can do two braids, one of either side of your head for today. Anything else fancy and I’ll have to look it up on google on how to do it.” Bunny said as she began to brush out Esme’s long hair.

“You’d do that? Look it up for me?” Esme asked curiously and with a hopefully lilt to her voice.

“Of course. If I can figure out how to do it for you I will. So what would you like for tomorrow? Two braids that go into one?” Bunny assured her easily.

“Yes please!” Esme cheered happily. Bunny nodded as she hummed along to the song playing on her phone and began to braid Esme’s hair into two long braids.

“Oh! I’ve got a sparkly ribbon that I can tie into bows on the end would you want that?” Bunny asked suddenly as she thought about the ribbon that she had in her craft room.

“Is it purple?” Esme asked as she turned to look at Bunny with wide eyes.

“It might be let me go get it and we’ll see if it looks good.” Bunny suggested as she hurried over to the craft room and grabbed the sparkle ribbon she had. When she made it back to the kitchen Esme had already finished her breakfast and was just finishing up her orange juice. Bunny showed her the ribbon and Esme nodded eagerly as she still drank from her cup. Bunny laughed and walked behind Esme again. Easily tying a neat little bow on the end of each braid Bunny nodded her head in accomplishment. “Alright all done. Go on upstairs and brush your teeth, get your jacket and backpack while I eat my breakfast ok?”

“Thanks Bunny!” Esme called after she put her dirty dishes in the sink and rushed upstairs. Shaking her head slightly Bunny quickly made her own omelet and ate it standing at the kitchen island. Furrowing her brow slightly as she leaned against the island just letting her thoughts run away from her as the music still played over the speakers. Gasping suddenly Bunny turned towards the notebook she kept next to the fridge and quickly began jotting down ideas that she had for the client’s website that she was designing. She smiled as she realized after writing everything down that all her ideas were all inspiration from braiding Esme’s hair.

———

It had been a few hours since Esme had gotten onto the school bus and Bunny had been eyeballs deep into her work. After the inspirational breakthrough she had this morning thanks to Esme she had easily applied her ideas to the website design for her client and had completed a very sleek and eye appealing website. With the finishing touches now being completed Bunny sent off the design to the client and powered down her computer.

Swiping her phone off the desk she lazily scrolled through the notifications until she saw that Jack had texted her about an hour or so ago. She had already warned him on the video call he had with Esme this morning that she would be busy with her work today as she had finally gotten over the block she had come across. He had told her it wasn’t a problem and that he’d text her later but not to worry about responding back right away. He knew how work could easily keep your focus and you lose track of time.She opened the text and smiled when she saw what he had written.

Doctor says yoga is a-ok with her. Also said any other exercises or sport classes that are low key like yoga would be good too. If you have any suggestions I’m all for it.

Bunny tilted her head to the side as she tried to think of any other classes that Esme could take that would make her feel better about having asthma. Bunny stood from her desk chair and walked into the kitchen to begin prepping for dinner tonight. She had plans to get Esme more into helping her cook tonight and she knew the little girl would enjoy it. Typing away on her phone she sent off a text to Jack and set the phone down.

Did the Doctor suggest anything? Do you think she meant classes like karate or tai chi? It could maybe help Esme feel better if she had some self defense classes. It might make her feel more confident.

Pulling out the yeast packet Bunny began making the dough for the homemade pizzas she had planned for tonight. After kneading the dough she placed it in a bowl with a towel over it and set it to the side. She then pulled out some veggies and began chopping them up so that they’d go easier on the pizza. Then Bunny began heating up some tomato sauce and adding spices into it and letting it simmer on the stove. Once everything was done and prepped she looked over at the clock over the stove and saw that she had about ten minutes until the bus would be arriving.

“C’mon Butter! Let’s go get Esme!” She called out to the dog and heard his feet scrambling against the floor as he ran from his spot in the hallway where the sun managed to hit the floor and heat it enough for Butter to take a cat nap. “You silly dog.” she said fondly to him as she clipped his leash to his collar and the two of them walked out of the house together. Slipping her phone out of her pocket when she heard her notification sound go off she smiled as she saw another text from Jack.

That’s a good idea. Do you know of any karate classes?

I’ll see what I can find out and let you know. ;)

Bunny froze as she looked down at the text that she sent Jack. The little winking emoji stared up at her and she felt her breath slowly escape out of her lungs. Why did she send that?! How was Jack going to take that little emoji? Was he going to think she was flirting with him? Was she flirting with him? Would he like that she was flirting with him? Thoughts raced through her mind as she stared at the emoji and waited to see if he would send a response really quickly or not.

“Bunny!” Shouted Esme and Bunny jumped almost a foot in the air as she whipped her head around to look at Esme. Pressing the hand holding her cellphone to her chest she tried to calm her racing heart. “You okay Bunny?” Esme asked curiously as she stared at her.

“Oh yeah, yeah kiddo. I’m fine. Sorry I was a little distracted.” Bunny said easily to Esme.

“What were you distracted of?” Esme asked and Bunny smiled softly at the mix up of words from her. And then she remembered what had distracted her. Bunny’s heart began to pound in her chest again and she took in a deep breath to try and calm herself down.

“Nothing sweetheart. Let’s get walking so Butter can go to the bathroom and then I’ve got another surprise for dinner tonight.” Bunny said softly. The two of them began walking around the block together and Bunny looked down at her phone to see that she had gotten another text message from Jack.

Thanks sweetheart. ;)

Bunny felt her face flush and she slipped the phone into her back pocket quickly trying to put the text message out of her mind. But that text message would stay with her for the rest of the night.

———

The next morning Bunny’s alarm rings out and she rolls over in the bed sighing softly. Staring up at the ceiling she lets her hand rest against her stomach and her mind begins to drift off with Jack in the spotlight. Last night after her and Esme had made two medium sized pizzas with different toppings, Esme had said she wanted to take a bunch of pictures to send to Jack and Bunny had pulled out all the stops. She took pictures of Esme holding up her homemade pizza and then pictures of Esme eating the pizza.

Then the pictures had devolved into dressing up and having a dance party in Bunny’s bedroom. The two of them took selfies with the selfie stick as they posed and danced. Bunny had captured some videos too to send to Jack of her and Esme dancing around like crazy.

When Jack had video called later that night he had laughed at the excited Esme as she giggled. He had even told Bunny that he loved her picture in the fuzzy boa before he winked at her over the screen. Bunny had flushed almost immediately and had quickly left the video call. Esme had given her an odd look for a moment before turning back to the screen and talking to Jack.

Bunny stared up at the ceiling focusing on the white paint and felt herself flushing again at the thought of Jack. She knew she was going to be sad when Esme was no longer staying with her, she had definitely gotten used to taking care of the little girl and having her around. But Jack was coming home in a few more days on Sunday night and Esme would have to go back home. Shaking her head Bunny tried to clear the sadness that was trying to creep up on her. It was only Thursday and she still had four more days with the little girl and the weekend to spend time with her. She wouldn’t let the sadness of her leaving ruin her time with her now.

Getting up from the bed she dresses in a pair of black leggings and slips on a light blue tank top and then a charcoal gray oversized sweater. She walked down the stairs after checking on Esme and quietly let out Butter into the backyard before stepping into the craft room and pulled out a length of sparkly rainbow colored ribbon that she wanted to weave into Esme’s hair. She had looked up how to videos online and had found some really cute designs for braids and ribbons to try on Esme.

In the kitchen she pulled out some frozen waffles and slid them into the toaster. She then pulled out some fresh fruit and began cutting them up and placing them in a medium sized bowl. The toaster went off and Bunny put in some more for herself before setting the first two on a plate and pulling out the butter dish and maple syrup.

Esme was just walking into the kitchen when Bunny pulled the other two waffles out of the toaster. Smearing butter onto the waffles she stacked them on Esme’s plate and poured some maple syrup over them.

“Mornin’ kiddo. How’d you sleep?” Bunny as she dished out some fruit as well for Esme.

“Good. What’s the rainbow ribbon for?” Esme responded easily as she yawned widely. Bunny chuckled softly and pulled the video of how to and showed Esme.

“I figured I’d try my hand at weaving some ribbon into your hair for your hairdo today. How’s that sound?” Bunny explained as Esme watched the how to video and squealed delightedly.

“That looks sooo good!” Esme cheered happily and Bunny nodded her head. “Oh please can we do this?”

“Of course sweetheart.” Bunny said easily. “Eat up your waffles and some fruit and I’ll braid your hair.” Bunny explained as she began eating her own waffles.

Once Bunny finished her waffles she moved behind Esme and set up her phone so she could watch the how to video as she braided Esme’s hair and weaved the sparkly rainbow ribbon into it. She braided one braid on each side of Esme’s head and then combined it into one larger braid all while weaving the ribbon into her braid. When she was finished she looked at the results and smiled warmly nodding her head.

“There we go. C’mon let’s go get check it out in the bathroom and then finish getting ready for school.” Bunny said nodding her head and began leading Esme up to the bathroom upstairs. While in the bathroom Bunny took a picture of Esme’s hair and showed it to her. Esme squealed with happiness and bounced on her feet. “You look very pretty Es. I hope you like it.” Bunny said truthfully and watched as the girl in front of her gasped and then lunged forward wrapping her arms around Bunny’s waist.

“I love it, thank you Bunny. You’re the best!” Esme cheered happily as she continued to hug Bunny. Bunny wrapped her arms around Esme and leant her head on top of Esme’s. Smiling softly she just let herself be hugged by the little girl and began to feel happiness start to consume her.

“You’re very welcome sweetheart.” Bunny said warmly to the girl and then patted her back three times. “Should we send a picture of your hair to your Dad. Show him how pretty you look today?”

“Yes! He’s gonna love it!” Esme cheered happily. Bunny quickly pulled up the text thread for Jack and typed out a message before sending the picture of Esme’s hairdo off to him. She walked out of the bathroom and went into her own to brush her teeth. Just then her phone started to ring with the video call ringtone and Bunny answered it as she was brushing her teeth.

Jack’s face came onto the screen and Bunny hummed at him as she continued to brush her teeth. Jack’s laughter came over the speaker and he grinned at her before she bent over and spat out her toothpaste.

“Hold on one second Jack.” Bunny said quickly as she rinsed out her mouth and began walking to Esme’s bathroom. “Good morning by the way.” Bunny said easily and grinned at him.

“Good mornin’ to ya too Bunny.” Jack said easily and his grin grew in size on his face. Bunny pressed a button on the screen and switched the camera to face front and showed Jack the back of Esme’s hair. Jack gave a long loud whistle and Esme whirled around with a grin on her face.

“Doesn’t she look so pretty Jack?” Esme asked smiling at the girl.

“She looks as beautiful as a rose. You did a good job Bunny, you’re setting the bar high for me aren’t ya? Good morning sunshine!” Jack said happily and Bunny handed the phone to Esme who switched the camera back and began talking to her Dad. Bunny smiled at the excited chatter that instantly filled the bathroom.

“Good morning Daddy. Thanks! I really love what Bunny did with my hair.” Esme said easily as she continued to grin and bounce lightly on her toes.

“She did a really good job with it.” Jack agreed with her. Bunny smiled as she walked out of the bathroom leaving the two of them to talk.

———

Bunny had seen a very excited Esme off on the bus. The little girl bouncing around happily saying that she couldn’t wait to show Nadia her hair ribbons. According to Esme her new friend Nadia always had such pretty hairdos and pretty barrettes in her hair. As Bunny walked back to her house with Butter she idly wondered if she could make Esme a set of pretty barrettes that Jack would be able to put in her hair.

When she got back to the house she walked into the craft room and booted up her computer to look up what she would need to create some pretty barrettes and bows for Esme. As since she had finished the project for her client ahead of schedule Bunny had the next two days off to spend however she wanted. She would only need to wait on the response back from her client and then she would be back to work to implement the website design for the client.

Looking at the computer screen Bunny saw what she needed to make bows and nodded her head confidently as she saw most of the supplies she needed she had. Putting on some background music she began pulling out all the supplies she needed.

Before she actually got down to creating the bows a notification came across the speakers in the room and she looked over at her phone to see she had gotten a message from one of her girlfriends named Mercy who ran the dog yoga classes on the weekends.

Hey honey bunny! I heard through the grapevine that you’re going to be joining us this weekend with Butter and a friend?

Bunny smiled as she saw the message and quickly began typing out a response to Mercy.

Yes I’m bringing Butter and a little girl named Esme who’s my new neighbor’s daughter that I’m watching this week. She has severe asthma so I’m trying to help find her classes that her doctor approved for her to take. The doctor suggested karate and tai chi but I don’t know of any classes nearby for that. Would you happen to know of any?

Girl, I got you covered. I’ll bring all the info I’ve got on those types of classes. There’s a few places not far from the community that offer up karate and tai chi. There’s also father/daughter classes too if the Dad is into it. Or mother/daughter classes if she wants you to do it with her.

Oh, that’s sweet of you but I don’t want to overstep. But I appreciate any help you can give me! Thanks sweetheart! I’ll see you on Saturday!

Can’t wait! See you Saturday!

Feeling a little accomplished with the prospect of having some information on classes for Esme Bunny grinned as she set her phone down on the counter again.

———

The day had warmed up a little bit, Butter was sprawled out in a large patch of sunlight that had heated up the wood floor in the craft room and Bunny was seated on the stool that sat next to her craft table in the middle of the room as she looped another pretty red ribbon on itself before securing it with her hot glue gun. Blowing lightly on the hot glue she pulled her fingers away and smiled triumphantly when the ribbon stayed perfectly still where she had placed it and glued it down. She picked up a black fabric covered button and put hot glue on the back of it before she pressed it in the middle of the red bow and let the glue adhere to ribbons and the back of the bow barrette.

Just then the shrill ringing of her cellphone caught her attention as the music cut off on the speakers. Setting the bow and the hot glue gun on the counter Bunny reached over and grabbed her phone. She saw Jack’s contact show up on the screen and smiled curiously as to why he was calling her in the middle of the day. Swiping her finger over the screen she easily unlocked the phone and heard the call connect.

“Jack? Are you okay?” Bunny asked curiously as she pressed the phone to her ear.

“Hey Bunny I’m sorry to call you during the work day.” came Jack’s rushed voice.

“No, no it’s okay what’s going on? What’s wrong?” Bunny asked now feeling worry start to course through her body. She felt her muscles tense as Jack’s tone. Something was wrong and her whole body was picking up on it just in his tone.

“I’m okay. Sorry, I’m okay. But I got a call from the school.” he said blowing out a sighing breath. Bunny was instantly relieved and then her body tensed when she realized that he mentioned the school.

“What’s wrong with Es? Did something happen? Was it her asthma?” Bunny began questioning him rapidly and Jack blew out another breath of air.

“No, she’s okay. I’m sorry I’m really bad at relaying this.” he said quickly trying to calm Bunny down. Bunny took in a breath and slowly blew it out closing her eyes as she slowly relaxed her tense muscles one at a time.

“Okay, next time just start out with everyone is okay then get to the info.” Bunny suggested as she tilted her head to the side and Jack chuckled softly at her words.

“Yeah that would have definitely been better. Sorry I didn’t mean to make you worry.” Jack said softly.

“It’s okay. My mind just jumped immediately to the worst case scenario. What’s going on though why did the school call you?” Bunny asked curious as she rested her elbow on the counter and then laid her head in her palm.

“So Esme got bullied again today and she went to a teacher to get it to stop.” Jack said softly and in a tone that sounded so heartbroken.

“What did the teacher do?” Bunny asked as she quickly picked her head up from her hand.

“The teacher stopped and brought the bullies to the principal’s office. Esme didn’t get into any trouble but the other kids are giving her the cold shoulder because she told the teacher.” Jack said dejectedly.

“Oh Es.” Bunny said softly as her heart instantly broke for the little girl.

“She’s probably going to come home not in the best mood at all. I just wanted to give you a heads up if she comes home and she’s down.” Jack said softly and Bunny nodded her head along with his words.

“Okay no problem. I think tonight I’ll see if she’ll be up to doing some crafts with me tonight. I’ve got a surprise for her that I’m hoping will lift her spirits a little after the rough day she’s had.” Bunny explained kindly as her eyes darted over to the pile of bows that she had already created. The bright colors with odd middle pieces made her grin with excitement to show Esme what she had created.

“Oh? And what did you make for my little monster?” Jack asked curiously.

“A bunch of bows to put in her hair. She mentioned this morning that her new friend Nadia has some pretty barrettes that she puts in her hair and I got to thinking maybe I should make some for the girls to wear. I made some for Es and I made some for her friend Nadia if she wanted to share them with her.” Bunny explained excited and Jack chuckled softly over the phone. “I’ll send you a few pictures later on. I’ve got a few more I wanted to make before I had to go get Esme from the bus stop.”

“Oh okay. That sounds great. Thank you Bunny. I was nervous at the beginning of this but you’ve definitely put my mind at ease with leaving Es with you. I can’t thank you enough for helping me out with this.” Jack said emphatically.

“Jack, what did we say about thanking me? No more okay? I don’t mind watching Esme for you, she’s a wonderful little girl and this week has been really great. I really enjoy being around her.” Bunny said sternly, trying to get Jack to finally stop thanking her. “Oh hey, while I got you on the phone my girlfriend Mercy said she has some info on classes for karate and tai chi that aren’t that far from the community. She runs the dog yoga so when Esme and I go this Saturday she’ll be able to give me the info. I’ll give it to you once you get home for you to figure out which class would be best for Esme.”

“Wow, that’s great! Okay thanks I really appreciate you getting information on those classes. I think they’ll be great for Esme. I really liked what you said before, that she might feel more confident with some self defensive classes. I think it’ll really be good for her.” Jack said animatedly and Bunny grinned at how into it Jack was into this idea.

“Yeah I think it’ll be good for her too. She really wants to be able to participate in gym class. And by doing something that she’s able to handle with her asthma I think it’ll make her feel a little more included sort of. Or at least I hope so.” Bunny said easily.

“Yeah I know she does it’s just tricky with her asthma. Alright I gotta get back to work. Thanks again for getting the class info. I appreciate it, I’ll talk to ya later sweetheart.” Jack said quickly and Bunny flushed heatedly at the pet name.

“Okay talk to you later Jack.” Bunny stumbled out softly and quickly hung up the phone. Fanning herself with her hand Bunny tried to calm her racing heart. How could he be affecting her so much over a damn phone call and a pet name?! Bunny took in a few more deep breaths and let them out slowly trying to calm herself. She knew that her emotions and feelings for Jack were brand new and it always felt so good in the beginning but there was so much more to figure out first than to continue developing these feelings for him. Shaking her head she began to push her feelings away and down deeper inside of herself. She had to make sure Esme was okay first and then maybe just maybe there could be something for her and Jack.

———

It wasn’t that long after Jack’s phone call that the alarm to go pick up Esme was ringing out into the air. Bunny looked up from her hunched over stance over the counter and set down the finished bow in her hands. She stretched widely letting her arms reach out on either side of her body as she slid off the stool she had been sitting on.

Bunny guessed she got so involved in finishing up the bows that she lost track of time. Arching her back she heard the pops in her joints and groaned softly. Smiling softly Bunny realized that she had never actually felt this tired in a long time. It was as if her whole body was just exhausted, she had a feeling it was because she was always trying to make the evenings fun for Esme and had been doing quite a bit of moving around.

“C’mon Butter let’s go get Esme.” Bunny said easily as she ushered the little dog out of the room and down the hallway towards the front door. The two of them quickly get the leash attached and are out the door.

“Bunny!” Called out a voice that made Bunny’s head snap up and turn to the side spotting Mr. Quinten sitting on his front porch waving at her.

“Hey Mr. Q. How are you?” Bunny asked as she led Butter across the front lawn over to the fence dividing her yard from Mr. Quinten’s. “Are you warm enough? It’s a little chilly out.”

“I’m fine, I promise, stop worrying about me. How’s it going with that little girl you’ve been watching this past week?” Mr. Quinten asked, waving away Bunny’s concern.

“She’s doing ok, had a rough start but now we’re doing good together. Tonight I think we’re going to do some crafts.” Bunny explained easily to Mr. Quinten. “Am I still taking you to the doctor on Monday?”

“Yep still scheduled to go.” Mr. Quinten replied. “That’s good that you guys are getting along. Never know when it comes to you dear.” He teased and Bunny rolled her eyes at the older man as she chuckled softly.

“Sure Mr. Quinten whatever you say.” Bunny grumbled out and Mr. Quinten laughed loudly.

“That’s what I like to hear Bunny!” Mr. Quinten called out as Bunny shook her head and waved at Mr. Quinten before leading Butter back towards the sidewalk to go walk to the bus stop.

Once Bunny and Butter had gotten to the bus stop Bunny had a seat on the curb and Butter quickly walked over and curled in her lap. Bunny ran her fingers through the fur on his back and Butter turned and twisted in her lap until he was laying on his back and presenting his belly to her. Bunny chuckled softly as she began to scratch his belly making him wiggle with delight.

“You’re such a needy little thing. I love you Butter.” She says softly to him as she cuddles him up in her arms and close to her chest. She laughs as he burrows into her chest and huffs loudly. Just then the sound of the brakes on the bus ring through the air and Bunny looks up from her spot on the curb to watch as Esme dejectedly walks down the steps of the bus.

When the little girl looks up and spots the two of them sitting on the curb and gives a soft grimace. Bunny smiles softly at Esme and holds Butter up to the side of her face hoping to make the little girl smile. It works as Esme lets out a loud giggle at the silly sight of the two of them. Bunny counts it as a win as Esme walks over and takes a seat next to her.

“Are you ok?” Bunny asks softly as Butter squirms in her arms as he tries to move to climb into Esme’s lap who giggles at his antics. The dog seems to vibrate as he wiggles in Esme’s lap and starts to lick her in the face happily. Esme’s giggles emit into the air and Bunny smiles as she sits next to the little girl and wiggling dog.

“I’m okay now.” Esme says quietly and Bunny watches her with concerned eyes. “You were right I didn’t get into trouble with the teacher when I told her about the bullying but the other kids. They weren’t so nice after they heard I told on the bully.” Esme explained, Bunny nodded her head at her words.

“Yeah sometimes people blame the person doing the right thing instead of the person doing the wrong thing. I know it stinks but those kids aren’t the friends you want in the long run. Was Nadia nice to you after you told on the bully?” Bunny tried to explain to her.

“Yeah Nadia thought I did the right thing. She was still nice to me afterwards.” Esme responded.

“Good that’s really good Es. Nadia is a really good friend then. She’s one you should keep around.” Bunny said knowingly. “I hope the two of you stay friends for a very long time.”

“I like her a lot.” Esme said softly and Bunny nodded her head.

“So I’ve got a surprise for you at the house. I was thinking maybe we’ll order some Chinese food and have it delivered while we do some crafts together, how does that sound?” Bunny suggested.

“Ooh what kind of crafts? And what’s the surprise?!” Esme asked excitedly, making Bunny laugh.

“Well any kind of crafts you’d like. We could make friendship bracelets for you and Nadia. We could do anything you really wanted. If I don’t know how to make it I’ll look it up on my computer.” Bunny explained easily to her. “And it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you what it was now would it?” Bunny teased softly and Esme squealed in her seat.

“I wanna make a friendship bracelet for you and Nadia!” Esme cheered and Bunny felt her heart clench in her chest at the thoughtfulness of Esme.

“That sounds like a plan to me girlie. Let’s get going so we can walk this one and then order some food and get crafting.” Bunny said as she began to stand up. She looked down and watched as Esme let Butter crawl out of her lap and then grabbed the leash. Bunny took the backpack from Esme and the three of them began walking around the block.

———

Bunny laughed as she watched Esme race with Butter up to the front door and then bounce in place as she tried to wait for Bunny to come unlock the front door. Taking a leap up the small three step porch she had Bunny was quickly unlocking the front door and opening it for both Esme and Butter. Esme quickly undid Butter’s leash and hung it up on the hook by the door.

“Alright kiddo the surprise is in the craft room. Let’s get in there and do a bit of crafting to relax and then I’ll order dinner how does that sound?” Bunny asked.

“Sounds good.” Esme cheered as she raced down the hallway and turned into the craft room. Bunny shook her head and walked into the kitchen to serve Butter his dinner for the evening and refresh his water bowl. Hearing the loud squeal from the craftroom Bunny couldn’t help the proud grin that burst across her face.

The sound of racing steps reached her ears and she looked up from the sink where she stood to see Esme standing in the archway of the kitchen with tears in her eyes and a duo of bows in her hands. Putting the dog bowl full of water on the floor Bunny turned fully to Esme as the little girl rushed forward and wrapped her small arms around Bunny’s waist. Burying her face in Bunny’s stomach Esme sniffled softly and Bunny felt her heart clench tightly in her chest as her hand came to rest against Esme’s soft hair.

“Thank you so much. I love them all.” Esme said around a few more sniffles. Bunny pulled Esme back a little bit and smiled down at her brightly.

“You are very welcome sweetheart.” Bunny said softly and ran her hand over Esme’s hair again. “Now c’mon let’s pick some out for Nadia and then we’ll make some bracelets.” Esme nodded her head and began making her way down the hallway towards the craftroom.

Once inside the room Bunny moved to the containers that held colored lanyard, colored string, beads and other things that they would be able to use to make bracelets. Bunny also pulled out a measuring tape and a few pieces of paper and a pencil, she had another idea to help Esme feel better about things that were going on.

“Alright so which ones would you like to share with Nadia. Or do you not want to share them with Nadia?” Bunny asked as she pulled out two stools next to the counter. The two of them sat on the stools and Esme began to look over all of the bows that she had in her pile. Bunny watched as Esme started to set aside a few of the bows for Nadia as she inspected them all carefully.

“Nadia likes the colors yellow and orange to most. She says she likes them because of sunsets.” Esme explained softly as she moved a brightly orange colored bow into Nadia’s pile.

“Well that’s nice that you’re picking her favorite colors for her. And sunsets are pretty. I get why she likes yellow and orange. What’s your favorite color?” Bunny asked Esme curiously as she watched Esme pick up a teal sparkly bow with a silver octopus figurine in the middle of it.

“I like purple and teal because it reminds me of the ocean.” Esme explained easily as she set the octopus bow in her pile before picking up another one. As Esme continued to go through each bow and decide which pile it would end up in Bunny pulled out her measuring tape and began holding the tape up against Esme’s body in certain places. When she found each measurement she needed she would write it down on one of her pieces of paper. “What’s your favorite color Bunny?” Esme asked softly.

“My favorite is teal, like a light teal. It reminds me of water and it’s really soothing.” Bunny explained and Esme nodded her head at her words.

“How come so kids are really mean and some are really nice?” Esme suddenly asked in a tone that sounded as if she was going to cry and Bunny instantly froze at the question. Feeling her heart shatter in her chest Bunny blinked her eyes for a few moments as she felt tears begin to pool in them.

“You know I don’t know why some kids are mean. It could be a lot of different things. They could have really mean siblings who pick on them at home, or really strict parents who don’t let them do things, or they could just be mean. There’s a lot of reasons why someone could be mean. But none of the reasons have anything to do with you, got that?” Bunny tried to explain to Esme so that she understood. “I don’t know why the kids at school were mean to you. But you’ve got your Dad, Me, and Nadia who care about you and we’ll be here to help you ok?” Bunny said confidently and Esme nodded her head slightly and Bunny slipped off her stool and hugged the little girl tightly. “I promise not everyone is mean and there’s some really good people out there. You just gotta look for them.”

“Ok.” Esme said softly as she hugged Bunny back around the waist. When the two pulled apart Bunny pulled over the materials for the friendship bracelets that the two of them would need to make. Esme smiled as she began knotting and tying off lanyard cords. “You’re the best Bunny.” Esme said quietly as Bunny climbed back onto her stool and pulled over the colored string to begin her own friendship bracelets. When the words reached her ears Bunny whipped her head over to Esme and grinned widely.

“You and your Dad seem to think so.” Bunny said fondly and Esme grinned at her nodding her head.

“Daddy likes you a lot. He thinks you’re really cool and a good role model for me.” Esme said knowingly and Bunny tilted her head to the side as she smiled softly.

“That’s nice to hear.” Bunny said softly and the two of them fell into a companionable silence as they began making bracelets together. Conversation flowing easily between the two as they appraised each other’s work. But Bunny’s eyes kept darting over to her paper with measurements listed on it silently drafting up ways on how she was going to create Esme’s surprise for tomorrow.

———

The next morning Bunny is awake before her alarm and after the morning routine with Butter she is easily rushing into Esme’s room and cheering loudly.

“It’s Friday! Wake up sleepyhead!” Bunny cheered happily as she opened up Esme’s bedroom door. The little girl let out a loud groan as she tried to snuggle deeper into the covers of her bed. Bunny laughed loudly as she moved over to the bed and took a seat on the edge, her hand coming up to rub along Esme’s body under the covers. “C’mon sleepyhead, only one more day of school and then it’s the weekend!” Bunny cheered happily as she patted Esme. “Besides you’ve gotta deliver Nadia’s bows and bracelet to her today.” Bunny teased softly as she stood up and left the room slowly.

“Oh! That’s right!” came Esme’s still sleepy response as Bunny gently shut the door. She chuckled softly as she heard the little girl rushing around the room to get dressed before she moved back down the stairs to let Butter back into the house. Bunny moved into the kitchen and quickly began to make omelets for her and Esme.

“Butter what are we gonna do when Esme goes home this weekend? We’re not gonna have a guest for very much longer.” Bunny said absentmindedly to the dog who was curled up in his bed staring at her silently. He barked loudly when she turned her head to look at him. She smiled at him and nodded her head. “I know we’re gonna miss her right?” Bunny asked fondly of the dog and he barked twice making her laugh. “Yup I’m gonna miss her.”

Just then Esme walks into the kitchen and both Bunny and Butter look over at her. Butter barking happily as he rushed over to Esme and danced around her feet making her giggle happily.

“Good Morning Butter!” cheered Esme as she bent down and pet Butter’s head. Bunny shook her head amused as she watched the dog trot off to his bed once he got the pets he wanted and slumped into the plush dog bed. “Hey Bunny, do you have a bag that I can put Nadia’s bows and bracelets in? I don’t want them to get messed up before I give them to her.” Esme asked as she looked over at Bunny.

“Yeah I think I do, let me see.” Bunny said as she plated up Esme’s omelet and then turned off the stove before moving to the pantry to see if she had any ziploc bags for Esme. “Ah, here we go.” she says producing a medium sized bag and Esme nodded her head eagerly as she took it from Bunny and set it aside.

“Thanks Bunny.” Esme said easily as Bunny nodded her head and turned back to the stove. “So what’s with the wake up call today?” Esme asks curiously as Bunny begins making her own omelet for breakfast.

“I’ve got things to do today so as soon as I get you up and off to school I can get to the things that I gotta do today.” Bunny said vaguely.

“What things?” Esme asked curiously and Bunny smirks softly.

“Things.” Bunny teases and Esme makes a scrunched up face at her making her laugh.

“Why can’t I know?” Esme asked curiously and Bunny shook her head.

“It’s a surprise.” Bunny said secretively and Esme eyed her shrewdly.

“You like surprises a lot huh?” Esme asked as she tilted her head at Bunny.

“For other people, yes. For myself I hate them.” Bunny answers honestly as she plates her omelet and moves to have a seat at the kitchen island.

“What do you mean for other people?” Esme asks and Bunny smiles at her.

“I like making surprises for other people. But I don’t like receiving surprises.” Bunny explains.

“Even if they’re good surprises?” Esme asks and Bunny nods her head as she begins to shovel her omelet in her mouth.

“Even the good surprises.” Bunny said with finality and Esme tilts her head and then nods.

“Well that’s good to know.” Esme says easily and Bunny nearly chokes on her food as she’s mid-chew.

“You’re a little sassy this morning aren’t ya?” Bunny griped out amused as she looked over at Esme with a grin.

“You won’t tell me what you’re doing today and just say it’s a surprise. Expect the sass.” Esme said as she huffed. Bunny’s eyes widened at the sass from the little girl before she began laughing delighted.

“Oh man your Dad has his hands full with you doesn’t he?” Bunny asked as she continued to laugh.

“You have no idea.” Esme said as rolled her eyes. Bunny’s laughter filled the room and Esme only responded with happy giggles of her own.

———

“Mr. Quinten, honestly I just asked for cardboard boxes. Do you have any? I don’t need the crochety old man act from you right now.” Bunny said tiredly into her cellphone as she pressed it to her ear. Listening to his response she blew out a long breath. “It’s for Esme. I want to surprise her.”

Bunny moved about the craft room as she eyed the large pile of cardboard boxes that she had gathered from her stockpile and the neighbors next door. She only needed a few more boxes and had hoped that Mr. Quinten would have them and wouldn’t give her a problem but of course the old man had to give her the whole 20 questions about why she needed the boxes.

She only needed three more boxes to finish up the pirate ship she was planning to make for Esme. This morning after she got Esme on the bus and got through the video call with Jack she had quickly raced home and gathered all the cardboard boxes that she had stored up. She then had asked the neighbors that she knew were home today if they had any boxes that she could have. They all had eagerly given them up to her so that they wouldn’t have to put them out on the curb and they knew that Bunny would find another way to repurpose them.

“I just need three you can keep all the others.” Bunny said exasperatedly. “Yes once I take them they’re mine I won’t be giving them back to you. Goodness, maybe I’ll just ask someone else if this is the trouble I gotta go through to get them.” Bunny complained as she pulled the phone away from her ear glaring at it. “Look can I have the boxes or not? I gotta get going on this if I want to get it done before Esme comes home. And if you’re giving them up I gotta find someone else with boxes that will let me take them.” Bunny explained. “Thank you! Finally, it’s like pulling teeth with you. I’ll be right over to come get them.”

Hanging up the phone Bunny let out a loud sigh as she blew out a breath. Shaking her head, her attitude began to change as she realized that she finally had all the cardboard boxes she would need to be able to create Esme’s pirate ship. She walked out of the craft room when her phone began ringing and she looked down to see that she was getting a call from Jack. Furrowing her eyebrows she quickly answered the call and placed the phone to her ear.

“Hey Jack, is everything ok?” she asked quickly and heard Jack softly curse on the phone.

“Yeah I’m sorry to call you during the work day again. I just-I wanted to make sure you were okay. You weren’t really on the video call this morning and I was worried something was going on that you didn’t want to say in front of Esme.” Jack explained in a soft worried tone. Bunny smiled softly to herself, he was checking up on her.

“Oh yeah I’m okay. There is something going on that I didn’t want to tell Esme but it’s nothing bad. I’m making her cardboard pirate ship as a surprise and figured we’d do some reenacting of the pirate’s movies after school.” Bunny explained easily as she continued to walk out of the house.

“Wow.” Jack said softly and Bunny laughed softly. “You can do that?”

“Don’t underestimate me Jack. I’m the crafting queen.” Bunny said amused. “I’m heading over to Mr. Quinten’s house now to pick up the last of the boxes I need to make the pirate ship. Then I’ve got some sewing to do for Esme’s costume and then by then it should be time for her bus to be coming home.” Bunny explained easily and happily as she bounded down the front steps of her house.

“You’re going all out for this huh?” Jack asked bemused.

“Oh yeah if we’re gonna play pirates you gotta go all out Jack. C’mon.” Bunny scoffed at him.

“You truly are amazing.” Jack says softly almost as if caught off guard by his own words.

“Jack.” Bunny begins to warn him softly.

“No, no hear me out. I don’t know many other women who would go and make a cardboard pirate ship for a little girl who’s had a rough week being away from her Dad. All just to make her feel better. I just want you to know that I really appreciate you doing all this for Es. Ever since Maria passed away I’ve kinda been going at this from the seat of my pants and probably failing spectacularly. But you’ve been such a good thing for her this week and I really do appreciate it.” Jack said earnestly. Bunny stopped in her tracks as she heard the honesty in his voice.

“I gotta admit I’m gonna miss her come next week. It’s kinda insane how easily I’ve gotten used to her in my day to day.” Bunny admitted softly and almost guiltily.

“Well we’ll definitely be seeing you around the neighborhood and if the yoga class goes well or those karate classes work out we could work something out where you and her get to spend some time together. You two can do all that girly stuff that I’m not into.” Jack said kindly and Bunny felt her lungs catch on her next breath. He was trying to keep her in your life even though you were only a neighbor.

“Oh Jack really? I’d love that! But if you wanna take her to karate or tai chi that’s all you, I don’t want to take that from you.” Bunny said quickly even as her heart lifted at being able to spend time with Esme. “Ok, ok let’s not get too emotional now. I still gotta build a pirate ship. I’ll send you pictures and videos once everything is set up and I get her into costume. Ok?” Bunny said quickly as she grinned.

“Alright sweetheart. I expect to see you in full costume too.” Jack said with a happy laugh.

“Duh Jack. Honestly who would I be if I didn’t get in full costume also?” Bunny asked with a scoff before she laughed softly. “I’ll talk to you later Jack.”

“Talk to you later sweetheart.” Jack said in response before the call ended. Bunny is already continuing her path to Mr. Quinten’s house when she stops again and realizes that Jack called her sweetheart twice during that phone call. She feels her face flush heatedly before she shakes her head, this man and his daughter were slipping so easily into her life it was a little daunting.

———

Bunny smiles as she stares at herself in the mirror. She’s decked out in her pirate queen costume. Gray pants cover her legs while knee high tan boots cover her feet. A dark brown leather corset sits on her rib cage and a loose fitting white shirt is underneath that. The look is completed with a long vibrant black and gold coat that falls to her knees, a fake sword is strapped to her waist loosely and a worn tattered pirate hat sits on top of her head. She smiled as she grabbed her phone from the dresser and took a few pictures of her costume. She sends one off to Jack with a catchy pirate themed comment and easily stows her phone in the pocket of the jacket.

Moving out of her bedroom and down the stairs Bunny makes a quick stop in the craft room and opens up the chest full of costumes. She grabs the octopus costume and walks into the kitchen smiling brightly at Butter. The dog looked over at you from his sprawled out position. When his eyes spotted the octopus costume he quickly scrambled up and raced over to you barking loudly.

“Alright, alright Kraken let’s get you all suited up and then we’ll go get Esme yeah?” Bunny asked as she laughed at the little dog’s response to the costume she held. Butter jumped around Bunny’s feet and she tried to wrestle the costume onto the dog. “Butter hold still bub.” Bunny instructed and the dog listened as he stood still for her and she quickly strapped the velcro straps around his body. “Okay good.”

Standing upright she ushered the dog over to the front door and attached his leash to his collar before the two of them were out the door. As Bunny walked down the sidewalk she grinned and waved at the neighbors who were returning home from work. Some laughed and waved back while others looked at her curiously before shaking their heads. Bunny stopped at the corner and stood there holding Butter’s leash and posed in a very Jack Sparrow-esque pose as she waited for Esme’s bus to arrive.

When the bus did finally arrive at the corner and Esme stood at the top of the bus stairs the squeal she let out could probably be heard two streets away. Her legs couldn’t move quick enough as she bounded down the stairs and ran straight for Bunny.

“Oh my god Bunny! You look amazing!” Esme cheered as she danced and bounced around Bunny. “And look at Butter!”

“Excuse me little miss. I don’t know anyone by the name of Bunny nor Butter. No. My name is Delilah ‘The Siren’ Vail and this ‘ere is the Kraken.” Bunny says in a horrible pirate-esque accent. Esme giggles loudly and bounces on her toes excitedly.

“Are we playing pirates?” Esme asks softly and Bunny grins before nodding her head eagerly to Esme.

“Yeah, we’re playing pirates. Wanna head home? I've got some surprises for ya.” Bunny says easily and Esme nods her head quickly. The two of them usher Butter back towards the house quickly and he barks as they try not to rush him too much.

Once back at the house Bunny unlocks the door and ushers everyone inside. She unleashes Butter and shoos Esme towards the craft room.

“Your costume is in there. Go get changed into it and then we board the ship in the backyard.” Bunny says hurriedly.

“There’s a ship?” Esme asks loudly as she moves down the hallway. The cheer and squeal from the craft room almost deafens both Butter and Bunny. But Bunny can’t keep the grin off her face as she hears the excitement coming from the craft room.

“Es, Butter and I are gonna be outside ok?” Bunny calls as she passes the craft room with her Kraken dog at her heels.

“Ok!” calls back Esme.

———

The ship rocked and swayed on the high seas as waves crested underneath knocking its occupants off their legs continuously. Seagulls cawed and cried above the crew’s heads as the birds circled the tall masts holding the fluttering sails. A storm was brewing in the air and the sea was churning with anticipation of it. Ivy ‘Gunner’ Wendell stood at the helm gazing out over the churning waters. There was something in the air that was making her cautious of their course. Something that she was forgetting.

Suddenly the ship shook as a loud thud was heard from below deck. It felt as if something had crashed into the side of the ship. As Gunner looked around bewildered she spied a dark wood ship in the distance that was flying a black and gold flag from their crow’s nest.

“Mateys, turn the ship around! There be the Golddust in the distance! We need to be sure her captain won’t board us!” Gunner called down to her crew and watched as they all whipped their heads to the side to gaze at the ship that was fast approaching. “Mateys!” Gunner cried out loudly and they all scrambled to do their part to turn the ship away from the Golddust.

Just then another loud thud was heard from below deck and the ship shook with it’s impact. Gunner nearly lost her footing and had to grab onto the helm before she fell over. When she looked back up to see where the Golddust was, she was dismayed to see that it gained at least half of the distance it was before.

“Mateys brace yourselves!” Gunner shouted as she tried in vain to turn the helm as quickly as she could. The helm spun for a moment or two before coming to a dead stop almost throwing Gunner to the floor of the ship. “What is this?!” Gunner cried out as she tried in vain to turn the helm. Her eyes darted up to see that the Golddust had drawn closer and was now turning so it would be parallel with Gunner’s ship. Gunner could see Pirate Queen Delilah ‘The Siren’ Vail gazing at her from her own helm with a smug smirk on her face. But as the Golddust sat parallel with Gunner’s ship the Golddust crew didn’t move to come aboard. It was almost as if they were waiting for something. Something to happen. But what? Just then it made sense to Gunner what those thudding impacts were below deck.

“KRAKEN!” Gunner shouted to her crew and watched as four large ugly purple and teal tentacles surged out of the water on each side of her ship. The tentacles rose higher than the masts of the ship and the horrified crew below cried out in horror. They all tried to scramble away as the large tentacles suddenly crashed down onto the floor of the ship. The wood splintered and Gunner was thrown from her position at the tremor of the ship. Quickly righting herself she drew her sword and began rushing towards the Kraken to defend what was left of her ship. “I will have your tentacle for what you’ve done!” cried Gunner loudly as she surged forwards to try and slice at the tentacles.

Suddenly the tentacles drew away and Gunner looked around bewildered along with her crew. She was ready to defend her crew and ship against the abomination but it had withdrawn. There was a grumble to the side of the ship and Gunner turned her head swiftly to see Pirate Queen Delilah standing on the rail of her ship holding onto some of the rigging with a smug smirk.

“He’ll only come when I call. Might as well give it up Princess.” taunted the Queen. Turning to her Gunner pointed her sword at the woman and sneered angrily.

“Never!” Gunner shouted and the Queen laughed mockingly.

“You would let your ship and crew go down to the depths of the sea all because you won’t join my crew?!” Shouted Queen Delilah. “We would be unstoppable! How can you not see that!?” Queen Delilah cries out as she easily boards Gunner’s ship.

“I will never join you! You’re evil! A black cad!” Gunner shouts as the two women circle each other. The Queen has drawn her sword now and the two are in a standoff.

“Then we fight.” sneers the Queen and she lunges forward striking out with her sword. The clanging of their swords fills the air as the two fight to get the upper hand. The Queen has the advantage of being stronger but Gunner is     quicker as she darts around the Queen. Neither one of them are gaining any leverage until the Queen lets out a loud cry and Gunner’s ship tries to withstand another thudding impact from the Kraker.

“Cheater!” cried Gunner as she’s almost thrown completely off her feet.

“I play to win Princess.” taunts the Queen as she advances. Gunner tries to defend herself but soon the Kraken is laying hit after hit upon her ship and is destroying it. Wood is flying through the air as the tentacles curl around the ship and begin to squeeze.

The Queen gasps and her eyes widen when she realizes that she will be destroyed with the ship if she doesn’t disembark. Spinning quickly she runs to the side of the ship and leaps from the railing to sail through the air and tumble onto the floor of her own ship. Gunner races after her and stops at the railing.

“You would’ve been saved Princess if only you had agreed!” cried out the Queen as she smirked and gave a little wave to Gunner.

“I will avenge my crew and ship!” Gunner cried out before the Kraken’s tentacles completely crushed the ship and Gunner was plunged into the icy waters of the unforgiven seas. Her fate left up to no one but herself.

   “Would she survive or would she perish along with her crew and ship?” Bunny calls out in a contemplating tone and Esme grinned as she sat up from where she lay on the grass right next to the cardboard ship. Butter was racing around the backyard barking happily and Esme giggled loudly at his antics. “Alright kiddo. Should we hold off for another day for part two of the saga of the Pirate Princess and the Pirate Queen?” Bunny asked as she helped Esme to stand. “It’s starting to get darker.”

   “Yeah!” Esme cheered and Bunny smiled down at her. “Can we send the pictures and videos to my Dad before we call him?” Esme asked excitedly.

   “Sure and dinner should be arriving soon too.” Bunny said as she ushered Esme into the house. “Butter c’mon!” she called over her shoulder to the dog who was still crazily running around the backyard. The two laughed as he dashed from the far fence to the backdoor his tentacles dancing around him.

[emperorofbullshit]

This is gonna be me ranting and whining about how annoyed I am at my own mediocrity and how I manipulate the people around me as a coping mechanism to delude myself into thinking I am doing pretty alright and I shouldn't complain because I have it good

Since 14 years old there has been much discord in my family. My father is an alcoholic and not just a normal one. He would go to work at 6, get off work at 12 and then come home after 6 more hours of drinking. There are 7 days in a week and out of those 7, in at least 5 I have had to hide in my room because I was scared of him. He would yell, he would call me names, he would even make threats saying things like :

"I have 2 sons. Do you see that window? I could throw you out of it and only have one son."

To a 14 year old kid who is scared shitless but can't show emotion on his face, those words were always taken at face value and I always had no doubts on him being unable to keep his words. I am the eldest of 2 sons and thus I had to take the brunt of the "parental dedication", as they call it, and was always pushed for excellence. They would always say : "Get good grades, make good friends, go outside, go study, go do this and go do that" in and out every day. From 3rd grade I have been taking courses on languages, sports and math at times and I would leave home at about 6:45 AM every day to get to school at 7:30 and I would go from school which ended more often than not at 13:30 to English courses and then to either Deutch courses or basketball practice which would end at roughly 6PM.

My parents loved achievements but did next to nothing to help me feel anything other than anger towards getting any. They would always go on and on about good grades so you can get the prize money, good grades so you can get in a good school, good this, good that and I subconsciously avoided being in the spotlight because I actually felt gratification from being able to see their dreams shatter into dust and fir a while, that was the inly thing that kept me going. Just the look on their faces, the tone on their voice, the gleam in their eyes. The gleam of someone realizing that their hopes and dreams of greatness were just turned to dust. I still have that side of me, I just choose to keep it under control but it want's to get loose once a while.

And so my life continued until 9th grade when ai decided to stop all couses because I was sick and tired of them and so I stopped going. Then came high school, this circus, part of which I am as of writing this text most if not all of you will skip because it's just way too long.

In the first year of highschool I had fun. I made some new friends and hung with them a bit and I also met the one person I thought I could trust because she was like me, except unlike me, she still had hope and she still had her parents, albeit controlling, with her, rather than against her.

I gave her counsel when she needed it and we hit it off. She was a great friend while it lasted. I knew from the beginning that she and I would most certanly not make it through the year as friends so I had as much fun as possible with her.

I told her a very tiny fraction about my life and jokingly but never untruthfully told her how my mind works and what I do to people around me, her included. I talked her about relationships once and I helped her out too because she had a guy she liked and he liked her back. This guy just so happened to also be a friend of mine so I thought : "Why not help my friend get together with my other friend?", and subtly but surely I made them get together faster.

That was basically the premise of the first year. A pretty average story but I left out the part where the alcoholism and mental abuse at home never stopped. I put focus on this one girl because helping her out was my coping mechanism.

Then came the second year. This girl had gotten together with her man and they were very happy to be together and still are, after all I am still in my 2nd year of high school writing this, but back to topic. The second year of high school was wierd to say the least because of the pandemic and our classes were split in half. Me, being the pupeteer I am, decided to pull some strings and set my annoying classmates away with sweet words and deals that sounded too good to be true, and ended up with the best classmates I wanted, part of which was my target for the second year. My target was a girl this time. She was and still is, pretty, smart, and very comfortable for me to be around but she and i had never actually talked at all. Wd had exchanged a sentence once on our 1st year and that's it. I spent a few days observing her and noticed that she was a loner, she didn't exactly have friends amongst the classmates, so I thought : "Well that's as good a chance as any.", and started talking to her and walked her home after school. We became friends and were going out daily after school to get a drink somewhere and one day, as I had planned, 2 fellow classmates show up and I tell them to sit with us and so began my act and my strategy on building her a group of friends. The group wasn't too big. It was me, her, the other 2 classmates, a friend of mine and the girl from the 1st year of highschool. We were all classmates so we all had fun and talked and we developed into a true griend group. Well, as good a group as any can be with me in it. Time passed an I noticed I was really not interested in this girl I had set as my target so I just let her go to do her thing and cut my puppet strings there.

I did all of this because I wanted to prove to myself something, I don't even know what it was anymore because it lost value in my eyes and so I just cut my strings on everyone and let them free. My social life was evolving for the better, which was good and all, but my familial life was degrading and devolving at such speeds that weren't even funny anymore.

My father would come drunk, lecture me for hours on end about the most uselss things in existence, and he would always call me names and berate me on everything. He had even come to me with a big kitchen knife pointed at my chest and said : "I will kill you and eat your heart if you dont do what I want"

I am still afraid of him and i still have trauma gron him so I still didn't doubt his words because when your father comes to your room at 10 PM holding a knife to your chest while your back is agains the wall, you then realize that bad things can really be considered good compared to other things.

I was living in fear. Every day I would pretend to be asleep for hours on end so I could avoid him and maybe be spared but that was just wishful thinking.

While my soocial life evolved, my familial life kept devolving. My father would come drunk more often, fight more often with my mother, screm more, curse more and shout more. I was honestly getting pretty fed up with his bullshit. One day, he woke up from his nap and he was still drunk and started lecturing me on what "Sons of bitches, idiots and parasites" every single member of my moms side of the family, my mother included was. I was very pissed and my knuckles had gone wbite form me clenching them that hard.

My mother got home mid lecture and thy started fighting again. First it was just verbal insults and slurs, but it got worse and worse untol my father literaly ran at my mother prepated to choke her.

That.

That was the moment I had my first meltdown in my life. I saw him run and I saw his hands on her throat and I just had one simple directive in my mund telling me one thing : "Whatever made you feel this way must be eliminated"

And that was what I tried to do. I ran and pushed him away from my mother and then punched my dad so hard he crashed into the wall and made a dent. I would probably have killed him there if it wasn't for my father's brother who came to us because of all the noise, stopping me. He tried to get me away from my father and when I did and my father got up and tried to punch me while my uncle was blaming my mom fir the situation, I grabbed both him and my dad and threw them to the wall. I would probably have been bruised because thwy are both fat and I was in complete meltdown just screaming in the rage of years and years of mental torture and violent self loathing which had build up behind the dam and only sought a way out. They eventually split us up and I was crying and yelling. I could barely breathe, my lungs just couldn't take in air fadt enough for my heart which was beating so hard that thunder would sound like a butterfly's wings beating. I opened the windows on my room and put 3 quarters of my body outside the window , risking to fall and die but I didn't care anymore. The rage had subsided, having found an exit and without it to push me, I was just a broken kid that just sought desperately the help which noone gave. Not my parents, not my friends, not even those who considered themselves and to my face said "We are best friends, we help each other". I never got any help and nobody even saw that I broke down. I dropped hint after hint after hint that I needed someone to talk to, someone to say a few words to me, someone to just listen to anything I wanted to say, yet all I got was nothing. I noticed that none of these so called friends or best friends care about anything. Thwy didn't even notice that when I took my shirt off to change for PE, I had bruises in my back and chest. Nobody said anything or did anything so i also did nothing.

Everybody just seemed to go on their own way and nobody wanted to even acknowledge what had happened or what help I needed.

I am still bitter and mad at everyone but especually at my "best friend" to whom I say the following :

V. You know who this account belongs to. You know me in real life and you know I'm not lying because I don't waste my time like that. You know damn well that if yku read this entire thing and see things just a small 1(one) percent of how I saw things, you wouldn't call youself my acquaintance, let alone my best friend.

To anyone that made it to the end and actually read it, please realize that no matter what, no matter where, you cannot rely on those you consider dear without knowing for certain that they also consider you dear.

[underthewestway]

Rose Quartz Was Always Pink Diamond: An Essay

Wowie! What a bundle of information we got regarding Rose after A Single Pale Rose aired...yet I've seen a lack of discussion/writing on it around the Internet. This is most likely due to the fact that SO MUCH was given to the fans, especially during Change Your Mind, an hour long special, that it was easy to shift focus onto other, new things, like RQ 2.0, WD, and Pink Steven.

However, being as sad as I am, I am completely enthralled by Rose's character in the series, and also at how well written she is. I can safely say that I have rarely seen this character archetype displayed on mainstream television during my lifespan so far, therefore I thrive in analysing and piecing together information that the show gives us about her...and let me tell you, we got a LOT in those bunch of recent episodes. More than we can handle. It is particularly odd and refreshing that, after a wide stretch of seasons with a severe lack of context/detail on the Crystal Gem leader, all this explanations are thrown at us near the end of the fifth season. So, lets talk about it!

  In Now We're Only Falling Apart, Pearl explains why Rose held her identity secret forever, and why she decided to rebel and reinvent in the first place. We find out her intentions were not those of malice, or as a twisted 'game', like Sapphire suggests, but rather impulses and eagerness for freedom. There is no denying Rose greatly cared for the Earth, we see her and Pearl playing around in the environment and admiring its inhabitants, until she realises they were here before gems, and the gem's colonization is going to impact them greatly. Rose's almost irritable excitement and glee for a new colony turns to large regret, guilt and maybe self-loathing. This is a new thing we learn about her, her emotions and actions tend to be that of wide extremes, rushing to go to the Kindergarten, hurriedly grabbing Pearl, jumping around, happily playing along with the new quartzes-like a child. Fans never came to this conclusion before because we were never shown this aspect of her, Pearl never mentioned that she could be reckless and erratic, and because Amethyst was scolded so coldly for it by Pearl herself, it was never a thought that someone she admired so highly could act the same, maybe even worse due to her power.

After, Pearl states PD fought relentlessly with Yellow and Blue, trying to reinforce this idea that this method of expanding their colony was wrong and damaging to innocent species of life. Now, this already known fact about RQ protecting Earth is under a new light. Her determination could somewhat be fuelled by guilt, as well as a moral feeling. Pearl too. Another new fact is that Yellow and Blue, although loving and caring to Pink, do not respect her at all. Maybe this is Pink's fault, maybe it is theirs, or maybe both, but in their eyes, she is a kid, and not an admirable leader of anything.

 I really, really love this, because the representation of Rose is a COMPLETE 180 degrees flip of that viewpoint. RQ, as seen by others, was a magnificent leader, brave warrior, and selfless mother figure, winning a war, who was all-knowing and largely respected by CGs, and detested by Homeworld. On the other hand, PD, as seen by others, was a selfish, reckless dictator, cowardly failing a colony, and a mindless child in the eyes of her Authority- never taken seriously and admired repetitively by other Gems on Homeworld only for her status, and not her actions.

Rose's intentions for saving Earth then morphed because of Garnet, learning that gems of two different types CAN fuse, a desire for experimentation and discovery of gems fuelled within her, and she wanted to now fight FOR gems, and for all life, to be free of judgement and conformation. This idea is a beautiful one, but for the idea to become reality, there were some reprocussions, as we learnt in A Single Pale Rose, and additionally with Jasper, Bismuth, Eyeball, the Diamonds...countless people were affected by PD leaving the empire and starting a war. In fact, the Great Gem War had a lasting impact on every character it seems, even those who were born/created after it. So, Rose had started a major bad influence in this story, as well as a major good one. Which can leave many feeling largely conflicted on how to feel about her.

Furthermore, in the Diamond Days Arc, we discover that Pink was hugely oppressed by the other Diamonds for behaving the way she does. As punishment, they would lock her away in a chamber, until she said sorry. Now we are given reason to why she began keeping so many secrets, and resorted to being overly flippant and ignorant of other gems/humans real feelings, as suggested in We Need To Talk. Her family has encouraged this method of bottling up any true feelings or thoughts that could upset/shock/confuse someone, and could also risk changing someone's viewpoint of their character and ideals. The Diamonds are the ultimate figure heads, idols, leaders, striving to fit one ideal, and Pink just was never meant for that ideal. White herself, saying ''You're a part of me, a part I always have to REPRESS'', strongly infers Pink was created as a form of all White's, or a person's, faults and hidden behaviours. So it only seems natural that she would feel like an outsider, I mean her peers are many feet taller for goodness sake, she was literally always looked down upon.

 White took this enforcement of controlling Pink even more when she mind-controlled Pink Pearl, and took her away from PD permanently. I feel as if though this forever left a mark on Rose, and may explain the complexities of her and Pearl's relationship as well. Also, this explains why we never see Rose or PD even mention WD in flashbacks, she speaks of YD and BD- never White. Her determined avoidance of White is highly likely to be because of what she did to Pink Pearl, and her anger/shock towards this may have been the final straw to no longer being open and honest towards the Authority. We see she is completely furious and DONE with being repressed and mistreated in Now We're Only Falling Apart, and her willingness to utterly lie to them with the new Pearl and abandon her previous life is a bit more understandable.

In 'Familiar' it is found out that PD kind of lived in a sort of 'limbo' of toxicity, and my oh my was she BORED and FRUSTRATED. Like Steven in early episodes, Pink was left on her own a lot of the time, and always eager to impress her parental figures when they were briefly around her. Except, unlike Steven, this never changed, and the Diamonds never let her grow out of it, because it is a stigma that gems aren't supposed to grow. It is hinted Pink most likely wanted a change of pace with having her own colony, and killing two birds with one stone, she could also prove her worth to them by doing what they do. Although, with the issue of giving Pink so much time to herself, she began to reflect and think a lot, and become obsessed with doing something new, to the point of begging the Diamonds to give her something to achieve.

 This is ultimately really tragic, and relatable for those who constantly are wanting to impress their peers in a repetitive environment. Pink seemed to never be allowed outside of Homeworld without another Diamond, and anywhere she goes outside her rooms is to be with an escort, and the pressure of being a figure. This pent up fascination of freedom, new things, and expression is everything Rose Quartz represents as a result of this.

This follows up to my main point about Rose - her obsession with ideas, which is highly ironic due to the fact that everyone who remembers her is enthralled based on purely the idea of her, and seems to forget her faults/other aspects. Most likely because of the Authority's encouragement of such a thing, Rose's interest in other people seems solely based upon the idea they support, rather than them as a being. A great example of this is Greg. When Rose met Greg, she loved the idea that his song represented, freedom and being a lonesome rebel. She then states in We Need To Talk, ''That's what I love about humans, you're all so funny!'', to which Greg shuts her down upon, claiming she isn't talking like a real person. This is because she is trying to live up to her name and reinvention, and be this happy, loving Quartz, who knows the most about humans and is the most caring of others, which we know she isn't.

It is very clear with Greg that Rose understands very little about humans, and it is very clear with Pearl that Rose understands very little about being empathetic. However, it is displayed with Garnet that Rose was interested in learning about fusion and love, and with Amethyst, Rose experimented with the idea of bringing up a gem without the prejudice of Homeworld's society, and the fluidity of growth. In the end, Rose chose to be with Greg, and give up her physical form to give gem life to Steven. Personally, I believe this is because RQ was utterly enamoured with Greg's, and most humans, capability of empathy, love and persistent reinvention, which is everything she wanted to have - at least the IDEA of Greg's relatability towards others. Rose was achieved a respectable status because of her well-known SYMPATHY for comrades during battles; sympathy and empathy can be completely different emotions under different perspectives. In RQ's case, she evidently possessed bountiful sorrow for hurt loved ones, although I see it as something she could never relate to, being as strong as a Diamond is, or at least, she wouldn't be willing to share her own sorrow.

Throughout her journey, we begin to see her transformation from a selfish alien dictator, to leading a damaging war, to wanting to settle on Earth and become a better person. We even see this through her design, as PD she possesses vibrant and hot pinks, lots of magenta, as well as with almost-impossible hair, and a princess/jester outfit.

 As she shapeshifts into RQ, we see she has peachy/pale skin, more natural curly hair, sad walled eyes and a dress with many dark layers... with soft, pastel and earthy tones in her palette. It is very much apparent that she wanted to fit in with humans, no longer be alien, and kind of BECOME an organic being.

 Yet, with being a Diamond, she severely struggled to empathise and relate to gems, let alone humans, because she was brought up to put herself first. Consistently, she tried to be loving, tried to understand, maybe a little too hard, and I don't think she ever got to learn some people don't want to be understood. I see Rose as one of those people who tends to sympathise with loved ones, and feel strong pity for them, but they cannot ever relate or realise the depth of the experience that person is going through.

 So her solution to making people feel better isn't like Steven, which is helping people by talking and facing their problems, it is avoiding them. This is why she left the Diamonds, even after the Corruption, and left the Corrupted Gems in bubbles forever, and left Bismuth in a bubble; she literally tended to have 'lived in a bubble' of a farce life, being extremely flippant and ignorant to the underlying problems she faced within herself and with others. All the wrong actions she had caused originate from this issue.

In conclusion, it is very difficult to decide whether you like RQ as a character or not. She is very much morally gray, and created a major amount of conflict within the show's story, however, her ideas and values were those of moral good and happiness for all life. Rose was different, and complex, and very determined, yet she was still always Pink, just out of reach of humanity, and repetitively trying and changing, which I think a lot of people liked about her, she asked things gems never usually ask, and viewed all gems as equal. On the other hand, she lied, all the time, creating fake rumours of herself, convincing CGs that a Diamond could never love, or listen to them, so therefore they never tried doing that, resulting in full blown war. What ever way you feel about her, her impact was lasting, and there would be no Crystal Gems without her.

  But what she did to Pearl really sucked.

 Like - seriously a douche move, Rose.

[mydarlingvioletine]

‘Just a Puppy Crush’

Ship(s): Violet/Clementine

Media: The Walking Dead Game (Season 4)

Summary: a zombie-less modern AU in which two dorks finally get together with the help of their friends.

                        Chapter 1

It started out with an invitation Violet found on her desk. A light purple envelope, her name written on it in beautiful calligraphy.

                 Well, it started a little bit before that.

Violet missed her alarm. And six of the backup ones she had set in advance. Her mother had left early for her shift at the diner and her father didn’t come home last night, so she slept peacefully and uninterrupted.

Until she lazily stretched out with a yawn, eyes opening and landing on the alarm clock across her.

                     7:20

She hardly had time to register what it said before the alarm started angrily beeping again.

        “Holy shit… Fuck… Shit!” Violet scrambled to get up, smacking the top of the alarm clock to silence the robotic screaming. She threw her sheets to the side, grabbing her jacket off the door hook on the way out.

While vigorously brushing her teeth, she looked down at her phone.

            15 missed messages from Pain in My Ass.

[ur uber is Here… am outside]

[got your drink & bagel, where are u?]

[viiiioooooleeet]

[ v i o l e t ]

[did you put the key in a different spot?]

[coward.]

Violet scrolled through the herd impatiently, getting to the latest messages, about 15 minutes ago.

[violet please fucking get up i didnt do my english homework i need to copy off of you marlon won’t let me copy his anymore]

[fuck i have to go i cant be late to pre-session but I’ll have brody come check on you to see if you can make the late entrance with her! ill keep your breakfast with me im sure mr. everett wouldn’t give a shit if you ate in class. i do it all the time]

          As if on cue, there was a faint, nervous knock on the door. God bless Brody.

“Be right there!” Violet shouted, quickly throwing her work messily into her backpack. She grabbed a couple dollars off the kitchen table for lunch, threw on her boots, and booked it towards the door.

     "Hey,“ Brody grinned at the shaggy-haired, droopy-eyed messy Violet in front of her. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

Violet grimaced, mumbling to herself as she ducked into the passenger seat of Brody’s truck. She caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror, and pulled up the hoodie of her jacket to cover her shame.

         The drive felt like forever, with Brody’s insufferable choice of music. Who still listens to Coldplay? In 2019? Violet was too grateful to complain, and clenched her jaw to hold her tongue.

Brody tried to hold a conversation, but Violet was too out of it to contribute anything other than nods and the occasional “mhm.”

      “Then Marlon was mad at me! I can’t believe that guy. I swear, if he wasn’t my best friend I’d…” Brody’s voice petered out as she pulled into the school parking lot, backing into her spot next to Louis’ car.

Violet immediately jumped out, gave a quick “thankyousomuchioweyouone,” and booked it towards the front doors of the school. The front desk ladies were distracted, so Violet was able to sneak past them and make her way down to the math wing.

            106… 108… 110!

Relieved, Violet peeked through the window, seeing Marlon’s pathetic excuse for a haircut as confirmation that she was at the right place.

     She tried her best to quietly open the door as to not interrupt the class and draw attention to herself, but wasn’t surprised when the door noisily creaked open, everyone’s heads turning towards her.

Really, Ericson? Ever heard of WD 40?

Violet shyly ducked her head, placing herself between Louis and Aasim. Before she could say anything, Louis placed her coffee and bagel on her desk, a patient smile on his face.

         Violet was able to manage a “thank you” while she was scarfing down the bagel. Cheeks full and a dab of cream cheese hanging on her top lip, it’s safe to say that she did not expect Clem to approach her desk at that moment with the worksheet she’d missed.

“Hey, Vi,” Violet’s head jerked up, meeting eyes with Clementine. Embarrassed, she took a tissue and wiped her face, swallowing before she took the worksheet from Clem’s hands. “Grabbed this for you.”

        “Thanks,” Violet managed to stammer, giving a sheepish smile while pulling her pencil case out of her pocket. Clementine hadn’t moved.

Violet tensed up, waiting for Clem to make a comment on her appearance or tease her. Instead, she placed an envelope on top of the worksheet, uncertainty embedded in her actions.

         "Uh, that’s for you. I’m having a birthday party tomorrow night at my house.“ Clem pushed the envelope towards her with emphasis, and cleared her throat nervously. "You don’t have to come if you don’t want. It’s on a Friday night and I know you probably have pla-”

“No,” Violet interrupted her, her voice louder than she anticipated. She received an exhausted look from Mr. Everett. “I’ll totally be there.”

      Clementine immediately perked up, a dorky smile on her face. “Awesome. Oh, and it’s gonna be a sleepover. You don’t have to stay for that.”

Violet frowned, cocking her head and looking at Clem under a suspicious lens. “You don’t have to invite me, y'know.” She sighed, placing the envelope back into Clementine’s hands. “I get it.”

        Clem froze up, visibly upset. “No, fuck. I really want you to come. I just didn’t know if that was your kind of thing.”

Violet, unconvinced, lowered her eyes and took a sip of her coffee. Cold. The heat of Clem’s hand covering her own was a nice contrast to that.

            Wait.

“I want you there,” Clementine insisted, squeezing her hand between her own. The heat from the touch quickly flushed to Violet’s face, her pale skin unable to mask the blush that covered it. “Please come.”

     Louis and Aasim exchanged an annoyed glance at the useless sapphics. Mr. Everett had stood up and taken an interest to their conversation at this point.

“Clem, go back to your seat please,” Mr. Everett cleared his throat, to which Clem recoiled, dropping Violet’s hand. “Violet is more than capable and doesn’t need hands-on help.”

       Clem, face red and flustered, ducked her head and moved back to her seat in the front of the classroom. “Sorry, da- I mean Mr. Everett.” She squeaked, glancing over her shoulder one more time at Violet, uncertainty and sadness on her face.

Mr. Everett continued the lecture, but Violet was too busy staring out the window. She was completely zoned out. She figured she’d just get the notes from Aasim later. She saw Louis give her the occasional worried glance out of the corner of her eye, and kept her focus on the kids playing in the courtyard.

      The class couldn’t have gone any slower, but eventually the bell rang, and all the tension that had built up in Violet’s muscles was relieved.

She didn’t know why this class stressed her out so much. She was pretty good at math, only the second highest grade in the class behind Aasim. Mr. Everett made her feel uneasy.

     He wasn’t a bad guy. Quite the opposite, really. He was a fun teacher who had gone to great lengths to help Violet out with her work. A little by-the-book, but a big sweetheart.

   Plus, he picked on Louis a lot. So he was pretty likeable in her eyes.

Clementine had gone up to Mr. Everett and they were now talking, Clem dropping the classroom decorum to tug on his arm and take a $5 dollar bill out of his wallet for lunch.

        Violet didn’t realize she was staring until both of their gazes landed on her. Startled, she pulled her hoodie back over her head and started gathering her books as quick as she could. She could hear distant murmuring, but couldn’t make anything out.

Her panic was interrupted by Louis swinging an arm around Violet’s shoulders, holding an almost identical envelope up in front of her face, but it was green.

     "If it’s about transportation, I can pick you up. C'mon, the Vi I know and love would never miss out on a chance to get her ass handed to her in Super Smash Bros.“ Louis teased, earning a playful punch on the shoulder from Violet.

"Yeah, right,” Violet rolled her eyes, looking over at Aasim to see he also had one, but orange. “You going?”

       "Nah, my moms are taking me camping this weekend.“ Aasim chirped, a glint of mischievousness in his voice. Noticing the curious glances from his two friends, he cracked an evil grin and spoke one word. "Campfire.”

“Smokey the Bear, Aasim,” Violet giggled, shaggy hair falling in front of her eyes. “What can you do to prevent forest fires?”

       Louis laughed while Aasim rolled his eyes, picking up his backpack and swinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll see you guys at lunch.”

Aasim was gone for what seemed like half a second when Clementine appeared at her desk again, followed by Mr. Everett. Violet froze, her grip on her books tight.

      “My dad wants to introduce himself. Not as Mr. Everett, but as ‘Cool Dad Lee.’” Clem raised her hands to make air quotes, while Le- Mr. Everett held out his hand to shake Violets’.

        Bewildered, she shook his hand.

“Hello, Violet,” Mr. Everett looked happy, glancing between Clem and she. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

      That line earned an elbow in the stomach from Clementine. Violet, still frozen, gave a robotic laugh.

“Oh, I wanted to tell you to ignore that part of the envelope where it says 'presents mandatory.’ My mom is a bit of a smart-ass.” Clem snorted, before cocking an eyebrow over at Louis. “Not you though, rich boy.”

       Louis gave her some finger guns, a big, goofy smile on his face. “Respect for that.”

The second bell rang, interrupting the conversation. Violet threw her backpack over her shoulder, and shot a glance towards Louis. “Fuck, Ms. Martin is gonna be so pissed.”

       "I’ll write you a pass. Don’t worry about it.“ Mr. Everett pulled a notepad out of his pocket and took the pen that was perched on Clementine’s ear. "Just.. try to make sure he actually gets there.” Mr. Everett gestured to Louis, who gave a mock gasp at the implication.

“Will do,” Violet promised, grabbing Louis by the neck of his coat. “I’ll uh.. see you two tomorrow night.”

      “You’re coming?” Clem squealed, her eyes giving away how happy she was. Violet nodded sheepishly, looking back at Mr. Everett before dragging Louis out of the classroom.

“I like that girl,” Lee stated, capitalizing on the blush that had taken over Clem’s cheeks. “Reminds me of someone.”

     Clementine rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, tapping her foot impatiently as he made up a pass for her. “That’s good…”

Lee tore off the front page of the notepad, and held it high before giving it to Clem. “You have my blessing.”

Clementine’s flustered state turned into a fit of anger, as she jumped up to try and grab the pass out of his hand. “Shut. Up.” Clem grabbed onto the slip, wrenching it out of his arm. “I introduce you as my Cool Dad and this is how you repay me?”

      Lee chuckled, putting the pen back behind her ear. “If you think I’m bad, just wait ‘til Carley sees her.. Oh, boy.. Her cheeks are gonna be red from all that pinching.”

Clementine huffed and stomped out of the classroom, putting all of her weight onto her prosthetic foot, so it noisily clattered. She kept up the noise until she knew she was out of ear shot, and smiled to herself, bunching the bottom of her sweatshirt up in her hands.

          Her seventeenth birthday was going to be perfect.

[sigritandtheelves]

Hi!! I’m the anon that has bothered you about Simple before. I definitely have not forgotten about, but no pressure! Whenever you choose to gift us with the next chapter is great!!!

I’ve had this message for so long… thank you anon, and I’m sorry this took so long, but here you go. 💛

Simple

Chapter 5

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

PG-13 | 2k wds | pre-XF AU | MSR, Melissa/Samantha

A/N: I’m not sure if taking a break helped my writing at all—it still felt like pulling teeth to get any words on the page, but I did put them there, so… here? Sorry.

—

January, 1990 - Stanford

She was down to the wire now, and the pressure was on. Surrounded by books, diagrams, and piles of notes in a cocoon of preparation for her second licensing exam, Dana had barely made time to eat for weeks. Studying was both necessary and the only thing keeping her mind off of the deep, lonely ache inside her. In bed at night, she oscillated between feeling crushed by the weight of the uncertain future, which seemed to press her down into the mattress… and the light fluttering of hope, the pulse of joy and desire when she thought of Fox Mulder. She imagined him as he’d been on that last morning, touching her face, his eyes searching hers, the solid feel of his hips between her knees. Her mind was a storm of medical facts and the interrupting image of his face in her memory, lowering to touch his lips to hers as he made love to her on her sister’s guest bed.

Then, inevitably, she would think of the residencies she might be offered in St. Louis or Albany. She thought of the fact that long-distance relationships rarely worked out, in the end. She thought of Fox getting tired of late-night phone calls, and of all the other women who were right there in D.C. already. She thought of Daniel, who had found her twice now at the hospital, pulled her into an alcove, and dropped less than subtle hints that he thought she should stay with him.

(“You’re a brilliant doctor, Dana. Just imagine what it could be like, the two of us.”)

She’d been firm, but he’d dogged her about why, and she couldn’t answer. She thought of his teenage daughter, of his wife who’d done nothing to deserve this, of the sharp jealousy she’d heard in his voice the day she’d broken things off. (“Is there someone else?”)

“Damnit,” Dana mumbled when she caught a mistake in her work. She erased, blew away the pink-gray shavings, scribbled another string of names and symbols. She appreciated the clarity of the answers on these tests: there was right and wrong, true and false. Nothing like the foggy, dark path toward her future, which she could not see.

It was past four in the afternoon when the phone rang—she’d been hovering over her coffee table working on her notes the whole day, and the low-hanging sun through the kitchen window surprised her with the hour.

“Hello?” She answered.

“Ah, there you are.” Fox’s voice, like a cool breeze cutting through humid air, made her smile. “I thought maybe I’d imagined you.”

“I’m here,” she said, nearly breathless with the pulses of joy the sound of him brought her. “And you? Are you real?”

“I’m real. Lonely, but real. You okay?”

She hesitated a moment. “Yes. Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Hmm.”

“What about you? How’s that strange case you’re working on?”

“It’s fascinating. I wish I could get your opinion on some of these medical files, but I’m not sure how this other agent would feel about outside opinions. She’s kind of territorial about her work.”

“Oh.” Dana turned that sentence around in her mind several times. Territorial. She. “But it’s, um, it’s going well? Your new, ah… arrangement?”

“Yeah. It’s good. I can’t wait until I can tell you more about it. Speaking of which, I may not be able to call for a few days. We’ll be out in the field. Out of town, I mean, for the case.”

Dana swallowed and sat down on her kitchen chair. “Oh,” she said again. “Where will you be?”

“Ohio. Near Columbus.” There was another pause where she could hear him thinking, even as the image of him on the road with this other woman elbowed its way into her mind: on a plane, in a rental car, face to face over a table at some diner in some small town, in a motel room… “Dana,” his voice was a gentle interruption. “Are you really okay?”

She wanted to tell him that she was fine. It was silly, she thought: there was nothing to be done right now, and worrying could only make things worse. But the soft tug of his voice, the concern at its edges, made her want to confess. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.

He was quiet a moment. His voice, when it came across the line, was so soft she barely heard it. “Scared about what, Dana? About us?”

She squeezed the phone cord, wrapped its loops so tight around her index finger that her skin turned red. “About the future,” she said. “And yes. About us. I mean, is there an us? What will happen if I get placed in Reno or Boston? Won’t you get tired of this?”

She heard his deep breath over the line, heard the rustle of him changing positions. “Are you tired of it?”

“No!” She said, perhaps too quickly. “No. But you have another kind of life. You must want something more than whatever this is.”

“Dana, what I do… It takes a lot out of me. You haven’t seen that part of it yet, but it’s hard. I’m a mess most of the time. And Sam, she’s pretty good at pulling me out of it, but the thing is…“ he took another deep breath. “Since I met you, you’re the only thing that makes it better. Remembering you. Thinking of you. So no. I’m not going to get tired of it. Even if I only see you twice a year, I’m not going to get tired of it.”

Dana’s face was hot—she could feel its flush. Her heart hurt. “Really?”

“Yeah, really,” he said. “So if you want there to be an us, there’s an us. At least until you get tired of me.”

She imagined him broken after a case, unshaven and rumpled with those sad eyes looking at her. She imagined how she would hold him, kiss his eyelids, let him cry if he needed to. She imagined a lab where she might work, where he’d call her in the middle of the day, excited to tell her some impossible thing. She imagined a world where they fit together like this—complimentary. Interlocking. Seamless.

“I do,” she said. “Want it, I mean. I think—yes. I want it very much.” Her flush of affection was so surprising and strong, she’d almost said she thought she loved him. Too soon, she thought. I can’t possibly. But somewhere inside her, she knew that she did.

“That’s good. Then we’re an us. And the next time I see you, I’m going to show you what a good us we are. With wine and maybe some dancing and a kiss so long and slow you’ll forget your own name.”

“Oh god,” she said, glad she was sitting down.

“Yeah,” he said. “With some of that too.”

Then she was laughing and missing him so hard she felt it in her bones.

—

January, 1990 - Ohio

“Agent Mulder, tell me more about yourself. Why did you join the FBI?”

Agent Fowley drove the rental across a flat suburbia. They were outside of Columbus, now, heading to the site of three unexplained deaths. Fox fidgeted with the map in the passenger seat, aware of his new partner’s curious energy.

“I was recruited out of my PhD program,” he said. “I showed an aptitude for behavioral science, and I enjoy the work. Profiling, I mean. It’s like puzzles, only when you get it right, you save people’s lives.”

She nodded, with a half-smile that said she understood. “No power fantasies, then? No grand heroic ambitions?”

He smirked. “No.”

“That’s good,” she said. “I’ve known enough men in the Bureau like that. Not married?”

He cleared his throat. “Ah, no. Not married.”

“Hmm. Me neither.”

He watched her drive, svelte in her black suit and carefully adorned with understated but expensive jewelry. She carried herself well, shot daggers with her looks when she felt disrespected (a fact he’d learned while visiting the Arlington PD with her last week), and she missed nothing in the case reports. She was intimidating as hell, but she seemed kind at the same time. Kind in the eyes, and in the way she angled herself to listen.

Unless that was flirting. God, he was bad at this. As clever as he was at profiling, Fox had always had a terrible time discerning for sure if a woman was flirting with him or just being nice. With Dana it had been different, a kind of immediate magnetism that made every glance and word and gesture feel charged. It hadn’t been deliberate or game-like at all. He thought of Dana’s frank curiosity, her sharp confidence in her work that softened into subtle apprehension about him—about them. Because they were a them now. She was maybe even sort of his, and this realization warmed a place low in his abdomen. He could flirt freely with Dana just by being himself. But he would need to be careful around this other woman.

Hard-frozen and empty soybean fields appeared around them, gray and frostbitten, as they passed beyond suburbia. The fields then gave way to strip malls that dotted the lazy, rolling hills outside their small-town destination. He and Agent Fowley dropped their things in two adjoining motel rooms, then met at the diner across the street to go over their case notes. She was all business, strategizing the order of their interviews and examinations—except when she ordered a slice of pie with a guilty smile. “Just this once,” she said, offering, for the first time, a hesitant vulnerability. She offered some of the pie as well, but he declined.

Later, in a farmer’s small kitchen, she wielded questions like knives. while he collected careful observations. They worked well together, a harmony between studious and persistent. By ten, they were back at the motel with more interviews planned for tomorrow. “You were good out there today,” she told him. “Insightful. I wouldn’t have picked up on that thing with the pen.”

He shrugged. “I’m sure you’d have figured it out.”

Her eyes lingered, perhaps just a little too long as she fiddled with the key to her room. “Well,” she said, and now her voice was husky, just a tad playful. “Good night.”

He swallowed hard and wasted no time with his own key. “G’night,” he said.

In his room, he double checked that the adjoining door was locked and dropped onto his bed, face first into his pillow. It was definitely flirting, and that was bad. Bad news bears. The Danger Zone. He was terrible at rejection, miserable at letting women down easy, probably because he’d so seldom had to do it. He was usually the one undergoing the rejection. In some other time, some other version of the world, he knew this would play out differently. A weaker version of himself would give in, would fall toward her like a desperate lost animal until she grew tired of him and left.

But he had Dana now, and just the thought of her made him feel strong. He remembered the feel of her pajamas under his hands while they slept on the couch, how she’d come down the stairs in soft flannel, nervous at first, like he might change his mind when he saw her. But when they looked at each other across the living room, her socked feet quiet on the carpet, it was as if the tumblers of a great lock clicked into place and they were just them again. They watched A Christmas Carol on TV with her head on his chest, like they’d known each other a thousand years. He needed her now (needed her always), so he drew on the strength he’d found with her that night.

In the morning, Fowley drove again. “Is it a left up here?”

He checked the map. “The second one.”

“Agent Mulder,” she said. “Can I call you Fox?”

“Um.” He cleared his throat. “I, ah… I’d like to keep this professional. If that’s alright with you.”

“Of course,” she said, stiffer now, sitting upright in the driver’s seat. “I just wanted to say thank you. For taking time out of your work in BSU to do this, I mean.” She put on her blinker and made the turn. “Agent Mulder.”

He nodded, and they were silent for the rest of the drive.

Three days later they were on their way back to D.C. When Fox got home, he put in a request for two days off (a long weekend) and booked a Thursday morning flight to California.

—end chapter five—

go to chapter six

[conspiracieys-archive]

dusan nemec, but as a supervillain. what powers would he have, where would his base be, how would he keep his secret identity if he has on, what would his super suit look like, etc.

hmmmmmm..... this is a good ask! well... let's see. long as usual so i tried to cut it under a read more (but u know mobile tumblr doesnt WORK so im sorry)

his secret identity. he keeps it secret really well, just because he's got a real good poker face and he also doesnt attack, like, places that can be traced back to him. (the exception is the DedSec hq, assuming in this au theyre the superheroes in parallel to him)

but the hq thing is covered by the fact that there ARE a lot of anti-dedsec people ANYWAY (bc there's always gotta be a few ppl who just hate the heroes). but also hacking is a commonplace thing nowadays and in the WD universe (and consequently this au), hacking is just... Insanely Huge? everyone and their mom seems to be a hacker, so if electronic fuckery happens, it's not GUARANTEED to be his fault ya know?

(also he has like... super enhanced intelligence as a ..power (see below) so like, it's not hard for him to come up w excuses or be tactical about when he does his Villainous Shit)

[ALSOOOOO -im writing this after ive written almost everything else sry- he doesn't like..... reveal he has powers. to the world, Dusan Nemec is just an incredibly good coder and he's just got a genius intellect. but his Villain flaunts his powers and takes pride in what he can do.

so it's like "Well, Dusan, do what that villain did" and Dusan sits down and like, painstakingly writes line after line of code to try and mimic the effects of his technopathy but he can't do everything technopathy can. so it's really hard to pin it on him. ppl still suspect though. they always suspect.]

--

POWERSSSSSSSS. i was gonna save this for last but then i realized: his primary power is technology manipulation. the good guys with this power would be technopaths, but he LIKES the phrase 'technology manipulation' because Dusan likes to be able to manipulate things... people... technology... to do whatever he wants.

so like before he came into his power of technopathy, he was still really, really good with coding. he'd never admit to having hacked things before working w ctos, but he has. and then... [insert backstory here] and now he can bypass the need to code and just ... MAKE ctos respond to him. he can pull up any surveillance cam at will, he can access any file remotely (we will address this in the Super Suit section), he can hack the traffic lights, he can just... do anything.

and w his personality, THAT is what makes him a supervillain.

if you don't have ctos or blume devices in your house, he bypasses ALL of it and forces Blume and ctos software to install. hell, your sexy Samsung smart fridge? literally now it's just been forcefully turned into a Blume fridge. w his remote access he can just turn any phone he passes into a ctos phone. like only another technopath (DedSec - technopathy would be one of the biggest requirements to get into the core of DedSec) can prevent Dusan's abilities from infecting and destroying and essentially controlling their technology.

he also has slightly superpowered intellect. which i think is a stupid ability but also i'm giving it to him anyway cuz he's considered a genius within the wd universe. so why not throw in the fact that his mind itself, aside from technopathy, has been quite altered and has significantly more improved functioning than the rest of us.

and lastly he does have an Eidetic memory. which isn't rly a superpower by itself but in combination w superpowered intellect and technopathy makes it an asset to his power set, ya know?

he can and will remember exactly who has ctos installed, who doesnt, if he had to do it or if they were willing, etc.

and he definitely remembers every little tidbit he finds abt DedSec

--

ok so since we've established he's a technopath now, and we know there are weird basement levels of Blume's HQ, at least 3 rooms are just HIS to use. like no one, not even another technopath, can access them. just bc he has Blume HQ fortified to the nines. i mean DedSec could probably TRY and maybe succeed at getting into Blume HQ itself but like, they won't get into his underground base.

like no one knows that three rooms off of the server rooms are even... there? he's got sexy hidden doors. like false servers?? where to the eye they look and glow and flicker like proper servers but they're secret doors. legit no one knows they EXIST much less how to GET TO THEM. his HQ is, like, solid af

--

super suit. ok like the main thing is he has a helmet. like.... a fitted full head helmet w tinted tempered glass in the screen. it's all black on the outside, and like nice cushy fuckin memory foam on the inside (sleek and black too ofc) and the visor is also a computer. (remote access!)

his base outfit is a black fitted body suit that is also, like, technologically fitted?

i just want it to be glowy ok?? he also has it programmed so that when he uses his technopath abilities and channels them thru his hands, his finger tips light up bc he's just That Bitch.

in theory his helmet visor/screen could emote like Wrench's mask

over his body suit, he has like. ok bear with me but like. skinny black sweats? they're not super tight or super loose. they sit low on his hips and end mid calf. i love Dusan and i love his sweats ok. he wears them always i'm trash.

also he's stupid and has shoes build into his body suit basically? like they're really nice and have good support and they're just... part of the body suit.

no he does not wear anything over the top of his bodysuit. also obvs the body suit is like, from his chin to his toes, w long sleeves and gloves as well.

his glowy bits are like, sleet and soft grey.

it's gotta be weird cramming his dumb beard into his suit and helmet but he does it. for fashion and to give away as little as possible in regards to his identity.

oo also he has like a speaker in his helmet that works as a voice scrambler. so it's like. even harder to trace to him, and w his technopathy he can change the scrambler at will.

like deadass one time he attacks DedSec he makes his voice scrambler sound EXACTLY like Wrench and it's shaking.

he doesn’t have any visible logos, just cool tech-y lines down his sides, arms, and legs. probably his back too? by tech-y lines i mean the kind you see on microchips and stuff.

--

ok let's talk abt weaknesses bc i rambled abt how GOOD his technopathy is.

but bc of his superior intellect, and just based on canon stuff, Dusan is... like the ULTIMATE stereotyped villain in that he just... loves to Monologue.

so it's easy to drop a virus into his system if you just keep him talking.

like say he's showin down w DedSec and he has all but Marcus tied up and he's gettin ready to kill Marcus but Marcus gets him monologuing so, like, Wrench can use his own technopathy to manipulate a virus into Dusan's suit.

the thing is, Dusan is aware 99% of the time. he's aware of his suit's system. he's aware of how his system connects back to Blume HQ and his private offices off the server room. he's aware 99% of the time of everything

but when Marcus fucking Holloway plays dumb as a box of rocks, Dusan Nemec canNOT help but mockingly explain things to him. and Marcus is used to ppl thinking lesser of him, so it's really easy to play it up until...

WELL, YA KNOW???

n Marcus fucking BOOKS IT to save DedSec while all sort of DS imagery is popping up on Dusan’s visor screen and Ode to Joy but, ya know, the DedSec version all loud and violent, is BLARING into his ears and he cant THINK and he’s scrambling and by the time he can get his brain to focus and force out the virus, DedSec is gone

(he never learns, either. but sometimes it’s Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture or some shit. it’s always a different violent crescendo of a classical song, ok? he never ever learns but he comes to DESPISE classical music.)

that’s like, his biggest weakness. he can’t help but, well, mansplain when he thinks he’s better than everyone in the room (which is always) and someone asks a stupid question. he’s such a jerk in canon, and this au/concept makes it worse bc he has like, veritable proof that his brain is more capable than others.

--

and, for the grand finale of this answer, Dusan Nemec’s Super Villain name...

i have NO FUCKING CLUE. here are some options:

the Coder, the Hacker, MicroGhost??? bc he like... can come and go like a ghost??? microchip, fantasy name gen just gave me Incognito which is so stupid i love it??? idk give me suggestions.

tysm for the ASK. let’s get back on this DUSAN SHIT

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day One! (6/18)

Welcome to the first day of my LGBTQ visual novel recommendation week, in honor of Pride Month 2018! Every day from today (June 18th) to Sunday (June 24th), I’ll be talking about four visual novels with LGBTQ themes, characters, and/or creators that have stood out to me and explaining a little bit about why I like them! I also reached out to a handful of those VNs’ developers and talked with them about their work, so you’ll be seeing a casual interview tagged onto the end of every post, too. ✨

To kick things off today, I’m highlighting four visual novels that are practically bursting at the seams with personality, all in their own ways — Saturn’s WORST DATING SIM, Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top, Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup, and Madeleine’s Inverness Nights! 

Hit the jump to read about watching Animal Planet with punks, beta-testing hookup apps, Mario fire alarms, and why it is that so many visual novels seem to use character archetypes.

One note before we get started! This list isn't meant to be reflective of "the objectively best LGBTQ visual novels" or anything like that, which I want to be ultra-clear about upfront. It's not a list of all the ones I've ever played, either. There are plenty of visual novels with LGBTQ characters/themes that have been recommended to me frequently — while I was working on this list and over the past couple years — that didn't make it onto this list because I couldn't afford to buy them, or because they just weren't for me when I did buy them, or because of a million other reasons.

To give an example of this in action: I barely have any originally-Japanese language visual novels on here, because the number of M/M ones that get translated is already so low and already nearly 100% commercial, and I'm way more inclined to pay for M/M than anything else. (Reason: I'm gay and I like looking at hot guys.) For the purposes of this list specifically, I've also cut out a fair few BL-marketed VNs — from both Western and Eastern developers — that skirt around the issue of whether or not the protagonist is gay/bi/etc awkwardly.

I also tried to limit myself to one VN per team, picking the ones I thought were best representative of their output and leaving space to mention other works of theirs that I'd liked, with the aim of keeping this list from being totally dominated by studios who'd put out a lot over a long period of time. And then personal taste for other genre and content details comes into play, so it cuts out even more from what's left! In the originally-Japanese BL category alone, that left me with a single nominee, which was... Well, you'll see!

Basically, I went over a lot of different options to settle onto a list that's ultimately only supposed to be things that I, personally, would recommend! And I don't want to recommend things I didn't enjoy, one way or another. Nobody wants to sit through multiple paragraphs of a slog where I'm trying to talk about a game I didn't actually like (or, in plenty of cases, a game I couldn't afford) without acknowledging that I didn't like it. To be totally honest, that sounds like it would suck to try and write.

So if your favorite LGBTQ visual novels aren't on here, but you want to give people an excuse to play them, I'd love to read anyone else's personal recommendation lists! I'm not a journalist or a reviewer and this isn't anything close to a formalized games review blog that I'm planning to update ever again; I'm just a VN dev who felt like sitting down and making a list of other LGBTQ VNs I liked one day, so I went and I did it. And I felt like giving those other devs a platform if I was going to talk about their work, so I took my own Patreon earnings to pay for as many as I could, then I went and did some interviews, too.

Thanks for sitting through (or skimming, as the case may be) that wall of text! Without further ado, let's talk WORST DATING SIM!

WORST DATING SIM (SATURN)

Itchio Tagline: “MRGRGR.” Genre(s): Slice of life, shitpost. Release Date: January 22nd, 2018. Content Warnings: Brief depiction of blood; violence.

Out of all the visual novels I’ll be covering over the next week, WORST DATING SIM is the only one I haven’t seen nearly all the content for, and not for a lack of trying! Saturn’s debut visual novel, a challenging conversational simulator where a punk named Etsuji decides to follow you home and hang out with you purely because he can, features a grand total of 69 ways you can get a GAME OVER. By and large, these endings come at the hands of your newfound friend (?), who’s got a temper and a sensitive streak a mile wide. If Etsuji doesn’t like what you’re saying, he’ll knock your lights out, and you’ll get booted back to the title screen.

The way WORST DATING SIM doubles down on this challenge is by intentionally removing Ren’Py’s default save feature — if you piss Etsuji off, you’re back at square one, period. You have to either somehow retain the information yourself or turn to someone else’s successful run for help, because it’s deliberately designed to be done in a single playthrough without reloading. Even a fair few jokes in the script, like “I’m sure in several alternate universes he’s punched my lights out, but so far I’m safe,” are dropped in to acknowledge the fact that beating WORST DATING SIM is more akin to powering through a run of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. (But don’t worry, the Skip Text function is still there to help you out!)

As someone who does turn to guides frequently to find out what I’m missing on my third or fourth playthroughs of visual novels, I assumed from the start that at some point that I’d want to find a walkthrough in order to see any real endings. But the sheer charm of Etsuji’s responses and, to be completely frank, how much fun I was having just trying to scale Etsuji’s emotional mountain meant that I never really hit that point while playing. WORST DATING SIM’s distinct personality struck exactly the right chord in my brain that made me want to keep playing by myself, tunneling away at it persistently, and it made the ending(s!) feel all that much more rewarding.

WORST DATING SIM is available now for free on Itchio, and you can follow Saturn on his Itch.io or Twitter (NSFW) for updates on more potential WDS content or his other upcoming visual novels.

COMING OUT ON TOP (OBSCURASOFT)

Itchio Tagline: “The erotic comedy gay dating game that'll make [you] laugh, cry, and get a little boned up! Hot dudes included.” Genre(s): Comedy, romance. Release Date: December 10th, 2014. Content Warnings: Nudity; mentions of homophobia; sexual content; seriously there’s a lot of sex in this.

If you’ve played M/M dating sims in the English language sphere any time in the last five years, you’ve probably heard of Obscurasoft’s Coming Out On Top — drawing more from the Western tradition of porn by and for gay men than anything else, it tells the story of newly-out college senior Mark Matthews and his run-ins with hot guy after hot guy (after hot guy, after... you get the picture). With the help of his roommate Penny, he also takes on the hookup app scene and delves into a sea of bonus dates funded by Kickstarter backers, which were released steadily from January 2015 to December 2016.

Coming Out On Top’s steady stream of humor never goes so far as to be totally derailing from its focus on sexuality and Mark’s genuinely sincere approach to relationships, casual or otherwise; Obscurasoft manages to infuse the numerous sex scenes with enough awkwardness, humor, and personality that actually playing through them back-to-back feels less like a string of pinups and more like scenes Mark is actively involved in or growing from. As a character, especially one whose archetype has gotten a lot of mileage in gay porn since the dawn of mankind, it’d be narratively easy to let Mark remain a generally undefined slate for players to project themselves onto.

And while there is a degree of personalization, especially when it comes to how blatantly horned-up some of the dialogue is compared to other options the player can choose, Coming Out On Top is still very distinctly Mark’s story. His specific insecurities from years of being closeted don’t vanish as soon as he comes out, and hookups don’t always work out for him the way they might in ten minute long “first time” AVs. His grades still matter, and his friends still exist, and he’s still got his own sense of priorities the player can disregard (at their own fish-related peril) or see through on the slow climb to the end of his senior year.

Coming Out On Top is available now for $14.99 on Itch.io, and Obscurasoft’s website; to get early updates about what they’re working on next, you can follow their News & Updates blog or their Twitter.

BUTTERFLY SOUP (BRIANNA LEI)

Itchio Tagline: “Gay girls playing baseball and falling in love.” Genre(s): Comedy, slice of life. Release Date: September 16th, 2017. Content Warnings: Parental abuse; violence; racist language; homophobic language; ableist abuse and slurs.

The strength of Butterfly Soup’s personality, from beginning to end, is founded in its four point-of-view characters — kindhearted Diya, reckless Min, sharp Noelle, and carefree (?) Akarsha. As a group of ninth grade friends with different priorities and different reasons for joining their shared baseball team, which are as obvious as the hugely-varied color schemes of each girl’s clothes, they play off of one another easily. Lei uses her fair share of actual memes, but never ones that feel like the speaking character — usually Akarsha — wouldn’t say them, which holds true to the rest of Lei’s dialogue writing. It feels distinctly ninth grade without ever being mocking or trivializing the way everything is so extremely important all the time when you’re a ninth grader.

Part of that strength definitely comes from Lei’s willingness to lean on each character’s archetype and unpack it at the same time; Diya’s physical strength and sheer skill, combined with her reluctance to talk to strangers, could have easily seen her shoehorned into a much more detached character than she’s written as. Instead, she’s thoughtful, expressive, and deeply concerned with the people she cares about, even if she can’t always necessarily communicate that to them very well through her ever-present anxiety. Exactly how their own differences manifest and each of the three other girls’ reasons for being that way are slightly trending into spoiler territory, but I think Diya’s fellow main characters also each have their own similarly-smart tweaks on familiar archetypes that make their joke-filled banter all that much more personalized and memorable.

Although there’s a lot to love about the positive, hilarious moments in the protagonists’ everyday lives, one of the things that I think worked just as well narratively were the scenes that required all those content warnings up there. They're very much going to be a YMMV situation for different players, especially with my own caveat that my relationship to dysfunctional families is coming from white Irish ex-Catholicism rather than those two specific Asian cultures’ values — trying not to give any spoilers about which characters I’m referring to, here! — but in-text, they’re never situations without any future, because we can see that future where the group has each other, and they always have room in the moment to be angry, or upset, or hurt without the narrative itself punishing them for failing to be perfect. Instead, they get to play baseball and fall in love and set off fire alarms, and they do pretty okay.

Butterfly Soup is available now for free, and you can follow Brianna Lei on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to learn more about her upcoming work.

INVERNESS NIGHTS (MADELEINE)

Itchio Tagline: “Every relationship ends.” Genre(s): Historical fantasy, drama. Release Date: June 30th, 2017. Content Warnings: See Itch.io page.

There are a lot of things about Inverness Nights that worked for me in a way I don’t know that they would have in another visual novel — in particular, Tristram’s character is difficult in ways that pretty directly pertain to some of the content warnings linked above, and I was personally interested in seeing the text unpack that bit by bit. The eventual turn the story takes further on in your playtime, to try and phrase that in a way that isn’t super spoilery, was something I personally didn’t mind taking a little longer to get to.

Curious to hear what its developer Madeleine had to say about the story, their thoughts on character design, and what they’re up to next, I reached out to them for an interview!

IVAN: Thanks for having me, Madeleine! To get this conversation started, how would you sum up Inverness Nights to everyone reading this?

MADELEINE: Inverness Nights is a game about queer isolation and the importance of queer community outside of romantic relationships. Set in 18th c Scotland you play as Tristram Rose, an immortal gay man who has just broken up with his mortal boyfriend, and decide how he’ll cope with the loss as someone unable to tell the world around him that he’s magical and queer.

Sounds spot-on! And definitely a great summary of all the things that made it super appealing — to me, at least, haha. Before anything else, I want to note that it's been just about a year since you released Inverness Nights! Congratulations! How's the experience been, and what particular highlights or lowlights over the past year stand out to you?

It was good actually releasing a game, I enjoyed that part a lot! Aside from that, I really appreciated a couple of thoughtful reviews it got where people connected with it as a game where being queer is difficult, but not bleak. I think that because AAA games love tragic gay stories indie games can sometimes feel they need to be ultra-positive to balance that in the other direction, which is cool, but as someone who likes stories that’re more in-the-middle it was a gap I wanted to fill. There was a good reaction to that, albeit a quiet reaction. It’s a very ‘first game, niche game’ complaint but the lowlight would probably be that not many people played it — however, there are a lot of understandable reasons why it worked out that way so I’m not too hurt overall.

Haha, getting something finished and released is definitely a great feeling; I'm personally really glad you stepped in to fill that niche, as someone who likes things that are honest about their characters' pain without feeling exploitative or endlessly hopeless! In the fantastic (but spoiler-filled) Medium postmortem you wrote on your process, you say that "an important part of marketing visual novels is selling your characters"; the postmortem goes into that in fairly great detail, especially as it pertains to ensemble casts, but would you care to expand upon that observation in the scope of the visual novel genre (and how you're keeping it in mind for future projects) a little bit here?

People make fun of visual novels sometimes for their reliance on archetypes — you know, look up the average dating sim and you can probably tell in an instant who the bad boy is, who the smart girl is, so on — but when you’re selling a character driven game to people, you can’t give away the cast’s backstories and quirks up front or there’s nothing to play for, so you’ve got to find some sort of shorthand to suggest what an audience wants will be there, and that usually comes back to telling them which archetypes you’ve got. When I started Inverness Nights I kind of laughed at that reliance on archetypes and tried to do something different but I learnt the hard way why it’s important. At the moment I’m finishing a game called Catacomb Prince with my didn’t-quite-finish-it-for-a-jam group Skeleteam, and when our character artist Roxy was doing the designs I gave her very broad notes on who the cast were so they’d be more archetypical. Consequently we have a very recognisable cool girl/frat boy/petite NB slate of romance options that people’ve connected with waaay more easily and way faster than anyone did with the IN cast, which I think speaks to why it’s a sound approach.

I definitely agree in the importance of finding a good balance with archetypes; I've had people who've instantly bonded when I invoked "shy genius" or "lovestruck best friend", which ironically has given me a bit more of that freedom in telling their stories more uniquely! Could you shed a little light on what Catacomb Prince is, without too many spoilers, and what your storytelling influences for a visual novel like that have been?

Catacomb Prince is a Gothic comedy; you are Prince Vitali, trashy heir to a fantasy Renaissance kingdom, and you have woken up dead five years after a raging party. Your parents still expect you to inherit the throne despite your new skeletal appearance, but your kingdom’s laws require the King to be married. Find love, find your killer — or die again trying.

It’s mostly inspired by Animamundi: Dark Alchemist, which is an old kitschy BL VN about a guy named Georik taking up alchemy to make a new body for his decapitated (still living) sister while hiding his hobby from his friends. Animamundi has some very gloomy stuff happening but it’s so over-the-top about it that it loops around to being a very funny game, and I wanted more experiences like that in the world, so here we are. There’re also some aspects of other goofy Gothic stories in there, like Hammer Horror movies and EC Comics, though the romance aspect of it means it’s not all rib-ticklers all the time. We took care to make the love interests more than just fodder for jokes and/or horror. They’re complete, kissable people, with flesh and everything.

I am not doing a good job of easing up on the skeleton jokes but please believe me on that last point.

Glad to hear the love interests have skin! Not super fussed about that, personally, but I'm sure some players would have logistical concerns about things like skeleton-on-skeleton kissing. (I'd like to go on the record and say I'm pro-skeleton and extremely pro-skeleton puns, so I'm waiting with bated breath to get to play as your not-breathing protagonist.) Other than what we'll be seeing in Catacomb Prince, what kind of genres and themes are you interested in exploring more of in the future?

After Catacomb Prince I’m going to work on finishing an IF game I started last year called Captain Dracula, about being the last survivor on a submarine after your Captain reveals he’s Dracula. That’s also a comedy. I spent three years making Inverness Nights so taking a breather to make funny games for a while seemed like a good plan, and I’m really into classic horror, so I’ve gravitated in that direction with it. I’ve also got a regular no-pictures no-choices fantasy novel I’m several drafts through at the moment which I’ll hopefully be releasing later this year. Once those’re off my plate, I’m keen to try making either an 80 Days-style narrative travel game or a Clock Tower-style point-and-click horror for a change of pace. I want to do something that’s more about exploring a place; I do academic stuff as well as indie development and all my academic work has been on how we explore places in games, so it feels weird that I haven’t made anything that utilises my research.

It sounds like you've got a lot coming up! I'm looking forward to seeing how you can combine your academic studies with your fiction work, which already have such strong settings of place from the get-go. And last but not least, what LGBTQ visual novels from other developers would you like to recommend?

It's IF rather than a VN but I love Heart of the House by Nissa Campbell, which is a Gothic game about an exorcist trying to remove an evil presence from a Victorian manor house, and maybe also wooing some of its residents. It’s very atmospheric and you can be NB, two things I like a lot. With caveats I’m also really keen on Animamundi (like I mentioned earlier — fun, funny MLM but warning for violent horror elements and sexual abuse), and The House in Fata Morgana (a dark romance about a trans man trying to rescue his girlfriend from a cursed manor, there’s an extensive content warning list on its website). Lastly, on the lighter side, Butterfly Soup and The Duenkhy are both good VNs about queer people making friends :) probably play them when you need to smile after all the grimmer suggestions I’ve made.

Awesome — and thanks again for your time, Madeleine! It was a pleasure.

Inverness Nights is available now for $12 USD, and you can follow Madeleine on Twitter or Itch.io to keep up with all the skeleton romances and Dracula adventures they're setting their sights on next!

Thanks to everyone who read this far! Keep an eye on the Twitter thread or this blog for tomorrow’s post, where I’ll be talking about four more visual novels that I think do some crafty things with their creative design!

[kimberley2021]

Day 3 9th August

We now have 13 on the tour from today(max is 21) plus driver and hostess. 3 are from the tour I was part of in the past 2 days and rest joined today. The group joining are a group of 7 people all friends or related and about 30ish age group. Remainder are in the 50- late 60’s ,1 81yr old and a daughter of one in her early 40’s. A very nice group so far so should be a happy trip. Today we left at 0630 and dove to about 2+hrs to a famous Road House on the way to Derby and had breakfast. It was all set up on a lovely shady lawn area and very pleasant. Even able to buy a real coffee at the road house and of course a toilet. Toilets become a real focus when you are driving distance and don’t have control on stops. However of course there is the Bush wee option if desperate😂. The Roadhouse was very busy with road trains and horse carriers,caravans, cars and tourist buses. Took your life in Your hands to cross from where we had breakfast at one side to the roadhouse door! Apparently the horse transport numbers are due to a big Rodeo and Broome races all occurring the weekend we are away.

Seen lots Boab trees and then the Derby Prison Tree and big trough. Here we also filled in our census online as we are out of reception for several days once we leave derby. There is also very little to no access to power for those days so couldn’t charge if we did have acces😂. Then depends on you provider after that.To do it on the night we would have had to travel 30kms do it by paper and drive back and access to the paper versions closed before we got anywhere close🤔.

We then drove to Derby to Norval Aboriginal Gallery. Beautiful paintings and even had someone sitting outside painting. I didn’t succumb to pearls bu did to a beautiful vibrant painting from the gallery! Fortunately I had it shipped home so no extra luggage. Then as I am told everyone who passes through Derby does we went out to the Jetty.

Now on the Gibb River Road with our destination Windjana Gorge where we’re camping.

Just saw some Brolgas which are apparently harder to see in the dry. Then stopped on the side of the road to collect wood for tonight’s fire (no power at the site). Discovered that collection of wood is another task we do every few days. We all went into the Bush dragged it in and then helped pass it up to Sean (Doc) our driver who was storing it on the roof. We turned out to be pretty fast and good collectors.

We went to Windjana Gorge and camped. Very remote and unpowered site again. Your headlamp is definitely your friend on this trip🤣. There were showers and toilets all set out individually but only about 6. This night we had swags and our sleeping bags and could put up our own little tent if we wished. However it was recommended to sleep in the swag under the stars which I did. An unreal experience. Even had a wallaby sniff around me and the swag next to me. We had a bit of a laugh when one of the younger men complained of being cold overnight and turns out he slept directly in his swag, no sleeping bag! We also had a drama when both men lost their mobiles, everyone mobilized and found one still in the pocket of the stored tent and one had been put in his wife’s bag for safety but he forgot to tell his wife🤣. Has become a bit of a joke all trip.

The stars that night were spectacular because no light pollution.

In the late afternoon we went for a walk into the gorge which is incredibly pretty with lots of water and lots fresh water crocs! One pool is ok so we had a swim in that.

We of course had a fire pit fire that night which was lovely as we all sat around had dinner and chatted.

We couldn’t do Tunnel Creek due to a rock fall a few days earlier.

Notes 10th

Notes Bells Gorge

Very rough nearly 3 hr drive there, stopped twice for photos and included a Bush wee,King Leopold Ranges magnificent. Once arrived it is a km walk downhill over rocks and pebbles, very rough and includes a slight water crossing. When you get there a number of smallish pools or upper pools greet you and a big view down to the bottom of the gorge where there is the lower pool and a waterfall. The upper pools are cold but the lower ones are freezing! After all that work to get here all I wanted was a swim! Pragmatism won and I decided to stay at the lower pools, one person went straight back after the walk and the rest went on to the lower pool. The lower pools are freezing, the access into the water is mossy and slippery which is fine getting in but I noted they had some problems getting out. They now need to walk 20mins to get back to me and then we walk the km out. We both got a swim. I have had a lovely time dipping into the water then walking and now under the shade where my back pack is I am sitting on a rock seat I made for myself with available suitable rocks so I don’t have to sit in the sand writing this waiting for them to get back.

More scrambling over rocks and swimming! Very rough roads at time in after dark at Manning River site. Tents fixed but showers and toilets as usual distance away and hot water turned off 8pm along with lights! They turn the generator off! Will see how I go getting to the toilet my usual 4 times. Another 5.30am up breakfast at 6 and walking to Manning falls which included swimming a river and climbing over more rocks! Will see how far I go! Then another walk and swim after lunch!

Wednesday 11th

Freezing this morning and the usual 0530 wake up. Decided not to go to Manning Falls. Not keen on the cross river swim in the cold plus a rocky walk for. Km to arrive at the steep decent to the falls and swim pool and I can’t do those steep rocky descents so would have done all the hard work and no swim! . Also seen gorges and swim holes and another (easier to get to one that doesn’t require rock climbing skills 🤣) this afternoon.

The area of the Manning river here at this campsite is just a few hundred yards walk and is stunning. Wonderful to have a gentle swim and explore and even has sandy white beach! Spent a wonderful morning in the water chatting to people crossing the river to start the Walk to the Manning falls. Probably the most relaxing start to a day yet. We have been going from early to sundown every day and apparently will do for the whole trip! Whole trip is physical activity heavy and along with setting up and taking down camps, helping with meals, firewood and any other jobs. We are up before 0530 every day and finish and to bed between 2000-2100. We have had a fire pit last 2 nights and last night had roast lamb and Veges cooked in The camp oven on the fire. After dinner we usually sit around the fire for a while and get tomorrow update. We also sit around the fire in the period while dinner is cooking and have a drink. Yes we were able to order alcohol at Broome(we paid for it) and it was loaded into the truck in big eskies which we keep iced during the trip! Restriction is that drinks need to be in tin or plastic as the vibration would break glass in the sky and has been known to cause tins to break! We also went to Adcock Gorge (ok but not exciting but a truly terrible road to get into it!) and Galvins Gorge which is spectacular and I got photos of that!

Thursday 12th

Longest drive of the trip from Manning River (Mt Barnett) to el Questro over about 8hrs all bone rattling on the Gibb!

We have done a lot of driving on the Gibb river road and rough in places with some bitumen some graded and some not. The closer you get to El Questro end the rougher it got. It is bone rattling especially after a couple of hour! On the way to El Questro we stopped including at Ellenbrae Station whose claim to fame is its scones and cream! The part of the Gibb going this way was surprisingly winding in parts and the whole area is mountainous so you are going up and then down. EllenBrae is Real oasis and also does a small campsite. Apparently all the stations make their money on the tourism but are Obliged according to the lease arrangements with the state to run at least 2,000 head of cattle all the time. They all do it but just let the cattle run free with pretty much no fences or care unless the cattle prices go up (every few years) then they get them herded by helicopter and employ the bull grabbers(or some such name) who drive fast with a contraption on the vehicle which somehow grabs the bull. Sounds dangerous! The station manager and his wife are friends of Doc’s so they gave us a bit of an over view of life on the isolated stations. We had some drama when we went to leave to discover we had a flat! Doc was laying in the dust getting it done and the wood he had under the lifter thing kept sinking into the soft earth so he had to borrow more from his mate. Then when the spare was being lowered it didn’t come right down and some judicious application of WD 40 was needed. All round quite an effort but at least it was in relative civilisation with shade for us and a toilet! Again we were very fortunate. We then kept on rattling along the Gibb including a side trip the actual Gibb River, photos at Durack River and crossing and photos at the Pentecost. Earlier we had been able to see some recent rock paintings. Also unfortunately we saw quite a few dead cane toads☹️. Also went to Telstra Hill overlooking the Pentecost River. Then I to El Questro which is a pretty slick operation. The company has tents set up here and camp kitchen and the ablutions are very good and prolific relative to other sites and has hot water and power plus our first phone reception for 3 days! I up graded to a bigger tent with power (read lead with power board fed into the tent and into which are plugged a fan and a bedside light! ) It was 38 and stinking hot in the tent but the fan helped as the evening wore on. Real beds as well and a treat after camp beds and sleeping bags. We went out this morning to Zebedee springs which is a hot water spring of 3 pools, rocky and in tropical setting and easy walk in for a change😂. Spent hour or so there and it was idyllic. The off to Emma Gorge which also has Resort facility’s including a pool, restaurant shop and excellent facilities. I decided not to do the hour walk to yet another waterfall and pool when Doc said it is an ankle breaker of a walk. We have clambered over more than our fair share of rocks on the tour to the extent we are becoming part mountain goat🤣🤣. Anyway I opted for a big mug capacino and a wander through the lush gardens, shop and then laying by the pool waiting for the walkers. It was another 38 day and they were hot and exhausted! Felt I had made the right choice. We have since come back to our ElQuestro which is still hot so sitting by the river pool in the shade doing this blog since after lunch. Coolest place to be at present. 5pm we need to order our dinner as it is the cooks night off, so just pay for yourself pub food, then shower, pack for an early start again to leave for Kununurra and on to Lake Argyle which is our next overnight and to bed. Tomorrow will be a busy start as we are leaving so it is a full camp pack up not just for the day so up about 5am to achieve that! Dinner at the pub and pack. The donkey that lives here and roams free was right outside my tent about 11pm!the pub here has live music every night but thankfully stops at 8.30pm.

[bbtwords]

My seven-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says, "You know, this could be the best day ever." And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, "Nana, will you ever get sick and die?" I think this pretty much says it for me and most of the people I know, that we're a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread. So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday, and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There's so little truth in the popular culture, and it's good to be sure of a few things. For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late 70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him. Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954. My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn't have an age. I'm every age I've ever been, and so are you, although I can't help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn't followed the skin care rules of the '60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield. It was so liberating, though, to face the truth that I was no longer in the last throes of middle age, that I decided to write down every single true thing I know. People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what's true. So I hope that my list of things I'm almost positive about might offer some basic operating instructions to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed or beleaguered. Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it's impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It's been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It's so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we're being punked. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don't think it's an ideal system. Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes – including you. Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you're waiting for an organ. You can't buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it. But it's an inside job, and we can't arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world. They have to find their own ways, their own answers. You can't run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero's journey. You have to release them. It's disrespectful not to. And if it's someone else's problem, you probably don't have the answer, anyway. Our help is usually not very helpful. Our help is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don't get your help and goodness all over everybody. This brings us to number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe, so try not to compare your insides to other people's outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are. Also, you can't save, fix or rescue any of them or get anyone sober. What helped me get clean and sober 30 years ago was the catastrophe of my behavior and thinking. So I asked some sober friends for help, and I turned to a higher power. One acronym for God is the "gift of desperation," G-O-D, or as a sober friend put it, by the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards. So God might mean, in this case, "me running out of any more good ideas." While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical self-care is quantum, and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It's a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, "Well, isn't she full of herself," just smile obliquely like Mona Lisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection for one's goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. It's where world peace begins. Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food. Its best use is as a bait in snake traps or to balance the legs of wobbly chairs. It was never meant to be considered an edible. Number six – writing. Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That's the secret of life. That's probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it. They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little. When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn't started. So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads – for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads – and he said to my brother, "Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese." So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should've behaved better. You're going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart: your stories, memories, visions and songs – your truth, your version of things – in your own voice. That's really all you have to offer us, and that's also why you were born. Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and evil people I've ever known are male writers who've had huge best sellers. And yet, returning to number one, that all truth is paradox, it's also a miracle to get your work published, to get your stories read and heard. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, that it will fill the Swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can't. It won't. But writing can. So can singing in a choir or a bluegrass band. So can painting community murals or birding or fostering old dogs that no one else will. Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. Again, see number one. At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal – remember that in all cases, it's a miracle that any of us, specifically, were conceived and born. Earth is forgiveness school. It begins with forgiving yourself, and then you might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants. When William Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But I promise you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderella, you can do it, and you will be amazed. Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean. Number 10 – grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as He or She loves your new grandchild. Go figure. The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, say, "Help," and then buckle up. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn't leave you where it found you. And grace won't look like Casper the Friendly Ghost, regrettably. But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you'll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other. And remember – grace always bats last. Eleven: God just means goodness. It's really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence, or, as we learned from the great "Deteriorata," "the cosmic muffin." A good name for God is: "Not me." Emerson said that the happiest person on Earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot and look up. My pastor said you can trap bees on the bottom of mason jars without lids because they don't look up, so they just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. Go outside. Look up. Secret of life. And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It's so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You'll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you're not supposed to. We Christians like to think of death as a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live again fully in your heart if you don't seal it off. Like Leonard Cohen said, "There are cracks in everything, and that's how the light gets in." And that's how we feel our people again fully alive. Also, the people will make you laugh out loud at the most inconvenient times, and that's the great good news. But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief and friends, time and tears will heal you to some extent. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate and moisturize you and the ground on which you walk. Do you know the first thing that God says to Moses? He says, "Take off your shoes." Because this is holy ground, all evidence to the contrary. It's hard to believe, but it's the truest thing I know. When you're a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don't worry – get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need. You won't be alone. They'll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, "When all is said and done, we're really just all walking each other home." I think that's it, but if I think of anything else, I'll let you know. Thank you.

12 Truths I Learned from Life and Writing TED2017 Anne Lamott https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing

[douchebagbrainwaves]

AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY OF JUDGEMENT

Don't worry if a project doesn't seem to be any syntax for it. To kids, wealth is a fixed pie that's shared out, and if something great happens, they'll stick with it—something great meaning either that someone wants to buy them or invest millions of dollars. It's wrong to call it a trick in his case, though.1 If they'd waited to release everything at once, they wouldn't have presented them the way they did.2 With Robert this quality is wired-in. How many little startups are Google and Yahoo—though strictly speaking someone else did think of that before? Once you start talking to users, I guarantee you'll be surprised by what they tell you. That tends to produce deadlocks. Isaac Newton Newton has a strange syntax as because it has no syntax; you express programs directly in the parse trees that get built behind the scenes when other languages are parsed, and these trees are made of lists, which are Lisp data structures. Well, I said, I think is a red herring.3 It's what bias means.

Hard means worry: if you're not worrying that something you're making will come out badly, or that you won't get money, and if investors are skeptical, the startup should take a smaller amount and use that to get the chain reaction started.4 You can compile or run code while compiling, and read or compile code at runtime. There are times in most of the talking, but he described his co-founder as the best hacker he'd ever met, and you willingly give him money in return for it. The distributors want to prevent the transparency that comes from having prices online.5 My relationship with my cofounder went from just being friends to seeing each other all the time, perhaps most of the time you'll find the person instinctively thinks the idea will be familiar to anyone who doesn't like being asked what they do. You can see the same thing with equity instead of debt. T: Scheme has no libraries. This is what you end up among the living or the dead comes down to the third ingredient, not giving up. The important part is not whether he makes ten million a year or a hundred, but how you get there. Since it is a huge time sink. Most people think they hate math, but the biggest win for languages like Lisp is at the other end of the spectrum, where you need to do what you know intellectually to be right, even though the phrase compact disc player end up spending considerable money at sites offering compact disc players, then those pages will have a large Baumol penumbra around it: anyone who could get rich, but as long as you have some core of users who really love you, or is there at least some little group that does? Optimizing in solution-space is familiar and straightforward, but you have to assume it takes some amount of pain.6

Is making money really that important?7 You probably can't overcome anything so pervasive as the model of work is a job. Before you can adjust, you're thrown sideways as the car screeches into the first turn. But it also explains why the ups and downs were more extreme than they were prepared for. Try to get your slides under 20 words if you can find, use the most powerful forces in history. It's the ones in the middle of the 20th century that convinced some people otherwise.8 You can shift into a different mode of working. And yet most VCs are driven by the same underlying cause: the number of startups. The bigger the community, the greater the chance it will contain the person who has that one thing you need most. Your Hopes Up.9

This is what you end up with: def foo n: return lambda i: return n i To be fair, Perl also retains this distinction, but deals with it in typical Perl fashion by letting you omit returns.10 Don't worry what people will say.11 The point of high-level languages is to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it were, so you have to create a descriptive phrase about yourself that sticks in their heads. In 1958 these ideas were far removed from ordinary programming practice, which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late nineties you could get rich by taking money from the poor, then you can build all the rest of the world, at least not in the sense that the measure of good design can be derived, and around which most design issues center. The new model seems more liquid, and more efficient.12 I've been repeating that since 1993, and I tend to agree. Check whether they outperform the others. Nearly all textbooks are bad.

If a design represents an idea that fits in one person's head, then the idea will be a good thing when it happens, because these new investors will be compelled by the structure of the investments they make to be ten times bolder than present day VCs. But make sure to write something that sounds like spontaneous, informal speech, and deliver it that way too. The bad news is that I was ready for something else. Thanks to Immad Akhund, Sam Altman, John Bautista, Pete Koomen, Jessica Livingston, Dan Siroker, Harj Taggar, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this.13 Several people used that word married. Can you have a healthy society with great variation in wealth and income, then follow it with the most naive speculation about the underlying causes.14 It's not like doing extra work for extra credit. Do less.15 Fred Brooks described this phenomenon in his famous book The Mythical Man-Month, and everything I've seen has tended to confirm what he said. If you asked the pointy-haired bosses to revert to the mean. But I could be wrong.16

Notes

Most don't try to write about the prior probability of an outcast, just try to make more money was the reason the young care so much attention. In fact, for example, probably did more drugs in his twenties than any other field, it's implicit that this excludes trickery like buying users for more of the market price for you; you're too early really means is you're getting the stats for occurrences of foo in the world. There was no great risk in doing something, but I couldn't believe it or not, bleeding out invites at a Demo Day or die. If I paint someone's house, though.

A significant component of piracy, which is the unpromising-seeming startups are usually about things you like shit. It's hard to predict areas where Apple will be big successes but who are younger or more ambitious the utility function for money. This is not how to use thresholds proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where w is will and d discipline. Some founders listen more than you otherwise would have expected them to stay around, but for different things from different, simpler organisms over unimaginably long periods of time on is a declaration of war on.

Naive founders think Wow, a VC means they'll look bad if that got bootstrapped with consulting. But there is a cause them to. Viaweb, which would be worth it for you by accidents of age and geography, rather than making the broadest type of mail, I use. Nat.

Yes, I mean that if you seem like noise. The Roman commander specifically ordered that he could accept it.

It's not quite as harmless as we use have a notebook to write it all yourself.

They hate their bread and butter cases.

It took a back seat to philology, which people used to reply that they will come at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they mean.

There's probably also encourage companies to build their sites, and intelligence can help founders is the ability of big corporations found that 16 of the next round.

So whatever market you're in, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally. Comments at the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and domino effects among investors. Maybe markets will eventually get comfortable with potential earnings.

So if it's dismissed, it's probably a cause for optimism: American graduates have more options. You have to sweat any one outcome. They shut down in, but historical abuses are easier for us! People were more the aggregate are overpaid.

Now many tech companies don't want to help you even working on your cap table, and know the combination of circumstances in the life of a silver mine.

If anyone wanted to make a conscious effort to be, and that they don't know which name will stick. I'm not saying that the guys running Digg are especially sneaky, but not in 1950. In the beginning of the things attributed to Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions.

Now we don't want to measure how dependent you've become on distractions, try this experiment: set aside a chunk of this: You may not have gotten the royal raspberry. Conjecture: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991. That's the best hackers work on Wall Street were in 2000, because the publishers exert so much about unimportant things.

There are aspects of the big acquisition offers most successful ones. There is archaeological evidence for large settlements earlier, but I took so long. Basically, the mean annual wage in the narrowest sense. If someone just sold a nice thing to be about web-based software will make it to the table.

S P 500 CEOs in 2002 was 35,560.

Sites that habitually linkjack get banned. Eighteen months later. Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to give each customer the impression that the site was about the Thanksgiving turkey. Without the prospect of publication, the reaction was so great, why didn't the Industrial Revolution was one firm that wanted to than because they will fund you, it often means the right to do this yourself.

[sholiofic]

could u write a prompt whenever you have time with young peter and yondu? Maybe pete has asthma or something when they abduct him, and nobody on the ship understands it + yondu just thinks he's weak, until he has an attack one day, and yondu becomes super protective and caring and tries to help him with the inhaler or stuff? ty xx

Also posted on AO3: Missouri Tornado (3200 wds)

I don’t have asthma, so hopefully this isn’t too far off. Epinephrine (adrenaline) actually is an older treatment for asthma, until newer drugs came along, and the internet, at least, says that you can treat a severe asthma attack with an epi-pen if there’s no inhaler available.

—

With the ominous inevitability of a Missouri tornado descending on the little town where he and his mom used to live, Peter feels an attack coming on – lungs clenching, throat closing up – and he thinks desperately, no, no, no … not here, not now … Mom, help …

(He doesn’t pray to God anymore. Mom wouldn’t like it, but he stopped praying to God the day she died. It’s Mom he asks for things, mostly, when there’s something he really, desperately needs.)

(And all he needs right now is air.)

He’s with some of Yondu’s guys, heading back to the M-ship from a job on a planet whose name he can’t remember. Trying to remember the names of all the planets he’s been to, just in the year or so he’s been on Yondu’s ship, is worse than trying to memorize the names of the states in social studies class. This one has a yellow sky and a smoky, scorched smell in the air. And that’s probably not helping with the lungs (he remembers how dust and smoke used to give him attacks), as he’s hustled along in the middle of a jostling, laughing group of Ravagers who are tossing back and forth the leather sack containing the jewels Peter just crawled through approximately forty miles of vents to obtain.

(Lots of dust in the vents, too. That’s not helping either.)

He gasps, stumbles – if he could just stop for a minute –

Yondu, bringing up the rear, almost trips over him. “Move, boy,” he snaps, catching Peter by the collar of his coat and hauling him forward. Unlike the rest of them, Yondu’s not sharing in the party atmosphere, except for an occasional brief, sharp-toothed smile. He keeps looking around, glancing over his shoulder, trying to hustle them back to the ship and offworld before the museum’s security notices they’ve been robbed.

Peter is dragged for a few steps before he manages to get his feet under him again. He clenches his fists until the nails press into his palms, trying to keep up, trying not to fall down again, trying to get enough air even when it feels like knives are stabbing his throat and digging under his ribs.

And he’s trying not to be terrified, scared down to the cores of his bones in a way even the Ravagers don’t scare him, not in the beginning and not now; scared in a way he wasn’t scared the handful of times that they’ve sent him into tight places to pull out something or other. Stealing stuff is exciting. (And wrong, yes, he tells himself that, but he still can’t get past the thrill of it. He’s only nine, after all.) And even if space, and the Ravagers, and Yondu, could kill him in a million ways, it’s still as much of a grand adventure as a terrifying one.

But this – this is a fear he’s lived with ever since he can remember. There’s nothing but fear to the way he’s sobbing for air while his pulse hammers in his ears, bumped and pushed along by the Ravagers’ legs and the tails of their long coats.

There’s some part of Peter that’s always known he’d suffocate to death someday.

He used up the last few puffs of his inhaler months ago. Since then, he’s skated by on luck and desperation, trying to avoid things that he knows set him off. Unfortunately his new life is composed of a whole lot of those things, like exercise and stress and dusty, smoky places. The whole time, his biggest worry (besides not dying) has been making sure the Ravagers, and Yondu especially, don’t find out about it.

Peter’s had enough kids in school kick the crap out of him for being small and sickly and weak that he doesn’t want to guess what the Ravagers would do to him if they knew his lungs didn’t work right.

And then they’re all hurrying up the ramp of the M-ship, though Peter is only vaguely aware of his surroundings by this point, and it’s only somebody’s implacable grip on his collar that drags him the last few steps onto the ship. He’s thrown unceremoniously onto the filthy metal deck plates, and by that point, all he can do is curl into a ball and fight for air.

He’s very dimly aware that he’s being dragged off somewhere, dimly aware of a rough voice above his head snapping, “You! Fly this damn ship an’ get us off this ball of dirt!” And there’s a vague worry that he might be in trouble for passing out on a job. But if Yondu’s gonna kill him, it might almost be better than the nightmare of suffocation that’s haunted him ever since he was four years old.

***

Yondu’s first thought is that the kid’s been poisoned by something on the planet. So far, they’ve been lucky that it turns out Terrans are close enough relations to the other humans and humanoids of the galaxy that most of the same rules apply. If it won’t poison Kraglin, it’s about 99% sure that it won’t poison Quill. Still, there’s always a few people in every population that are allergic to damn near anything. And there’s no telling what the kid ran into when he was crawling around in the museum ductwork.

Then, too, Quill’s always been a little bit of a wimp. Doesn’t like to run much, that kind of thing. Could be he got into something he shouldn’t; could be he’s just out of breath from trying to keep up with the adults.

There’s not much privacy on an M-ship with a dozen Ravagers on board, so Yondu hauls the gasping, wheezing kid behind one of the bulkheads back of the cabin, pulls him upright (or as upright as he can get him) and kneels so he can get right up in the kid’s face. “Boy! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

The only answer he gets is a high-pitched wheezing, and as he takes in the child’s red, sweaty face and obvious terror, it starts to sink in (like a cold hand clamped around his heart) that something is really, truly wrong.

The first thing he thinks of, out of nowhere, is Gliss.

He forgot about Gliss. Genuinely forgot about her, until this very moment.

She was one of the only friends he had as a little kid, a slightly older kid who used to look out for him and the rest of the smaller children. She tried to make sure they got extra food, broke up fights, interfered with bullies, and generally did her best to look out for the littler kids.

But there was something wrong with her heart or her lungs. Something that made it hard for her to get enough air in a fight. Even then, at such a terribly young age, he knew she couldn’t possibly make it through their brutal battle-slave training. Still, she had managed to hide it from their keepers for a long time. She’d compensated in other ways, mostly by helping the other children so they covered for her.

And then it had happened at last. She’d fallen, gasping, during a training bout, writhing on the ground, struggling for air.

There was no place for battle slaves who would never reward their owners’ investment in them. No place, and no mercy.

Yondu wishes now that her face had never come back into his mind, wishes he didn’t remember the cruel, impersonal efficiency of the overseer’s battle lance glistening with Gliss’s green blood, plunging through her chest to silence her defective breathing forever.

(Years from now, infinitely far away from the Kree slave pens in space and time, he will meet Quill’s fierce green-skinned girlfriend when he scoops them both out of deep space outside Knowhere, and he’ll think of Gliss again. And maybe that’s part of the reason why he’ll be so angry at Green Girl, at Quill, at both of them: because she made Quill dive into vacuum to save her; because Quill did save her where Gliss is nothing but long-crumbled bones under a desert sun, and even knowing it was long ago and only a fool cares about the past doesn’t always help.)

But all of that is far in the future and right now he has hold of a child who’s shaking, struggling to breathe with a violence that wracks his tiny frame. Yondu doesn’t know what’s wrong, but he can tell it’s bad.

“Kraglin!” he barks, and the scrawny teenager shows up an instant later with a yelped, “Cap'n!”

“Go see if the med locker’s got adrenaline patches. Bring me a handful. Human standard if you can find it.”

Give the kid his due – he doesn’t ask questions before dashing off. M-ship doesn’t have much in the way of medical facilities, just what they need for patching up Ravagers hurt on a raid; all the good medical stuff is on the Eclector. But they ought to have adrenaline. It’s pretty similar for most of the humanoid races in the galaxy, it’s useful for everything from dealing with allergies to restarting a stopped heart to giving someone a jolt of energy to get them through a fight, and therefore, along with painkillers, it’s one of the standard medkit supplies the galaxy over. If the supply is out on this ship, then whoever’s on restocking duty is getting his ass kicked as soon as Yondu figures out who the guilty party is.

Meanwhile, he’s got a sick, sweaty kid on his hands. Quill’s trying to cough, trying to breathe, and doing a damn lousy job of both. His lips are turning blue.

Yondu’s first urge is to shake him, and he does, but Quill hardly reacts, teeth snapping together as his eyes roll back in his head.

Yondu curses under his breath. “L'il bastard,” he mutters, and – pressing his shoulder against the bulkhead for balance – he grips the boy’s face with hands that are made for handing weapons, not children. He swipes a finger through Quill’s mouth to see if he’s got something caught in there.

Quill tries to bite him and makes a tiny, gargled spitting sound, and that makes Yondu grin fiercely. Somewhere in a deep part of his soul (right next door to the part that’s sick with terror, if he could even spare the attention to deny it to himself) there’s a little bright candle flaring with something that might just be pride. Quill’s still in there, however sick he is. Kid might be a wimp about certain things (and somewhere else in the back of Yondu’s brain, there is a sudden flash of insight about why that might be, to be explored at a less critical time) but he’s still fighting.

And there’s nothing else visibly wrong with him except he just can’t get air.

“You look at me, boy,” Yondu snaps at him, using his grip on the kid’s face to turn him so Yondu’s staring into the desperate, tear-filled green eyes – desperate and terrified and (Yondu’s oddly grateful to see) furious. “I’m your Cap'n an’ you ain’t got permission to quit breathin’ on me, so knock it off. Deep breaths, boy. Deep breaths an’ that’s an order.”

From the pent-up fury in that fierce green stare, he’s pretty sure that if Quill had breath for it, Yondu would be getting an earful right now, probably some complaining like I can’t! and excuses along those lines. But it’s one hell of a lot better than the fear, because right now fury seems to be winning and as far as he can tell from the look on the boy’s face, Quill is now struggling to get a breath just so he can yell at Yondu.

“Here, Cap'n.” Kraglin drops to his knees beside him, panting like he’s been running all the way, both ways. He shoves a fistful of patches and injectors at Yondu.

The patches are easier to use, but the pre-packaged injectors deliver their load more quickly. Yondu drops the kid so he’s got both hands free – Quill falls into his lap, more or less – and as he grabs up a handful of drugs and starts sorting through them, he snaps at Kraglin, “Get up there an’ see if Tullk’s managed to get us on a proper heading for the ship this time or not.” Because having someone hovering over him sure ain’t helpful at this particular juncture.

“Yes, sir,” Kraglin says, and with a last look back, lingering on the kid, he goes. The kid … who wraps his small fists in two handfuls of Yondu’s coat and curls forward, his face inches from Yondu’s chest. His body bucks as he wheezes for breath.

Yondu rips the wrapping off an injector containing mainstream-galactic human adrenaline and presses it to the back of the boy’s neck under the sweat-soaked fringe of overgrown hair. He pushes the button and Quill jerks against him. “Yeah, that’s gonna hurt,” Yondu says, and hears another strangled, incomprehensible sound of fury. He grins, can’t help it, and he drops the injector and puts his hand on the boy’s thin back, pulling Quill against him because – because –

Because the boy just pulled off a successful heist, and there’s every possibility something he ran into on the planet just sent him into some kind of fit, so if Yondu wants him to keep pulling jobs for the Ravagers, dropping him on the deck and leaving him to choke doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.

Yeah, that’s a good reason.

“Deep breaths,” he says into the kid’s hair, as he holds Quill against his chest, his coat spilling around them and his bulk blocking the trembling child from the casual view of passing Ravagers. “Breathe with me. In and out. Slow. There you go.” Kid’s hair smells like dust and fear-sweat and scared Terran. It’s not a bad smell, not something that Yondu has a mind to complain about. Slowly the shivering and the too-rapid heaving of the little rib cage under his hand starts to slow down and get more regular, the boy’s shaky breathing syncing with Yondu’s own deliberately slow and measured breaths.

Yondu rubs his hand up and down the kid’s back because – well – it’s just the thing that feels right. Gotta stop the boy from working himself up into a panic state and jeopardizing their getaway.

Peter’s panicked wheezing gives way to slow breaths that dampen the front of Yondu’s wool tunic between the flaps of the coat, and that’s actually a pretty good feeling, all things considered. He’s not gonna have to train himself a new Terran after all.

With a sudden jerk, Peter wrenches away, and Yondu sits back on his heels. The boy rubs the back of his fist vigorously across his mouth.

“You put your hand in my mouth!”

“Thought you was chokin’,” Yondu points out reasonably.

“Gah!” Peter retorts. He reels into the bulkhead. Yondu reaches out to steady him, and it’s a genuine relief when the kid shakes his hand off. A Peter who’s weak and shaky and clinging onto his coat is something he doesn’t know how to deal with. Peter glaring at him and trying to hit him is a much more comfortable situation for both of them.

***

Peter’s not sure what’s in the plastic-wrapped patches Yondu gives him. All he knows is, it makes him feel terrible whenever he uses one (jittery, keyed up, his heart racing too fast). It’s not nearly as good as his inhaler. But it makes the awful squeezing in his chest recede, lets him pull in a full breath, and so with a lot of scowls in Yondu’s direction, he carries a pocketful around with him everywhere.

And it’s probably two or three months later (he still can’t quite figure out how ship time relates to Earth time) when they just happen to be on one of the more industrialized worlds in the Nova Empire for some ship repairs, and Yondu takes his inhaler to a lady who runs a cut-rate med clinic, who takes some samples of spit and blood from Peter, and comes out of the back with something that looks like one of the patches Peter’s been using. But instead of putting it on Peter’s skin, Yondu presses it into the little metal crescent of the space helmet that he’s already taught Peter how to use. So now, whenever Peter pushes the button that makes the helmet cover his face, it reads his breathing and, if he needs it, gives him a little puff of something that has exactly the faint medicinal taste of his inhaler.

And it’s maybe a year or two later when they’re on another high-tech planet where Yondu marches Peter into a big medical complex and – after a bunch more tests, and quietly passing his thumb across a credit slip (which Peter glimpses, and is faintly boggled by the number of zeroes that Yondu is just casually paying) – walks out with a little metal thing that’s supposed to go on Peter’s ribs. When Peter puts it on himself in the relative privacy of the head, there’s a sharp sting and it buries itself in the soft flesh between two of his ribs. He jerks in reaction, and stares at the metal glint in the cracked, dingy mirror, and tells himself that Yondu wouldn’t do anything that would stop Peter from being able to effectively steal things – that’s why he’s on the ship, after all.

And, though it stings a little, over the next month or so the metal thing stays embedded in his ribcage and releases a slow dose of something that makes his lungs feel itchy and weird. But it makes the tight feeling go away almost completely. He can run. He can crawl around in tight spaces and never feel a twinge. He’s still got the helmet and a handful of replacement patches for it, and he’s glad he’s got it, because the asthma never quite goes away completely. He’ll sometimes get a little tightness in his chest, even as an adult. But all he has to do is deploy the helmet for a minute or two, and he’ll be okay.

***

Years later, when he’s searching the third quadrant for toys to lay on the bed of flowers that Groot and Mantis are quietly and solemnly constructing around Yondu’s body, he finds his old inhaler in a drawer. At first he just stares at it. He’d long since lost track of it. And then the thought occurs to him that maybe if you might need to replicate a drug again, having the original source was exactly the sort of practical precaution that Yondu would plan for.

He lays it on the funeral pyre, a little piece of white plastic from circa-1988 Missouri. It’s the only way of saying thank you that he knows how to offer, and maybe the only one that Yondu would understand.

[the-end-of-art]

A mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread

Anne Lamott: 12 Truths I Learned from Life and Writing TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing/transcript)

My seven-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says,"You know, this could be the best day ever." And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, "Nana, will you ever get sick and die?"

00:31

I think this pretty much says it for me and most of the people I know, that we're a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread. So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday, and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There's so little truth in the popular culture, and it's good to be sure of a few things.

00:57

For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late 70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him.

01:13

(Laughter)

01:17

Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954.My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn't have an age. I'm every age I've ever been, and so are you,although I can't help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn't followed the skin care rules of the '60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield.

01:51

(Laughter)

01:53

It was so liberating, though, to face the truth that I was no longer in the last throes of middle age, that I decided to write down every single true thing I know. People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what's true. So I hope that my list of things I'm almost positive about might offer some basic operating instructions to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed or beleaguered.

02:24

Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift,and it's impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It's been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It's so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we're being punked. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don't think it's an ideal system.

03:04

(Laughter)

03:07

Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes --

03:13

(Laughter)

03:15

(Applause)

03:19

including you.

03:22

Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way, unless you're waiting for an organ. You can't buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it.But it's an inside job, and we can't arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world.They have to find their own ways, their own answers. You can't run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero's journey. You have to release them. It's disrespectful not to. And if it's someone else's problem, you probably don't have the answer, anyway.

04:11

(Laughter)

04:12

Our help is usually not very helpful. Our help is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don't get your help and goodness all over everybody.

04:28

(Laughter)

04:31

(Applause)

04:33

This brings us to number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe, so try not to compare your insides to other people's outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.

04:51

(Laughter)

04:56

Also, you can't save, fix or rescue any of them or get anyone sober. What helped me get clean and sober 30 years ago was the catastrophe of my behavior and thinking. So I asked some sober friends for help, and I turned to a higher power. One acronym for God is the "gift of desperation," G-O-D, or as a sober friend put it, by the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.

05:24

(Laughter)

05:31

So God might mean, in this case, "me running out of any more good ideas."

05:37

While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical self-care is quantum, and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It's a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, "Well, isn't she full of herself," just smile obliquely like Mona Lisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection for one's goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. It's where world peace begins.

06:17

Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food.

06:23

(Laughter)

06:27

Its best use is as a bait in snake traps or to balance the legs of wobbly chairs. It was never meant to be considered an edible.

06:41

Number six --

06:43

(Laughter)

06:46

writing. Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That's the secret of life. That's probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it. They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little.When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn't started. So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads -- for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads -- and he said to my brother, "Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese."

07:52

So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

08:11

(Laughter)

08:14

(Applause)

08:19

You're going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart: your stories, memories, visions and songs -- your truth, your version of things -- in your own voice. That's really all you have to offer us, and that's also why you were born.

08:42

Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and evil people I've ever known are male writers who've had huge best sellers. And yet, returning to number one, that all truth is paradox, it's also a miracle to get your work published, to get your stories read and heard. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, that it will fill the Swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can't. It won't. But writing can. So can singing in a choir or a bluegrass band. So can painting community murals or birding or fostering old dogs that no one else will.

09:40

Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be.Again, see number one.

09:53

(Laughter)

09:54

At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal --

09:58

(Laughter)

10:00

remember that in all cases, it's a miracle that any of us, specifically, were conceived and born. Earth is forgiveness school. It begins with forgiving yourself, and then you might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.

10:20

(Laughter)

10:23

When William Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But I promise you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderella, you can do it, and you will be amazed.

10:45

Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.

10:53

(Laughter)

11:03

Number 10 --

11:04

(Laughter)

11:06

grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as He or She loves your new grandchild. Go figure.

11:26

(Laughter)

11:28

The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, say, "Help," and then buckle up. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn't leave you where it found you. And grace won't look like Casper the Friendly Ghost, regrettably. But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds,you'll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other. And remember -- grace always bats last.

12:13

Eleven: God just means goodness. It's really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence,or, as we learned from the great "Deteriorata," "the cosmic muffin." A good name for God is: "Not me." Emerson said that the happiest person on Earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot and look up. My pastor said you can trap bees on the bottom of mason jars without lids because they don't look up, so they just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. Go outside. Look up. Secret of life.

12:59

And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It's so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die.You'll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you're not supposed to. We Christians like to think of death as a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live again fully in your heart if you don't seal it off. Like Leonard Cohen said, "There are cracks in everything, and that's how the light gets in." And that's how we feel our people again fully alive.

13:39

Also, the people will make you laugh out loud at the most inconvenient times, and that's the great good news. But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief and friends, time and tears will heal you to some extent. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate and moisturize you and the ground on which you walk.

14:04

Do you know the first thing that God says to Moses? He says, "Take off your shoes." Because this is holy ground, all evidence to the contrary. It's hard to believe, but it's the truest thing I know. When you're a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don't worry -- get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need. You won't be alone.They'll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, "When all is said and done, we're really just all walking each other home."

14:55

I think that's it, but if I think of anything else, I'll let you know.

15:00

Thank you.

15:01

(Applause)

15:03

Thank you.

15:04

(Applause)

15:06

I was very surprised to be asked to come, because it is not my realm, technology or design or entertainment. I mean, my realm is sort of faith and writing and kind of lurching along together. And I was surprised, but they said I could give a talk, and I said I'd love to.

15:25

(Video) If you don't know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.

15:32

Anne Lamott: People are very frightened and feel really doomed in America these days, and I just wanted to help people get their sense of humor about it and to realize how much isn't a problem. If you take an action, take a really healthy or loving or friendly action, you'll have loving and friendly feelings.

[alcyone2305]

Insomnia

“An isolated nation protected by an ancient line of Kings. A modern civilization alive with crystal's songs of swords and sorcery. The city is a sprawling metropolis, inspired by modern-day cities like Tokyo and New York, and as such, is populated by skyscrapers and highways.”

First of all thank you to @the-galahdian-warrior​ for helping me out on the search for additional information. While I focused on what we get to see of Insomnia in Kingsglaive, they gathered a whole bunch of links with information. I guess I’ll try to pile everything together.

This is what we get to see in game of FFXV (at least on the map).

So on the in game map, the Citadel is barely missing. But I think we still underestimate the incredible size of the city. In the picture above, we can see one of the check points/gates in the lower right corner. On the map, that’s the entrance to the city beneath the word INSOMNIA. Considering the Kingsglaive return from one of their mission without passing lakes or the sea, they most likely entered the city this way, executed their mission either on the bit of land right next to the wall OR they entered the city from the West. (Now that I think about it, I believe they had their mission at the Western wall. Just looking at the map we can see huge, huge wastelands and I wouldn’t be surprised if the city devastated by the Niffs was located there.) Maybe a small fact to back up my assumption: It’s clear the gate is located at the corner of the wall which fits to the West wall on the in game map.

Hint hint, spoiler alert: I’ll also try to get every screenshot with one of the statues of the city. After I went through the movie and screenshoted the heck out of it, I was rather surprised how often we had a King’s statue in the picture.  When I saw this picture, I immediately thought of New York.

At first, we’ll focus on what I call “the upper level” of the city. It’s what makes us feel amazed and impressed. Clean streets, amazing buildings and architecture, expensive shops.. Everything you get to see up there is just breathtaking and underlines the nickname of Insomnia being the jewel. The beautiful side of Insomnia.

The blue sign above the convoy of trucks reads “Citadel West Wall / Citadel”. Something that already caught my attention is how all the signs are always about “Walls” and the “Citadel” which already underlines the importance of those two objects. I wouldn’t be surprised if people communicated this way as well. “Where do you live?” - “Oh, in the xth district of xyz.” - “Where is that?” - “About 600 meters away from the Southern Wall.” I hope you get what I mean.

The red sign on the left side reminds me of the Underground signs in London so maybe the subway is down there? But the short scene following that, we also catch a glimpse of the not-so lovely side of Insomnia: As the Kingsglaive is still a bit away from the center of the city (where all the expensive and fine looking things are), they pass some drunk people sitting on what I assume to be cupboards, flailing and wobbling around.

We pass another statue! The first pic is slightly blurry, but this one is holding the trident. The red sign in the second picture actually reads “Spira” followed by Chinese signs. To quote the Final Fantasy Wiki: “Many of the businesses in Insomnia have names that allude to previous Final Fantasy games.” Hello, FFX! The flags read “Signing Ceremony 16th V 756″ and can be found almost everywhere once the signing ceremony comes around the corner.

Before we focus further on the main part of the city, let’s travel far away from the center and take a closer look at the check points.

This is what it looks like inside of them. I thought of them as just a gate to pass through, nothing more than we get to see in the movie. But it seems to have two parts? One outside which Nyx is guarding, another one inside as seen in the concept art. Now that’s what I call safety. And we finally get a feeling of how freakin’ tall the Citadel actually is. It’s towering over any other building even though we’re at the very border of the city. Dat shit is massive.

Let’s head over to another eyecatcher, the Onyx Monument.

This is the area right beneath the monument. The middle sign reads “Royal Museum of Lucis”. I assume this is the attraction which is referred to on some advertisement boards.

If someone knows something about the Onyx Monument, please tell me since I really want to know why it was built. It’s such an eyecatcher. So what kind of advertisements can we see? I’ll try to go from left to right but only few can actually be identified. BG&WD (no clue what this is about, maybe jewelry or cosmetics?) Beats (of course) Wataluxe – Lucis Wag (?) Center (Wag must be wrong. Help me out? Anyone?) Lucis Bank (Money, money, money..) Indicum Hotel Insomnia Centuluxe Audi Lucis Crystal (Jewelry?) Labyrinth

I’m struggling with the rest.

It’s scenes like this one which make me just love Insomnia when it comes to structure. Different levels and most of the streets are on the lower levels. We’re also informed some Lucian railways are suspended. Maybe it’s the same ones we can’t pass in the beginning of the FFXV game.

Japan Airlines Stone Solid – Outdoor & Camping Gear AUDI – Vorsprung durch Technik Lucis Bank UNIQLO Lucichrome CAELUM VIA Hotel&Resorts INSOMNIA (where Iedolas and Regis meet up)

We’ve already passed another Beats advertisement. The sign above Nyx’s left arm reminds me of a mixture of Chinese and Korean? The black sign above Nyx reads Ashtart. I also just noticed the building on the left seems to be all about interior, art gallery and similar stuff. Maybe it’s like a culture shopping mall?

The first time I saw the scene, I didn’t even notice the statue! We can see something like a highway going towards the statue but it’s actually in a tunnel. So maybe if you follow the road, you’ll drive right beneath it? Final Fantasy Wiki: “The green man symbols on pedestrian crossings in the city are a silhouette of a cactuar.” If you watch the night scene, you can see the outlines of the cactuar beneath the red light!

Wroom, wroom! Let’s follow the track Drautos and Nyx are taking to pick up the Princess! This is the moment I went silent for a second and thought “This city is more massive than I thought.”

The blue sign of the second picture reads: “Citadel North Wall / Citadel West Wall / Citadel East Wall”. The PASSIFLORA sign can be seen later on when we inspect the lower levels of the city.

Wherever this shot is taking place, this is the same area where the Indicum Hotel is located. It’s the blue sign at the very top of the picture. Okay, maybe there is more than one Indicum Hotel. But this is where one of them is at least. As we can hear Drautos accelerating, we know we’re leaving the crowded areas of the city and now are taking a highway.

“Citadel South Wall 6km” – “West Gate 4km” – “Exit” The Asian letters/words/Kanji signs most likely just say the same.

LOOK AT THAT MASSIVE CITY, HOLY DAMN. They didn’t even the ground when they built the city. Instead, they just let it be and built the buildings on top. Impressive. Though this causes highways and long tracks to be a necessity. Lower right corner: Another statue. Most likely the one Nyx and Luna pass when they are attacked by the Niflheim ship.

“(…) these stones divine, for the night (…)” – “(…) in the light of the Gods (…)” Sadly we don’t get to read more.

You have no idea how hyped I was when I saw those statues! They moved!! They’re alive!!! H Y P E! I wouldn’t say the spirits of the Kings live in those statues. Instead, it’s one way for the Kings to reach out to our world. There’s the ring being used to communicate and the statues are a different way for them to interact with us. And once shit hits the fan, they break out of those stone shells to take over.

Last picture of the upper levels, the beautiful side. Nothing too special but I found it bitter when I saw the red sign in the right upper corner: “All we can do is laugh” And maybe I was right that BG&WD is selling cosmetics. Are those lipsticks in the lower left corner?

Let’s go down, shall we? Welcome in the melting pot, where all the poor people and immigrants live. It may sound cruel but I love how the dynamic changes. It’s more crowded and more lively, it’s really a place where friends would meet up to enjoy the little things in life.

“Citadel 5km / Citadel Main Gate 2km” Holy damn, I was already aware of the Citadel being heavily guarded but having the gates about 3km away from the center? Let’s be honest: The lower you get, the more horrendous it becomes. At least when it comes to the appearance. The walls are dirty, trash bags are just thrown down. It’s not really a nice place to live in. It really pales in comparison to the shining side of the capital.

Notice how many languages we can see. Thai (I think), Japanese, English.. It’s really a place for all nationalities to live in.

PASSIEFLORA INCARNARA FOOD & TAVERN

The black sign with white writing on it reads “Luchi Bassu”, so Luci Bass. Maybe that’s a jazz bar or something similar?

Those scenes show us how run-down and shabby this area is. There is construction work going on though I doubt it will be down anytime soon. The living areas are small and tight, as seen with Nyx’s “apartment”.

SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!! Seven Soldiers Shot Bar on the right, though there’s nothing else on there. Some signs again, but except for the book store sign on the left.

Okay, I’ll give up now when it comes to the advertisements to be honest. Look at this link: Here. It may be in Japanese but I assume it lists all the boards we can see.