#the things that make me cry are more like sweet animal rescue videos acts of kindness touching stories or really deeply inspirational or

[sheerioswifties]

.

[starsbythepocketful12]

headcanons cause i’m in flarrie hours

they are THE couple when it comes to halloween costumes

all their outfits for big events (parties, gigs where dirty candy and/or jatp perform) are coordinated

carrie my femme queen & flynn my nonbinary lesbian darling

go to protests & marches together

flynn lends carrie books by her favorite Black female authors & carrie lends her books by her favorite sapphic poets

they make playlists about each other but the other doesn’t know they do it (julie & kayla are the only ones permitted to know of the existence of these playlists & have been sworn to secrecy, though julie has a strong suspicion carrie also makes playlists about flynn and vice versa)

have a joint pinterest account for their wedding moodboard

carrie adopted a tiger cub and named it flynn for their three month anniversary

they go to the mall together every other weekend and shop, which they both love to do and when they get home they always model the new outfits they bought

flynn squeals every time they see a dog in public and always runs over and asks if they can pet it and carrie always watches her with such a fond look that the owner almost always makes a comment on what a lovely couple they are or asks how long they’ve been together (something that has actually been happening since even before they were dating, and back then you can imagine the flustered ness it caused)

flynn often comes to watch dirty candy rehearsals, cheer them on, make sure they’re staying hydrated/taking snack breaks and that carrie’s not overworking herself

carrie is the first person that flynn tells she wants to DJ professionally and carrie gets her her first gig

eventually flynn gets into producing as well and ends up making a track for carrie, who writes lyrics to it and it becomes dirty candy’s most successful song to date

carrie says i love you first one saturday afternoon while they’re watching a movie on flynn’s computer in her room. flynn laughs at a joke and carrie looks over at her, her beautiful, incredible girlfriend, and simply can’t resist the urge to say it

flynn’s shocked into silence so carrie panics and leaves and doesn’t answer flynn’s messages

that night flynn shows up at the wilson mansion and throws rocks at carrie’s window until she comes out

flynn is upset with carrie for running out and ghosting her and carrie’s trying to defend herself so they argue but then flynn interrupts carrie by kissing her and breathlessly saying, “i love you.” carrie kisses her and not another word on it is said

carrie steals flynn’s hats

they’re not really PDA-y, they just happen to engage in a lot of unconscious, casual affection, like flynn often absentmindedly intertwines their pinkies and carrie doesn’t realize her arm is around flynn’s shoulders until she’s doing it

even after months of dating will still flirt like they’re in their enemies who are secretly very attracted to e/o era

flynn really loves art, particularly murals, so she drags carrie to a lot of gallery openings and museums

at one point when flynn’s going through a hard time carrie enlists all their friends for help making a giant mural full of drawings of things that make her happy

flynn happy cries when she sees it and is pretty much always seen hugging carrie for the rest of that night

only really cuddle when one (or both) of them is sleepy, though flynn does often sit on carrie’s lap

before starting to date, carrie would tease flynn for having stuffed animals during their sleepovers at flynn’s until they started dating and flynn started spending more time at carrie’s and flynn discovers that her girlfriend’s a little hypocrite

flynn has a younger sister and brother (sister is six, brother is four) and they absolutely ADORE carrie and think she’s the coolest and carrie thinks they’re the cutest

flynn’s like no they’re little demons and carrie’s says who says demons can’t be cute? you once called me a demon right, and im cute, aren’t i? and flynn rolls her eyes and fights back a smile

flynn also has a college aged older sister who she looks up to a lot, like that’s her hero and absolute role model, so naturally carrie’s terrified to meet her, and though she tries to appear intimidating at first, she can’t keep up the act for long and starts being friendly with carrie pretty much right away

one day they’re supposed to go on a date but carrie’s sick and forgot to text flynn telling her not to come so flynn shows up at her house but stays anyway to look after her

flynn reads to her and makes her soup

trevor & flynn play video games while carrie naps

flynn makes jewelry in her free time and consults carrie for her thoughts on every piece (in junior year she starts selling them at school & turns out to be quite the entrepreneur)

they have an inside joke about cosmo and wanda

a couple of the dirty candy members sometimes jokingly flirt with flynn and are like “watch out! we’re gonna steal your girl!” and carrie gets possessive and apologizes for it pretty quickly but flynn thinks it’s hot so it works out pretty well

will watch bad rom coms to make fun of straight people and throw popcorn at the screen when they get together

pet/nick names: care, baby, babe, love, (from carrie to flynn who shuts down upon hearing it) honey, (flynn to carrie, who becomes very giddy the first time flynn says it in a text message) sweetheart

if you couldn’t tell before they ofc have an enemies to friends to lovers arc

move in together after graduating, neither planning on going to college (julie goes to berkeley and nick some other place in california where they have lacrosse cause that’s the sport he plays right) and their parents think it’ll be a disaster but it actually goes really well

the first couple of weeks they fight more, all petty arguments mostly out of the stress of moving, but they always talk it out

it doesn’t take long for them to be happy they’re living together and feel really glad they took that step

two years after graduating flynn gives her a promise ring

carrie cries her eyes out and replies “of fucking course, you dumb fuck” when flynn asks if she’ll take it

ten years later carrie’s a successful pop star/choreographer & flynn’s a record breaking producer/DJ and they’re about to buy a house when they realize they never got married

it’s just a moment where they’re relaxing together on the couch and suddenly are like. oh

and proceed to burst out laughing

it’s a small ceremony, thrown together in just three weeks

carrie wears a short, light pink dress with a heart cutout in the back that would probably be more suited for a high school sophomore’s spring fling but no one cares

flynn wears a suit, and is walked down the aisle by her older sister

they both tear up upon seeing each other and sob through the vows (the traditional pre written ones, they wrote vows for each other but they recite them to the other when they’re alone, so it’s something special only they can share)

julie & kayla are the maids of honor, nick and alex are the best men

julie & luke’s five year old hernando is the ring bearer & alex and willie’s three year old umi is the flower child

trevor, flynn’s older sister and parents cry

even flynn’s now teenage younger siblings, who as of late have often been stereotypically cynical and moody shed tears

jatp perform at the reception (they have also become a hit band at this point)

when they get back from the honeymoon the first thing they do is get a dog

they adopt a golden doodle rescue named stella

a couple years later they start talking about kids and look into getting a sperm donor

because they love being competitive they do little games to decide who will be the one to carry the baby

it’s all jokes though, they decided at the start of the process that it would be flynn for the first kid and carrie for the second

but then SURPRISE flynn has twins

a boy and a girl named tyler and ollie (who’s who i won’t tell you cause fuck gender)

they don’t even talk about carrie getting pregnant now cause they’re busy with the babies and trying to manage their careers but one night, when the kids are eight, and flynn has just flopped onto the couch with a dramatic sigh after putting them to bed, carrie puts down her kindle and quietly says that she wants another kid.

they talk for hours because while flynn wants another kid too, when you’re both celebrities with demanding jobs and people constantly trying to peer into your life, that decision involves even more factors

they decide to have another kid and carrie chooses to take a step back from her career for now-she’ll return to it eventually but for now she wants to be able to just be a parent without worrying about work and not have to deal with the guilt that comes with working when she feels like she should be being a parent

though the kids have always been their main priority and they have done quite well dividing their time between work and being with them, and have done decently shielding them from the public eye (majority of the pictures of ollie & tyler that the public has are blurry candids, and the few high quality ones are from when they were three and they no longer look like that anyway so it’s all good)

it’s a harder process for carrie to get pregnant as she’s almost 40 and flynn was 31 when she had tyler and ollie

but it happens though they’re careful about choosing the sperm donor-even briefly consider asking reggie or nick-because with this kind of thing there’s always the risk that other parent could track down where their kid ended up and want to be a part of that kid’s life later on which is uber complicated for many reasons so they get those scary possibilities out of the way by just finding someone who they know wants to be in the child’s life

preston choi, a thai & korean american mathematics professor ends up being their guy

he’s immensely genuine, sweet, respectful, polite, and gentlemanly

when he came out at fifteen his parents kicked him out of the house

it was a long and difficult journey but they’re in a decent place now

but it’s not the family he wants to have and he’s tried but has yet to find a partner

but doesn’t want to wait to have kids so here he is, more than happy to co parent with flynn and carrie

so that’s what they do! tyler and ollie become big siblings to miles wilson-choi on december 10th, 2044

miles grows up in the most multicultural home ever, being fluent in 4 languages (English, AAVE, Spanish thanks to their tia julie, Korean, and Thai) all their life

tyler & ollie welcome preston and miles into the family with open arms, as well as the addition of korean and thai cuisine to the already amazing dinner tables they had of soul and caribbean food

when miles is seven carrie goes back to work full time, with preston’s assurance that he’s got this when her and flynn are busy and tyler and ollie (who are now fifteen) promising they’ll help out as well

at that point the long awaited julie and the phantoms/carrie and flynn wilson collaboration FINALLY happens

flynn wins her 28th grammy for it, leaving her tied with beyoncé for most grammys won by any woman ever (its julie’s 14th, luke’s 6th, and carrie’s 12th, and the band’s collective 10th cause alex never did any solo projects and reggie released one country album but it didn’t win any grammys rip though it was nominated for 2 CMAs)

[bonnie-and-cloud]

Hi! First off I love your post . And your bunnies are adorbale . Do you have any tips on a person thinking of getting a bunny?

I don't know when this was sent @fulltoadpicklemuffin so sorry if this is late. I've also taken my time to give you a thoughtful, thorough reply

ALSO HEADS UP THAT I'M ON MOBILE WITH NO ACCESS TO A CUT SO I'M SORRY

So I did a full year of research before getting my girls. I was living on a college campus where animals were banned except for goldfish and other small tank animals, emotional support animals, and service animals. I was in an apartment so I had plenty of space for a rabbit or two but we also had a school policy where we could have a surprise inspection at any point in time. We weren't even allowed to have friends who had pets come into our spaces even to pick us up it was so strict. It was pretty strictly enforced too

I also wasn't working because my mother promised me that so long as I focused on my studies, I wouldn't have to get a job. She paid for textbooks, groceries, my phone, medical expenses including meds, and so on. She helped me get a car and did a lot of heavy lifting. Meaning that between that, being disabled, and the school policy it didn't make sense to even sneak a bun

Well, I only needed one class for my last semester meaning I lost campus housing eligibility so I'd have to pay the campus something stupid like two grand a month to stay there. We moved to a temporary apartment and didn't say anything but like they didn't do inspections like campus did so whatever

So that's part of why I did a whole year of research. I made triple sure to know their proper diet, switching foods, and so on. I was very careful about them playing only with Approved Bunny Toys and didn't even have a cage for either of them at first as they were in an 8x8 closet with limited access to roam our room. Between that and my research, I have plenty of advice and it'll be stuff you won't necessarily hear from other people

IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU ADOPT FROM A BREEDER, SHOP AT A STORE, OR GET A RESCUE

At the end of the day, a bun got a home that otherwise might not have. And that's more important, to me at least, than other factors. I don't recommend getting a pet store bunno because they are horribly mistreated but you do you. I won't judge either way on that one. I got my girls directly from a reputable breeder

I do recommend different methods for different needs, ability, and whatnot. I had never owned a rabbit before so I had no idea what the baseline for bun behaviors were. I didn't know how destructive they were prone to be had they not been traumatized via abandonment or abuse or whatever. I had no idea the difference between a happy loaf versus a grumpy loaf. I didn't know a happy flop from a passive aggressive one and no amount of reading up on these things or YouTube videos was going to really show me unless I saw them with my own eyes

Not to mention, buns take a long time to get comfortable with you just in general. Bonnie and Cloud took almost two months before they were cool enough with me to cuddle me on my bed. I remember crying thinking they hated me with no idea they were bonding to me very quickly. It would have been even longer with a rescue and I might have sincerely thought I was a bad bun parent and given up on buns entirely

So, for new bun parents, I recommend getting from a reputable breeder two bun siblings of the same gender from the same litter like I did. Not only do you get a better baseline for behavior, you genuinely get to see a lot of things you wouldn't from other bonded pairs. Like these two fight over the same scrap of broccoli when there's a little pile beside them that either of them could choose from. They also play "pranks" on each other like sneaking up on each other, giving surprise boops, and running away. They make WAY more vocalizations than your average rabbit and can easily be mistaken for guinea pigs with their noises. Both in the type of vocalizations but also with how loud they can get. They act very similarly to human siblings

I say reputable breeder for obvious reasons. I contacted a breeder who was willing to promise me 4 week old buns which was a big fat no from me. There was no way they'd be completely weaned let alone emotionally ok with leaving their nest. When he said 4 weeks, I just hard blocked his number. Our breeder gave us ours at 6 or 8 weeks (I forget which) because they were ready. She even texted us saying they were ready to leave their parents earlier than she expected and gave us the option of waiting a couple more weeks to be double sure

So we could tell she knew her stuff and was reputable on top of her sending pictures of her setup and their pedigrees. She sent stuff shows care about too so it wasn't just x parent or whatever like she had genotypes back to their great grandparents which she herself had raised and had pedigrees for. We went ahead and got them early because I was so eager to meet them

My spouses and I have discussed adding two more to the mix but we're going to wait a bit. We're going to look into guinea pigs first and then if we still want two more bunnos, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. But, we'll almost definitely get from a reputable breeder again

As I've had my hip replaced, I can only handle creatures up to a certain weight. After my surgery, our roommate's cat jumped on my leg and opened my surgery wound. I won't get too graphic with it but it opened clear to my metal replacement and she wasn't even that large of a breed. Well, as far as my experience goes, the smallest buns get homes first because they're "cuter" due to their size. Holland lops go especially quickly because of how sweet and friendly they are. And I have needs

There are plenty of other bun parents who get all "well having a creature is a privilege not a right" about this and insist I shouldn't have a bun if I'm going to a breeder. These people can eat me. I have depression and meds and therapy only get you so far. Without these guys, I'd only leave my bed to use the bathroom or run errands. I know because that's where I was prior to them. I also can't have children so I need something to pour my love into or I'll hurt myself. I know that sounds weird or whatever but I shouldn't have to tell other bun owners, or anyone really, "without tiny fur children to love, cherish, protect, and provide for, I'll definitely kill myself" because like. None of their business

Not to mention, there's the question of bonding buns which takes time and a lot of effort. So even if we could get a couple rescue small buns, would they bond to the kids we have already. Rinse and repeat. Only one of us can drive so it's not like we have that much time available to bond either. It's faster, less stressful, and less time consuming for everybody involved to just adopt two babies from a reputable breeder

I say all my reasons why not to be all "breeder all the way!" because that's not where I'm coming from. I'm trying to illustrate why that might be a better option. Someone else may have to drive several hours out of the way to adopt and there is a perfectly good and cute bunno in need of a loving, happy home at a pet shop a street away. Whatever the case, so long as buns that exist get proper homes, I don't care. It's more important to me that buns aren't mistreated

ALL THAT SAID, time to move onto some quicker advice

Get a cage for each of your buns. We got those big ones that go for like 120 a piece or whatever at Petsmart. The big open trays with the wire sides and the side door. This gives them a comfy place to flop so they can nap in whatever hay you put. This will also keep them confined after they get fixed so you're not worrying about an expen or whatever else

THIS SHOULD NOT BE THEIR PRIMARY HOUSING. Now I understand if you can't free roam your buns. Not everyone has the space or living conditions. Frankly, we would put them in separate cages before bed, and release them when we woke up so they were in there 8ish hours. Mostly it was so they got some rest but also to keep them out of mischief while we slept. They turned into more of very large litter boxes over time and have only really functioned as cages post spay or when one (usually Cloud) was being destructive or bitchy and redirection and distraction weren't working so she needed a time out to calm down

Now that we've moved into half of a duplex with three whole separate rooms, an enormous front room, and so on, they're just very large litterboxes/hangout spaces. One will eventually be downstairs so they can be close to us while we do things and the other will be in our bedroom so they're shut with us at night. This is so they spend more time roaming during the day and don't get fat from being lazy babies

Now I won't Totally judge if anyone has an outdoor hutch so long as it's plenty of room and bunnos come in during extreme weather. It's not the safest but like I get it

GI stasis is going to happen. Don't freak out. Yes, it CAN kill bunnies but only if you're not doing what you should. We give ours 80% hay/wood sorrel/grass, 10ish greens/salad, 10ish pellets with a bit of wiggle room for treats. The wood sorrel (commonly called clover across the US) and grass are rare treats but they eat enough to basically replace their hay when they get it. Occasional treats are I'm eating strawberries and they get the tops or the ends of carrots when we're cooking dinner. Sometimes they get Legit pet store treats but these are rare

We see GI signs most often when they're shedding and it's because they're ingesting fur so their poop does the connected string thingy that's the first sign of GI stasis. We also have seen it every time after a move because they've been too stressed to eat enough hay so we up their pellets and greens during that time to compensate. The only other times were when we switched them from alfalfa as babies to Timothy as adults and when they were fixed

A good way to combat this is a product the Hook's Holland Lops lady recommends on her channel. They're digestive tablets made with papaya, ginger, pineapple, peppercorns, banana, and so on. It's all organic and one tablet contains a MINIMUM of 2% crude protein, 15% crude fiber, 0.5% crude fat. A tablet contains a MAXIMUM of 4% moisture, and 0.2 grams of fruit sugar. For mild cases, one tablet every day until they're in the clear is just fine but for a severe case, use one tablet per pound of bun body weight. This should be broken up from one feeding to throughout the day though so it doesn't screw up their systems

How I do it is twice a day because my babies are so small at 4ish lbs and 6ish lbs. They're actually 3.5 and 5.5 but it's easier to just say 4 and 6. I'll give Cloud 2 in the morning and 2 in the evening, and Bonnie 3 at both times. I've only had to do that after their spay. The worst their GI symptoms have ever been, they each needed one tablet twice a day. Now, if either were, say, 12 pounds. I'd split that into 3 tablets 4 times a day or 2 tablets 6 times a day

This has kept them from needing an emergency vet thus far. They've never had hard guts and their weird poops haven't ever lasted too terribly long either. Just keep an eye on how much they're drinking, how much hay they're eating, and so on

Bunnies shed WAAAAY more than you think and nobody can possibly prepare you for it. Literally, every time I go to comb or pluck or otherwise groom either of them, I end up with a pile of fur that is at LEAST as large as they are if not twice or three times as big. And I still have to groom their sides like I've only just cleared their backs

They shed so much that the poor babies were having sneezing fits. We checked their noses and no snuffles. So you'll need to vaccuum to try and keep that down. But like they will leave it on you worse than cats and they shed twice a year, roughly each spring and fall

LISTEN to your buns. Are they abnormally skittish around your new roommate? Keep an eye on that person the same way you would if your dog or cat were abnormally skittish. I promise you they aren't a good person. At the very least, they aren't very good for you and you shouldn't trust them around your buns. They don't want your new partner to pet them? Run the other way. Or at least remember it. My babies have let me know ahead of time when someone or some place is bad news

Not just this, they'll let you know when they're not happy. Whether that's their hay, their bedding, if the carpet feels weird. Listen to them. You'll be around after them but they only have you so make them as happy as you can

Bunnies are deceptively stupid. Now, I know some bun parents who are like "how dare you insult such majestic creatures" when like I ASSURE you, Karen, that Oreo there has nothing going on in his head beside "mmmm monch" when he sees your baseboards. Like they're definitely smarter when fixed because hormones aren't flooding their tiny brains but they're still super dumb and governed by instincts

That isn't to say they have absolutely nothing going on upstairs because that's a lie. They are smart enough to recognize routines and wake you up for stuff, bother you if something is upsetting them. They're about as intelligent as toddlers? If that makes any sense. Like toddlers aren't geniuses by any stretch of the imagination, they're still smart. Like they're tiny little dumbasses ruled by "am hunger so must eat" and so on. So if you act like you've got tiny toddlers with soft fur then you're pretty gold

Also, they like to watch TV. Cloud likes MLP and other animal cartoons like Looney Toons. Bonnie likes dramatic stuff with explosions and her favorite thing is YGO. So like :/ toddlers :/

Bunnies are more expensive than you think but they don't have to break the bank. Bunnies are the most expensive pet I've ever had but I've also only ever had dogs and roommates with cats. Hay can be pretty expensive, plus salad, treats, and that's just food. You also have to take into consideration litter boxes, damage costs, and so on

To cut down on hay, we buy a 75 lbs bale from Tractor Supply for about $15 that lasts quite a few months. Depending on how we use it, it can go as quickly as 3 months because they pee on it (which means mold flakes) or as long as over 6 if rationed appropriately in old pet shop hay bags. Then, we buy fresh stuff in season and take advantage of sales and coupons. Sometimes, we don't give a salad if finances are tight enough but they will always get hay and pellets. We also buy pellets in bulk for cheaper and bought a Brita pitcher for like 20 bucks or so so they get filtered water no matter how hard the water is for much cheaper than water bottles

Get a portable pen for hay like the one here. It helps contain mess a LOT. Like hay is gonna get everywhere, obviously, but if you do the bale like we do, it's super helpful and keeps the mess pretty well contained. On that note, I highly recommend a shop vac which the type of vaccuum wood shops, car repair places, and construction sites tend to use. I just linked an example so you know what you're looking for but get a hose that's at least 1.5 inches in diameter. Ours is close to 2 inches but you need the wide diameter so you can vacuum fur and hay without creating clog issues like a regular vaccuum. Capacity doesn't matter so much as hose size and ours cost us something like $60

Your buns will inevitably eat something they shouldn't. Depending on what it is and how much, your reaction should change. Your bun nosed their way into the trash and got the little chip crumbs at the bottom of a snack bag? Eh they'll be fine. If it's something that's dangerous like plastic or a poisonous food then you should contact your emergency vet. But Cloud has ABSOLUTELY snatched chips and bits of coke from a straw or two and we always have to fight her to stay away from our chips. I have a friend who has a bun who assaults her for pancakes. Like it's fine

Even after you have buns, keep researching. When it was stupid hot and I was worried, I looked up what to do to help keep them cool. When I was worried how much Bonnie was shedding, I asked my discord group. When I'm not sure about a food, I hit up Google

And I think that's it? At least that's all off the top of my head of stuff I wish I'd known going in regarding buns that I didn't see anyone else talking about. Feel free to hit me up with more specific questions!

[youre-obsessed-with-me-still]

I’m tempted to just say every single one for Hundoe and Pernat but i’ll just say every one you wanna do for them bc I wanna knowwww (for the derailed questions meme)

1. What’s their full name? Why was that chosen? Does it mean anything?

Pernat and Hundoe Mancuu. I dont even remember where those came from,,,

2. Do they have any titles? How did they get them?

Pernats title would be The Guardian. Hundoes would be The Virulent

3. Did they have a good childhood? What are fond memories they have of it? What’s a bad memory? 

They both had fairly good and easy childhoods. Pernat spent the first half learning about Subjuggulation however Dogdad decided that it was unfair on Pernat. Hundoe spent most of his younger years with a certain matesprit ( GUESS WHO ;DD) He was rather heart broken when said matesprit disappeared and decided that he was against the world and the rest is history.

4. What is their relationship with their parents? What’s a good and bad memory with them? Did they know both parents? 

Pernat adores DogDad and would die for him legit. Hundoe used to have a good relationship with Dogdad however.... they now have an extremely strained relationship.

7. Did they have lots of friends as a child? Did they keep any of their childhood friends into adulthood? 

Pernat knew many many clowns when he was younger due to his local circus, however has not seen any of them in a very long time (thank god. that boy picks up bad habits way to easily). Hundoe was popular. He was charismatic and good hearted. He doesn't have many friends anymore.

9. Do animals like them? Do they get on well with animals? 

Pernat loves animals. Animals love Pernat. Hundoe does not like animals and tends to ignore them, it doesn't help that animals generally dont like him either.

10. Do they like children? Do children like them? Do they have or want any children? What would they be like as a parent? Or as a godparent/babysitter/ect?

Pernat LOVES kids. ADORES kids. He hopes that He, Tardar and Morris can take on more children in the future.

11. Do they have any special diet requirements? Are they a vegetarian? Vegan? Have any allergies?

Nope! Pernat loves all kinds of food and especially stuff with chocolate. Hundoe eats mostly meat and carbs.

12. What is their favourite food? 

Pernats favourite food is cake thanks too morris. Hundoes favourite food is a good bloody steak.

13. What is their least favourite food?

Pernat dislikes bland foods, he finds nothing to enjoy in it. Hundoe hates anything thats too sweet.

15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking?

Pernat is TERRIBLE at cooking. He burns stuff, gets stuff stuck to pans, sets things on fire. More than once he's made morris come too his hive because he just cant cook. Morris is happy too. Hundoe on the other hand is a BBQ extraordinaire as much as he would never admit it. His barbecue is to die for.

16. Do they collect anything? What do they do with it? Where do they keep it?

 Pernat has a very very large collection of collars. Im talking like over a hundred at this point,,, people keep buying him them!! Hundoe has way more guns than any troll should possess. He likes them.

17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos?

Pernat takes selfies! He enjoys sending his friends pictures of him making silly faces. Hundoes phone is so broken that it won't even take pictures nor does he want too.

18. What’s their favourite genre of: books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything else

Pernat LOVES adventure novels and romance novels, he has a lot of books and is an avid reader. He loves animal movies and he enjoys documentaries. Hundoe doesn't read. And he doesn't own a TV.

19. What’s their least favourite genres?

Pernat HATES love triangles. Considering his Matespritship

20. Do they like musicals? Music in general? What do they do when they’re favourite song comes?

Pernat digs a musical and he enjoys theatre! Hundoe is an avid music listener, he likes rock music and country music and a mix of the two.

21. Do they have a temper? Are they patient? What are they like when they do lose their temper?

Pernat is patient unless he's being blatantly ignored, That takes him from one too ten REAL quick. Hundoe doesn't often lose his temper. He knows he can win most fights with brute force.

22. What are their favourite insults to use? What do they insult people for? Or do they prefer to bitch behind someone’s back?

Pernat mostly just mumbles and bitches about them later to Tardar. Hundoe skips the insulting and goes straight to a pen knife in the gut as a way of saying “fuck off”

23. Do they have a good memory? Short term or long term? Are they good with names? Or faces?

Pernat has pretty bad memory. He writes down a lot of notes but is still prone to air heading on things pretty often. Hundoe doesn't bother trying to remember things. He has a very shut off mind.

24. What is their sleeping pattern like? Do they snore? What do they like to sleep on? A soft or hard mattress?

Pernat sleeps well but occasionally will struggle to sleep for a few days. He doesn't snore but has been known to occasionally bark in his sleep. Hundoe doesn't sleep well. Living in a zombie infested desert where they are constantly trying to get into his trailer during the day makes for shit sleep.

25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves?

Pernat isn't quite sure if he's funny or not. But he does feel good about it if he makes someone laugh... even if they're laughing AT him.Hundoe think he is HILARIOUS. He's not.

26. How do they act when they’re happy? Do they sing? Dance? Hum? Or do they hide their emotions? 

Pernat is happy 85% of the time. But when he's extremely happy he is flightly, excitable, unable to sit still and generally a bit nutty. Hundoe is at his happiest when he has found someone gullible or easy to control. He feels very proud during those times.

27. What makes them sad? Do they cry regularly? Do they cry openly or hide it? What are they like they are sad?

Pernat is saddened when he thinks about Tardars short life span. He hates to think about his privilege as a highblood and how he is judged for that. Hundoe an asshole. Nothing can make him ‘sad’ and he doesn't think about his Ex

28. What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared?

Pernat is afraid of being hurt and not being able to help people. Fear makes pernat quiet and stressed. Hundoe claims he is afraid of nothing and he certainly  acts it but it isn't quite true ;)

29. What do they do when they find out someone else’s fear? Do they tease them? Or get very over protective? 

Pernat doesn't think about it much but will help the person avoid it. what do you think Hundoe would do? (hint: exploit them majorly)

30. Do they exercise? Regularly? Or only when forced? What do they act like pre-work out and post-work out?

Pernats only exercise comes from Avalanche Rescue. However he is very naturally muscled anyway and his muscle is mostly working muscle due to his job. Hundoe is a gym rat, Most of his spare time is spent working out or ‘visiting’ pernat.

31. Do they drink? What are they like drunk? What are they like hungover? How do they act when other people are drunk or hungover? Kind or teasing?

Pernat rarely drinks but has been invited a few times to meet Morris’ subjuggulator ‘friends’ and has managed to get severely drunk. Apparently pernat is pretty good at Keg-Stands. Hundoe drinks regularly and a fair bit. He has a high tolerance and doesn't often get out of it.

32. What do they dress like? What sorta shops do they buy clothes from? Do they wear the fashion that they like? What do they wear to sleep? Do they wear makeup? What’s their hair like?

Pernat likes comfortable clothes that are bright and warm, He still wears makeup in bad habit. He struggles to break his habits and that is one of the ones he hates the most. Hundoe wears very what you may describe as redneck clothes. as you can tell. He wears fairly skinny jeans and likes to wear vest tops and likes topping it off with a denim jacket.

33. What underwear do they wear? Boxers or briefs? Lacey? Comfy granny panties?

Pernat wears a good mix but mostly boxers. although he will admit to owning a few ‘’’fancy’’’ pairs. Hundoe wears boxer Y-fronts only. 

34. What is their body type? How tall are they? Do they like their body?

Pernat is built fairly square. He has broad shoulders and a wide chest. Hundoe is very much dorito shaped. Wide shoulder very skinny legs (Pretty great ass though)

35. What’s their guilty pleasure? What is their totally unguilty pleasure? 

Pernats guilty pleasure is hanging out with other purple bloods. He doesn't agree with subjugators but he enjoys hanging out with them and enjoys how crazy they can be but promptly takes a step back when they get into violence. Hundoes guilty pleasure is super fancy food places even though he will claim its pointless spending loads of money on food.

36. What are they good at? What hobbies do they like? Can they sing?

Pernat is good at hauling weight and recovering people, He has very good smell but poor eyesight. He enjoys reading and skiing. He CANT sing. Hundoe has a sharp aim and a high (but wasted) charisma. He enjoys shooting things and manipulating people. He can actually sing pretty well. 

37. Do they like to read? Are they a fast or slow reader? Do they like poetry? Fictional or non fiction?

Pernat LOVES reading as mentioned. He is a VERY fast reader. He really loves fiction. Hundoe doesn't read. He thinks reading is stupid and unworthwhile. Tell that to his younger self though.... Somebody used to like writing his own stories (but you didn't hear that from me.)

38. What do they admire in others? What talents do they wish they had?

Pernat admires courage and persistence and hopes to be known as a hero one day. He wishes that he could be more assertive and be able too say no. Hundoe doesn't admire others. He wishes he was a god.

39. Do they like letters? Or prefer emails/messaging? 

Pernat prefers to message and enjoys chatting on Trollian. Hundoe can write in calligraphy pretty well but doesn't.

40. Do they like energy drinks? Coffee? Sugary food? Or can they naturally stay awake and alert?

Pernat has been shown the joys of coffee by Morris recently. He very much enjoys it but still sticks to a classic hot chocolate. Hundoe drinks too much Coffee and Energy drinks.

41. What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship?

Pernat is gay and poly however in pale he is Bi. He finds men who are very gentlemanly attractive, he likes men to be polite but sweet. Hundoe is also gay however I personally will not allow him too be in a relationship because he would kill them.

42. What are their goals? What would they sacrifice anything for? What is their secret ambition?

Pernat loves the idea of being known as a hero. He goes home at the end of the night hoping that he will be remembered. Hundoes goal is to be on top. On top of everybody. Alternia. The Fleet. The Heiress. Her Imperious Condescension. The Empire. Everything. He wants to be on top of it all.

43. Are they religious? What do they think of religion? What do they think of religious people? What do they think of non religious people?

Pernat is no longer religious despite still wearing the identifying markers. He doesn't believe in The Circus or the Messiah. Hundoe is religious. He believes he will one day be whats known as the Messiah.

44. What is their favourite season? Type of weather? Are they good in the cold or the heat? What weather do they complain in the most? 

Pernat loves spring. He loves flowers and bird and light showers. He does horribly in anything above 10c he cant function he thinks its way too warm. Hundoe lives in a desert. Autumn is the best for him, its not long below freezing but its not almost literally boiling. 

45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves? 

People see pernat as a mean big muscular subjuggulator. Even if he walks with a kind look lowbloods will go out of there way to not walk near or around him in fear. He hates this and sometimes he almost convinces himself that its true. Its the only think he really really hopes hundoe never finds out about it because hundoe would destroy his life with it (by trying to make him act like that (which is fairly likely to work in because of how hundoes powers work on him)) Hundoe Is seen as terrifying. Looks mean. walks mean. is mean. Hundoe knows this. He likes it and demands respect.

46. Do they make a good first impression? Does their first impression reflect them accurately? How do they introduce themselves?

Pernat tries to make the best possible impression because he knows how most trolls think of him before they speak to him. Pernat introduces himself kindly and if he thinks the person needs any sort of assistance he will offer it. Hundoe is rude. uncaring and thinks first impressions dont matter. His first impression is accurate.

47. How do they act in a formal occasion? What do they think of black tie wear? Do they enjoy fancy parties and love to chit chat or loathe the whole event?

Pernat loves dressing fancy! He's not such a fan of black tie events because he likes to be colourful but he still likes to get all dressy. Pernat is a social butterfly and would mingle with everyone. Hundoe on the other hand hates anything formal and would only go to a fancy party to crash it.

48. Do they enjoy any parties? If so what kind? Do they organise the party or just turn up? How do they act? What if they didn’t want to go but were dragged along by a friend? 

Pernat enjoys most parties, he's never organised a party but if he did it would be bomb. Pernat wouldn't have an issue being dragged along he enjoys peoples company. Hundoe only likes the most trashy hive parties with cheap beer. He hates socialising and would be grouchy

49. What is their most valued object? Are they sentimental? Is there something they have to take everywhere with them?

Pernats collar means a lot to him. Its a comfort object in its own right but it also reminds him of morris. Hundoes sawn off shotguns have a strong value to hundoe. He believes they are lucky and he's had them 90% of his life.

50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials?

Pernat would bring a change of clothes, survival food and as much water as he could take. Hundoe would take his guns, plenty munitions and snacks.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story - Part 2

So, this became a little longer than i expected because i started remembering stuff, and i didn’t want to spend two weeks editing it down, and i still have more to go obviously. I am really glad so many people liked the first part of my life story. I would definitely have posted it sooner, but i was in the middle of my work week, so i spent most of my free time getting as much sleep as i possibly could.

In case you didn’t read the first part, here’s part 1.

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/160186590059/about-me-life-story-part-1 

Due to the font on my page, which perhaps i should change, but won’t at the moment, i would highly recommend copying and pasting it onto something you could see better without destroying your eyes. 

Anyway, 

The hardest thing about Kindergarten ultimately, even with everything said and done, was not any of this other stuff in my personal life so much as it was my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Denler herself. There was never a single child who ever came out of her kindergarten class who liked her, in fact she traumatized us all, some more than others, but everyone has their scars. She would steal toys from kids, and one time she even stole money. I can speak to her victims as adults, and it doesn't matter if it was a class she taught in 78' or 97' – we all feel the same way. She liked to psychologically and emotionally abuse small children. And even though the adults would watch her do this, it was like there was some kind of filter in their minds where they just refused to see it as a problem. She was a very mean person, but she would act a little nicer too when the adults were not in the room. She wasn't mean the way that the janitor is mean. She was not hardened by life, or under-appreciated. I say this as an adult who has the benefit of looking back at the behavior. She was mean because she wanted to see suffering. She was probably a sociopath.

I don't remember my first day of school, though the first part of it is on tape, so I know how it went. It's a somewhat boring videotape, that shows me taking about twenty minutes tying my shoes, eating pop's cereal, and Roxanne making faces at me while I cried about it, but most people seem to enjoy the video quite a bit. On the first day of school, I met the friend I would end up keeping in my life until I was in tenth grade of so. Her name was Sam. She had very short blonde hair, and I might have thought she was a boy, as this was what Colt's hair looked like. I was probably looking for someone who reminded me of him. She shared her cookie with me at lunch time. She was a very sweet little girl. My mom didn't know that I was supposed to bring my own lunch. We sat next to each other, she saw that I didn't have anything to eat, and she split her lunch with me. That was all it took for us to develop a friendship. It's hard to believe that it was once that easy to make lifelong friends.

Mrs. Denler would teach us the alphabet in a way that was unpleasant. She would sort of yell out words and sounds angrily. I was a very stressful for me. If we didn't perform to her liking, she would single us out and scold us in front of the class, make us recite our mistakes to everyone over and over, put us in the corner, force us to keep our heads on the desk for an hour. Make us stand in front of the classroom and be used as a demonstration to the rest of the kids was the worst. I was always in a state of shock. I could barely function. She was all about shame. It turned out that I was emotionally more fragile than my classmates. If she called me name I instantly became frightened and would not answer. She started singling me out. As the weeks progressed, I would feel waves of dizziness and fear every morning I walked into the classroom. My hands would shake. If I hadn't made a friend I might have broken down completely.

I didn't know how to explain to my family what was wrong. While I was in school, I could hear my heart beating in my chest frantically at all time. She never said anything in a nurturing way, she never hugged or comforted the students. And she didn't like me in particular. She eventually told my parents she thought I was 'mentally retarded'. And what made this even more difficult is that Mrs. Denler had very old fashioned superstitions that left-handed individuals were marked as naturally evil in the religious sense. And it just so happened that I am left handed. So my handwriting was poor writing with my right hand and this confirmed her suspicions that I was mentally challenged. But if she saw me use my left hand for anything, she would suddenly be upon me from behind, where she would either yank my hair, twist my ear, slap my hand with a ruler, or just grab my hand with hers, crushing it and force me to write with my right hand. I never knew when she was behind me. She would silently walk behind us as we worked, waiting for my devil hand to instinctively use the pencil. There was one day where she grabbed my write and hand squeezed it and forced me to write with it the for the whole class hour, all while telling me what a terrible child I was.

My parents eventually saw the bruises on my hands, and they had a meeting and told her she was not allowed to do that to me. This seemed to help somewhat and it forced her to stop grabbing my hands so hard, but she picked on me even more in class. When Christmas came around, I colored my reindeer coloring book print out as a red deer, rather than a brown one. Mrs. Denler was furious. As an adult, I absolutely cannot imagine being furious at a five year old for coloring an animal a different color, but she was completely out of sorts about this. She called a meeting with my parents to warn them that I showed signs of 'deviancy. My parents were sarcastic back to her, possibly because they could not imagine why they had to take time from work to talk about a crayon colored red reindeer.

I think the grand finale of that year with her was when I peed my pants. I was of course too afraid to ask to use the bathroom. You were not allowed to do that, and you would have to apologize to the class if you asked. She grabbed me by the collar and shamed me in front of the other students, telling them what a gross child I was, before dragging me up to the office to sit in a room and wait for my mother to come and get me. She told my mother in the office that she didn't think I would be capable of first grade and that I needed to be in her kindergarten class again next year. Thankfully my mother declined and I didn't have to spend another year with Mrs. Denler.

That was most of what occupied my life at that point, but there was also a boy who I became infatuated with named Dustin McFarland. He was a kind of pretty little boy. He had very long eyelashes and dark hair. I always imagined he was some kind of a prince. He was five or six, and looking back at my old pictures, he truly was just a little boy, nothing more, nothing less, but in my five year old mind he exemplified all that was handsome. I became obsessed with him in secret. I was so infatuated with him that I could hardly even think in his presence. I used to try drawing him over and over during the weekends. I made up stories in my head quite often where he would rescue me from someone evil, where we would get married and drive away on a motorcycle.

Roxanne found out I had a crush on him. I imagine she just put the pieces together or read the expression on my face. She had to know all my weaknesses. I don't know if what Roxanne did the coming week was an attempt to humiliate me, or an act of altruism to get me set up with the boy of my dreams, or both. But she decided to get involved, much to my anxiety and fear. Roxanne was a sixth grader, and the kindergartners were to read books with the sixth graders on Thursdays on the gymnasium floor. I wasn't allowed to be in my older sister's group since she was my sister. But we would usually change off what older student would read to us. Anyway, Roxanne gave me this funny smiling look that day, and she and her friends rounded up Dustin to be a part of their group. Something was definitely up. She did this with intent. I knew at that moment that Roxanne was going to blow my cover. For me at that young young age, NOTHING in the world was worse than someone finding out that you had a crush on them. You were better off dying. And Roxanne had something in mind, though she would not tell me what. I remember just melting. My insides felt like worms on fire. I was almost hyperventilating.

So, I remember feeling mortified as I watched her and her friend talk to Dustin from across the room. I could not hear them though. I saw her asking him questions and smiling to herself. She kept looking over at me. She was enjoying her power in the situation. At one point they both looked over at me. I was dying. I knew my cover was blown, but what could I do? I don't know how long things went on this way, but when the bell rang, Roxanne and her friend walked up to me. Roxanne told me that she had told Dustin everything. And then she told me that Dustin had a crush on me as well and wanted to be my boyfriend. I assume she expected this to be a relief for me. It was not. At was at this point that I broke down and started crying, in front of Dustin, my whole class, and all the of the sixth grade. I was horrified. My life was ruined. This was the worst news in the world to me at that time. I felt exposed. I was taken out of the gym crying. Roxanne didn't understand. She thought I would be happy to get a boyfriend. At my age she was taking boys into the bushes and kissing. But for me my feelings were ruined, the world I lived in was ruined. I was embarrassed and extremely ashamed. I instantly lost interest in Dustin altogether at that very moment. Something in me just shut down. And after that, I didn't have a crush on anyone until I was in 7th grade. My love life for quite some time after, was presumed dead.

I ended up seeing Dustin McFarland years later. He worked at the factory with me in 2013. I barely recognized him. He wasn't particularly handsome, or ugly. He was just a dude with a cap on his head. There were not beams of light radiating from him. He actually was a bit dumb to me. Still had the same eyelashes though. He basically looked like a redneck with falsies on. He introduced himself to me because he remembered me from school – probably not remembering what could have been between us, but just maybe. It was kind of a strange moment there and then.

My sister Allison was born at the end of that year. My mom spent most of these years pregnant. She had William, who died of course, and then four months later she was pregnant again with Allison. One month after Allison, she was pregnant again with David. My mother was attempting to have a son, to replace William, which I guess finally happened when they had David. Allison marked the end of me being the youngest child. I was then conveniently pushed as the middle child for those formative years, which has it's own blessings and curses.

Allison was considered a lot cuter than me. Where I had mousy brown hair, she had thick eyebrows with long lashes, and had perfect dark hair that curled into tight sausage curls and dimples, like Shirley Temple only with dark hair instead of blonde. People would always stop and want to touch Allison's hair. She could never keep her tongue in her mouth, which always seemed to be poking out from the corner of her mouth. I remember feeling a bit jealous of her, wishing I had curly hair that people wanted to touch and ask if it was real, but as Allison grew older, I tried to befriend Allison. She didn't like me – and there seemed to be no clear reason for this. She would not let me pick her up, or let me touch her stuff. If I got close to her, she would be very snotty and start to cry. She would throw things at me. It was like she was born from the womb with resentment for me. I have since racked my brain on what it could have been that caused her to dislike me so intensely. Perhaps in a past life I had really been a pain to her. She didn't get close to me at all till she was nearly four years old.

My mother bought an unruly female dog and they called her Sidney for that year. It was one of the many animals cycled in and out of the home on my mother's whims. Sidney often would try to run away. We had to keep the door shut. I was five and was not so good at keeping the door shut. One fine spring day, Sidney got loose, most likely because I forgot to shut the door behind me. Two minutes later I remember hearing this blood curdling wail and a screech. Everyone in the house ran down the street. Sidney had been hit by a semi. Her guts were strewn all over the street. We loaded her up and took her to the vets, but ultimately she had to be put down. Roxanne cried all night, and would often let me know that I had killed Sidney, which made me feel horrible. I felt guilty about that for years.

I had a extremely strict schedule in those days. Nobody made me have this schedule. I just seemed to make it happen for myself. I woke up at 8:30 am. I laid in bed till nine. I would then get dressed, have the same breakfast every morning. And I would go outside and sweep the driveway. I became very obsessed with sweeping. I could never get all the fine dust out of the driveway that I wanted. It was something I did every morning. People thought I was very odd. A lot of people would see me each morning and they tended to think I was pretty cute. And it was in this daily routine that I eventually made the best friend I ever had.

I was still five at the time, but getting close to six. I was doing my voluntary sweeping job, and there was this three year old girl who kept passing my house. Eventually one day she came up and asked me what I was doing. She was very bold. I don't recall exactly what our exchange was from that point, but she became a fixture to my life from that point on. Her name was Rachelle. Her family was incredibly poor. Nobody watched her. At three years old, she would travel a two mile radius away from home, on her own, and with absolutely no one's permission. Her mother was a religious nut, and her father was always drunk locked in his home repair shop, where they made just enough money to pay the bills. In the summer though, they didn't even have electricity. Rachelle was scrappy in a third world kind of way. She didn't get Christmas or a birthday. She only had one pair of clothing. Often the family did not get dinner. Her mother donated all the spare money the family had to charity. She likely befriended me at first because she thought our family could spare her a meal or two. She didn't have toys. She wanted to see what I had, and to see what she could get from me. She wasn't above stealing if she had to either.

In a way, this was really good for a kid like me. I was very much a dreamer. I was kind of controlling in my little world, and stuffy. I was fearful of most things, and clumsy. Rachelle over the six years we were friends, really pushed me to be a bit more rebellious. She got me in a lot of trouble. There wasn't a day that went by that we didn't do something we should not. She's the one who taught me to ride a bicycle, even though she was almost three years my junior. For all the years that my parents fought, my sister's partied, and so on, my childhood from that point on was more defined by my friendship with Rachelle. She essentially was my childhood. Because of this, I believe I have shaped myself to be more defined by my friendships than by my family.

We literally spent every day together for years. We would find each other after school. We were almost never separated. I don't think either one of us had a full personality without the other. We were completely in sync with one another, and we just operated as this single entity half the time. Occasionally, she would choose some neighbor girl over me to hang out with. This always upset me, but we always made up. My friends in my own class hated her, and they tried to shame me for hanging out with her. She eventually almost lived with us. Her mother made Rachelle go to be at 6:30 pm even in the summer when it was still daylight outside in every way, so she had a much better life over at our place where we went to bed at ten in stead. The only clothes she got were my handmedowns. Eventually everything she ate came from my house. All of her birthday and Christmas presents came from us. But she never seemed to feel sorry for herself. She was extremely resilient in that way.

On New Years in the beginning of 1996 my father and I went to the theaters to see Toy Story. This was a monumental occasion for me. I had been to the theaters a few times before, having gone to Jurassic Park, Lion King, The Mask, A Goofy Movie, and Joe's Apartment. But Toy Story looked different than all the other movies. I remember just feeling totally enchanted by that. After Toy Story, we went to see the park where they put up lights for Christmas. This was a very special night for me.

Roxanne and my father were getting along worse and worse. Roxanne was not pregnant yet at the time, but she would be within that year. Roxanne had run away for three days and nobody could find her. The police were called. When the police found her with a friend who's mother was cracked out, I remember the police holding a flashlight in Roxanne's eyes. I guess by whatever they saw in her eyes they could tell she was high. About a week later, Roxanne and I were playing in Allison's baby room. The intercom was on. My father could hear from downstairs. Roxanne took one of my toys, and she began breaking it, and pushing the button. I cried for her to stop but she would not. Roxanne had made a habit of breaking my toys in those days. She would break my toys, and then she would break her own stuff, and frame me just to see me get in trouble. She even shaved my legs when I was sleeping. Then she later pointed out to my parents that I was shaving my legs. I remember feeling very confused. Nobody believed me. I was ordinarily a very calm child, but I have always gotten pretty loud when I feel unjustly accused of something I have not done. I remember screaming and crying begging people to believe me, but since I was little nobody did.

Anyway, Roxanne was in the room with me, picking on me. Usually my mother just let her do whatever she wanted, and I would get punished. But my dad favored me, so today the tables were turned. Ordinarily he would have been at work this time of day. But he was not. He heard the whole thing from the baby monitor. He stomped up the steps and unexpectedly charged into the room in a flying rage like I had never seen. He was way crazy furious. Roxanne denied picking on me. I don't remember what he called her. I think he might have called her something pretty awful that you should not call a twelve year old. He then grabbed her and slapped her hard across the face. I started crying. Roxanne ran away and got a hold of her dad. Her dad called the police. My father told me to lie to the police and attempted to convince me that what he did was right. I lied to the police, but it was very obvious I am sure that I was lying for my father. In any case. Years later when my father was slapping me across the face I rethought about this incident some.

There was another incident later when I was in second grade that came to clash between my father and Roxanne. They basically hated one another at this point, and this was when Roxanne decided to tell our mom that my father had molested her years ago. She wanted him out of the house. Anyway, they had this kind of dumb program where a big set of chicklets was brought into our classroom, and everyone for a few dollars could take one home with them over the weekend. Little baby chickens are the sweetest little beings. They just want to be gently cared for and treated like the little angel beings that they are. I remember I was sitting on the floor, holding my little chicklet when Roxanne and my father began fighting, presumably about Roxanne wanting to go to one of her less than savory friend's parent's homes. It escalated somehow. My father ended up grabbing Roxanne and shaking her screaming at her. He was very loud. I remember curling up and trying to protect the little chicks ears. Baby birds are very sensitive and loud noises like that can simply make them keel over and die. I tried to ask him to be quiet, but in my father's rage he told me to shut up. As Roxanne walked off, He screamed at her and called her 'white trash'.

Later on, I asked my father what that meant. All I could think of was some postmodern art sculpture made of trash, except all of it was monochromatic and painted white. Why was Roxanne to be compared with something like that? At least that is how my mind invisioned it. This was the beginning of understanding for me that my dad was racist I think. He sat me down, like he was going to give me some nod of great wisdom. “White trash,” he said, “was when white people acted like black people.” I tried to understand this as he told me, and I imagine in some way I internalized this notion into some subconscious racism that I had to face at a later time in my life without realizing it had been ingrained in me when I was very young. The premise of this statement essentially, though he tried to explain to me that there were 'a few good black people' was that most people of color were essentially 'trash'. I didn't feel all that compelled by what he stated. What he said seemed wrong. What watered down version of MLK I had learned in school seemed to contradict my father's ideology in a pretty basic way. Furthermore, I didn't understand why he felt so much animosity for black people. There weren't even any black people in any of the neighboring towns. I had seen maybe two people in my entire life who were of color. And yet, he seemed to feel that they were some imminent threat to 'our way of life' and all things decent. Naturally being considered trash seemed very low. Because according to my father's values, you only had to state the color if it was some exception to the rule, implying that to be white was to naturally not be trash. But to be black, well, by your very nature, unless you tried very very very hard to live up to white people's expectations of you, well then you were just naturally trash.  

The town of Kendrick flooded in 1996. I remember looking out my window and down the hill. There were houses that were nearly entirely covered with water. There were people paddling around in canoes. School was canceled of course. It was the craziest thing I remember seeing at that point. On rainy days, when occasionally Rachelle had religious duties with her mother, I started playing Sega genesis quite a lot. More often than not, Roxanne would be listening to music on these rainy weekends. She listened to Ace of Base, Salt n' Peppa, Shania Twain, Oasis's famous Morning Glory album – which I grew to love and still do like quite a bit, and 'What if God Was One Of Us?' on repeat. For my sixth birthday I begged for a Howdy Duty Doll. It was kind of a gross strange doll. My goal in life was to be a comedienne

The house above ours was pretty big. At some point the Johnsons moved in. The Johnsons were Mormon. The father was a creep. I don't know much about him, other than he beat his children with a belt, a lot. The mother was a very high strung neurotic sort of woman who eyed and judged us non-Mormons suspiciously from her doorstep, and had trouble keeping her mouth shut. The oldest girl was named April. April was considered very unpopular in school. She really loved Baby Bop and Barney when she was a teenager. She still acted like a little girl. I think she probably had a rougher time at life than I could have known at the time. She adored Roxanne. Roxanne didn't want to have anything to do with April. Roxanne would try to pretend she wasn't home, but April would find walk around our house and look into our windows. It was a little weird.

Then there was Adam. Adam was a year older than me. We eventually became really good friends one summer, but then it kind of fizzled away soon after. Adam was always getting beat on by his father particularly hard. He always had bruises all over him. I thought he was pretty cool for the most part, but he avoided hanging out with me, since I was a girl.

Then there was Ashlee and Ayla. Ashlee and I never really got along well. She also had mysterious bruises all over her, and she talked an awful lot about sex. I kind of wonder if something was happening in their family that should have been reported. I tried several times to hang out with her, but she said and did things that bothered me. She was kind of mean, but it was more than that. As an adult now, I can''t pinpoint why I stopped hanging out with her per say. But I recall a very disturbing thing that happened that made me leave her alone. Ayla was the only one of them without bruises. She was I think, the father's biological daughter, and she was treated a lot better than the other kids were. She was about four around this time. Ashlee, Ayla, and I were hanging out in their fort in their backyard, when Ashlee told me she wanted me to see something cool she could make Ayla do. So, we were up in this fort, and she began forcing Ayla to french kiss her. The little girl resisted and was crying, so Ashlee slapped her in the face. I was not impressed. I told Ashlee she was gross. I tried to leave the fort, but she blocked the entrance. I had to fight to get my way out of there. She would not stop making her little sister kiss her. I got out of there somehow eventually, and I avoided being alone with Ashlee after that. There mother was always accusing me of corrupting her children anyway, and we weren't allowed to have most soda pops in her house.

In the summers of first and second grade, my parents were fighting a lot. This was the beginning of the end for them. It started with fights that seemed to stay at an agitated, but not outlandish level behind closed doors later in the night, but soon escalated to my father screaming so loud that neighbors three doors down called the cops alarmed. They sent me down to stay with my grandma Betty for the summers down in southern Idaho I think to keep me away from some of that. It was very hot and dry down there. Southern Idaho is a total desert. I can't say I am a very big fan of southern Idaho. It's basically like Utah. My aunt lived down there as well. She had a few horses that were on this woman's land. They had acres of corn fields, and I got to run through this endless corn field. It was quite liberating. There are things about childhood that you forget. You know you forgot something, but you don't know what that something was exactly. I spent a few summers at my grandma Betty's like this.

My grandma Betty was a bit boring. She chain smoked. She had a new cat, a Siamese fluffy cat named Shanghai. We would television together. She had an oven, but my grandmother was too afraid to use it. She was also too afraid to use the microwave unless someone was there. I got to visit my second  cousins who were a little younger than me once or twice a week. My cousins on my dad's side are all a lot older than I am. I don't know that they really liked me all that much. I still have a grudge against my cousin Matt. He put me in the corner for not eating my cole slaw. I hate cole slaw. Unless it's so un-cole-slaw-ish that they have basically taken away all but the very basics of cole slaw, I can honestly attest that it's one of my least favorite meals. I spent a good three hours sitting in a corner for not eating something my parents were fairly understanding about me not eating. I felt highly resentful for this, and never once did I give in even a little and decide to put that bad tasting stuff in my mouth. I had given it a genuine try. I genuinely did not enjoy it. I did not understand what the point of this exercise was other than for an adult to punish me for their own personal issues they had with themselves.

One thing I do remember that I did love a lot though, was a place called Discovery Zone. This place was basically like a McDonald's play area, only 30X bigger. It had several stories. You could get lost. Everything was extremely bright colored. Being let loose in this otherworldly maze was mind altering. I felt like a wild animal let loose for the first time in it's natural habitat. If there is such a place as limbo, than I am fairly certain that Discovery Zone modeled itself after such a place. The vibes were like joy and hell all in one.

At some point when Allison was two or so, I found her with a giant stab wound in her stomach. She had been playing be herself, but I really could not find the cause of the cut. Nobody saw it happen. We found no sharp objects. Nobody else had been around. She didn't seem to know either, though her limited speech prevented us from understanding her explanation. She was walking around naked, and didn't seem all that upset that blood was gushing out of her little belly. My mother rushed her to the hospital, and she got stitches. I remember they sent me to the store for something. I honestly thought she was going to die. I had never ran so fast in my life.

Most of my life though, was just me and Rachelle hanging out. We turned a shed like room that came off the side of my house into a fort. We hung out there for hours. Rachelle, assuming she had not stayed the night, would show up as soon as she woke up. She often had to stop me from sweeping, as I was still somewhat obsessed with the task. There were other things to be done. I would always begrudgingly stop and decide to do what she wanted, generally after squabbling to a certain degree. She always wanted to play with the Johnsons. I didn't want to. She eventually made the Johnson mother so angry she wasn't allowed back. Rachelle was a Catholic, so the Johnson family felt threatened by that I think, them being so Mormon. One of our favorite things to do in the whole world was steal. We would steal sugar packets from the diner. I believe this is why I developed a taste for aspartame. We would go in there for a glass of water, and then we would start filling up our pockets like crazy with the stuff. We would then go home and eat it. We tried hanging out at the creek, but I was honestly so clumsy as a child I could barely walked through those rocks.

There was also this old man named Bucky. Bucky wore suspenders and a little 20's style hat. He had a dog that looked like Wishbone. He walked around town all day. He always had these hideous cherry flavored hard candies he would give us when he saw us. I believe he stashed them in his back pocket just for the chance at spotting us. So part of our day was going about the business of finding Bucky. There was something more than a little off about Bucky, but we didn't realize it quite yet.

When we could, we would try to get to a nearby town where there was a library. In the library, they had MAD magazines. Rachelle and I thought the raunchy cartoons were the absolute best. We would flip through the magazines for countless hours, reading every dirty joke. There was one page once, that had a scene of hundreds of people fucking one another. It was so outrageous to me then. I could not believe what sin we were seeing. There was a thrill for me in doing bad things. It ended up becoming a bit of an addiction for both of us. Rachelle taught me how to ride her bike, and eventually one birthday I got my own, but eventually that was not enough for us. I was not to keen on stealing from the actual grocery store. There was a birdlike woman named Debbie that worked down there (still does in fact), and her entire life was built on the hope of being able to catch some dumb kids like us stealing a candy bar. Plus, I was afraid that if we started Rachelle would not know when to stop. She had absolutely no gage on when to stop doing something and it made me a little nervous. And if we got caught I would not be able to purchase ice cream after we swam at the pool, on those rare and wondrous days where we were given $4.50, which miraculously would pay to give us the entire day to swim in the pool AND we could buy ice cream cones.

So I begged Rachelle to not steal from Phil's, and instead we decided to start climbing into homes and apartments through the windows and exploring other people's houses when they weren't home. I never took anything, but Rachelle did. It was never anything seemingly that important. It would be a gallon of milk, or a pair of socks. One time someone came home while we were in the apartment. This forced us to jump out of a two story window, land precariously on a tin roof, slide down, and land on our feet painfully and then climbing under a fence that scraped our backs. It was loud. I also was about 50/50 on just turning myself in. I protested. I had to have been heard. I eventually just jumped and got it over with. Most of the people in town didn't like Rachelle. I don't believe this was fair given that she almost literally didn't have any support growing up. But they did have their reasons.

Rachelle's mother made Rachelle go to church functions 2-3 times a week. I always went along as well, given that this gave us the perfect opportunity to write 'fuck' in all the bibles. I never could quite accept Christ I guess. Christianity for me was a gaggle of angry elderly old women who hated me no matter what I did. It was some strange bum in a robe, staring at me from the clouds. I suppose I wanted to believe in something, but everything about church was extremely earth-bound to me. It catered to old people the same way that newspapers and canned peaches did. Nonetheless, I started going to Sunday school when I was six and stayed until I was nine. I learned absolutely nothing from these years.

I decided to make up my own religion. The Catholic church was a two minute walk from my house. It was surrounded by overgrowth, and it was coming off of a hill, that was covered in all kinds of mystical looking plantlife. It was a miniature forest. I imagined there was some God much bigger and older than the one inside the building. Rachelle and I were not allowed to go into the area because there was poison ivy. But it still got my attention. I think after awhile, we made this God very real in our imaginations. We decided to baptize ourselves with this new religion. I was a religion that only girls could be a part of. Our god was the earth. I didn't realize that I was simply recreating Paganism. One day, as it rained and we created little altars for the dark forest goddess, it began raining very heavily. We anointed our heads under the drainpipe that came off the church's roof.  Never in my life had I felt so liberated. I know this was just in my head, but I felt like I was capable of flying. I felt so happy I could laugh and cry. Rachelle did the same thing. Whatever we belonged to, it was something else from everyone else then. I guess I had caught religion there for a spell. Statistically, religion works like a drug at times for some people. And since then, I have had no experiences that I could say were religious. The situation is what it is. I am sure any people who heard this would make assumptions about what it was Rachelle and I experienced. I am going to go ahead and say it was due to brain chemistry and social conditioning.

There were two murders in Kendrick that took place around this time. Kendrick had gotten to be a somewhat violent little town for a few years. Drug use was extremely high among the teenagers of the 90's, and the groups of kids my sisters hung out with. The first murder was of this one kid, I don't remember his name. He was borderline mentally handicapped, but someone had been foolish enough to give him a bunch of drugs to deal to his fellow high school classmates. They gave him tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs. He didn't sell much of it. Instead, he used a lot of it, and gave it away for free. So another guy named Cody from a town twenty miles away took him out into the woods and shot him and hid the body. Nobody ever found the body, and there was never enough proof that he did it, but many people heard the gunshot, one of them being my former roommate Josh (way way later in the tale). A lot of people in town knew what happened, but nobody did or said anything. It was kind of like that movie, Rivers Edge. Except there was no justice for this kid. The police did a lazy job looking for him and gave up very fast. Police around here really don't like to get out of their vehicles. Everyone just accepted it and moved on.

The second murder happened up in the hills a ways. He was Chuck Palahniuk's father. Chuck Palahniuk, is the person who wrote Fight Club, for those who may not know. I don't think him and his father were very close from what I gather. The details of the story are slightly hazy, but basically Chuck's dad stole some other man's girlfriend. Somehow this guy also knew people in Kendrick. So, he killed Chuck's dad in order to get revenge for him having stolen his girlfriend. I don't recall if he killed his ex girlfriend as well. But in order to hide the bodies, he and his friends, who happened to be my school bus driver at the time, and his wife, helped him attempt to set up the whole scene like it they died in a fire. The whole thing didn't work, and my bus driver, his wife, and their vengeful friend all went to prison. I remember being young, and wondering where the heck our bus driver went that looked like a pirate and hated children. There were whispers that he had done some horrible crime, but I actually didn't find out exactly what till I had a chance encounter with a clerk at Hastings fifteen years later.

My mother had complications with giving birth to David. I am not sure of the severity. I was sent into this playroom that was the biggest disaster big sty ever in the hospital in Moscow ID. My father was shaking and seemed panicked and frightened. This might be an overreaction on their parts, given they lost William. I am not sure. My mother claims she almost died. The doctors say she didn't, and since my mother makes up illnesses all the time (she has a complex), I am going to believe my father and the doctors. David's head however did get misshapen slightly getting pulled out. It gave his head an egglike appearance for several years of his life. He now looks mostly if not completely normal, and what strangeness there is with his head-shape he covers it with thick dark hair. But there might have been some damage. We will never really know.

He was the ugliest baby I have ever seen though. His jowls were enormous. His eyes tiny. His jowls hung low,and seemed to almost be connected to his neck. Onlookers who ordinarily get excited when they see a baby looked at him and turned their heads away. He was very fussy. He had lots of allergies. He was always sick. I didn't see him that often. She sort of became obsessed with him and kept him in a room with her alone most of the time. Allison was no longer all that special to her, so she was left to Shirley Templing up to Roxanne. My mother really never did like Allison and I quite like she liked David.

It was around this time that Roxanne got pregnant. She was still twelve. Roxanne had hooked up with her best friend's way-too-old older brother. He had no interest in being the father. Roxanne was still playing with dolls occasionally when she got pregnant, and now she wasn't going to model for seventeen magazine or even finish eighth grade. She was going to be a mother she decided. The whole thing was very alarming. The plan was at first, concocted between my mother and Roxanne, my grandmother Marie, and Maria was to pretend that the baby was Maria's somehow. They would send Roxanne to live up north with my grandma Marie, and she would have the baby in secret away from my father, so he would never know. This didn't work out eventually. And eventually he was told. This is when fights started bringing the police out to our house. In a way I can sympathize with my foolish father. My mother had stopped working, though she was getting her license to be a nurse at a nursing home or to take care of elderly people in their home. She had spent 80,000 dollars on garbage essentially and this forced him to take on three jobs, two of the full time just to pay the bills. She kept bringing pets home. She put him in a situation where he was expected to reprimand Maria and Roxanne and then when he did the best he could (which was usually a chauvinistic failure), all three of them would turn against him. He was drinking too much to cope with it all, there were babies all over the floor and my mom stopped changing diapers so he had to rush home to do it for her, and then he found out that Roxanne was pregnant, and he wanted her to give the baby up for adoption, but nobody wanted to do that. I can definitely sympathize with how trapped he must have felt. On the other hand, he had this coming.

So, with all this turmoil at home and stress, he decided to focus all his energies on me. I was the only positive thing in his life at the time. We went camping every weekend. We generally went out to a place called Buffalo Hump. It was a place that could not be reached most of the year. Idaho has a good deal of areas where people cannot go called The Wilderness Area. You can see it in the center of Idaho on just about every map. We camped on the outskirts of these places, and then we would backpack up these great peaks. He started talking badly about my mother a lot, and about my sisters. He became obsessed with doing this. I started copying him in order to gain his approval. It became something we did a lot. I remember it kind of felt gross somehow. Like, I felt like I was being very disconnected from my mom and my sisters. It wasn't that we were very close, but it started to feel like I really wasn't allowed to love them anymore. I didn't know what the right thing to say in any given situation was anymore. Because my mother clearly could tell that my dad had been 'talking to me', and she started quizzing me. I tried to stay loyal to my father and didn't tell her anything. It became this really unpleasant thing. I eventually simply chose my father's side, because he seemed to at least like being around me. My mother only seemed to care about David.

It was in these trips that I would also ask my father questions about life. I had already doubted the existence of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, and God. My father admitted to me that non of these entities were real. I think out of all of them, I was most disappointed that the Easter Bunny was not real. This might have been because I could not imagine what sort of Rabbit could maneauver his paws well enough to place eggs in hiding places all around the yards of every boy and girl in the nation. I liked to try to imagine this Easter Bunny, an ordinary squishy little rabbit with long man arms coming out the sides. I grew fond of this idea, and it was sad to let that go.

My mother became intensely jealous of these camping trips, so one day she came out to find us. She had baby Allison and baby David with her. It was a four hour drive. Nobody was really expecting her to come, and I am not even sure how she found the camp grounds we were staying at. Just as she got close to the camper, I started talking about my mother, and I don't know what I said, but it could not have been more perfectly – or horribly planned. My father had, in his own need to be validated, trained me like a parrot to say anything negative about my mother in order to make him feel better. Just as she was approaching the camper I think I might have said something about my mother being stupid, about not loving her, and about how glad I was that she wasn't there with us.

And then she was standing right there in complete shock in the camper doorway. She looked completely floored. My dad looked incredibly guilty and stupid in that moment. He momentarily tried to punish me for it, as though all of this had come out of the blue. But it seemed phony. My mother was a mess of tears and honestly looked like someone had just punched her. I don't recall what happened after this. I think my dad tried to chase her down, but she drove away. I was left scratching my head. I realized I had said something I should not have said, but my father had seemed to be really clear that up to that point, me saying these things was the right thing to do. I felt really alienated at that moment.

One of my father's part time jobs was at a health food store in Lewiston. The building is empty now, but next door to this was this joke store. There aren't very many of these stores anymore, but there used to be these weird ass stores where they actually turned a profit selling creepy greeting cards with overweigth women with missing teeth eating whole cakes, fake puke, jumping beans, fake ice cubes with a fly in the middle, fake cigarettes with some dust in them to look like smoke, magic sets, woopy cushions, and tons of comic books by Robert Crumb, and I presume because of the 18+ only signs above a curtain that always seemed shut, they must have had porn in the back. I spent hours and hours in this building. I wanted to be a ventriloquist after all. This was my kind of stuff. I was sitting in this room looking at one thing or other, when on the radio it was announced that Bill Clinton, our president had been caught having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. I honestly thought it was part of the store. I thought it was like a gag along with everything else.

My father became OBSESSED with hating on the Clintons after that. He started listening to Rush Limbaugh every day. He started saying stuff about feminists ruining the nation. He often made jokes about Monica Lewinsky though I noticed, more than he did Bill Clinton. He talked often about how gross and fat she was and how nasty our president was for wanting to have anything to do with a woman that looked like her, even though his wife was 'bad enough.' I am sure he must have been channeling some of his anger at my mother onto Monica Lewinsky. But it seemed like this was something he could just not get over. He made fat woman jokes all the time about her. It felt like this woman was the nation's punching bag. Years later, she did a Ted Talk. Having the experience of watching her get taken down like that really did in some way shape the opinions I had of myself in my teen years. It was not healthy for me to have listened to so much of. Because at the time, I didn't really believe my father could be dead wrong about anything.

A few weeks later there was one final fight between my mother and father. Roxanne I don't recall being there. Basically, it was the one fight that was going to in my father's mind – change my mom's mind about Roxanne being allowed to be a mother at such a young age. My mother would not be dissuaded. She seemed to think that Roxanne, in all her twelve years of life had the experience to be a mother, and that her pregnancy was a very normal thing. My father on the other hand was losing his mind and could not seem to cope with this. Everything had played out to this final fight. I don't know if I was crying. I remember most of these fights as being somewhat like a movie playing out. My dad is an extremely loud person. Nobody can really win because he will yell over anyone and his voice being louder will go over yours, and you will lose. So my mother was trying to fight back, and what essentially my father kept saying was 'THE BABY WILL BE A BASTARD!!!! THE BABY WILL BE A BASTARD!!!', which was another word I had to ask about later. He ended up also calling my mother a selfish pig. I am sure everyone down the street could hear the whole thing. My mother's teeth were gnashing angry as she said whatever it was she was saying underneath my father's repetitive bastard shout. My mother ended up pushing my father. He fell into the couch. I don't know what really happened after that. I think I was upset. I do remember later that night, I tried to talk to my mom. I felt very confused, and pressured by both of them to pick a side. I tried to talk to her, but I remember her very clearly telling me in a monotone quiet voice 'You are ruined. Your father has ruined you. I don't want to see you anymore. Go away.” I left the room.

[cometothecatbureau]

Botanical asks: baby's breath, bleeding heart, foxglove, daisy, painter's palette, tulip, sugarbush, sunflower, golden rod, and lilac :)

Baby’s breath: 5 things you associate yourself with

1. Assorted animals, specifically foxes, bunnies, whales, jellyfish and badgers. 

2. Big, old school “sexy librarian” glasses 

3. Coffee 

4. Profanity (usually in excess) 

5. Shaky hands and crying (that mental illness life kids) 

6. The colour pink 

Bleeding heart: What makes your heart go mushy? 

Okay so I’ve worked with kids a lot over the years and honestly every job or volunteer position has left me with a story that brings happy tears to my eyes so honestly just freaking kids. Every child in the world is beautiful and special and funny and smart and deserves to be loved. Also those like recovery videos of animal rescues. Usually I’ll watch like thirty seconds at the beginning until I can’t take it anymore and skip the medical processes right to the end where they’re happy again. I’m a sucker for critters in distress, whenever we go to the shelters to visit I always pick the nastiest looking or acting cat/dog/whatever and try to bond with them, varying rates of success apply but I’m not giving up! 

Foxglove: What’s your favourite colour and in what shade? 

Pink, but not any of that pastel business, like crayola markers hot pink. Fuchsia. The inside of a watermelon. Bubblegum straight out of the packet. Bright, happy, in your face pink. 

Daisy: What is your favourite flavour of cotton candy, ice cream, and juice? 

There’s more than one flavour of cotton candy???? What??? Though if we want to get into specifics, the blue/pink kind that looks like it’s own little galaxy in a bag you can buy at the movie theatre. Eating it…has never gone well for me but honestly it’s so tasty it’s worth it. Maybe just not for the people with me who have to deal with my hyped up ass. But I have a good time. As for ice cream, either chocolate chip cookie dough or chocolate chip mint, though occasionally I’ve had orange and it’s been a beautiful experience. Also, I don’t know if this counts as juice but has anyone ever seen that Brisk Cherry/Lime half and half stuff? It’s in a green and red can with a lama on it. It’s harder to find in Canada now but it’s such a beautiful thing. That, or flavoured lemonade. Specifically raspberry or strawberry. 

Painter’s Palette: Are you more of a singer, dancer, painter, or instrumentalist? 

None of the above

In a former life I used to sing, paint and play piano a fair bit but that’s all before it got sucked into the Depression Void™ some years back. 

Tulip: What is your most favourite makeup product? Do you like it more natural or dark, or etc? 

So I can’t name specifics because the brands I use tend to vary with what I can currently afford but I love bright colours, especially in eyeshadows and lipsticks and shimmery baked blushes. Off the top of my head, ELF makes some lovely eyeshadows, NYX’s liquid lipsticks are really nice and Hard Candy makes a great baked blush. I tend to pair a pop of something bright with more neutral tones. 

Sugarbush: Do you have a sweetooth? If so, what’s your favourite sweets? If no, why? 

Gummie bears are the best thing on the face of this whole goddamn planet. Those and then those like sugar coated strawberry marshmallow things. And chocolate. Chocolate always. 

Sunflower: Would you like to be a fairy or a mermaid? 

Mermaid, certainly. I’ve never been the strongest of swimmers due to asthma and honestly I feel like I’ve missed out by not being able to do things like go snorkelling or even just for leisure swims. It would be amazing to get to see the ocean and it’s critters up close, and then curl up in a sandy bank somewhere all nice and cozy. 

Golden rod: Are you more of a baker or a cook? 

Baker, for sure. I’ve been making pastries and sweets on my own since high school to share with friends. Savoury dishes not so much, proteins tend to throw me for a loop and I’m prone to over-seasoning but it’s a learning process. 

Lilac: Would you rather sleep and be cozy or hang out with friends? 

How about sleep and be cozy with friends? If they’ll share a nap, they got your back. 

Thank you for the ask! Sorry this took so long!  

[star-venom]

Witch Works

Characters: Serena, Yuuri, and Dennis Macfield

Word Count + Rating: ~1,700 words, rated G (not one swear ain’t that fantastic)

Summary: So, Serena’s a Witch. Hopefully Yuuri takes that revelation easily. [Witch/Magic AU]

A.N: All mistakes mine. This is honestly just a self-indulgent non-plot oneshot about Witch!Serena and I can’t even lie about that.

A full minute after Serena revealed her largest, most important secret to Yuuri, he took a long sip of his chilled hibiscus tea before demanding, “Show me a trick.”

She tilted her head, somewhat certain she had heard wrong. “... A trick.”

“Yes, a trick. You do know what those are, right?” Planting his cup down on a round coaster with a pink floral pattern--he must have brought it in, because she didn’t have anything posh in her dorm room--Yuuri lifted a hand and waved it in a circle. “Lift something in the air with your mind. Change this table into a dog. Breathe fire--whatever you do, make it interesting, little miss Witch.”

Falling silent, Serena took in his request. He wasn’t angry at realizing she was a Witch; honestly, he didn’t seem the sort to react so negatively in the first place. He didn’t outright write her off as speaking nonsense too, which she appreciated, as Witches tended to exist in fairy tales and video games. To Yuuri, as long as she showed him something unnatural, he would accept it.

Things could have gone worse, she decided.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Serena said, shifting her legs around on her mattress and awakening the cat resting in her lap. Luna glared at her with bright yellow eyes, warning her not to move again lest she go find a better body pillow.

Ignoring her, Serena kept speaking, voice low to not distract the other person inhabiting her room. Unlike them, Dennis was studying like a good student; his pencil scratched against paper every so often as he sat on Yuuri’s right. Somehow, he was so deep in his work that their conversation had blown right over his head. “There are different sorts of magic. I can’t lift objects or use the elements. My magic focuses on something else.”

She experienced no surprise when her friend snorted. “Unable to show me your magic powers?” Yuuri rolled his eyes in disappointment, going back to his drink. “So much for being a Witch.”

Without a second thought, Serena grabbed a pillow from the top of her bed and hurled it toward him. Yuuri dodged her makeshift weapon with practiced ease and an easy smile--but the pillow still hit the hand grasping his hibiscus tea. The cup dropped from his grip and clinked against her glass table, splattering it and all of Dennis’ study notes with deep red and sweet liquid.

Pencil tip still connected to the sheet, Dennis watched the tea soak into his papers with muted horror.

“Sorry,” Serena said, as Dennis released an anguished cry.

“My notes!” Shoving out from under the table, Dennis leaped to his feet. Even while Yuuri burst into unrestrained laughter, he did nothing other than stare at his hard work like the whole world was ending.

Leaving him to his own pain, Serena restarted the conversation Yuuri had tried to stop. “You didn’t let me finish; I am a Witch, just not the ones you tend to see. My magic allows me to speak to animals.”

“Ani--” Ending his laughing fit with a final chuckle, he faced her again, a wide, amused smile stuck smile to his face. “Animals, you said? Are you a snake whisperer now?”

“No.” She pointed down to Luna. “I speak to cats--felines. Small ones, large ones. Any of them.”

“Ah. Pardon me, then. Cat whisperer.”

“Shut up,” she said. “Do you want to know what she thinks or not?”

He shrugged. Behind him, Dennis stomped out of her bathroom with an unused white towel. “Get on with it. You talk to her while I’m around you all the time, so it changes nothing.”

Taking that as her cue, she ducked her head to look solely at her cat and familiar. Luna must have listened in while she dozed, as her golden eyes reopened without any prompting, long before Serena considered anything to ask her.

You move too much, Luna scolded, head nestled in the back of her knee. Stop it.

Sorry. I need to ask you something.

And what is it?

Yuuri came to her rescue. “Ask her what she thinks of me. She’s known me for years, after all, so she must be fond of me. Who isn't?”

What do you think of that guy? ‘That guy’ being the only thing Luna knew him as, courtesy of Serena.

Him? The gardener? Her familiar considered the question. I enjoy eating the plants he leaves out on his balcony, and the treats he bakes are tasty. Outside of that, he is rude, nasty, impatient, persistent--

Serena raised her head and told Yuuri the truth. “She thinks you’re the worst. I agree with her.”

His smile dropped. “You aren’t using magic. You’re making that up.”

“No, I’m not. You got your answer, Yuuri. Don’t get upset because my cat hates you.”

Sniffing, Yuuri scowled at her and turned away, rotating to where Dennis sat. Dennis, on his end, was patting his completely ruined notes with an incredibly downhearted air.

“I can’t believe you two,” he griped, a frown etched on his face. Yuuri’s irritation faded away like fine mist, leaving him snickering all over again. “Don’t laugh! It’s not funny! I worked hard on this!”

“You can turn it back to normal,” Serena pointed out. His green eyes snapped up to hers.

Swiftly, he replied, “No, I can’t,” too fast to imitate actual sincerity. Serena squinted at him.

“A Witch, huh…” Getting over his second fit, Yuuri lifted up his spilled cup at last, placing it back on its unnecessary coaster. “I suppose that’s interesting enough. ‘I know a Witch’ isn’t exactly something one tends to say.”

“So you believe me?”

He made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “I do require more examples than you speaking to that horrible little plant-eater,” he said, shooting Luna a scornful glare that she didn’t notice. “But I can accept this. Besides, if I find you’ve been playing me as a fool, I can always unload some of my plants into your room as punishment. You would owe me one, you see.”

“Yes, I see.” Although the small, subtle threat was unneeded.

“I do have some things you can answer, though,” Yuuri continued. Landing both of his elbows on the table and somehow avoiding both the puddles from his drink and the towel wiping it up, he asked, “How many are there? Do you know any? How many attend this school? Are they powerful?”

The last inquiry in particular sounded ominous. Scratching Luna’s sides to hear her purr, Serena answered, “There are thousands of us. I know of several, but a handful attend the Academy. If you want to see if they’re powerful, go find one and get them to cast a spell on you. I will gladly assist you in getting zapped by something.”

“Hmm. Downer.” His gaze fell to the table as he thought. “Fine. Next one. How can I tell them apart from the rest? There are too many nuisances at this school, and most are regular humans, correct? So even if I assume someone acts strangely--like stiff, uptight Phoenix in third year--I suppose I can’t call them a Witch--”

“Warlock,” she corrected.

“Pardon?”

“‘Witch’ is for women. ‘Warlock’ is for men.”

“Warlock?” he repeated quizzically, and the towel cleaning up the tea came to an immediate stop. “Warlock… Sounds sophisticated. I like it.”

Dennis released a bark of laughter that was super weak and contained enough fear to raise countless eyebrows. “What are we talking about? Warlocks?” He looked to her again, apparently now fully recognizing what they’ve been discussing for the past ten minutes or so, and he didn’t seem happy in the least. “You’re talking about magic stuff? There are, ah, better things to do, right? Like, hey, why don’t we--?”

“Witch and Warlock,” Yuuri cut him off--she doubted he’d paid his words a semblance of attention. Each time he roamed over the final syllable of ‘Warlock’ as he repeated it, a deep red flush like the spilled hibiscus tea burned Dennis’ cheeks. “Serena the Witch and cat whisperer. And… well, you do love magic.” His teasing gaze locked on to Dennis. “Dennis the Warlock. How about it?”

Dennis choked. A soft noise escaped him, like a balloon losing air. Serena suspected he had stopped breathing, too, as his flushed face steadily turned gray.

Sighing--now she was beginning to understand--she elected to help him out. “Yuuri. Come here so we can find out what else Luna hates about you.”

“I told you to not make things up,” was his automatic response. Still, Yuuri slid from the table and wandered over to her bed, arms crossed and glaring with his full concentration at her tired cat.

As he gathered what new set of questions he’d want answers to, Serena left him to it, focusing on the soft, relieved sigh escaping the Warlock in her room.

Dennis combed his fingers through his hair, the strange gray color beginning to leave his face. They met eyes again and she nodded, acknowledging his unspoken and extreme wish even if it confused her. The grateful look he shot toward her made her furrow her eyebrows, but if his decision made him happy…

With Yuuri distracted, Dennis dropped the useless towel and tapped his finger twice against his ruined notes. As though it was a simple layer of film over his papers, the spilled tea rose in the air in a dark red, sugary mass, leaving the work he’d been so worried about as good as new. Then, snapping his fingers, the tea disappeared into nothing, leaving Dennis grinning happily to himself.

Glad her room wasn’t left a mess, Serena resumed rubbing Luna’s sides, awaiting what else Yuuri would choose to ask her familiar.

It seemed, after her reveal, that things were going to continue as the exact same. Serena couldn’t have asked for anything better.