tmbswhodunit

[tmbswhodunit]

TMBS Who Dunnit 2 Electraboogaloo (2025)

Hello again everyone!

Here is the tentative primary list for all actively participating members of this years TMBS Whodunnit Challenge! If for some reason you can't find your name on here, or if you know a friend whose name is supposed to be on here, please let me know.

Nothing is set in stone, and the list may change before the final reveal.

@oflightningandstars

@sophieswundergarten

@defloress

@ocean-lilac

@heyitsthatonesmolgay

@moonlarkandpinetree

@mvshortcut

@acollectionofcuriousreblogs

@lizardwoman-from-earths-core-2

@lotsofsq

@ae-jurumi

@pumpkinthistle

@nobodysdaydreams

@fandom-queen-13

@mycatisholdingmehostage398

@mashpotatoequeen

@threedaycharter

@rosy-cozy-radio

@mysteriouseggsbenedict

SOME REMINDERS

All works must be submitted to the AO3 collection by July 28

You can make any sort of fanwork, be that art, a gifset, fanfic, etc.

Fanfics should be at least a rough 500 words.

Even if you're not making something, you can still participate by trying to guess who made what!

Have fun, be respectful, and let me know if you have any questions. Follow this blog for reminders or update posts!

Thanks everyone for making this fandom so fun to be a part of!

[tmbswhodunit]

IT'S JUNE 28! WHOOT WHOOT!

Hello gentlefolk! If you are interested in joining the TMBS Whodunit Challenge, today is the last day to join so please let me know soonish! Remember, if you're uncertain, you can always join now and back out later. There is no pressure!

[tmbswhodunit]

You run the TMBS Whoduntit, right? I wanted to ask a question, but asks are closed over there. Is there a word count max on the challenge? Obviously writing like…10,000 words would be a lot, and probably not feasible for most, but what ballpark would be too much? 5,000? 6? If there’s not a rough max, I know I might get overzealous and bite off more than I can chew

Hi! Sorry- I'll fix the ask problem over there now. I am not always the most technologically adept.

For the sake of this challenge, there is no hard word maximum. Tell the story you want to tell and go from there! I did put a word limit at a rough 500 words, but that's it. You also don't have to make a fic at all, if you would prefer to make art or something!

If it helps, the person who wrote the most last time wrote around 5,000 words. The average word count was closer to 2,500.

Happy creating!

[tmbswhodunit]

TMBS WHO DUNNIT 2 Electraboogaloo!

Hello, one and all! If you're new to the TMBS Who Dunnit Challenge, welcome! If you're a returning participant, welcome back!

Here's the premise:

June 28th: People send me a message or respond to this post and say if they want to be a part of the challenge or not.

July 28: Deadline for people to submit their fanworks to the anonymous collection.

August 1st - July 6th: I post two or three anonymous fanworks a day, depending on how many people want to participate, along with a polls of the possible authors and/or artists. These polls will be published on this sideblog!

August 7th: People post their final theories!

August 8th: I post credit where credit is due for all of the amazing authors and artists. We get see how well we know our fandom and pay our compliments properly! :D

SOME NOTES FOR PARTICIPANTS:

Anyone can join! Artists, writers, gif makers, whoever it may be! Maybe you haven't made anything before and want to give it a go! That's just fine!

The main point is having enough content for people to reasonably use to guess who you are, not length. Probably the minimum amount of words for our authors is a loose 500.

If you're just discovering this and want to join, let me know. We can chat :)

If you need to back out for any reason, you can! No worries :)

The tag that I will be using is tmbs whodunnit 2025

[tmbswhodunit]

HERE WE GO FOLKS!!!

TMBS WHO DUN IT 2 ELECTRABOOGALOO

Hello all! Who would be interested in participating in another round of trying to figure out who makes what? We've had several lovely new writers, artists, and creators join us this past year, and this summer should be more free than the last time we did it! It would be fun to do it again with a mix of old and new faces. :)

[tmbswhodunit]

TMBS WHO DUN IT 2 ELECTRABOOGALOO

Hello all! Who would be interested in participating in another round of trying to figure out who makes what? We've had several lovely new writers, artists, and creators join us this past year, and this summer should be more free than the last time we did it! It would be fun to do it again with a mix of old and new faces. :)

[tmbswhodunit]

TMBS WHO DUN IT 2 ELECTRABOOGALOO

Hello all! Who would be interested in participating in another round of trying to figure out who makes what? We've had several lovely new writers, artists, and creators join us this past year, and this summer should be more free than the last time we did it! It would be fun to do it again with a mix of old and new faces. :)

[tmbswhodunit]

Who Did Dunnit? The Reveal List

for those of you who haven't had the time to check out the collection yet (link here), this is the list for you!

Again, a huge thanks to everybody who joined in. I hope everybody had fun :)

mysteriouseggsbenedict - i have spent my life clamoring towards it

lizard-woman-from-earths-core-2 -> The Alpaca

oflightningandstars -> We'll both be completely at home in midair

acollectionofcuriousreblogs -> The Interview

sophieswondergarten -> Don't Grow Up Too Fast

ae-jurumi - Card Games

crow-in-springtime - Cat fic

heyitsthatonesmolgay -> ART: A Psychic Among Us

mvshortcut -> Steady On

fandom-queen-13 -> Fairytale

mashpotatoequeen -> petrichor

nobodysdaydreams -> Sirens of the Sea and Sky

WE DID IT!!!!

[tmbswhodunit]

The Reveal

hello! Happy Winter Solstice!

A big thank you to everyone who participated and a HUGE congratulations to you all! We did it!

The collection is officially non-anonymous. Have fun commenting and going I knEw IT at people!

Official bracket wins will be discussed a little later today.

(⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)(⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)(⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)(⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)

[tmbswhodunit]

Okay I have very few guesses because I haven't been able to actually read all of the works yet and. Energy. (wailing in background) but this is what I'm thinking:

sophieswundergarten - Don't Grow Up Too Fast

mysteriouseggsbenedict - i have spent my life clamoring towards it

mashpotatoequeen - petrichor

heyitsthatonesmallgay - A Psychic Among Us

mvshortcut - Steady On

And of course...

oflightningandstars - We'll both be completely at home in midair.

[tmbswhodunit]

greetings one and all

Here is my bracket for the @tmbswhodunit extravaganza:

I'll also take the liberty of listing the guesses in text format, since all the overlapping lines can be hard to read.

"i have spent my life clamoring towards it" is by ME!

"The Alpaca" is by @lizardwoman-from-earths-core-2

"We'll both be completely at home in midair" is by @oflightningandstars

"The Interview" is by @acollectionofcuriousreblogs

"Fairytale" is by @sophieswundergarten

"Card Games" is by @ae-jurumi

"Don't Grow Up Too Fast" is by @crow-in-springtime

"A Psychic Among Us" is by @heyitsthatonesmolgay

"Steady On" is by @mvshortcut

"Cat fic" is by @fandom-queen-13

"petrichor" is by @mashpotatoequeen

"Sirens of the Sea and Sky" is by @nobodysdaydreams

[tmbswhodunit]

My Last Minute and Probably Wrong Guesses for @tmbswhodunit (and my undoubtedly flawed logic to go along with it)

Drumroll please...

Petrichor - @mashpotatoequeen

The title is lowercase and most of her recent titles are also lowercase

Many of her fics have titles like this (fancy words like eucatastrophe or bellis perennis)

This fic is very beautiful, amazing word choice, gorgeous visuals (which is what I really love about her writing 💖). I also enjoyed Constance and Sticky's sibling dynamic very much!

We'll Both Be Completely Home in Midair - @oflightningandstars

The title of this fic on AO3 ends in a period, which Moth has done on occasion

The AO3 version also lists where the title is from, which is a Moth staple

The fic is locked. Moth is one of the only people who consistently locks his fics

Even when you ignore the first three points that make me look overly analytic (sorry), the fic is about aliens, which is very similar to the "Cirque des Etoiles" concept which involves stars and spaces AND the Dr. Who AUs, which at some point involved Moth.

The writing, characterization, and concepts are also absolutely beautiful, so they match Moth's style perfectly!

Steady On - @mvshortcut

Milk always double spaces between their paragraphs and also this feels a lot like Milk's writing (and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time! seriously the part where Martina doesn't take Mr. Benedict's hand...why do you do this to me... /lh /I loved this fic!)

Milk's titles are all capital letters, so this fits that (sadly so do many of these fics, but that at least narrows it down)

Milk consistently tags both the books and shows for their fics. There are only two fics in this that fit that requirement. It was for this specific reason that I only tagged the TV show for my own fic (at least for now. I'll probably edit my tags now that the exchange is over).

The Interview - @acollectionofcuriousreblogs

Summary is a longer sentence, other authors usually use shorter ones.

The way the paragraphs are spaced is very similar to her other fics

The angst is AMAZING and very similar to that one snippet I saw on her tumblr during whumptor with her OC's (which was also very well written, but also hurts??? And what happens to Sticky??? The public (me) needs to know! /lh /great writing).

The Alpaca -@lizardwoman-from-earths-core-2

Has used *** to separate lines in fics before

The fic is unrated, and some of her fics on AO3 are also unrated, which is generally rare.

I really enjoyed this fic. The line "some has Godfathered my daughter" made me laugh. 😂

Art: A Psychic Among Us - @heyitsthatonesmolgay

Has made fan art for me before (which I love😍) however, that was a pencil sketch, so it's hard to compare the styles.

You can make gifs and animations for free with fire alpaca (according to google) which I know Nick uses

The way Nick titled the fan art was to put "art" or "fan art" before the title of the art in all caps, which matches this style.

This art is fantastic, I love the animation, I love the concept, just...all of it. 10/10. Anyone in the fandom who makes art is officially a wizard in my book because I don't know how they do it.

Fairytale- @fandom-queen-13

This one gave me the most trouble out of all of them by far. At first I was 100% sure fandom-queen-13 was the one who made some of the fanart, because I have art drawn by her for my SOS fic (if you haven't see it, it's amazing!) BUT! The art submitted to the exchange didn't match the style. Also, I know Crow does a lot of fairytale AUs, and I know Sophie and I have talked about them too, so that really threw me off. HOWEVER, there were three key things about this fic that tipped me off:

1) The bold alternating text in the fic and use of ~ matches other works of hers on AO3

2) The fact that it says in the description that this fic was inspired by "@sergentsporks". There is no one with that URL on AO3 or tumblr, HOWEVER, there IS someone named "@/sergeantsporks" and I found this post: https://www.tumblr.com/sergeantsporks/695958143301255168?source=share. Only one person in our fandom liked the post. Once I figured that out, it cracked the case wide open (unless of course someone else liked and unliked the post in which case this entire guess post is completely wrong. If that is the case then um...my bad? 🤷🏻‍♀️)

3) The writing is amazing and completely blew me away, not unlike the art style I'm more familiar with. Seriously, this was a FANTASTIC concept and I loved it so much! Werewolf Kate and Milligan my beloveds!

Card Games - @ae-jurumi

This one was difficult. Once I determined that fandom-queen-13 was in fact likely NOT an artist, I was down to Amphibian and surprisingly, realized at the last minute that I forgot to consider Sophie as an artist. I've seen some art from Amphibian in the past, but it can be hard to track down because they have two blogs, and as for Sophie, she writes such great fic that I find myself forgetting "oh yeah, she's also an amazing artist, like really good???" however, I had to go with amphibious entity for this. Why? The art seemed slightly more their style, and most of Sophie's recent fics have titles where all words were capitalized.

Most seem to agree with me, as the tmbswhodunit poll had them winning for this

Has only written one fic that I know of (which was INCREDIBLE everyone read it) but the odds of them doing art for the exchange seemed higher

This art was amazing. It's so beautiful, I can't even tell if you drew it or use software to do it, but either way, it's incredible and proves my earlier point that all fandom artists are wizards.

I Have Spent My Entire Life Clamoring Towards It - @mysteriouseggsbenedict

All words of title are lowercase which Frances sometimes does

Posted to an anon collection as well as WhoDunIt and I know from the discord that Frances was worried about the fic being posted properly

Mary Oliver is a poet, and we know Frances studies library science

A wonderful and sweet fic, and we know that Frances is a wonderful and sweet person. Suspicious. /lh /affectionate

Seriously a very wonderful fic. I love anything where Nicholas Benedict is a good dad and a good mentor.

Cat Fic - @crow-in-springtime

Second word of title is lowercase, which is consistent with how recent fics on AO3 are titled

Author took finals according to the tags, and Crow is in the right age range for this

Has tagged fics "I wrote this instead of sleeping" before

Usually writes fairytale focused content (which I LOVE), however, this fic also seems very much in the wonderful adorable whimsical style of Crow

Crow also tags both the TV show and Book on AO3 (as does this fic)

I love this fic. But the cliffhanger though: what is the cat's name??? 👀

Don't Grow Up Too Fast - @sophieswundergarten

It is to my great shame that this took me the longest to guess and it might not even be correct

But it matches the technicalities of Sophie's writing: the use of long dashes, each word of the title is capitalized.

The biggest give away is that it’s one of the only works Sophie DIDN’T give kudos to, and you can’t leave kudos on your own work.

Also, the writing really does feel like Sophie. I know she loves nicknames, and the "Pen/Penny" thing is a nickname. So. There's a clue right there.

She also loves sibling dynamics, so focusing on Rhonda and Number Two's relationship fits that too.

Sophie already commented on two other fics and she doesn’t seem like the type to comment on her own fic and throw everyone off (would be impressed if she did though)

The writing leaves me with a warm feeling that I get whenever I read fluff by Sophie. So the more I think about it, there more confident I am about this guess. I think I just had to eliminate a few other choices first.

Amazing fic btw. They are such a family 🥰

And...finally...as many were quick to guess both on tumblr and in the discord:

Sirens of the Sea and Sky - @nobodysdaydreams

The Crangst (Crack + Angst) style is my bread and butter (though I usually emphasize the angst more).

It’s the longest fic in the bunch, because in classic Bods fashion, I never know when to quit. The whole paragraph of backstory was completely unnecessary.

Also in classic Bods fashion, the fic has a glaring typo (I wrote that Mermaid Curtain drove into the water instead of dove into the water. I fixed it on AO3 but not before everyone read it on tumblr. Oh well. At least this way we can imagine mermaid Curtain driving his golf cart into the sea).

Genuinely curious to know the exact moment in the fic that made @sophieswundergarten and @myfairkatiecat go "oh gosh dang it Bods" and all but @ me and/or private message me about it (as I suspected they might).

Don't judge me. This is finals did to my brain. They melted my mind. I swear, if this is the first fic of mine you've read, literally any of the other 7 works on my AO3 are so much better than this, I promise.

Really, who else could it be? Who else would do this? The silliness and absurdity haunts me like a plague. I will never be free. Never. I didn't even try to make this funny, this is just what my brain is like 24/7. I've never seen one episode of Sailor Moon and have barely watched any H2O and that was years ago. So why write that into a fic? I don't have the answer. I know not what I do. But I hope that at least some of you enjoyed it, because despite everything, I really enjoyed writing it!

Thank you @mahpotatoequeen for putting this together and thank you to everyone for your wonderful fics! When I have more time, I will be leaving comments on them all because you all are extremely talented deserve them! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! 💕💕💕💕

[tmbswhodunit]

My MBS Whodunnit Guesses!

mysteriouseggsbenedict - i have spent my life clamoring towards it

lizardwoman-from-earths-core-2 - The Alpaca

oflightningandstars - We’ll both be completely at home in midair

acollectionofcuriousreblogs - The Interview

sophieswundergarten - Don't Grow Up Too Fast

ae-jurumi - Card Games

crow-in-springtime - Fairytale

heyitsthatonesmolgay - Cat fic

mvshortcut - Steady On

fandom-queen-13 - A Psychic Among Us

mashpotatoequeen - petrichor

nobodysdaydreams - Sirens of the Sea and Sky

I'll post my reasoning/guesses tomorrow at the reveal - I was gonna do it now, but my dog wants his walk and he will not be denied!

[tmbswhodunit]

@tmbswhodunit Thank you for how fun this was!!!

[tmbswhodunit]

The Anonymous Collection is Posted!

What are you still doing here? Go read and comment and make your conspiracy boards! :3 /jk

Link to the AO3 collection HERE

[tmbswhodunit]

TMBS WHO DUNNIT CHALLENGE- The Final Bracket

Hello, everybody!

HUGE congratulations to everybody who contributed to the Who Dunnit Challenge! We made some really awesome stuff. :3

Now comes a time where we must truly show how much we know about our fandom! Included below is a template you can choose to use to try and guess who made what. You don't have to use the template, though, if it's more convenient to type it out. :)

People should post their completed templates by 4:00PM, Eastern Standard Time on December 20th. You can post earlier, too, I suppose, but be aware that humans might try to kidnap ideas from you/see where you placed yourself!

If you include your conspiracy boarding, it will make me eternally happy :3 Also be sure to include an @ to the tmbs account so that I can find it!

To make things a little easier, I will be publishing the Anonymous Collection on AO3. People can feel free to start leaving comments to our lovely artists and authors!

The Collection will be made non-anonymous on December 21st, 10:30AM. I will also scrunge up all of the templates/guesses and see who got the closest!

REMEMBER: EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T CREATE SOMETHING FOR THE CHALLENGE, YOU CAN STILL PARTICIPATE IN THIS PART! :)

If anybody has any questions, please let me know!

The Template:

[tmbswhodunit]

WHO DUNNIT TMBS CHALLENGE: We'll both be completely at home in midair.

There was a small community in the city of Stonetown, mostly unnoticed by the city at large. But not entirely unknown. There were whispers about these people, who lived in a large rambling house on a quiet street. It was said these people were not from Earth.

They appeared human, more or less; nobody was quiet sure if that was the result of some sort of disguise, some visual filter allowing them to blend in with their human neighbors, or if somehow the variables had lined up so that life from an nother planet appeared eerily similar to that of Earth.

They kept a low profile, or at least tried to. For as many years as the man, Mr. Benedict he called himself, had lived there, neighbors had seen strange lights floating above the house at odd times of night. But mostly, everything was as expected of a human house in a human city on Earth.

Aliens arrived on Earth from time to time, sometimes on purpose, but often not. Those who could do so attempted to fit in, to pass as human. Those who couldn't... well, their stories were hardly happy. Many of the stories of this community, this family, started out similarly unhappy, but they would not stay that way forever.

A pair of scientists studied Earth from a far-away planet and fell in love, with the planet and each other. After initial studies, they decided to move their lives there, to study this planet in person for the rest of their lives, as a family.

Something went wrong. Their baby -- babies, as it turned out -- ended up separated, alone on a strange planet, and their parents... It was an experimental transport unit to begin with, one they'd modified themselves to handle the long distance. And sometimes experiments don't go as planned.

Do alien children, separated from their parents, grow up knowing they are aliens? That they are from out among the stars? Some do. These two, growing up on different continents, figured it out quite quickly. They soaked up knowledge and it quickly became apparent that they were not of this Earth. Their responses to this were quite different. One wanted so much more than this tiny, pitiful planet could give him. Humans could hardly take care of themselves, and he might as well do it for them. But he always had his sights set on returning to the stars.

The other wanted to learn every possible thing about this planet that had found itself home to him, all about the ground and the sky and the water, about technology and agriculture, about the beings that lived there, the plants and animals, and people.

He had an Earth name, "Nicholas Benedict," written on documents which followed him from orphanage to orphanage, through his time in the Navy, into his life as a scholar, labeling published papers and later the ever-increasing piles of rejected papers, weighed down with the laughter and sneers of the humans rejecting his ideas, the humans who couldn't see what was happening before their eyes-- no, he had to be kind, and patient. It wasn't their fault it was alien technology, that he wasn't affected like they were.

But he had another name too, hidden in the corners of his mind by parents who wanted so badly to see this planet in person, so show their children its wonders. Sometimes, at night, he whispered this name to himself and feel as if he was more connected to his body, to his universe. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen him change, seen a very alien form where his human one had been. John and Violet had seen it, his true form, late at night in the observatory. They had hugged him after, told him he was their friend. Phil Noland had seen him once on accident, turned around and never mentioned it. It was clearly private, and Nicholas had saved his life and was an all-around good man, and nothing much mattered beyond that.

A small bundle appeared outside an orphanage one day. This is not the only time this had happened, or will happen, small babies being found bundled up, some with projection field generators clutched in tiny hands, already burrowing into soft skin.

At first, nobody was sure there was anything inside the blankets, some sort of cruel prank. But no, there he was, a tiny baby boy, excedingly average in appearance. He was taken inside, the adults laughing about how average a baby must be for them to think it was merely a bundle of cloth. These adults tried their best not to be cruel. They often did not manage. The other children were not much better. For as average as this child seemed, he never fit in. But he found books, stories of space and aliens, and he felt understood in a way he never had.

And later, a kind tutor. She was a human, but somehow, inexplicably, she saw him so clearly. More clearly than he was able to see himself. And rather than run away, she cared more. When he thought he was saying goodbye to her for maybe forever he gave her a tight hug, and if the suckers on his limbs stuck a bit she didn't say anything, just squeezed him closer.

A little boy grew flowers on his head, his body a young plant. He was more than his parents had ever expected; the children of aliens themselves, they were never this bright. It was as if the light of a sun they had never seen was glowing out from him as he read, answered questions, drank up knowledge like the water that nourished his roots.

But too much water is not good for a plant, and that's an imperfect metaphor, because it wasn't the knowledge that hurt this child, it was the pressure, the expectations. For perfect blooms trimmed just so as he stood under bright lights and tried not to get his answers mixed up. He started plucking the flowers off his head, twirling them in his fingers to cope with the stress. Eventually, they wilted and stopped growing. His mother tutted and gave him some more water, hoping the lights would help them grow back. They did not, and this child ran away.

A little girl and her father played out among the stars. One day, they came to close to a planet, such an innocuous planet, and the father was captured, pulled to Earth, firey core doused in harbor water. The little girl chased after him but she was too late. She crashed into a farm field, crawling into a bright red bucket for several days as she tried to understand her new surroundings, so different from the vast emptiness of space she had known.

A small bundle appears outside an orphanage. The child inside shifts and changes, writhing into form. Her eyes are wide open, glowing. By the time her form is set, the adults who found her do not remember seeing anything but a tiny, impossibly grumpy baby on their porch.

Some children know they are aliens as they grow up. Some do not. Either way, many feel so so alone, surrounded by beings from a different planet, a planet these alien children are not always suited for, what with its specific gravity and atmosphere. What is it like, to grow up thinking you are the only one like you in the whole world? What is it like, to know you are not, but to feel apart all the same?

Nicholas Benedict grew up knowing he couldn't be the only one. Maybe the others wouldn't be exactly like him, he didn't know about his twin yet, but if he was from another planet, another solar system, then surely others were too. When the Emergency started, alien technology infecting the world with unease and mistrust, he didn't know for sure if he wasn't affected because he was an alien, but it seemed likely. He didn't know if any humans could be unaffected, if other aliens would be unaffected, but he went looking anyways.

And he found them.

A girl who had too many legs if you looked out of the corner of your eye, whose body made too-quick work of the energy from human food.

A girl who was somewhat vaporous, drifting down through a grate to grab a fallen pencil, writing formulas for the exact chemical makeup of her body.

A sad man with no memories, who could almost change his form. Nobody was quite sure if he was an alien, least of all the man himself. But it didn't really matter either way.

And four children found their way there too. The early time they spent together was stressful, knowing the end of the world could be near, but at the same time it was a relief, to have found others like them. Reynie felt panels of arrows for the one that was different and nobody scolded him for the slight residue he left. At the Institute, Constance dropped her human facade in their rooms, too tired to keep it up, especially when broadcasts were occurring. Kate scuttled through the vents on rocky legs, and when she hugged her father for the first time in years cracks formed in their outer shells and the fire that spilled out was brilliant. And Sticky, quite wilted when he first arrived... As he hugged his parents for the first time in ages, everyone crying, Sticky positively bloomed.

The children and their families, a mix of humans and aliens themselves, all moved into the large house and stayed there, even after all the danger had passed. Moocho Brazos, human circus performer and friend of Kate's, was determined to make food that all the aliens of the house could eat, that would meet their nutritional needs and nourish them. If that required making individual dishes for every person in the house, then so be it, he would do it gladly.

Some of these aliens knew of their homeworlds, knew languages and customs and the ways in which they were not like anything humans had ever imagined. But some of them didn't get that. And this led to many research projects, to figure out where in the universe they might be from, to seek out other aliens and ask them about their own lives, to learn each others languages, whether or not human or human-like bodies could reproduce them.

But mostly, they spent their days laughing and talking, and occasionally fighting, though that was mostly when Constance was being especially stubborn; spending time together.

There was a small community in the city of Stonetown, mostly unnoticed by the city at large. But not entirely unknown. There were whispers about these people, who lived in a large rambling house on a quiet street. It was said these people were not from Earth.

The neighbors suspected, but it wasn't an issue. They were all polite, fond of taking walks through the neighborhood, always greeting any neighbors out and about cheerfully, asking after their plants, their children, their jobs, only occasionally referring to others as "humans." Sometimes the smallest child would stare too hard as she passed and a flash of some strange light would appear in her eyes, but then the girl with the bucket would swing her onto her back and the little girl would appear normal again. The strange lights above the house became more common, and sometimes a stray limb that did not resemble a human one would appear in a window. Neighborhood kids would sometimes try to peek through the windows, but mostly that just resulted in them being invited in for tea, or to play tag in the backyard with the house's children. They hosted barbecues for the whole neighborhood, and if some of the plates held things that didn't look like human food, the neighbors would simply skip those dishes. Everything else was delicious.

Eventually the neighbors all headed back to their houses, and it was just them, this group of aliens and a few humans, gazing up at the stars, pointing out where their home systems were, telling any stories they knew and making up new ones together.

This community, this family, had come from so many places, unimaginable distances apart. But they were here now, all together on Earth, their home.