#Myka Mouse

[michellemouse]

I'm too lazy to explain each one so I'll just post this image as if nothing happened 🥱👩‍🦯‍➡️

[michellemouse]

Awwwww so cuteeeee aaaahhhh 🥺🥹🥹🥹🥹💕💕💕💕💕💝💝💝💝

thanks for the art trade ^^♡

Art trade for @michellemouse !!

Plucky and Myka🐭🐓 I like them ^^ they're cute

[fuelmind]

Top 5 Most Popular Personalized Gift Ideas for Her

If you're looking for a unique and meaningful gift for the special woman in your life, personalized gifts are a great option. Here are the top 5 most popular personalized gift ideas for her. I brought you some example for the items, too.

1. Personalized Jewelry: Jewelry is a timeless gift, and personalizing it with her name, initials, or a special message makes it even more meaningful. Consider a necklace, bracelet, or ring with her name or initials engraved or a special message inscribed.

2. Personalized Photo Album: A photo album filled with memories is a great gift, and personalizing it with a special message or quote on each page makes it even more sentimental. You can include pictures of your time together and add captions or sweet messages.

3. Personalized Mug: A simple yet thoughtful gift, a personalized mug with her name, picture, or a special message printed on it is a great way to remind her of your love every time she has her favorite beverage. She can use it at home, in the office, or even on the go.

4. Personalized Journal: If she loves to write, a personalized journal with her name or a special message on the cover is a great way to encourage her to jot down her thoughts, ideas, or even as a gratitude journal. She can use it to document her travels, dreams, or anything that comes to her mind.

5. Personalized Phone Case: With everyone having a phone nowadays, a personalized phone case is a practical and stylish gift that she can use every day. You can personalize it with her name or a special message, and choose a design that suits her style.

These personalized gift ideas are sure to make her feel loved and appreciated. Each one is unique and thoughtful, and with a little bit of personalization, they become even more special. So, the next time you're searching for the perfect gift, consider one of these popular options!

[apparitionism]

Appreciation 5

This one is very rough, and it doesn’t hit any beats quite right, but I’m pushing it out anyway. “Apples/Warehouse shenanigans” is the prompt, and what came to me in response was a version of the conversation that’s the primary component here (hence the title, sort of), which I’ve shoehorned into a semi-frame... ideally it would have become an actual story, but time zips along, and the story-pieces didn’t. (I should note that this little thing takes place in a world where season 4 never happened except for the Warehouse came back; after that, so did Helena.)

The appreciation proceeds, in any case, and earlier came four days’ worth of same: “Architecture,” “Bridge,” “Worry,” and “House.”

Voice

Steven Connor, Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

[M]y voice is not something that I merely have, or even something that I, if only in part, am. Rather, it is something that I do. A voice is not a condition, nor yet an attribute, but an event.... [T]he voice always requires and requisitions space, the distance that allows my voice to go from and return to myself.... My voice can be a glove, or a wall, or a bruise, a patch of inflammation, a scar, or a wound.

****

Myka enjoys spending time in the Warehouse office. She likes it when she’s alone, naturally, and she’s perfectly fine with Pete, as long as he isn’t acting out; with Steve; and even with Artie, though in that case she’s always on alert, trying to perform as perfectly as she can.

She enjoys being there with Helena, of course, and in that case, too, she’s always on alert, trying to perform as perfectly as she can... but what she’s attempting to enact is less clear. It isn’t “Warehouse agent,” because she knows she accomplishes far less, work-wise, when Helena is present. For a while she’d tried to pretend otherwise, but holding the falsehood in her head made her feel like a fraud. And given their history, Myka doesn’t want anything fraudulent to intrude on their deepening accord.

But as much as Myka enjoys any time she spends with Helena, she has discovered that spending time in the Warehouse office space with Claudia is differently, maybe even commensurately, enjoyable, for it is also something very like therapeutic. This is because Claudia—when she is genuinely engaged in a project—talks. Her voice hums incessantly as she talks and talks and talks: to herself; to various screens; to deities, oracles, and ghosts; even to Mrs. Frederic, whom Myka usually presumes is absent and yet of course might not be... then again, she might be one of the those deities, oracles, and/or ghosts, based on Claudia’s mutterings.

In any case, the vocal chaos paradoxically soothes Myka. She knows she’s not being invited to participate in the conversation—or the “conversation”—so she’s free to absorb or ignore as she pleases. It’s how she imagines people who like a television on in an empty house probably feel about that sound: it’s there, it gives the space a sounded shape, but it creates no obligation.

Today, she and Claudia are working, companionably, with Myka silent and Claudia not, when a sharp question from the doorway upsets their yin-yang balance: “What are you doing?” asks Helena.

“I’m—” Myka starts, but the question was clearly for Claudia; Helen has marched to stand beside her, and she is looking down judgmentally at what Claudia is holding in her non-mouse hand.

Claudia looks up at Helena, looks down, then up again. “Eating an apple,” she says. She takes a bite and crunches away at it.

A defiant move, given the expression on Helena’s face, and Helena certainly seems to have read it that way: “Here?” she demands.

“You’re watching me do it, so I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that question.”

Again, defiant (or at least careless), but Helena calms, if only infinitesimally. “Isn’t that... unseemly?”

“It seems like I’m eating an apple, so I think it’s at least seemish. But I don’t really know what your Victorian-offended words mean, so maybe?”

Helena crosses her arms and nods severely at the apple. “Doesn’t it seem a bit... cannibalistic?”

“No? Because I’m not an apple?” Claudia’s tentative now, perplexed, and Myka can’t blame her.

“Given the architecture that surrounds us,” Helena says, freeing her arms to perform an all-encompassing swirl.

“Did you get hit in the head?” Claudia asks. “Maybe with an apple? No, wait, that’s Newton. No doubt you did a lot, but you didn’t discover gravity.”

“Entirely apocryphal, that. And he didn’t discover anything. How could one ‘discover’ a fundamental force that acts at all times upon every body on the planet? At any rate you needn’t worry about my head. What about yours?”

“I’m fine. Or I was until you called me a cannibal.”

“I called you no such thing, but in any case, I was making reference to the known affinity of this facility.”

Claudia squints at the fruit in her hand. “This place isn’t made of apples. And even if it is, I’m not made of Warehouse. Am I?”

“As Caretaker-in-training?” Helena asks, a muse of a question.

“Did Mrs. F swear off apples?” Claudia counters.

“I have no idea.”

“So you’re saying that if she didn’t, she’s a cannibal?”

“That is not in fact what I am saying. Did you not hear me utter the words ‘a bit’?”

“‘A bit?’ Isn’t that what British people say when they mean ‘you’re bathing in the thing’?”

“A bit and a bath being entirely dissimilar, I—”

“Here’s what I’m doing: never eating an apple again. Happy now?”

Helena smiles. Serenely. “Of course not,” she says.

It’s such a completely Helena response that Myka, who’s been trying to stay out of whatever this is, inadvertently contributes a small “hmph” of laughter. Helena gives her a look, one that doesn’t quite contain a wink. But it could have.

“Is there any pleasing you at all?” Claudia demands, and is that another look Myka receives from Helena? She resolves to ponder it later, as Claudia says, “What is it now?”

Helena, still serene, says, “The adage about the doctor.”

Claudia snorts, then offers Helena a big-eyed, sentimental blink. “But I love Dr. Calder. Don’t you?”

Helena bows her head—a “well played” nod of concession. “Of course. But I believe ‘the doctor’ is in this case a synecdoche for the medical profession.”

“Synecdoche, schmenecdoche. Which it turns out is hard to say... anyway, it’s the doctor. That’s what that daily apple keeps away,” Claudia says. “Queen Myka of Literalism, back me up on this.” Myka scrambles in her head for a way to resolve a synecdoche-versus-literalism battle to everybody’s satisfaction—scrambles also to resettle herself after Helena graces her with an “I know I’d win” lift of lip—but she’s saved by Claudia pushing on with, “And Dr. Calder’s the doctor as far as I’m concerned.”

“Consider a compromise,” Helena says. “For health purposes, you might eat an apple every other day. Ideally in some other location.”

“Location, location, location. But what if one of those other days is when Dr. Calder’s supposed to be there?”

Helena offers a little frown. Is she getting rankled at Claudia continuing the joke? “Perhaps adages aren’t edicts, darling.” The little condescension of “darling” suggests maybe so. “That is, perhaps they don’t behave as artifacts do, compelling a particular outcome.”

“Here’s another one: perhaps Warehouses aren’t made of apples, compelling you to call me a cannibal.” She looks down at her snack. “I don’t even like apples all that much, so no loss. Myka gave this one to me. Cannibalism-enabler,” she accuses, and she tosses her semi-eaten apple at Myka.

Myka wishes her reflexes weren’t so good: now her hands are sticky, their damp tackiness taking up space in her head even as Helena turns to her, apparently ready to spar. “I really don’t think you want to pursue this,” Myka tells her.

“Or perhaps I do,” Helena says, with a dangerous glint in her eye.

Claudia seems to have glimpsed the glint and determined that whatever danger it portended outweighed any benefit to watching what might play out. Backing away—as if letting Helena out of her sight would be dangerous in itself—she says, “If an apple was enough to set her off, Myka, you’re on your own.”

Helena watches her go. Then she says to Myka, with no glint and no hint of combativeness, “You seem less than pleased to have that in your hands.”

“It’s kind of mangled,” Myka says. “She doesn’t eat apples very precisely.”

“Are cannibals known for their precision?”

“I have to side with her on this one: I don’t think she and the Warehouse are made of apples.”

Helena smiles. “In all honesty, neither do I. But twitting Claudia is.... I’m sorry, but it’s entertaining.” She’s not wrong, but Myka can’t help frowning a little. “Don’t worry,” Helena says, “that isn’t my primary purpose. Ideally, I’d like to make her think.”

“About the Warehouse?”

“About who she is in relation to the Warehouse. Is, and is becoming.”

Myka finds Helena’s investment in Claudia sweet, but truth be told, a little overwhelming—and if it seems that way to her, Claudia surely finds it several orders of magnitude more so. But maybe the fact that they’re kindred genius spirits creates an easier bridge that Myka can’t sense? “Helping her with that becoming... it seems like a pretty noble goal.”

“Haven’t we established my lack of nobility?” Helena asks, and her increasing ability to speak lightly of that terrible, terrible time is yet another reminder that things are—and are becoming—different now. “There’s a bit of self-interest as well. Or rather, interest that is selfish, with regard to her future. Given that I myself was intended to be Caretaker. Until.”

This revelation levels Myka, who struggles to keep her reaction from showing. You should have known. Helena’s connection to the Warehouse has always seemed so strong... Myka has attributed it to her having simply been there for so long, even as she hated her imprisonment. In inadequate response, she begins, “I think that would have been...” An infinity of ways to finish that sentence, but the first one that comes to mind is “perfect.” But that seems a damaging thing to say, so she starts again, with “I’m glad you...” Now she wants to say “told me,” but that sounds selfish. She settles for a question: “Have you told Claudia?”

That seems to startle Helena. “Heavens no. She has no need to think about that sort of might-have-been.”

“I’m sorry you have to,” Myka says.

“Well. At this moment, I prefer the situation as it stands.” She tilts her head down at Myka. “Or sits.”

A low-grade giddiness that’s been swirling in Myka’s head since Helena invaded the office begins to ramp up its intensity. Years ago, she’d felt a quivery exhilaration begin to overtake her every time she was in Helena’s presence, every time she witnessed Helena being, whether with Myka alone or in any combination with others. She’d resisted it, then, as much as she could, but now there’s no need to fight it. If it’s a threat, it’s to Myka alone.

Helena chooses that moment to turn decidedly unthreatening: she reaches out and briskly plucks the apple from Myka’s grasp. It’s a considerate gesture, one clearly intended to save Myka the trouble of dealing with the mess; she should probably say a generic “Thanks, I appreciate it” in response.

But she can’t. All she can think is that now Helena’s hands are sticky too, that if she raised her own hands and caught Helena’s, now, they would join and hold, sugar-stuck, juice-wet.

She stays still. It’s not time yet. Not yet. (Yet. Yet. Yet.) But every new detail Helena shares is an intimacy, a small weight added to what Myka knows, added to what she wants, tilting the scale an imperceptible bit more toward resolution. Every new detail, that is, helps the resolution resolve...

“Unless you wanted a bite?”

Myka’s eyes rise from the hand that’s now extending the apple toward her to find a lifted eyebrow. A challenge?

Helena lowers the eyebrow and smiles, releasing the tension.

Not quite yet.

END

Note:

I was also thinking about the idea/problem of if somebody’s eating an apple in the Warehouse, they probably can’t smell any apples other than the one they’re eating, and that might offend the building—it might think the eater’s trying to appropriate its approval thunder. Or maybe it would get into a perfume competition with the actual apple, thinking that that apple was being the thunder-stealer, expressing its liking for the person... I was also wondering about varieties: like, does the building personalize the apple smells depending on which one(s) the person it likes tends to favor? Or it just Granny Smiths all the way down? What I’m really asking, I guess, is some variations on “how does the Warehouse deploy its weirdo aromatic ‘voice’?”

[99nzheng]

Can we take a moment to appreciate two lesbian couples Netflix did well?

I’m talking about Trepp x Myka in Altered Carbon Season 2 and Striga and Morana from Castlevania Season 3

Trepp is a bounty Hunter and Myka a former archaeologist. They are established, have a ten ish year old son together, are normal parents.... etc. They love, they have disagreements, care for each others’ wellbeing, and make sacrifices. It is beautiful and sweet.

Striga is a buff, badass, baddie who assumes the warrior role in Carmilla’s sisterhood of vampires that act as a ruling council. Morana is—- I don’t remember what she is. I think she was the one who saw “the present” according to Lenor. (I need to rewatch). Anyways... they obviously care deeply about each other but aren’t so over the top with public displays of emotion that it’s cheesy or cliché. They have normal moments like Morana worrying about Striga not getting enough sleep because she can’t stop thinking about battle strategies. Rather than bully her into coming back to bed, she helps figure out another solution. They have a scene on a balcony or ledge where they reminisce about how they met and were grateful for each other (among other topics). But overall... it felt so natural. They didn’t get all us and them, none of the other characters said boo about it or gave weird looks.

it wasn’t a mad game of cat and mouse chasing and running pulling hair and fighting. It wasn’t an endless charade if dubious flirtation that could be interpreted ten thousand ways. There was no stupid love triangle or drama or another character getting all gushy and going off about how they “saw it all along with their gaydar”. They were treated as every other relationship out there. And I think that is honestly the best approach. The subtle approach where nobody bats an eye. It’s been there for forever, and it will be for forever and it is normal. These couples can do whatever the fuck they want (as it should be). No extra drama necessary.

[viharistenno]

No, not leaving this in the tags because seriously YOUR BRAIN:

#hey I had this idea:#(so yep I'm gonna reblog this again)#okay so - how about Christina was killed by a vampire#and Helena has made it her life's purpose to kill vampires in turn#(maybe even seeking out dark magic to stay alive for longer so that she can hunt and kill more vampires - THAT'S how dedicated she is to he#purpose)#and one day she meets Myka Bering#a vampire so strong and smart that she easily evades Helena's myriad traps and snares#and Helena becomes obsessed with her#and over time realizes that Myka was turned against her will#that she is just as much a victim as any turned vampire forced into immortality and monsterhood#that she struggles with it even as she has bent her considerable intelligence to the task of surviving as a vampire#(in a 'making the best out of a shitty situation' kind of way)#they dance around each other like cat and mouse#and Helena has to confront how much of a monster she herself has become#and maybe at some point they team up - perhaps:#oh get this#perhaps Helena has finally FINALLY found the vampire who killed Christina#but he's too strong for her to kill him all by herself#she tries and gets hurt badly#and Myka 'happens' to be close by and can save her and nurse her back to health#and offers to help Helena#cue the team-up of former enemies against a common foe (what if that boss vampire turned Myka too?!)

via @purlturtle

Bering and Wells AU

↳ Hunter!Helena & Vamp!Myka

[horsegirlimogentemult]

5 tv shows i should watch?

Schitt’s Creek: A ridiculously rich family, the Roses, lose all of their money and everything they own. The only thing they’re allowed to keep is a town that the father bought for his son as a joke twenty years ago, called Schitt’s Creek, and so they have to move there and live in the local motel, and become friends with all the locals.

You’ll want to live in Schitt’s Creek. It’s also got the best gay rep I’ve ever seen in David and Patrick, and the whole town is such a safe place. And it’s hysterical. You haven’t lived till you’ve heard Moira Rose pronouncing words. I can’t even tell you the amount of heart this show has and how much it means to me and so many people. It’s warm and happy and a wonderful place.

12 Monkeys: In 2017, a plague swept through the entire planet. By 2043, humanity is one generation away from extinction. A scientist named Katarina Jones believes that there’s only one cure: making the plague never happen in the first place. A message from the past sets her off on a mission where she sends James Cole, the time-traveler, to 2015 to team up with virologist Dr. Cassie Railly to stop the plague….except that the conspiracy runs far deeper than they ever could have imagined, plunging them into the workings of the Army of the 12 Monkeys, a mysterious figure known only as the Witness, and Primaries who can see time’s secrets, including Jennifer Goines.

I literally cannot stress enough how good 12 Monkeys is. It answers every single question it ever raises, and does it in ways that make you scream at the foreshadowing and want to rewatch immediately. It twists and turns and every single bit of plot is fabulous and the characters are amazing.

The Good Place: Eleanor Shellstrop has died, and she’s in The Good Place! She’s got her house, and her neighbors, and her soulmate! One catch: They’ve got the wrong person. She’s not supposed to be there. Eleanor is, in fact, a terrible person who should be being tortured in The Bad Place right now. Luckily for her, her soulmate Chidi was a professor of ethics and moral philosophy during his life, and he’s agreed to teach her ethics so she can become a good person and earn her spot in the Good Place for real. Which should totally work out without anyone noticing…right?

Okay, I’m sure you’ve seen this one all over tumblr, but like, it’s just so good. The characters, it’s fucking funny, the questions it raises about philosophy, the plot……it’s all incredible. Plus, what other show can you hear the line “Whenever I was on Earth and I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail at it, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.”

Killing Eve: Villanelle is a professional assassin. Eve Polastri is an MI6 agent who brings it upon herself to track down Villanelle. The two become paired an an epic game of cat-and-mouse where they’re both the cat and both the mouse, and they’re mutually obsessed with each other. And falling in love.

Here’s another one you’ve probably heard all about everywhere, but……the thing about Killing Eve is that no matter how good people tell you it is, they’re not doing it justice. It’s better than that. Watch it. I watched the whole first season in a day because I couldn’t stop.

Galavant: It’s the Middle Ages, and Sir Galavant, greatest knight in the kingdom, has a lady love in Madalena–except King Richard kidnaps Madalena to be his bride. It’s Galavant to the rescue! King Richard can offer Madalena great fortune, Galavant says, but only Galavant can offer her great love. Madalena chooses the fame and fortune. A year later, Madalena and Richard have invaded the kingdom of Valencia, and Valencia’s Princess Isabella needs Galavant’s help in getting her kingdom back, and they and Galavant’s squire Sid set off on a hero’s journey accompanied entirely by songs.

It’s a musical! Galavant is so much fun, I can’t even tell you. The world did not deserve Galavant, Galavant was too good for it. It’s absolute absurdist humor, ridiculous songs, and a masterpiece.

The Librarians: The Library only ever has one Librarian, passed down lifetime to lifetime. And it calls Cassandra, Ezekiel, and Jake all as potential candidates–except it turns out the current Librarian, Flynn, is still alive, searching for the lost Library. The Library also called Eve as the new Guardian of the Librarian, and the group of five–along with Library caretaker Jenkins–set off on various adventures around the world, gathering various magical relics.

The Librarians is…..really good. It’s got heart and humor, and magic, and I love history, and god, it’s like the little show that could. Every year everyone expected it to be cancelled, and every year it would get renewed and it felt like magic. I miss it with my whole heart.

Warehouse 13: Based on the ending of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Warehouse 13 is a secret warehouse in North Dakota (as the name suggests, the thirteenth throughout history, having been all over the world) that houses artifacts with powerful abilities–objects that belonged to someone, often someone famous from history, imbued with something relating to their personalities or what they’re famous for. For example, wearing Harriet Tubman’s thimble gives the wearer the ability to disguise themselves as anyone else they wish, Janis Joplin’s backstage pass can transport you to any concert that has ever happened, and Lizzie Borden’s axe makes the person holding it have an uncontrollable urge to kill people they love. Secret Service Agents Myka and Pete are brought on as the new agents of Warehouse 13, alongside caretaker Artie, and later tech genius Claudia as the bunch form a found family and go through some of history’s most dangerous artifacts in the process.

Warehouse 13 meant the entire world to me years ago. I mean, I’m passionate about history and an actual history major, so that part’s fun, and I also adore the way the show is structured and everything. The idea of having the artifacts is really cool, and some of the effects are very clever. I’ve always felt like it was an underrated show that it felt like no one else knew about, and I loved it.

[tabloidtoc]

People, February 10

Cover: Kobe Bryant -- The shocking death of a sports legend along with 13-year-old daughter Gianna “Gigi” 

Page 3: Chatter -- Brad Pitt, Tyra Banks, Taika Waititi, Adam Driver, Irina Shayk on Bradley Cooper, Leslie Jones 

Page 4: 5 Things We’re Talking About This Week -- a social media challenge goes viral, Hershey’s debuts a makeup line, Bong Joon Ho learned swear words from Spike Lee, the Mean Girls musical will be a movie, Bambi is getting a live-action remake 

Page 6: Contents 

Page 8: Grammy Awards -- Billie Eilish’s big night, with brother Finneas 

Page 9: Demi Lovato 

Page 10: Rosalia, Billy Porter, Lil Nas X and Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi 

Page 11: Camila Cabello and her father Alejandro, Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton and Tanya Tucker and Shania Twain and Keith Urban, Chrissy Teigen, A Difficult Grammy Night -- the shocking death of Kobe Bryant and an ousted CEO loomed large 

Page 12: Tyler the Creator, John Legend and Smokey Robinson, Cardi B and Offset, Nick and Joe and Kevin Jonas 

Page 13: Party Time -- Jay-Z and Beyonce, Gary Clark Jr. and his pregnant wife Nicole Trunfio, Heidi Klum and Tom Kaulitz, Aerosmith 

Page 14: StarTracks -- Emma Thompson and Robert Downey Jr. at the London premiere of Dolittle, Olivia Newton-John and Michelle Pfeiffer at a G’Day Usa event in support of the Australian bushfire relief efforts 

Page 15: Drew Barrymore and Minnie Mouse at Disney World, Patrick Dempsey at the 80th Hahnenkamm races in Austria, James Marsden and girlfriend Edei and his kids Mary and William Luca at the Sonic the Hedgehog premiere 

Page 16: Stars at Sundance -- Glenn Close and Alec Baldwin, Kaitlin Olson and Veena Sud and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Eva Longoria and America Ferrera, Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kerry Washington

Page 19: Taylor Swift’s hidden pain 

Page 20: Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial begins 

Page 22: Heart Monitor -- Cara Santana and Jesse Metcalfe messy split, Avril Lavigne and Pete Jonas new couple, Brandon Jenner and pregnant Cayley Stoker surprise wedding, Lena Waithe and Alana Mayo it’s over 

Page 24: Blake Lively -- Family is my everything

Page 27: Channing Tatum and Jessie J back on and going public after split, Catherine and Sean Lowe juggling 3 kids under 4 

Page 28: Molly Ringwald from brat packer to modern mom 

Page 31: Passages, Terry Jones passed away 

Page 33: Stories to Make You Smile -- a kindergartner makes tiny clay koalas to raise money to help real ones -- https://www.instagram.com/littleclaykoalas/

Page 35: People Picks -- Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer 

Page 36: Tommy, The Sinner 

Page 37: The Rhythm Section 

Page 38: The Assistant, Briarpatch, One to Watch -- Party of Five’s Brandon Larracuente, Q&A -- Coyote Peterson 

Page 41: Books -- Q&A with royal etiquette expert Myka Meier 

Page 42: Cover Story -- Kobe Bryant -- a tragic death, a lasting legacy 

Page 50: Diane Keaton became a movie star and her brother’s life was stunted by mental illness and in her new memoir Diane tells the story of her beloved brother Randy 

Page 54: The Bella twins Nikki and Brie are both expecting 

Page 58: Princess Kate’s new project is honoring Holocaust survivors 

Page 60: How Schitt’s Creek -- a little feel-good TV show -- became a global sensation and turned its cast into the toast of Tinseltown 

Page 64: A Jehovah’s Witness cover up -- survivors of sexual abuse inside the religious group speak out in a new documentary part of an investigation they hope will bring offenders to justice 

Page 67: James Taylor opens up about how he overcame personal pain to find his peace through his songs 

Page 70: The deadly coronavirus -- what you need to know 

Page 73: Oscar Insider -- Renee Zellweger, fourth time’s the charm for Brad Pitt? 

Page 74: Cynthia Erivo, double nominee Scarlett Johansson, could Parasite pull a surprise win? 

Page 76: Oscar Ballot

Page 87: Second Look -- Seth Meyers and brother Josh Meyers and Jack McBrayer vs. Kevin and Nick and Joe Jonas 

Page 88: One Last Thing -- Sean Hayes

[sallowhillshq]

it’s been a while since we did a most wanted listing, so i grabbed some of our mun’s most wanted charas for you all!  it’s gonna be a long one cuz i wanted to hit as many as possible.

gomez addams, fester addams, pugsley addams, & enid (addams family / wednesday).  cassie sandsmark, bruce wayne, clark kent, william clayton, zoe ramirez, & oliver queen (dc universe).  disney princesses (disney).  more doctors, missy, ace mcshane, leela, martha jones, & clara oswald (doctor who).   hermione granger, ron weasley, ginny weasley, & luna lovegood (harry potter).  frodo baggins, samwise gamgee, merry & pippin, legolas, glorfindel, & boromir (lord of the rings).   natasha romanoff, sam wilson, clint barton, & kate bishop (marvel).  morgana pendragon & the knights (bbc’s merlin).  any percy jackson characters. imogen, mouse, noa, hanna, & mona (pretty little liars). jace, izzy, & clary (shadowhunters).   henry cheng, jordan hennessy, matthew & declan lynch (the raven cycle).  ebb petty & fiona pitch (simon snow series). all the star trek characters.   leia skywalker, han solo, any clone, & rose tico (star wars).  charlie bradbury & jack kline (supernatural).  scott, allison, kira, malia, theo, liam, & isaac (teen wolf).  daryl dixon, maggie & glenn rhee, & carol (twd).  pete, myka, claudia, & artie (warehouse 13).  elphaba (wicked).

[birdofdawning]

Myka's ensemble (and stride) is crying out for a gunbelt!

I feel that Helena is already manifesting her hoop skirt and proper hat though.

There's an AU, the cool gunhand from Colorado with a ranger's star playing a game of cat-and-mouse with the charming English woman who is ostensibly travelling the railroad to perform her ASTOUNDING FEATS OF SCIENCE AND WONDER to packed houses. And at each encounter you never know who is going to get the better of whom this time.

H.G. Wells & Myka Bering Warehouse 13 (2009–2014)

[michellemouse]

☆Meet Myka Mouse

•info:

She was a Mickey Mouse fangirl

Michelle's frenemy

She works in a dessert shop

Her dream is to be a chef (in fact she is one in House of Mouse)

Her best friends are Lacey and Dixie

She would later have a love relationship with Plucky, Renard/Dorito's frenemy

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

•Outfits:

Casual (normal) Casual (Alt)

Chef (House of Mouse) Pastry chef outfit

Modern Old

•Extra

°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･°❀⋆.ೃ

[supergirlspurgatory]

I am a hoe for Super kidfics

That being said, in honor of father’s day because I have mommy issues, not daddy issues, I’ve decided to make you guys a list of my favorite fics featuring SuperCorp/SuperCat with kids and the occasional baby Supergirl.

SUPERCAT FICS

Best of the Best by supertrashcompator

20 chapters, 30K+ words, completed Rated:M

SuperCat sans the Kryptonian powers. This was the very first Supergirl fic I bookmarked on AO3. Features Kara Danvers as the kickass taekwondo instructor(a retired Olympian), who recently opened a new studio just a short walk away from Cat Grant’s apartment. The kid in this fic is none other than Carter Grant who is a 3-year-old in this AU and totally in love with Kara before Cat is.

Aura by supertrashcompactor

8 chapters, 14K+ words, not complete Rated:G

SuperCat established relationship, features both Carter and a new little bundle of joy. When a Kryptonian pod crashes to Earth, Supergirl brings home a surprise for Cat. Fluff and adorableness ensue. Also, includes some fun nods to Kryptonian culture.

SUPERCORP FICS

The Little Luthor series by swanqueenfic13

10 installments featuring a total of 11 chapters, 52K+ words, Each work is complete, Rated: G-T (Depending on the work)

AU where Kara is a preschool teacher rather than working at Catco, and has yet to come out at Supergirl. Lena has an adorable daughter and has yet to take over L-Corp. Also, features married Sanvers with an adorable daughter Jamie. 

Supergirl in Training by wtfoctagon

13 chapters, 53K+ words, not complete, Rated:T

THIS IS MY FAVORITE FIC of all the fics. 

When Lorelai L. Danvers gets kidnapped from the future by Lillian Luthor, she does the only logical thing she can think of. She tracks down her mom Lena Luthor. In the future, Lena and Kara have married and had a child. This is super beautifully written. It’s got fluff and it’s got angst. The entire time you are rooting for everybody. I don’t much want Lorelai to go back to the future, but I know she has to. IF YOU ARE NOT READING THIS, YOU SHOULD BE!!!!

Also, check out: Kids Will Be Kids by wtfoctogon

It’s a partner fic to go with Supergirl in training. It is also incomplete but is Lorelai and some other special superkids in the future where they belong.

The Fifth Wall by Black_Tea_and_Bones

8 chapters, 23K+ words, not complete, Rated:M

A fifth dimension break of some sort, likely an Imp, decides to toss Kara and Lena’s lives into chaos. After going to bed in different apartments on differents sides of town, the duo wake up, naked, in bed, together, in a completely new apartment. Only to be even more confused when they hear a child screaming for its mother from another room. Said child turns out to be theirs and according to all of the pictures in what appears to be their apartment, they are married. Just add in that everyone including J’onn and Alex believes the two are married (a spell that is broken more easily for some than others). As the two try to figure out what is causing the changes, what they assume is an imp causes more and more chaos. Not much is clear, but one thing sure is, the Imp really wants Kara and Lena to live happily together. A fantastic, cute fic. If you aren’t rooting for these two the whole time, I don’t know what you’re doing here.

The Lexington Chronicles by JediFighterPilot2727

12 chapters, 19K+ words, not complete, Rated:T

What started a one-shot for the author’s SuperCorp one-shot compilation series, turned into a multi-chapter fic. Most chapters are pretty stand alone. They revolve around the story of a little girl, Lexington, that Lena and Kara adopt from an orphanage. It is fluffy and sweet and the little girl is witty. Doesn’t just focus on her being young, some chapters focus on a college age Lexington. I highly recommend this.

you and me by bs13

7 chapters, 40K+ words, not complete Rated:T

This is an AU fic. Kara is not Kryptonian but still really amazing. After having a short affair with Cat Grant’s son, Adam Foster, Kara finds herself pregnant. The story picks up as the child is being born. This is a fix-it(ish) fic, the infant is ‘Mike’ a Mon-el replacement. Kara move into one of Cat Grant’s apartments in National City, to live with Adam who she is not with, just wants to have him near for his son. After taking the baby home, a stranger comes into her apartment, the stranger is none other than Lena Luthor. They start a friendship and are slowly falling in love. This is a hardcore slow burn, but it burns SOOOO good. 

Child of Our Golden Sun by LePetitCroissant

13 chapters, 35K+ words, not complete/chapters are standalone one-shots Rated:G

This is a future fic, where Lena and Kara are married and have had a son (Sawyer), eventually a set of twins are added into the picture. It is super adorable and they are such a great little family. There are also snippets including Alex and Maggie. Every chapter ends happy, and the author is AMAZING!!!!

listen closely and the stars will sing by celaenos

10 chapters, 84K+ words, not complete (projected for 14 chapters) Rated:T

Rather than Mon-El the Prince of Daxam being in the pod at the beginning of season 2, this fic features Mon-El Princess of Daxam, a sweet little girl that Kara takes in to raise. Taking on the name, Myka Danvers, the little girl is adorable and has an instant connecting with on Miss Lena Luthor. It doesn’t take long for Kara to reveal that both her and Myka are aliens, but it does take a little bit of time for Kara and Lena to acknowledge their feelings for one another. Also, features awesome Aunt!Alex and her partner in crime Maggie the coolest Sawyer falling in love.

Double the Trouble, and Twice the Fun by awkward_alien

4 chapters, 5K+ words, not complete (This is a super new fic), Rated:G

After he is arrested and put away for the rest of his life, Lex Luthor’s little sister Lena is left to take on the most daunting task of all: Motherhood. It’s what’s been keeping her from pursuing a relationship with everyone’s favorite Kryptonian, mostly because her new role is kept under wraps. This is just starting out, and it is ADORABLE!

Shadows of the Past by witchofink

9 chapters, 46K+ words, not complete, Rated:M

Kara Danvers AKA Supergirl has been keeping a secret for 6 years, the only people who know the truth as Clark Kent AKA Kal-El who helped her figure things out and Astra In-Ze, who was willing to trade J’onn’s safety for Kara’s deepest secret. When that secret runaway to be with her mom, Kara must figure out how to balance being Supergirl, a cub-reporter, and parenthood, not to mention trying to figure out her relationship with Lena. Features super-douche Mon-El, who gets kicked to the curb pretty dang quick. Supergood!

Experiment 13 by Rhino (Rhino Mouse)

7 Chapters, 12K+ words, not complete but slated to finish at chapter 8, Rated:T

Supergirl and Superman find an experiment in one of Lex’s old labs, something that Superman wants nothing to do with. The experiment is a little boy that is a Luthor/Super hybrid, a clone that is half Lex half Kal-el/Clark. Rather than let the country take him and potentially have him destroyed because no one has decided if a clone has basic human rights, Kara wraps him in her cape and flys him to a National City children’s hospital when Lena meets her and takes the steps to adopt the boy as she is his closest human relative. Fluff ensues that finds Co-Moms Kara and Lena who fall in love. 

BABY/TODDLE KARA FICS

The Littlest Supergirl by swanqueenfic13

9 chapters, 20K+ words, complete Rated:T

No relationship pairings in this one. Supergirl gets hit by purple Kryptonite which in this fic causes Supergirl to be transformed into a toddler. Features lots and lots of sickeningly sweet fluff, Cat and Alex take turns babysitting the newest little bundle, also a little bit of everyone’s favorite sass-master, Lucy Lane.

Baby Kara: The Kryptonian Menace by BeaMoraes and TowandaBRA

7 chapters, 15K+ words, not complete, Rated:G

After the DEO recovers a Kryptonian device, Kara messes with it and is turned into a much younger self, in fact, a 9-month-old baby version of herself. This is a Sanvers fic and I LOVE IT! It is super fluffy and super adorable. Also, it features most of the DEO squad.

It Takes a Villiage by swanqueenfic13

5 chapters, 13K+ words, not complete, Rated:G

After going off earth/dimension for yet another mission, Kara is returned via being dumped on Alex’s living room floor in the middle of the night. The catch? The Supergirl that is returned is not the one that left, instead, it is a toddler version of the Kryptonian, who is sad and confused. The icing on the cake is that Maggie is super down to handle a toddler. Alex on the other hand? Not so much. Add in Lena Luthor coming to search for definitely not her girlfriend and stumbling upon a tiny blonde Supergirl, who is definitely attached to the L-Corp CEO. 

[taikoturtle]

Bering and Wells Appreciation Week 2022 - Day 4: AU

HG Wells is an illusive thief who always seems to be one step ahead of Agent Myka Bering and though this game of cat and mouse proves to be endlessly frustrating for the ace detective, she can’t help but find herself enjoying the thrill of the chase.

[beyondthesunrise]

Here's my long baby, always looking out the window. My little mouse named Myka

[softkatekane-blog]

Rules: Answer the questions and tag who you want to get to know better! Tagged by: @thisisbitti (Thanks for tagging me!! Sorry it took so long, I was visiting a friend who's dad just happens to have tumblr blocked) 🌱 Are you named after someone? No, but the story I've always heard about how I got my name was my parents were joking around with first and last names that, when put together make another word or reference to something, and one of the ones they came up with was Hannah Bull Lector (😂) and they ended up naming me Hannah so. 🌱 When was the last time you cried? I feel like I should know the answer to this since I cry a lot (lol) but less than a week ago. 🌱 Do you like your handwriting? Depends on the day. It's alright. 🌱 Do you have kids? Nope! 🌱 If you were a different person, would you be friends with you?
Yeah, probably. I don't do socialization well though and I have trouble holding conversations so idk how long that would last 😂 but in general I really adore people and I'd probably like me more if I wasn't me, y'know? (I like myself a lot more than I used to though ☺️) 🌱 Do you use sarcasm? Sometimes. Depends on who I'm with. 🌱 Do you still have your tonsils?
Yes. 🌱 Would you bungee jump?
UH NEVER ?? You'd catch me jumping out of a plane before I'd bungee jump tbh (preferably won't be doing either though) 🌱 What’s your favourite cereal?
I don't eat cereal too often?? Honestly, I'm super picky and unless something is part of my current samefoods it's as if I've never liked it in my life 🙈 ~ Just Autistic Things ~ 🌱 Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
Nope! 🌱 Do you think you’re a strong person?
Questionable. I normally underestimate all the stuff I've been through, though. 🌱 What’s your favourite ice cream?
Cookie dough 🍪🍦 🌱 What’s the first thing you notice about someone?
I'm honestly too focused on not fucking up social interactions for first impressions to register 🙃 🌱 What’s your favourite physical thing about yourself?
My eyes, probably 🌱 What colour trousers and shoes are you wearing right now?
I'm wearing black shorts and laying in my bed soooo no shoes 🌱 What are you listening to right now? A 151 song playlist I made for my trip. It has the most obscure collection of songs, from literally every "phase" I've gone through 🙈 🌱 If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?
Red 🌱 Favourite smell?
Probably campfires 🔥 🌱 Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Ha, me? On the phone? (It was the creditcard place, trying to activate my card, I cried) 🌱 Favourite sport to watch?
I used to be really into hockey, but not so much anymore 🌱 Hair colour?
Brown 🌱 Eye colour? Brown 🌱 Do you wear contacts?
Not often 🌱 Favourite food?
Not really a food, but catch me choosing Slurpees over any other food-type treat 🌱 Scary movies or comedy?
Comedy (preferably gay ?? Because I'm a Cheerleader yes pls) 🌱 Last movie you watched?
Power Rangers 👊🏽💥 🌱 What colour shirt are you wearing?
White 🌱 Summer or Winter?
Winter used to be my favorite season?? But, tbh neither ?? (Fall pls) 🌱 Hugs or kisses
Hugs!!!! Hugs r my favorite and they're also a gr8 pressure stim 🌱 Book you’re currently reading?
I haven't read a book-book in a really long time, just comics. I started the original Birds of Prey vol 1 before I left but never finished it 🌱 Who do you miss right now? My little cousins Lynden and Myka 🌱 What’s on your mouse pad?
Don't have one 💁🏼 🌱 What’s the last tv program you watched?
Big Brother (USA), my parents just got home from their vacation and had to catch up on episodes 🌱 What is the best sound?
La Vie Boheme A & B, Rent Motion Picture Soundtrack (2005) 🌱 Rolling Stones or The Beatles?
I've never really listened to either 🌱 What’s the furthest you’ve ever travelled?
Probably Puerto Vallarta ?? 🌱 Do you have a special talent? Does being impossibly bad in social situations count? 🌱 Where were you born? Canada 🇨🇦 Tagging: @soft-jason-todd @batwlwoman @jedikatherinekane @kryptoehoe @kate-kaned @katesgf @perpetuallycoldbutgettingwarmer

[apparitionism]

Sugar 2

Aaaaand now I’d like to wish @baeringandwells a very happy New Year! Tracy Bering, longing, and fluff: in the first part of this sweet tale, those boxes were all checked, and here in part two, they are still check, check, and checkity-check-plus-check. This concluding part got a little long... what a surprise, right? You know that once these loons get to yammering, I’m loath (or for those of you across the pond, loth) to shut them up. So it’s lengthy. And lordy is it sweet. I mean, I think so; you might not... check your pancreatic function, anyhow, just to be safe. (P.S.: ENORMOUS thanks to @kla1991 for running the holiday show this year!) (P.P.S. To anon: I do indeed have an AO3 account. I’m apparitionism there, too.) (P.P.P.S. To ants-in-Finland anon: I’m laughing, but also, thank you. Sincerely.)

Sugar 2

An enormous fir tree indeed dominated the space into which Myka and the others had been transported, or which had replaced their normal surroundings, or whatever kind of non-natural thing had happened to turn a vaguely normal Christmas Eve into... no. No, no, no.

But then Myka saw Helena. She wore a uniform of some kind, a swallowtail red coat featuring gold buttons and braid and epaulets, while on her head perched a tall black-and-gold top hat/crown thing. Her face displayed unnaturally heavy makeup that elongated her jaw in a way that seemed designed to suggest...

“No, no, no,” Myka said aloud, but she was afraid it could no longer be denied. “Somebody tell me this isn’t what it looks like.”

“What does it look like?” Helena asked. “A Christmas scene, orchestrally accompanied, in which one finds dancing toys, including toy soldiers, and... mice? And you seem to be wearing a nightgown. Charming, but not generally how I picture your sleepwear. Not that I have pictured it. Of course not. There would be no circumstance in which—” She cleared her throat. “In any case, as for myself...” She looked down at her arms, at the gold-buttoned front of her coat. Raised her hands to her head and touched her hat. “Fascinating.”

“That’s one word for it,” Pete said.

Claudia said, “I wouldn’t be pointing fingers, man. What’s with the ears and the tail?”

That made Pete whip his head around to regard his rear end, to which a tail seemed to have been tied; his ears, too, sported attachments that made them look bigger. More animal.

“Best guess,” Myka said, “given that there’s also a crown? He’s the Mouse King.”

Pete reached up, took off his crown, and held it up in front of them all. “Lookit that! Royalty! Good for me! But how do you know I’m a mouse?”

“Because,” Myka said, and she briefly entertained the idea that if she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true.. but she of all people knew that never worked. She sighed and gave up: “Helena’s the Nutcracker.”

Pete snickered. “Appropriate.”

“You should be happy that I am not in actuality such an implement,” Helena said, “given the effectivity I believe I mentioned earlier. You should also be happy that you do not have seven heads.”

Pete had nodded enthusiastically at her first statement, but in response to the second, he cocked his head in question. “Kind of a random thing to put on my ‘thrilled-about’ list.”

“The Mouse King has seven heads in the Hoffmann,” Helena informed him. “I concede that would be a difficult effect to achieve in a ballet, which I presume, given the music and the abject horror on Myka’s face, this is.” She turned to Myka and said, “My most sincere condolences.”

Claudia said, “Waitaminute. Who am I supposed to be?” She fluttered the edges of the cape that draped her shoulders.

“I think you’re Drosselmeyer,” Myka told her. “He’s Clara’s—or, I guess my—godfather. He’s the one who made all the dancing toys, and the Nutcracker too, as Clara’s Christmas present. He’s a little creepy.”

“Goals. What about Tracy? Nothing’s different about her outfit.”

Tracy stood at the side of the... was it a stage? The side of the space, whatever it was, and she said, with a hint of a pout, “No costume? I’ve got to be somebody who isn’t in the ballet.” She perked up. “Maybe I’m Balanchine! Or Tchaikovsky!” But then she pouted again. “Probably just the narrator, though. Helps the kids in the audience follow the story... because a lot of them want to, unlike Myka, who was always too busy being traumatized.”

No kidding I was traumatized, Myka thought, and then: Tracy. Oh god. “Okay,” she began, but she could barely speak; her breathing thinned and shallowed and she thought she might pass out, because what explanation would she give for this? “Tracy,” she tried, “this is a really vivid dream you’re having. You fell asleep, and that is what this is. Okay? That’s all this is.”

Tracy shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you say. But I’m going to assume that that’s about as true as your unconvincing story of how a tornado destroyed my nursery.”

Pete said, “But also, your pregnancy hormones made you not remember the tornado. That was an important part of the unconvincing story.”

“Right,” Tracy said, poker-faced. “I’m just saying that if this were actually a dream, I don’t think any of you would care so much about trying to figure anything out. Because I, as the one having the dream, would already know.”

Helena laughed. “Tracy, I find you to be not unlike your sister, in some rather salient respects.”

Myka said, and as she spoke she realized Tracy was saying the exact same thing with the exact same intonation, “Is that good or bad?”

Helena pronounced, “And upon this evidence, my lord, I rest my case.” Said to a presumably nonexistent judge, but Myka wasn’t feeling entirely safe about any presumptions at this point.

“The Case of the Similar Siblings,” Claudia offered.

“Hey, why are we never in an episode of Perry Mason? That’s a great show,” Pete said.

Clearly, being rodent royalty did nothing to tamp down his ability to be annoying. “What a great idea, Pete,” Myka fake-enthused. “Start throwing out suggestions of new ways to crazy up our lives. I mean, why not ask why we’re never on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick?”

“Because I don’t want to be on the Pequod trying to kill Moby-Dick. You wouldn’t want it either. You wrote a check to some ‘save the whales’ group two weeks ago; we all saw you do it.”

“My point was that nobody wants to be in anything.”

“That’s so untrue. This time of year, I’d kill to be in Die Hard. Besides, you were pretty happy to be in that detective-noir-thingy, weren’t you? Or maybe you changed your mind, because it turned out not to be a love story after all?”

He’d moved closer, practically in her face. Why was he being so confrontational? For that matter, why was she herself being so confrontational instead of trying to figure out how to get them all out of this?

Myka opened her mouth to ask, but Helena preempted her with, “I have a different question, one that may be slightly more pertinent: am I indeed expected to lead the dancing soldiers into battle against the dancing mice? The troops seem to be looking to me for choreographical guidance.” It was true; small soldiers shuffled their tiny toy feet as they turned hopeful little faces toward their Nutcracker commander. Helena spread her palms helplessly at them, then looked to Myka and Tracy.

Tracy said, “I don’t know how ‘my’ dream is supposed to work. I’m guessing that you people are way more experienced with things like this, and tornadoes. But it does seem like a good idea to follow the plot, doesn’t it?”

“Very well,” Helena said. “Be advised, however: I cannot dance.” She proceeded to prove that. Myka wasn’t sure how she felt about dancing being the one thing Helena Wells wasn’t able to do with preternatural skill... Helena seemed to be performing some unholy cross between hopscotch and a waltz, though the hopping was mostly a product of her attempts to avoid stepping on the soldiers and mice, none of whom stayed in formation. That in turn, of course, was the fault of their respective leaders, and Myka hadn’t expected to discover, not on Christmas Eve, that neither Helena nor Pete, who now marched with the mice, was capable of guiding an army of tiny creatures in terpsichorean combat. You really did learn something new, or several somethings new, every day.

Claudia had her arms crossed, watching the mayhem. “I have a really boring part in this show,” she announced.

Myka said, “I’m wearing a nightgown.”

“I give,” Claudia said. “Your part’s worse.” Her expression changed from grumpy to thoughtful. “I really feel like this is not what was supposed to happen. Or maybe it was, but I wonder why so trippy?”

“Supposed to happen? You did this?”

“I didn’t do this. At least, I didn’t think this was what I was doing.”

Myka could not imagine that a more frustrating group of people existed. Anywhere. “Not. For. Personal. Gain. Why aren’t we all required to have that tattooed somewhere visible?”

“It isn’t for personal gain! It’s for general Warehousical gain! Well, maybe a little bit of personal gain, just as a byproduct, but I swear to you, artifact usage is not involved here.”

Pete shouted, from the battlefield, “But why would you do anything at Christmas? You know how Christmas makes the Warehouse—whoops, hey Tracy, I mean ‘some storage facility’—lose its mind.”

“The thing I did, I didn’t do it at Christmas,” Claudia said. “And I didn’t even really do it. Plus there wasn’t really a single ‘it’ that was done. By me or by anybody—I mean, anything—else.”

Tracy said, “I’m sorry to interrupt all this clearly very important dream exposition, but Pete, you need to attack Helena.”

“I what now?”

“You’re the Mouse King,” Tracy told him. “You fight the Nutcracker, and you do it now, given the music.”

He brandished the sword he was holding. “Okay by me. H.G., you game?”

“I... suppose? En garde?”

Under other circumstances, Myka would have found Helena’s puzzled regard of her sword adorable. As it was, though, she was holding the blade completely wrong, so Myka went to her and moved her arm into a slightly more appropriate position. She asked Tracy, “Why couldn’t I be one of the ones with a weapon? I’m the only one who can actually fence.”

Tracy said, “You sort of do have a weapon, and you get to use it, but you have to let go of Helena first.” Myka dropped her guilty hands. Tracy went on, “Now you hit Pete with your shoe. To distract him.”

“Well, it’s no epée, but: with pleasure.” She took off her shoe—a dainty little ballet slipper that she probably couldn’t have taken a decent fencing stance in anyway—and whacked him over the head.

“That all you got?” Pete taunted, but now he seemed more silly than annoying.

“Now, Helena, the sword!” Tracy urged.

Helena squinted at the sword again. “I would say ‘with pleasure’ as well, but I don’t actually want to hurt him. Today.”

“We’ll do the thing where you ‘stab’ between my arm and my body,” Pete suggested, “and then I can finally do the death scene that wins me the Oscar.”

“Dance it. You have to dance it,” Tracy said.

Pete looked even more excited. “Dance it? Yes ma’am. You can all thank me later for the colossal moves I’m about to bust. Best Christmas present you’ll ever get.”

The moves Pete busted were “dance moves” under only the broadest definition of the phrase, in that he was moving, and the music continued to play. He spun; he shimmied; he sashayed; he struck poses. When he started in with what Myka was pretty sure was intended to be breakdancing, Claudia groaned, “My eyes. My sad, sorry eyes.”

Helena remarked, “The Nutcracker, having done this murderous deed, would feel such remorse that he, or rather I, would naturally turn his, or rather my, eyes away. Don’t you think?”

“Coward,” Myka said. “Look on his Works, ye Mighty, and despair. I know I am.”

“You don’t appreciate anything old school,” Pete grunted out, while attempting to hop on one hand. He fell over with a crash.

“She appreciates everything old school,” Tracy corrected him.

Myka wanted to say, “Definitely one thing—one person—who is very old school.” That one person who was very old school had accepted Myka’s challenge to keep watching Pete, and Myka let herself spend a moment enjoying Helena’s face as she worked to hold back what had to be either nausea or laughter. At last Helena gave up, and once she had allowed herself several low chuckles, she caught Myka’s eye and said, “He’d have been perfectly justified to laugh at me as well. And he does at least have great enthusiasm.” Myka had to agree: Pete did always commit. No matter what...

His commitment ended with him stretched out on the “stage,” twitching to show that the last of his mousy life, or maybe the horrified spirit of Terpsichore, was leaving his body.

Tracy said, “Pete, that’s enough. Next step: Myka and Helena, get in that bed over there.”

“Tracy!” Myka yelped

“Don’t be a prude. It’s in the ballet.”

Myka said, “I’m not being a prude.” And she wasn’t, not a prude, just a person who couldn’t stand the thought of getting something she wanted but not really getting it...

“You’re always being a prude,” Tracy said. “Get in the bed. It’s totally innocent: Clara’s just sleeping with the Nutcracker.”

Pete said, “That doesn’t sound innocent. That sounds like this ballet’s about to get all—”

“Pete!” Tracy interrupted. “You are not helping.”

Claudia remarked, “It’s weird how often people named Bering say that.”

Myka heard them, but hearing was her least important sense right then; far more worthy of her attention were sight and smell and touch—and taste, she wanted that too, but she couldn’t be that bold. She settled for resting her head on Helena’s epauletted shoulder, feeling the warmth of her skin through the stiff-collared neck of the coat. She sighed.

She might have imagined it, but she thought she felt Helena’s chest rise, fall; heard a heavy exhalation: was Helena sighing too? And then she didn’t care, for a red-sleeved arm found its way around her shoulders.

“In bed with you.” The words left Myka’s mouth of their own accord.

****

“In bed with you,” Helena breathed in response to Myka’s words.

Helena closed her eyes, let the strange, wonderful sensation of bodily peace have its way with her. Oh, Myka, don’t move; don’t ever, ever move, she thought, but then: Or, better, move only to be closer to me; move only to put your mouth on mine... she felt such thoughts might become speech, might already have become speech, here in this unreal realm...

Then, though, she had a sensation of awakening... but Myka’s head was still on her shoulder... and Helena knew, then, that that sensation was perfect. The caress of her hair, the warmth of her breath. If Helena should turn her head, and if doing so should join their lips, how surprised Myka might be—but how soft her mouth. How soft and warm and wanted... and if Helena were very lucky, how wanting. Because each moment of this dream, no matter its dreamer, was leading Helena to stronger hope. If her eyes could remain closed, if she could continue holding Myka to her, perhaps she could maintain that hope—

“I can’t see,” she heard Pete complain. “Why’d it get dark?”

Tracy said, “First act curtain.”

“What happens next?” Claudia asked.

“Myka’s favorite part,” Tracy said, and in her voice was a note that reminded Helena greatly of Myka, but only at her most playful...

“Oh god,” Myka said, removing herself from Helena’s embrace, and she sounded not at all playful, “it’s the—”

“Land of Sweets!” Tracy crowed. “Is it wrong of me to be really entertained by this?”

“It’s your dream. Knock yourself out,” Myka said. She let herself fall back against Helena’s shoulder, and Helena rejoiced. Then, tragically, Myka sat up. At that point, Helena opened her eyes, just in time to see Myka stand up.

Helena reluctantly followed suit... and thus they were no longer in bed together.

“I’m in a different outfit,” Myka said.

“So you are,” Helena said, for Myka was indeed wearing not the modest, girlish nightgown of the previous act, but a more traditional ballet costume, with a silvery, bejeweled bodice and a skirt of pale pink gauze. Then Helena realized: “So am I.” Hers, too, was more obviously ballet-suitable: a rather princely doublet and breeches, all white.

“I sort of miss the uniform. You looked dashing,” Myka said.

“Do you think so?”

“I haven’t ever seen you in a uniform before. Also the hat. It really worked for you.” She turned her eyes away, as if sudden self-consciousness were the price of such statements of appreciation.

That made Helena, in turn, bold. “I shall never again go hatless,” she said, but instead of declaring it, she whispered it. Into Myka’s ear, which pinked.

Tracy said, “Interesting. Doubling the parts.” They all, Helena included, looked at her in question, and she went on, “Small companies sometimes do that.”

“I guess we’re a pretty small company,” Claudia said.

Tracy crossed her arms and regarded the new setting. “Although I’m not sure why we need anybody playing any parts, here in this dream I’m having, if mice and toy soldiers and cookies actually can dance. Those are real pieces of chocolate jumping around to the Spanish Dance, aren’t they? Maybe you crazy people are right; maybe this is a dream.”

“It. Is. A. Nightmare,” Myka said, and Helena did believe that from Myka’s perspective, that was absolutely true: candies of many sorts danced before them—some seemed a bit disappointed at the less-than-enthusiastic response they were receiving from the small Warehouse “company”—and sugar saturated the air, from which the occasional powdery granule seemed to spontaneously precipitate. Pete stuck his tongue out in an attempt to catch some as the rest of them continued to regard the dancing confections.

Claudia said, “Dream, nightmare; I think it’s none of the above. I think we’ve been put on hold, in some cosmic sense. I have never been so bored. It’s all just dancy-dance-dance.”

“Now, now.” Helena admonished. “Even if you have no appreciation for Tchaikovsky, consider the poor marzipan’s feelings.”

Pete gave up trying to catch sugar in his mouth. He complained, “What about my feelings? All I feel is hungry. Particularly since my super-aerobic dance of death. I should make workout videos.”

“I should get an insulin shot,” Myka said.

Claudia nodded. “No lie. I feel like I’ve got sugar in my hair. Gross. Here’s hoping maple syrup shampoo never becomes a thing.”

Myka said, to her sister, “See, Claudia understands.”

Tracy was listening to the music, her head cocked. “Myka, I really hate to break this to you, but...”

“But what?” Myka asked, in the tone of one who feared that Tracy did not in fact hate the news she was about to break.

And indeed, Tracy began to laugh. “You, sister of mine, are the Sugarplum Fairy. Merry Christmas, sweetie.”

Myka began muttering, “I think you really are dreaming, and I think it’s some kind of revenge fantasy thing where you get back at me for that time I hid your toe shoes, which I apologized for, twenty-five years ago, and yet here you are, still holding it over my—”

“But in what might come as positive news,” Tracy said, in a conciliatory tone, “Helena seems to be your Cavalier.”

“That’s awesome news!” Claudia enthused. “Probably.”

“They’re going to dance a pas de deux here in a bit,” Tracy told her.

“Even. Awesomer. Again, probably. One question: is it, you know, all romantical?”

Tracy nodded. “Basically the only really romantic thing in the show.”

“Sparkly.” Claudia looked to the heavens and pressed her hands together, as if in prayer.

Helena said, “I myself am not finding fault with the situation. But is there some reason you are having such an excessively positive reaction?”

Claudia pointed her pressed hands at Helena. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve sussed out what’s happening.”

“You have determined that your function is Riemann-integrable,” Helena tried.

Tracy remarked, “And here I thought it was me, having a dream. A revenge dream.”

“It is,” Myka said, with no cheer. “And in your dream, Claudia has sussed out what’s happening and Helena’s doing a callback to something that wasn’t funny the first time. And now everybody can wake up so I can get out of this Sugarplum outfit and brush my teeth.”

“I don’t think we can wake up yet,” Claudia said. “Because here’s how I think we get out of this: you dance that dance that’s the only romantic thing in the show. And you mean it.”

“What do you mean, ‘mean it’?” Myka asked.

“What do you think ‘mean it’ means? It means mean it!”

Mean it, Helena thought, and she said, “Ah. Ha. Really?” She fought to keep her face from revealing her eagerness for that romantic dance—she would mean it; she could not help but mean it; and the extent to which she would mean it would be so readily apparent—

“H.G., you look like you’re gonna throw up,” Pete announced. “And hey, so does Myka.”

Helena noted that Myka’s face did seem to be fighting with itself, much as Helena’s own must... and she should not hope it might be for the same reason, but she did hope it all the same...

Tracy said, “That is not what Myka looks like when she’s about to throw up.”

“It’s what Myka looks like when...?” Claudia prompted.

“When it’s Christmas morning and she’s unreasonably terrified that she might get what she wants. She’s good with anticipation. Terrible with actual attainment.”

“Tracy, you should do it,” Myka said. She looked down at her body, touched the gossamer skirt. “I can’t dance. You can dance, and I can’t.”

Helena regarded that hand, resting on that skirt: it was shaking. She wanted to take it, raise it to her mouth, and kiss it. Instead, she said, “Perhaps in a dream you can.”

“But what if I can’t? What if it’s important to be able to?”

Helena tried to keep her tone light. “If that is the case, Pete and I have doomed us.”

“I don’t want to be doomed at all,” Myka said, and her voice gathered strength as she went on, “but in particular, I don’t want to be doomed by doing a dance about sugar in a ballet version of a fairy tale I don’t even like. That’s literally adding insult to injury.”

“I think you’d be doing a dance as sugar,” Tracy told her.

“Indignity to insult to injury. I really think you should do it instead.”

“There is no production of this ballet in which the narrator dances the pas de deux,” said Tracy. She could sound quite starchy when she wished to... Helena imagined that Myka must historically have responded rather poorly to that. But then Tracy’s voice softened. “Besides. There’s no reason for me to dance with Helena.”

“There’s no reason for me to either!”

“Isn’t there?” Tracy asked, and the starch was back.

“There shouldn’t be!” Now Myka’s eyes were wide, and her body seemed poised on the edge of movement, as if she might take off running, just to get away.

If only we could have stayed in bed together, Helena thought. Then she might have been able to maintain a belief that that was what they both wanted, that it was not anything from which Myka felt she needed to escape. “Perhaps there should be such a reason; perhaps there should not,” she said, then looked to Claudia. “I may be mistaken, but I believe it is time for you to make some statements that are about what they are about.”

Claudia swallowed, and possibly she was the one experiencing nausea now. “Are you sure?”

“As mentioned, I may be mistaken. So of course not,” Helena said.

“Good point.” Claudia sighed. “Okay, see, one of the things that the Caretaker’s supposed to, uh, do, which I personally did not know, prior to, you know, Caretaker Bootcamp, is to make sure that the agents... you know.” She fluttered her fingers.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, and Helena was certain that for once, he was speaking for them all.

“You know,” Claudia insisted. “Make sure they... get along. In the ways that would be best for them to... get along. But the thing about Mrs. F is, she kind of had... let’s say, some old-fashioned ideas. About who would. Or should. In what ways. And she and the... storage facility, they spent a lot of time and energy engineering... an outcome. But that was a major oops, because general wrongness. So anyhow, after some conversations about what’s what, which let me tell you I never expected to have to be the one explaining, some things got... put back. But then obviously there was, you know, another thing that needed to be addressed. So here we are.”

Myka shook her head. “That was... incomprehensible.”

Claudia shrugged. “So much for subtlety. Mrs. F thought you and Pete, right? And so she and the storage facility set up dominoes to maneuver that into happening. But obviously, big no on that, so we fixed it. But just as obviously, another... uh. Situation. Needed to. Let’s say develop? And that was my job.”

“You’ve been trying to get Myka and H.G. together,” Pete said.

“Right.”

But why take such a long way round?, Helena wondered. She did not have to ask aloud, however, for Pete saved her the trouble. He scratched his head in puzzlement and said, “In the weirdest way possible? Was that part of the bootcamp? ‘Whatever you do, do it weird’?”

Waving her hands at him, Claudia shouted, “If the whole thing happened to be entirely up to me, I’d just hang some mistletoe and say ‘Now smooch!’ Actually I wouldn’t even bother with the mistletoe, because why wait? But I’m pretty sure you know just as well as I do, bootcamp aside, that if it’s the storage facility running the show, it’s going to be a lot more complicated than just turn around three times and spit. Also I might not have full control of the dominoes yet, okay? Do you have any idea the kind of inbox situation I’m dealing with here?” Her gestures had escalated in intensity throughout this recitation, leaving her panting as she finished.

“But what if this is wrong,” Myka said, and Helena ached to think that she did believe it to be wrong. “It was wrong with Pete; I knew it was wrong.”

Claudia said, “I told you, Mrs. F blew that one. It was wrong.”

That did nothing to lessen Myka’s evident despair. Helena could not stand to let her think that Helena herself harbored any reservations, regardless, so she said, “I don’t want anyone, least of all myself, forced into anything. Having already been placed into many circumstances not of my choosing. But—”

“See?” Myka said.

“But I don’t care. I do want you.”

“And I want you, but—”

“You do?” Helena could scarce believe her ears; if that were true, then why the despair?

“Of course I do. Wait—you want me?”

“Of course I do.” She had never said anything more true.

“But what if this isn’t even what we want? What if it’s just what the Warehouse wants us to want?”

“I could not possibly care less,” Helena said, and she meant it. “What I do care about are the fascinating ways in which articulating the words ‘what’ and ‘want’ make your mouth move.”

“Don’t charm me. I don’t know what to do when you charm me. And I told you, I can’t dance. I can’t.”

Helena said, “Then don’t think of it as dancing. Tracy, tell us what narrative purpose this interlude serves in this ballet.”

“The Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier... it’s generally thought of as a way of modeling romance for the young Clara, or if the same ballerina’s dancing both parts, letting her experience romance in its most perfect form. An ideal representation.”

Helena turned to Myka. She said, as gently as she could, “Providing an ideal representation of romance—that, we can do. Can’t we?”

Myka didn’t immediately answer.

And now Helena did not intend to sound desperate, but she knew she would... “Please say yes. I don’t care about the Warehouse and what it does or doesn’t want. Please say yes.”

Myka did not say yes. But she did take a step toward Helena, and Helena’s heart leapt. But then: “I don’t know what to do,” Myka said.

“You might swoon for me,” Helena suggested lightly.

“I’m not much of a swooner,” Myka said back, not quite as lightly.

“It’s true that your spine and shoulders are somewhat rigid.” Helena put her hands on those rigid shoulders, as if to test them. But instead she let her warm hands rest on Myka’s nearly bare, yet incongruously warm, skin.

Myka gave a small shrug to her shoulders, and Helena tensed; did Myka want to shake her hands away? But Myka said, “Then again you could swoon for me.” And she moved her own hands to Helena’s waist, seemingly to support her, should her body indeed collapse.

“I fear it would seem overly theatrical,” Helena said, as a tease.

Myka smiled. “We’re in the middle of a fake Warehouse-contrived ballet, and you’re worried about seeming overly theatrical.”

This smile was one more of play than of joy, but Helena found it transporting all the same. She leaned close to Myka, so close, such that she was once again speaking directly into her ear. “What about this,” she said. “I want to kiss down and up again the length of that straight, strong spine.”

Myka’s hands tightened on Helena’s body. “You win. That might make me swoon.”

“And then breathe against the nape of your neck,” Helena said, for good measure.

And now into Helena’s ear, so close as to make Helena’s very skin vibrate, Myka said, “If we were not in the presence of witnesses, so help me god.”

Helena said, after a throat-clear, “And yet I have heard that you are always a prude.”

Myka shrugged again under Helena’s hands. “Tracy and I did grow up together, and she does know some things about me. But she doesn’t know everything.”

“No one knows everything,” Helena said, with an intentionally casual answering shrug. “So it should be hardly surprising that we two extremely intelligent, well-educated women might not be able to execute a perfect pas de deux. But... shall we make some attempt?” And now she did remove her hands from Myka’s shoulders and instead raised her arms, offering them as if to lead one of the partnered dances her parents had insisted she at least attempt to learn as a girl: right hand at waist level, left hand raised to receive the lady’s right. The gentleman’s role had seemed so much more compelling then, and was doubly so now, as Myka, despite her protests that she knew nothing, moved into the hold as if she, too, had been subjected to such lessons. “All I can remember, even vaguely, are the waltz and the polka,” Helena said. “Is this a waltz?”

“It’s probably not a polka, and I know in a waltz you count to three. Let’s give it a try.”

Surprisingly, then, they began to waltz. Their slow three-count had nothing to do with the music, as far as Helena could tell, but that could not matter. Mean it, Claudia had said. An ideal representation of romance, Tracy had said. At this moment, Helena had never meant anything like she meant her heartfelt hold of Myka’s body, and she could think of no model for romance more perfect than herself and Myka, counting to three in unison, trying unsuccessfully to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, looking down at their feet, looking back up again into each other’s eyes, smiling, looking away...

Helena heard Claudia say, “They really can’t dance.”

“Not at all,” Tracy agreed. “And yet...”

Helena did not dare break her count, or her concentration, but she suspected Claudia was nodding her own agreement with Tracy’s implication.

Myka was the one to break, though, for she said, “Did you hear Claudia? She said we can’t dance. I told you—”

“Then stop trying, and kiss me instead.” Helena had thought to say that as a tease. An absurdity: of course Myka would not kiss her, not here, not now.

But Myka did not hear it that way, and the way Myka heard it? That was how Helena had indeed meant it, and she understood Myka’s anxious words in response: “I thought we were supposed to dance. Besides, this shouldn’t be how we—our first—”

“First doesn’t matter.” So now, now, let the first be now... “No one kiss will matter—all of them will.”

“All of them...”

“Yes,” Helena said, with conviction. “All of them. The entire... what should the collective noun be? An osculation, perhaps?” She could do this, could give Myka a moment to think, to consider, to decide—to remember—that any first need not, and in the case of their own interactions, had not, set the tone and tenor of all that would come after.

Myka took that moment. Then she smiled and said, “A canoodle.”

Helena countered with, “A prurience.”

“That’s a little too lascivious. And don’t say ‘a lascivity,’” Myka added quickly. Then she tried, “An amatorium?”

Helena considered. “Not quite. I propose that we continue these attempts presently. At which time, I will emerge victorious.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself. What if I come up with the winner?”

Tracy asked, seemingly of no one in particular, “Is this part of their representation of ideal romance? Or are they like this all the time?”

Pete said, “They do not know how to shut up about this kind of thing. Never have. Storage facility didn’t maneuver ’em into that. Then again that’s probably what they think romance is.”

“I don’t have to bother figuring out what a storage facility called ‘the Warehouse’ has to do with anything, do I, because at some point I’ll ‘wake up,’” Tracy said. “Right?”

“Or something about hormones,” Pete assured her.

“Fantastic. Look, just tell me Helena isn’t going to hurt my sister.”

Helena tensed, waiting for Pete’s response. Pete took his time in answering, but he finally said, “I don’t think I can tell you that. I mean, she did before.”

Points for honesty, at least. Helena looked to Tracy, Pete, and Claudia and said, “Never again. I swear, never again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Tracy warned, and Helena did not doubt her intent.

“Hey,” Myka said, “I think that should be my line. But I’ve got a revised version: don’t make promises if you don’t intend to keep them. I know there’s no knowing what will happen.”

Helena said, “There is indeed no knowing. For I would have wished—but would not have dared—to consider a Christmas Eve on which I would be dancing with you.”

“We’re not even dancing,” Myka said, and it was, as far as it went, the truth. They were no longer moving, and Helena’s arms around Myka were no longer positioned with any formality.

But as far as it went, it did not go far enough. Helena said, “It is the oldest dance imaginable. And we are beginning it.” She paused. “Are we not?”

Myka said, simply, “Yes. We are.”

The kiss was surely no revolution in the art: their mouths moved together with a gentle yet intensifying pressure, and what innovation could she and Myka bring to such an old, simple action? Well, one at least, for what other perfect match of lovers could lay claim to having been separated by a century—then, after closing that gap, having waited still more years for the match to be made?

Such an old, simple action, and yet it carried such meaning, serving as both a culmination and a beginning... once begun, though, they did not stop, until they had kissed again, and again, and again, and once more. Helena drew back a bit and breathed out, “Five.”

That made Myka draw back slightly too. Puzzled: “That’s not a very creative collective noun.”

“But it is more than four.” Helena did not intend to brag, but it was objectively the case that five was more than four.

Myka laughed a small laugh, one that said she understood. “Okay. Six,” she said, and made it true.

“Seven,” Helena sighed, after she had made that true as well.

They were engaged in eight when Helena heard Pete say, “I think it’s working. Are we waking up?”

A veil fell again, a slow darkening followed by a slow brightening. And there they all were again, back in their old familiar living room, but in a newly familiar position: Helena’s arms were still around Myka, and Myka’s mouth had just left hers, and Helena tried to tell herself that waking up would be all right, that they would make the best of whatever happened; but she could not now imagine being satisfied to return to that stasis that had been not quite enough.

The floodgates had failed.

****

Should I move? Myka asked herself. She and Helena were locked in an embrace, and Myka felt her pulse in her suddenly lonely lips, felt it as a beat that wanted to push her forward to meet Helena’s mouth again. But they were in the real world now, and what if waking up again, here, meant that nothing had changed?

Tracy, as if she had read Myka’s thoughts, said, “It is all a dream of course.”

Myka stepped away from Helena’s arms. She didn’t look at Helena’s face. “Of course,” she said. “Of course it is. I mean, I’m so glad you think so.”

“I mean in the ballet, you idiot,” Tracy said. “That whole second part, about the Land of Sweets: Clara dreams it.”

Now Myka did look at Helena. Bleak, soft, sad: her eyes reminded Myka of her haunted hologram gaze, that gaze that knew so deeply how punitive her unreal body was. A constant “look but don’t touch” taunt... and Myka did not know if Helena understood that Myka, too, had felt it as punishment.

But a real body stood here now. “Then I don’t see why she—I mean I—would ever want to wake up,” Myka said. She took Helena’s right hand in both of hers, raised it to her mouth, and kissed it.

Helena made a small noise—disbelief?—but she put an arm around Myka’s hips and looked a question at her. Myka nodded. Helena said, “Then you should not have to. Wake up, that is.”

“Even though it’s too sweet for you?” Tracy asked, and her skeptical tone was clear. “In all the ways, I would’ve thought. Based on your... history.”

Helena, obviously emboldened by the location of her arm, exclaimed, “Tracy Bering, are you attempting to talk your sister out of this? Or are you simply making certain?”

“Trying to make certain. I’m getting that it’s important. I’d like things to work out the way they should, because I’m betting that if they do, I get to go home and everything will turn out okay. It’s like with Dad and that haunted book or whatever it was.”

Myka blanched. “How do you know about that?”

Tracy rolled her eyes and said, “Because I talk to our parents, Myka. You should try it sometime when nobody’s about to die.” Her tone became nonchalant. “You might want to try it sometime soon, in fact, because I bet you’d prefer to be the one to tell them about Helena... and you know bad I am at keeping a secret...”

Helena, exclaiming again: “Tracy Bering, are you now attempting to blackmail your sister into visiting your parents?”

“I’m just making statements that are true. What Myka does with them is up to her.”

And now Helena was laughing. “Tracy Bering. You are a Christmas gift I did not expect.”

“Hey! What am I exactly?” Myka said, and she hadn’t expected to be possessive, but: she put her own arm around Helena. And pulled her close.

Helena’s smile turned incandescent, but her voice was familiarly sly as she said, “If recent events are to be believed, you are my sugarplum. And/or fairy.”

Claudia spoke for the first time, as if she were trying out her voice to make sure it still worked. “H.G.,” she said, and coughed, “if you don’t make the dingy-ding-ding part of that song your ringtone for her, I will lose all respect for you.”

Pete chimed in with, “We all should have that as our Myka ringtone. ‘Is the Sugarplum Fairy calling you, Pete?’ ‘Yes. Yes she is.’”

“I’m strangely comforted by all of this,” Myka said.

“Are you really?” asked Helena.

“Well. It pretty much shows that nothing’s going to change.”

“Nothing?” Sly again.

“One thing. A very important thing.” She leaned her head against Helena’s neck.

“Two things,” Tracy said. “Don’t forget about Helena meeting the parents.”

“The parents of Myka and Tracy Bering,” Helena said, and her tone was one of “what manner of creatures are these.” “Hm. These parents, who named their older child Myka Ophelia Bering, and their younger, Tracy... Desdemona Bering?”

Tracy laughed. “Oh, good guess. But no.”

“Portia?” Helena tried, and Tracy shook her head. “Bianca?” Another negative. Helena twisted her lips one way, then the other. “Surely it couldn’t be Cleopatra.”

“I wish,” Tracy said.

“Why couldn’t mine be Cleopatra?” Myka griped. “Do you know how many times people have told me ‘get thee to a nunnery’?”

“Please don’t,” Helena said. “For I would be obliged now to come and liberate you from it, and I really don’t need to add to my offenses against religion. And the religious.” She turned back to Tracy. “It certainly can’t be Helena.”

“No, but you’re getting warm,” Tracy said.

“Hermia?”

“Still warm...” Tracy said, and she winked at Myka.

“Here it comes,” Myka agreed.

Helena pounced. “Ha! In the fairy realm, one Bering a sugarplum, the other a queen: Tracy Titania Bering. Observe you.”

“H.G.,” Claudia said, “it’s ‘look at you.’ Or ‘get you.’ ‘Observe you’ sounds weird.”

Tracy said, “I like her version. In fact I like her.”

“So the Wells mojo works on all the Berings,” Pete said, but he didn’t sound completely like himself. Myka put a mental post-it flag on that so she would not just not forget it, but also come back to it.

“If there is any such thing as Wells mojo, I would much prefer it work only on one particular Bering.” Helena emphasized her point by kissing Myka’s cheek. Myka reciprocated. It was ridiculously satisfying.

“That’s okay by me,” Tracy said. “If I’m lucky, Kevin will remember that he likes one particular Bering too.”

That made Claudia say, quickly, “I’m sorry, Tracy.” She put her hands in her jeans pockets and hunched her shoulders; she might as well have been captioned “embarrassment.” “The whole thing, all the straight-up lunatic reasons for it all... I’m also sorry that I’m technically not supposed to explain why I’m sorry, but I’m really really sorry. If it helps, I think if you’re not mad at your husband anymore, he might not have much of an idea that you ever were.”

Tracy waved the apology away. “Myka’s involved, so the reasons can’t help but be lunatic, and it’s not like I’ve never been furious at Kevin before today. But no matter how my little not-exactly-breakup works out, it does bring up one thing that our ideal lovebirds over there need to remember: the honeymoon ends.”

Claudia said, “I guess not today, though. Gotta say I’m a little surprised how strong the ‘mean it’ mojo carried over.”

Helena had been nosing against Myka’s neck, but now she raised her head and asked, “And how are you finding this part, Claudia? That is, if I have interpreted your previous metaphor correctly.”

“Don’t get yourself carbonite-frozen, is all I ask,” Claudia said.

“I have had enough of enforced immobility, thank you.”

Tracy said, “Then I think you should try movement instead.”

Myka was not particularly proud of how quickly her mind took that and went south—and then she was further flustered by Helena’s saying “What?” with a level of startlement that suggested she’d had the same thought.

Tracy started laughing. “Good god, your faces. I meant you should take a dance class.”

****

The entire rest of the evening, Myka let go of Helena only once: she went to the kitchen, where Pete was hunting through the refrigerator for food he hadn’t yet introduced himself to. She said, “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” he asked, his head still inside the appliance.

“Don’t play dumb.”

“Mrs. F should apologize. We were both bystanders.”

“Not innocent, though,” she said, to the back of his head. “You committed. I didn’t.”

He didn’t turn around, and he didn’t speak.

“You’re going to freeze your face,” she told him.

“I’m not in the freezer,” he said, but he did stand up and close the door. “I’m sorry too.”

“What for?”

“I committed. You didn’t. Should’ve told me something, right?”

“I don’t know what should’ve told either of us anything.”

He turned to face her then. “You and H.G.” He puffed out a breath. “You look good together. I don’t just mean you’re both pretty—I mean you are—but you look good together. You look right. Sound right, too. You did, even before. That should’ve told everybody everything they needed to know.”

“Nobody here seems very good at paying attention,” Myka said.

“Well, Claudia is. Mostly. And Steve. Abigail too.” He sighed. “The newbies. Maybe the rest of us have been here too long.”

“‘The rest of us’? We just spent Christmas Eve in a ballet because ‘the rest of us’ apparently can’t be trusted to run our own lives,” she told him, and he huffed the start of a laugh. That seemed like a good sign, so she went on, “What I’m really saying is, you better stick around, because I need your help.”

“Yeah, okay,”  he said, and he turned back to the refrigerator.

“No, I mean I need your help right now. Helena and Claudia are explaining to each other why the Warehouse database should be made out of blockchain. Or something. And if they run off to the storage facility tonight to make that dream a reality, I’m holding you responsible.”

“You got some other plans?” he asked. And then he waggled his eyebrows.

It was all going to be all right. They’d probably still have a hiccup or two or several, but it was all going to be all right. “I didn’t spend Christmas Eve in some stupid ballet for no payoff, Lattimer.”

****

A year ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve this way.

Pete and Claudia were still engaged in their video-game duel, although at considerably reduced volume... Tracy Bering had retired to the guest room after a long telephone conversation with her husband, whom she still loved, and who still loved her...

As for herself and Myka: alone now, in a darkened room, in a bed, continuing their dance...

There was no suggestion, on either of their parts, that they “take it slow”; no angst-ridden worries as to what the morning would bring; no hesitation at all—and if that was due to holiday disinhibition or the knowledge that there truly was no time like the present or even just the flat simplicity of two eager, tender adults willing and able to indulge their bodies with what was wanted, Helena could not have said.

What she did say, in a dark quiet moment right as Christmas Eve was becoming Christmas morning, came in response to Myka’s whispered, post-indulgence question, “And we’re sure this is real?”

“I hope so,” she said. Then, “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. I don’t expect an act curtain to fall, but your sister is right, of course: the honeymoon does end.”

Myka stretched her straight, strong spine—the length down and up of which Helena had indeed kissed. She said, “If it does, then we’ll just have to have a second one.”

“I had no idea you would be so romantic,” Helena told her. For Myka had indeed been romantic—she had said unabashed words of love, and of want, and Helena had answered them in rapturous kind.

“I didn’t either. Maybe it’s some aftereffect—excessive sweetness. It’ll probably wear off.”

“I suspect we’re likely to have more problems if it doesn’t wear off than if it does. As you’ve no doubt noted, I’m not especially sweet myself.”

Myka said, “I beg to differ,” and she kissed Helena again and again and again, as if she had found a secret fount of edulcoration, as if she could not get enough of all that her mouth encountered...

Much later, Helena murmured, “Torturous journey,” as she let her fingers trace an easier, smoother one across Myka’s collarbones.

“And we didn’t even know it was one. Not while we were on it.”

Helena sighed. “Blame the storage facility.” She paused. “Not a sentence one expects to utter.”

“Do you care? If we’ve been... nudged? Pushed?” Myka’s hands had been moving too, over Helena’s back, sliding over scapulae, then moving to Helena’s shoulders, down her arms. Now they stilled, waiting.

Helena sighed again. “Nudged, pushed. Flung? Away from each other, now toward each other. I care only that it took so long for the storage facility to get it right. I don’t appreciate the detours.”

“For my sanity, I’m just going to pretend that the storage facility isn’t as influential in everyone’s business as it apparently is. But I have to say, I think my parents are going to wake up tomorrow morning pretty confused about why they booked themselves on a cruise.”

“And yet they might enjoy it. Opinions can change, in the event. For example, how do you feel about The Nutcracker now?”

“I don’t want to tell you.” She shifted a bit, abruptly awkward under Helena’s weight. “You’ll take it the wrong way.”

Helena slid fully off of Myka’s body, turned on her side, and propped herself on her elbow. “You continue to find it your worst nightmare,” she guessed, though it seemed more a certainty.

“I can’t help it. I still can’t stand it—and I don’t understand why the storage facility had to stick us in that sugary horror show anyway.”

“Hm,” Helena said.

Myka said, with apology, “You’re thinking the honeymoon’s over right about now, aren’t you?”

“That is not at all what I am thinking. I am considering two questions. First, which of us, you or myself, has no objection, philosophical or otherwise, to the consumption of sweets?”

“You...” Myka said, but now with suspicion.

Helena chuckled. “And second, which of us was cast as the Sugarplum Fairy... the one who, we might say, is made of sugar?”

Myka closed her eyes. She made the same hand-to-forehead gesture she had, so much earlier in the evening, with Pete: as if she were attempting to ensure that her brain remained in place.

Helena, greatly satisfied, continued, “Thus I am thinking that the storage facility stuck us in that sugary horror show in order to indicate that I should—”

The hand that had been at Myka’s forehead moved swiftly to cover Helena’s mouth... but Myka smiled.

****

No, a year ago, even a day ago, Helena would not have imagined this Christmas Eve–become–Christmas morning this way. Even if she had, she would have told herself that such satiety could never be more than the stuff of fantasy... the stuff of sweet dreams.

But even the sweetest of dreams sometimes come true.

END