#Shriek wants her bow tie pasta and she wants it NOW!

[authorellenmint]

“Hold still!”

I stood sentinel in the corner watching Cullen attempt to wrestle a giddy eight-year-old in place. While she’d usually give in after a show of cajoling from her father, the allure of a mountain of candy kept her twitching about like leaves in the wind.

“Mar, I swear to the Maker,” he sighed as she slipped from his arms and dashed for the plate of cooling spaghetti on the table. Five orange noodles slithered into her puckered mouth, yellow and red stains slapping against both her cheeks and the grey fabric hanging too precariously off her shoulders.

Without a by-your-leave, Cullen locked his arm around his daughter’s waist and hauled her into the air. Those same burning amber eyes tried to curse at her father for interrupting her dinner, but she had no recourse as he plopped her on top of the kitchen counter.

“Da-ad!” she groaned, her arms flopping to the sides in exaggerated annoyance.

“This is too long,” Cullen yanked up the hem of the tunic/robe that without shoes on piled at her feet. “I need to pin it up.” He blindly fished for the plastic bottle crammed full of the safety pins while having to keep both eyes on our daughter.

“It’s fine,” Marie rolled her eyes sky high, an adult sigh of exasperation escaping her lips.

“You’ll trip and break your nose,” he insisted, already bunching up the ends of her costume and pinning it in place.

“But I ha’ to eat dinner!” she complained, wiggling at her knees despite being high off the floor. One glare at her father paused the jostling but she jabbed at her nearly congealed plate of pasta. Ever since it was fished steaming out of the pot, Marie would run into the kitchen, cram a handful into her mouth, then dash to her room to add another layer to her costume.

It was a surprise this year. One she cobbled together all by herself, if my paying for the various pieces at the store didn��t count as helping. As Trick-Or-Treating grew closer, she’d try to make us guess, growing angry at how off the mark we were. All of Cullen’s answers had been some form of a witch, which was usually when she’d stomp off to her room in a huff and start gluing rhinestones on.

The beleaguered father concerned about his daughter’s nose turned to me for backup. Unfolding my arms, I stepped closer to the pair. “He’s right.” That was clearly the wrong answer as she blew her fallen hair up. “You don’t want to break that pretty nose of yours.”

“Maybe I do!” Marie insisted. “Get a kitty bandage on it, all the ice cream I can eat, and I can miss school.”

“Ice cream…?” Cullen glanced to me and I shrugged. There’d been a rash of tonsillectomies in her class and all Marie got out of it was unlimited ice cream. “No, you don’t want a broken nose. You’re not getting a broken nose. Not on my watch.”

Luckily, our daughter was blessed to know when she was beat. With a roll of her eyes, she pronounced, “Fine.”

Without her interference, Cullen made quicker work bundling up the too long strip of fabric Marie industriously cut a hole into to shove her head through. It dangled above her ankles in an asymmetrical line, but as she was placed back onto the ground, Marie gave a twirl. The heavier safety pins helped increase the reach which she giggled at.

Secure in her not-breaking-her-nose costume, she dashed back to the cold spaghetti. After dumping another mass of parmesan onto the plate, Marie slurped down the rest of the dinner she had to finish before making her rounds.

Speaking of. I checked the clock on the microwave and groaned. Cullen caught the move, his hand wrapped around the small of my back as he leaned close. “I have to leave soon. Rounds starts in a half hour and with all the kids about to flood the street…” Rather than repeat my woes to the man who knew them as well as his own, I wrapped my arms around his chest.

He cuddled his palm to the back of my head, worrying the straining muscles in the nape of my neck. “Don’t worry. I can handle this,” Cullen whispered, the scruff on his chin scraping over my forehead.

The rattle of porcelain caused us to both look over as our daughter held up her spaghetti-stained hands to declare, “Done!”

I laughed at the messy child, already yanking up a towel to scrub her down for her long ghost walk. “It’s not you I’m worried about,” I said to Cullen as our child in grey dashed back to her room to finish changing.

Cullen slotted in beside me, a hand wrapped around my shoulders as if to prop me up. We were both facing a very long night. “Take lots of pictures,” I said.

“I always do,” he chuckled, fishing out his industrious and always full phone.

“Make sure to take her down main street, with the hayrack,” I kept instructing him.

“I remember. And I doubt Mar will let me forget.”

“And,” I nuzzled my lips against his ear, my hot breath tickling his skin as I said, “nick me a few candy bars.”

His proud-but-cautious father edifice cracked as a sly smile flitted about his lips. Enveloping my waist with his hand, his amber eyes burned down upon me as he whispered, “Why, you are so devious I might have to run you in.”

My finger brushed against his lip, aligning with the white scar perched upon the top before sliding down. His sultry bottom lip lapped out from the pull, the wet heat of his mouth warming my finger and other parts. “I’ll hold you to that,” I said, hoisting myself tighter to his body as I raised up for a kiss.

“Let’s go!” the apple of my eye shrieked, shattering the moment. To emphasize that she was in no mood to wait around while her parents necked, she slapped her hands, rattling the empty pumpkin bucket. “Well…!”

With a resigned acceptance, we both turned from the rain-check kiss to find our daughter wearing a pair of angel wings ripped from her old Christmas costume, dragon slippers meant for the bedroom, a tiara perched upon her head, and a Zorro mask slipping off her unbroken nose.

“No!” Cullen stomped towards her, “No, no, no, you are not wearing all of that.”

“Mom!” Marie cried, already dipping into her well of emergency tears.

“Take those shoes off,” he ordered, jabbing at the flimsy slippers. “They do not belong outside of the house. And you will trip in them. You can barely walk in the living room, never mind the streets!” Cullen was in full wet hen mode, his feathers fluffed as he intended to shuffle his baby under his wings for protection. Poor Marie kept shooting me pleas to rescue her.

“You know the rules, young lady,” I said instead, crossing my arms. We had to be a united front or she’d walk all over us.

Red burned across her cheeks, Marie debating if throwing a tantrum was worth missing out on candy. Whether it was my cool head, or her father’s tactical ingenuity that won over, Marie yanked off her slippers and tossed them at the couch. She still got off one more, “Fine!” to drive home how angry she was about this.

Cramming on her school sneakers as fast as possible, Marie eyed up both of us then leapt to her feet. She was almost to the door handle, before her dad said, “Wait. The mask.”

“Come on!”

“Masks are dangerous. That one could slip, cut off your line of visibility, and you’d walk into a truck,” Cullen ordered, marching to the girl who gripped so hard to the door handle she looked about to break it.

“Mo-om!”

I slipped a hand over my daughter’s shoulders that were trembling at such an injustice. “You know how it works in this house, Mar,” I said, getting a major eye roll at the reminder that rules existed. “We listen to two of Dad’s inane fears, and ignore the third.”

“What…?” Cullen sputtered. “It is not inane —”

“Thanks, Mom!” Marie pecked a kiss to my cheek, trying to cement that there was no chance her father could win this. I did make certain to re-tie the knot on her mask so it had little chance of slipping.

“Now, stand there so I can take some pictures,” I ordered, plucking out my phone. There was no usual glare from my baby shifting closer to becoming a teenager with every day. She was proud of her costume, even if she did have to lose the feet.

While Marie posed, often stretching her arms wide as if she was flying, or doing the fake muscle-man grunts, Cullen sidled up beside me. “But the mask…”

“I’m certain you’ll keep our daughter from being hit by a truck, or a meteorite, or cursed by a witch. You can’t shield her from everything,” I whispered to the man who no doubt saw a teetering toddler when looking at Marie instead of the jungle-gym scaling grade-schooler we had.

“One day she won’t even need me,” he whispered to himself, a sheen of tears misting over his eyes.

Slipping the phone away, I brushed my cheek against his chest as I embraced the father facing the march of time. “To fight all of her battles, yes. But to be there for her…?” His chest rumbled at the truth, Cullen burying his nose in my hair as we both breathed in the future for our tiny fighter.

“Da-ad! We need to go before all the good candy’s gone!” Marie’s pleas broke up our maudlin session.

Cullen nodded, a hand rustling over the back of his neck. “Okay, Mar. We can head out now.”

“Finally,” she pronounced at the parents who kept ruining her life. As Cullen reached the front door, one hand sliding on his light jacket, Marie suddenly thrust a plastic sword at him.

He blinked in confusion, hesitant to accept the fake blade. “What’s this for?”

“To defend me from the monsters, duh!” Marie pronounced, shaking her head at her father’s foolishness.

With the seriousness of a knight accepting an order from his Queen, Cullen tucked the plastic sword into his belt. He bowed deep to Marie who was already bolting out the front door and down the front steps. Following behind, I watched the pair walk across our driveway to the first house. Our little girl was flapping her arms around, telling her father precisely how to kill all the monsters with his sword. Cullen listened with rapt attention.