#althea writes

[mill-3-rd]

LUNAR CYCLE — s. winchester

discovering other ways to control yourself during the lunar cycle, a drabble (+16)

he doesn’t mind helping you each month, he knows you find it difficult to control your hormones and he loves that you can seek out his comfort. the month starts off normal, you’re unaffected by your werewolf gene and nobody could be able to tell off the bat, even if they were a hunter.. but then you get irritated: a result of the brewing ravenousness that will come when the moon is full. as a pureblood, you can control when you transform aswell as your hunger, but it doesn’t mean that you’re any different to a regular werewolf under the influence of a peaking lunar cycle. but that tension is released when the moon is round and bright: full.

your fingernails drag down SAM WINCHESTER’s back and he hisses into your neck. the humidity lingering on your collarbone is a leftover sign of his panting from near fatigue.

your head falls back into the pillow arrangement you had set up since you began renting your apartment, messing it up like you had done for the last two nights. a long, drawn out whine leaves your mouth which reveal the fangs that keep contracting with your lack of self awareness in such a state. sam feels the sharpness of your fingernails and realises how desperately you’re holding back.

his big hands caress both the legs over his shoulders and he whispers, “‘s okay, let go f’me.”

there’s another gasp from you and a flutter of your eyelids before sam takes his head out of your neck and admires the hang of your top canines over your bottom lip as it quivers. he can see the goldenness hiding beneath black lashes and low lidded eyes and if sam looks close enough, he can see the dark slit in the centre.

his right hand comes up to cradle your face, lustful eyes glaring at your sharpened teeth and he lets his index finger glide over the pair. you shudder and whine and it tells sam just how sensitive your teeth are.

your backs arch in sync, both your stomachs flattening against the other’s: sam due to your nails wraking back up to his shoulders and leaving marks in their wake and you because he’s hit a certain spot inside of you.

your thighs twitch: a telltale sign that your close and sam’s left thumb dips and begins to circle the bundle of nerves left neglected between you two. you moan, your eyes rolling into white while a string of curses fall from your kiss bitten lips. all that’s left is for sam to catch up to you so the two of you can finally rest.

[mischievous-thunder]

When you share a small flat with two shameless roommates that's the end of peace and quiet in your life

[devourable]

drunk cuddly darling + sober yan

vs

sober darling + drunk yan

do yans have any preference on either scenario or is it just no bueno either way

im just gonna simplify this ask down a bit. m!yanderes + f!yanderes x cuddly drunk gn darling 🫶 (no poly/non humans for the sake of my sanity)

⛪️ ;; abe is not the type to drink, never has been and never will be, even if you pressure him to drink more, so while he doesn’t exactly approve of you getting drunk either, he just cant bring himself to be mad at you. not when you’re being so sweet to him! he’s happy that you’re content to just be held by him until you fall asleep rather than get into any trouble that he’s not prepared to deal with. be ready to wake up to a scolding by him though, you could get sick if you go overboard! even if he kind of likes it when you do.

[cw dubcon] 🖥️ ;; god bless any darling who gets drunk around gene because if he can tell you’re inebriated he’s either trying to fuck you or is equally as hammered (if not more). so when you get drunk and start getting all touchy with him he sees it as an invitation to take things further. you wanted the attention, you can’t get mad at how he chooses to give it! it isn’t his fault, you just make really cute faces when you’re wasted. he’ll give you a little apology gift for your sore insides when you’re up the next day — one most likely made up of painkillers and your favorite takeout.

🪶;; it irritates sterling to no end that you got drunk. don’t you know you have an image to uphold? he’s prattling on and on about how he’s sick of your disgraceful behavior and how unbecoming it is for you to waste your time fucking up your brain, until your arms are around him and you’re snuggling up against him. then his words are all caught in his throat and hes tripping through his sentences, half heartedly trying to reprimand you still, but he eventually settles down and (begrudgingly) holds you until you’re asleep. he’ll swear to himself its only this one time; if you remember the next day and try to tease him about it he literally wont talk to you for a week.

💪 ;; valentina had already planned to simply cuddle you till you went to sleep, so the fact that you initiated it makes her elated. she likes how it feels when you squirm in her arms, too out of it to be able to do anything but what she wants. it’s like she’s handling a living doll! she carries you around like one, too, going about her day with one hand and holding you you with the other. yes, it makes doing things way more difficult and yes, the arm she carried you with will be sore for days, but it’s well worth it to her.

[cw dubcon, again] 👑 ;; althea ordered you to go to bed the moment you stumbled into her presence in your inebriated state. when you instead clung to her and insisted on cozying up instead, while it annoyed her, she took it upon herself to make sure you got to bed and couldn’t get into any trouble. but you insisted on her staying with you! and the way you tangled her body up with yours and dragged your hands across her form in a move that couldn’t have been entirely innocent (to her, at least), allie couldn’t help but help herself to your body. you practically owed it to her, anyway; and the way you whimpered and sighed for her proved that you didn’t seem to mind too much anyway.

🥩 ;; rhodes doesn’t particularly care for drunks, they’re used to them being loud and obnoxious. so they’re not exactly happy when they find you after having a bit too much to drink. they’e expecting a tedious night of making sure you don’t hurt yourself or others, so it’s a pleasant surprise when you seek them out for comfort instead. they still would prefer you being sober so you’d be able to better appreciated them taking the day off to be with you, but they’re satisfied with the time you spend with them regardless.

[amethystandemma]

Trial of Sebastian Sallow WIP

“Sebastian, please listen to me!” Althea shouted. “You’re not thinking clearly! This has gone too far!”

“I need to save Anne! This relic is the answer!” 

“Dark magic isn’t going to help her! It will only make it wor-”

“Crucio!”

Althea crumpled to the dusty stone ground with a scream that echoed throughout the cavern. Solomon Sallow stepped out from behind a broken stone pillar, his wand still pointed at the girl’s body. 

“ALTHEA!”

Sebastian’s brown eyes were thrusted open as he woke up with a strangled yell. She was in trouble. She was in pain, and he needed to help.

He reached for his wand, his breathing shaky and uneven. Only, it wasn’t there.

In a panic he looked around his surroundings, his head swiviling from side to side. It took his brain a second to catch up with what he was seeing.

The fifteen year old was lying on a cot in a dark cell. Solomon wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Althea wasn’t with him.

He was alone.

[marigoldbaker]

With careful precision, sharp, thin thorns sprouted along new vines, slicing through the fabric of Thea’s shirt without ever once so much as scraping the skin underneath. Thea pulled back just a bit, and when Jaheira broke the kiss, she saw the startled vulnerability to the other woman’s eyes. “You know what I want,” Jaheira breathed. “And I am a woman made impatient. You are at my mercy, aren’t you, hethtalos?”

happy thanksgiving! i'm apparently celebrating by writing old women tying each other up.

this has decisively no place within the larger established canon i'm working on with these two -- i kinda just wanted to write it. soooo bad.

[seriousbrat]

what would the marauders' (+ lily and snape's) tastes in literature and poetry be like? i like to think remus would be a kafka guy and i see lily as a big fan of sylvia plath and the romantic movement, but i'm curious about your take

Ahh I love this question soo much and I've been thinking about it a lot! Thank you for asking ❤️

James

sorry to say but this is a Kerouac bitch. this is a bitch who likes 'boy fiction' like On the Road and Catcher in the Rye. I also think James would like epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings, and science fiction like Dune.

Also, I'm just going to go with Muggle (aka real. lol) literature for this BUT I also want to say that I have invented a wizarding poet that Fleamont is really into for my fic, (this is just an excuse to write/include poetry lol) and James would like that too, having grown up with it. ALSO in my mind James would read poems about Quidditch lol

As for poetry, I think he'd like Beat poetry. But also TS Eliot and Dylan Thomas, similar to Remus, and Yeats, like Lily. An Irish Airman Forsees His Death is perhaps my favourite poem of all time and I think it would REALLY resonate with James. Especially since 'a lonely impulse of delight' would also drive him to 'this tumult in the clouds.' wahhh i love that poem

Sirius

I think Sirius would skew a little darker than James. Honestly as much as he'd hate this he might have a bit in common literature-wise with Snape lol, so I'm giving him Camus, The Stranger, and Sartre, Nausea.

as for poetry, Ginsberg's Howl would appeal to him. and William Burroughs. Like James, Beat poetry in general, though I feel he wouldn't be as into Kerouac as James.

A lot of this kind of stuff doesn't appeal to me as much (Kerouac is my fav Beat unfortunately) but I think generally Sirius would like fairly gritty realistic dark stuff. So the obligatory Bukowski is going here. Also perhaps Ted Hughes. Maybe stuff with a political/social commentary.

Peter

honestly I can't see Peter reading a lot lol but if he did, it'd be fairly easy and exciting things, maybe fantasy/scifi like James. I can see him liking The Hobbit. Also maybe crime novels or thrillers? Like kind of bad, easy to read ones haha.

Also comic books, i know nothing about that personally though. Super heroes?? lol idk

No poetry lmao, he wouldn't get it. Maybe he'd like humourous stuff. Limericks lol. An epicure dining at crewe / found a traitorous rat in his stew, etc

Remus

I agree about Kafka!

I just want to give someone this because it's one of my favourite novels ever, so I'm giving Remus Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier. (I think it's been translated as The Lost Estate in English but I prefer the original title.)

Hmm I think he might be a Hemingway?? Also Raymond Carver (who is one of my fav authors) anyway I think the minimalist, understated style of both would appeal to him.

I also think he'd like a good coming-of-age story when younger so, the aforementioned Meaulnes (honestly i rly just love that book) but also Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and, like James, Catcher in the Rye.

And then when older it would be more minimalist stuff. I just think he'd be a Hemingway! Also maybe Steinbeck and Capote. I really dont know why I'm always giving Remus such American taste in things. In my mind he has great taste though haha.

For poetry I'm giving him Dylan Thomas (see? Welsh) and T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden.

Lily

absolutely Sylvia Plath! I had her reading The Bell Jar in my fic.

but also other poets, particularly female poets. Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Edna St Vincent Millay.

Yeats too, she'd absolutely love Yeats. Like I said my fav is An Irish Airman... but Lily would LOVE and be so enraptured by The Stolen Child (as am I)

as for fiction, she'd love The Mill on the Floss (as well as other things by George Eliot,) the Brontë sisters. God would she love Wuthering Heights (both the book and the Kate Bush song.) I think she'd like Little Women too and really identify with Jo (as do we all,) and also Virginia Woolf. I'll give her Oscar Wilde and Poe too.

Also I want someone to be a Wodehouse fan and that's going to be Lily.

as a kid I think her favourite books would have been The Secret Garden and Watership Down. And Alice in Wonderland. She probably grew up with Beatrix Potter and Edward Lear too. This is essentially just my own taste/what I grew up with btw lol

Snape

I think he'd like Kafka too. also, like Sirius, Camus's The Stranger and Sartre's Nausea lol. he'd be pretentious and dark, basically.

I also think he'd read the most nonfiction, specifically philosophy, specifically nihilism lol so the aforementioned Camus and Sartre, Kierkegaard, and NIETZSCHE. god.

He might like horror. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde. I'm not really a horror fan myself but I think Snape would be.

fun fact but hpwiki lists 'poetry' as one of Snape's skills and I believe that. Anyway, similarly he'd enjoy moody man poetry. But also be more romantic and more classical than Sirius.

I'm giving him Richard Lovelace, I think he'd relate to the romantic aspect of To Althea, From Prison (which is so beautiful) but also the tragedy haha.

As you might be able to tell this is heavily based on what I like and therefore what I could think of off the top of my head. I feel like if you combine Lily's taste with Remus's and then add a bit of the darker Sev side of things, that's just what I like lmao.

So I'm sure there's obvious stuff I'm missing for someone, pls feel free to suggest things!

Edit wait, since I mentioned Dylan Thomas I wanted to share this Welsh translation of his famous poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, sung by Welsh group Brigyn! It's a bit folksy haha but such a beautiful version:

[icarusredwings]

A fic written by @monkepenguin

A review of chapter 1 and 2 by me- Hi. With commentary 👌

It's 23k and still going. There are typos, but this person isn't a native speaker of English (aren't the best fics always like that?)

Spoilers:

Wade - it has been a whole 5 seconds. Shut up. Please. Like what the fuck are you even talking about. Why are you saying these things in public?

If I dont read 200 words in and think "what the actual fuck" Am I even reading deadpool? No.

Imagine your room mate is gone for 3 days, shows up, pronounces himself as "Marvel jesus" what ever that is- and now you have 2 more mouths to feed.

Al is way more chill than we give her credit for. She's a pretty chill for a cokehead. (Dont do drugs kids)

"That's future Logans problem." Ah yes, very Wolverine thing to think.

D'awww. See kids when you take care of your logan properly they are happy and clean. Now he needs fed and some TLC and you will have your very own loyal Logan :)

Instinctively kicking dogs is so on brand.

Careful wolvie, you're gonna get a yeast infection.

"It screams liver cancer" says the one jealous of the fact he has cancer

On yes the truama jokes. Poor guy.

At least he's admitting that he knows joking about it isn't good for him, but he doesn't anyway :D

Snappy logan is the best logan.

Ohh baby boy no- no more bar rotting for you. Banned.

You tell'em al! Loud fucks.

Bruuhhh.

Logan: *starts opening up*

Wade: Excuse me? Im the main charater *SLAPS HIM*

Wade: *opens up*

Al really was like "are you guys gonna fuck or fight?" And instead they sobbed together on the roof 😌

Fred you trooper. You go get that old lady.

Oh god not the "Were literally the same people in different fonts" moment 😩

"Wade was actually a good guy just extremely unhinged and horny" Yeaaahhh it's probably a response from scout master kevin- Or the fact that you get dopamine and oxytocin during sex and a lot of people with adhd can easily be addicted to those things. Im suprised he doesn't have a thing for gambling with something other then his life.

"I mean actual coke" "Ahh-" yeah sums those two up.

Wait until al finds out about slippers LMAO. Chalancla him grannie!

Oh my god hes gonna buy a fucking honda odyssey

"OH NO HES HOT"

"Al, my condolences to you for not being able to see this man." FAAACCTSS, im so glad someone else brought this up. Shed be all over him. You know it.

(Logans the type to walk past a diner and get rawred at and giggled by a bunch of old grandma's so much that it gets to the point that he goes "Evening ma'am" to them so they'd stop cat calling him.

Also, WHO RAISED THIS MAN!? Charles!! Charles, this is a god damn gentleman over here! I know damn well it wasn't your father Logan! Was it Jean? Did Jean slap manners into you?)

Aaahh dont give puppins the sex leash noooo (totally canon)

Bro why is wade actually so domestic? Dude is like "Hi! Your life is ruined? Cool! My life is ruined! Lets go comit insurance fraud and buy the exact same car I fucked you in. Now lets go pumpkin. Onward!! To the dealership!"

[gilly-moon]

first draft/WIP of a Nightlight thing where he loses his glow and is Very Unwell about it. This fic is shaping up to be long and ✨️angsty✨️ but here's a little preview of a more wholesome moment from chapter one:

.

“You must be the Nightlight.”

Twisting where he sat, Nightlight expected another member of the staff, come to ogle at him with the others. He straightened up when he found a finely-dressed lady standing at the door instead, her dark eyes reflecting the soft smile on her lips.

He nodded, rising to his feet. There was an instinctual voice in his head telling him to bow to the woman, but he hesitated. Certainly her dress was that of a noble, its dark blue velvet embroidered with gold at the cuffs and collar. But unlike the nobles he’d seen in the Capital City, she seemed otherwise unadorned, auburn hair falling in loose waves down her back.

“Was the journey here bearable?” the woman asked. She pressed a hand to her chest, a simple golden ring glinting on her finger. “I do apologize, we’re so far out of the way…”

Nightlight shook his head, resting the base of his staff on the ground to lean against it. The woman’s eyes followed the movement, but her expression remained pleasant.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for the delay, as well. It seems there was some…miscommunication about when we should expect your arrival.”

Of course. But why wouldn’t the Lunanoffs do everything in their power to be rid of him as soon as possible? He was nothing more than a reminder of their pain. A dead weight to be shipped off to anyone willing to bear him as a burden.

“Well, bygones, I say!”

His eyes lifted from where they’d fallen to his feet. The lady was still smiling, her cheeks rosy with warmth. She actually seemed…pleased that he was here.

“My name is Althea,” she said brightly. “If any of the staff insists I be called ‘Lady Pitchiner,’ they’re fooling with you. We’re all family here in this quiet little corner of the universe.

“And you…is it just Nightlight? Do you have any other name you like to go by?”

Nightlight shook his head emphatically, fingers wrapping tighter around his staff. A Nightlight was a Nightlight and nothing more. He’d already lost his shine. He wouldn’t lose his name, too.

“Very well,” Althea conceded. A touch of concern dimmed her features, but she seemed adept at smoothing it down. “Nightlight, then. Have you been given a tour of the house yet?”

[celticrune]

More thoughts on that OC AU post because now I have AUs and characterisation on the brain. Here are my characters in order of easiest to hardest to put in Situations: Keiji: Easiest by far. It's a rare AU where I even really have to think about where to put him. He's a drifter by nature, is easily entertained with violence and sex, and doesn't have some troublesome moral alignment that can limit his options. His only real limit is that he's an absolutely terrible protagonist, by virtue of the above lack of care and lack of moral alignment.

Tanwen: Also easy, but on the opposite axis from Keiji. She's easy not because she's a genre chameleon but because she's such a sunshine that she changes the tone of any world she's put in. She will carve out some small foothold of hope and kindness and she will remind anyone of their heart, because she's a radiant beacon of fervent hope and it's impossible to engage with her without baring something true. But also when I'm not breaking her naivety on the horrors of war any story she's in will inevitably become a romcom and i'm not sorry

Val: As the third former DnD character in the list, Val's still pretty decent troublemaker/adventurer/hero material. I'm also usually fairly sure what tone I want to hit for them and where I want to put them in AUs, but they're in third because the places they can go are fairly limited. While an arc about recovering one's identity and agency can go multiple ways, Val's being as strongly tied into Temperance as a maternal figure makes her an inevitable tagalong. Does mean that any new AU usually means a new way for her to die, which is cathartic.

Althea: Easy to adapt, not always easy to make relevant. Any world can do with a spoiled young woman from an out of touch upper class who just wants to be adored and exercise some small breath of control in her own life. Her trouble comes when there's adventuring afoot, because she's perfectly content to sit in her position of privilege and leave the hard work to other people. Not a good protagonist, but in any setting where she can lounge around and be pretty she's very easy to adapt. Themes of being the least favoured daughter and internalised misogyny are pretty broadly interpretable.

Jay: A man sent from hell to torture me personally. Not impossible to adapt, or even all that hard, but he's much less sculptable than any of the above. Jay is always Jay, no matter how much I try to throw curveballs at him. He's stubborn enough to retain much more of himself across universes than most, and still he refuses to fucking narrate anything. Learn to have a conversation. Be literally anything other than a bear. I beg you.

Angharad: Worst worst worst worst worst. This man both is and occupies one single niche and I refuse to let him be more. He's all my worst arrogance and judgemental snobbishness and he deserves to suffer for it. He can go in any AU where he can have an intellectual superiority complex, and has zero interest in any others.

Bonus round: James Atlas Trick question, James is both the best and worst. It doesn't count as an AU when he's just The Same Guy.

[mill-3-rd]

BED PEACE — m afton

you’d love to stay in bed with michael without interruptions. it’s too bad some people have impeccable, or horrible, timing.

warnings – sex while on the phone, riding, slight jealousy

© MILL3RD 2023 — all rights reserved. mature content. please do not steal my works.

a thin, singular streak of orange cast into the bedroom, barely enough to fill up the room with the sunrise but enough so that you and michael could see each other. it was no surprise he had blackout curtains since when he wasn’t working the night shift, he was sleeping. usually.

you let out a sigh of content, wrapped nicely between your boyfriend and the covers. he was behind you, kissing your shoulders and back while his hands roamed underneath the silk sheets. you moved your hair over your left shoulder and turned around to face michael, bringing your hand up to redirect his head to face yours.

the two of your lips met, both of your hands cupping michael’s face while his still continued to bury themselves in forbidden territory. they remained on your thighs, squeezing the soft flesh.

you kissed for what seemed like a while, losing track of time as you both had the weekend off of work: michael as a night guard and you as an office assistant. two boring jobs, but you two could get by well enough together.

michael turned you around, getting you to straddle him so your core was flush against his own. you both let out a breathy sigh, your lips meeting again while your boyfriend rocked you against him. the fabric of both your’s and michael’s underwear created the perfect friction for the two of you, the materials dampening quickly.

you let out needy whines here and there between gasps for air and michael ate up your noises with just as needy kisses. your nails scratched his shoulders soothingly, you knew he enjoyed the sensation. michael’s hands left your thighs, trailing up the curve of your ass to the small of your back and so high that his palms comforted the base of your neck and his fingers massaged the back of your head.

pulling away, you opened your eyes and huffed. now letting your nail circle his chest, you pouted at michael and spoke barely above a whisper, “i can’t cum like this..”

“oh yeah?” michael murmured, his hands remaining in your hair. you nodded, your nose scrunching how it always did when you were frustrated and your eyes watering with want.

“can’t keep my girl waiting then, can i?” you grinned, giggling after michael told you to lift your hips. your thighs ached slightly as you squatted, hooking your arms around michael’s neck. he moved his boxers down just enough for his cock to spring up, bumping your clit. you huffed impatiently before michael pulled your panties to the side. he lined himself up and you finally let yourself sink down on him.

the two of you let out similar moans. you took a few seconds to enjoy the feeling of michael inside you before you started moving. the room was filled with groans and moaning in no time. the two of you barely had time to yourselves before the telephone rang. a collective groan fell from your mouths’ as michael leaned sideways and felt around for the box on your nightstand.

“hello?” michael asked as he wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder, the wire curling around your finger as you played with it in boredom. his eyes met yours, an annoyed expression falling upon his face. he gave the phone to you and you shook your head with a tiny smile. your friend was on the phone.

“hi trisha,” you greeted, listening to your friend rave about a possible outing. as a habit, michael’s thumb maintained circles on your hip, “yeah, i think that’s a great idea, when?”

trisha mentioned that she wanted you to meet her boyfriend and that michael could tag along if he wanted to. however, michael was starting to get bored. his hands gripped your hips and began to move you manually on his thighs. your free hand fell onto michael’s chest and you glared at him, but he just grinned.

“keep talking,” he mouthed and you rolled your eyes at him. she continued to talk about places to go later that day. your brows furrowed as michael hit a good spot inside you and a sigh left your mouth. you could hear trisha’s frown through the phone, especially when she asked if everything was okay.

“yeah, i just don’t think today’s a good day,” you excused, “me and michael planned to spend the day together, y’know with it being our weekend off and all that, maybe tomorrow? if that works with you..”

trisha sighed, yet she agreed that tomorrow would give you all time to plan out where and when.

you pinched michael’s collarbone and he winced, thrusting up into you to try catch you off guard again. this time, a scarcely audible moan left your open lips. but it was into the phone and trisha gasped, asking if you were okay.

“i’m.. ah, i’m fine,” you panted, your nails creating marks in michael’s jawline while he smiled, “it’s just a bit hot in here, haven’t managed to open the windows yet.. how does tomorrow at seven sound?”

you wanted to celebrate when your friend agreed to your arrangement but now she began to list why she knew you’d accept her boyfriend. michael was as impatient as ever and your eyes rolled back as he began to bounce you himself. your hold on the phone grew weak and little hums buzzed in the base of your throat. trisha took it as you agreeing with her. with every movement michael forced upon you, the phone slipped from your hand gradually until it fell into the sheets and your friend probably, surely heard the mattress squeaking.

michael grabbed the phone before you could, thrusting up into you quickly and spoke into the phone, “hey trish, we’re a bit busy right now, can you call back later?”

you could hear the familiar laughter through the phone before a few words and a buzz indicating she hung up. throwing the phone to the side, michael chuckled, “she knew the whole time!”

laughing along with him, you shrugged, “that’s trish, anything to frustrate us, gotta love her though..” your boyfriend rolled his eyes, “sure.. i think she just likes keeping you away from me..”

you giggled, leaning down to kiss michael a few times, “maybe, but now we can continue with no interruptions.”

michael grinned, stealing a longer kiss, “fuck yeah!”

[mischievous-thunder]

Just three freaky flatmates sharing their views on men. Two of them are having flashbacks too!

[headlightsforever]

And God, please let the deer on the highway get some kind of heaven. Something with tall soft grass and sweet reunion. Let the moths in porch lights go some place with a thousand suns, that taste like sugar and get swallowed whole. May the mice in oil and glue have forever dry, warm fur and full bellies. If I am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man.

Althea Davis, “Kinder Than Man”

[whatkindofnameisella]

reading mad ship has taught me that if there's one thing robin hobb is gonna do it's spit bars. "enlightenment is just the truth at the right time". "why must love cost anything? why does need have to be mixed up with love? why can't people be like butterflies, coming together in bright sunshine and parting while the day is still bright?" "everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. but almost anyone can do that. almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die." hold on for one second i gotta

[miralines]

One thing I think is interesting/useful to note about the Rose Red book is that it is a book that was published in the OUATIS galaxy a little under ten years after the war, and that it has an in-story author— and, crucially, that author is not necessarily an entirely reliable narrator.

More rambling about this under the cut

The author, Althea, is a normcivilian with an unusual amount of sympathy for the now-decommissioned Rose Reds. This is not a popular position, and between:

A) her rhetorical goal of changing the minds of people actively against the Rose Reds being allowed to survive

B) the constraints of mainstream publishers, who are under social/political pressure to not threaten the new government, requiring her to be both neutral and not too challenging,

C) her own corresponding bias in believing that neutrality is both possible and desirable,

and D) her limited viewpoint as a normcivilian (not a Rose Red) from a privileged background,

There are quite a lot of places where events, people, and viewpoints are presented in ways that are somewhat misleading. Althea has a degree in journalism, but she does not live in an entirely free society, and both external forces and her own biases do color the narrative she presents throughout the book.

In short, she’s the equivalent of a left-leaning ally to a marginalized group who’s a bit more centrist than one might hope and is presenting herself as even more centrist in order to be published at all through mainstream channels and taken seriously by people who are biased against her cause.

[marigoldbaker]

wrote some original fiction look at that!!! have been thinking very loosely about writing the bakery ladies in a modern setting, and a love interest for marigold keeps insisting i give her some attention, so i gave her some today. :)

amazing news for all: this DOES read completely fine without any context! it's a standalone. soooo if u wanna meet my girls but have found the new fandom confusing: meet them now!

~~~

Marigold hadn’t actually been expecting to find anyone else under the table. She’d sort of been hoping for the opposite: a people-free location, somewhere that no one was looking at, where she wouldn’t be surrounded by a thousand incredibly thin people wearing as little as possible because they didn’t have any reason to feel like an overstuffed sausage when they wore a glorified bra to a social engagement. And she wasn’t one of those thin-girls-who-thought-they-were-fat-but-were-really-just-charmingly-curvy, either–she had cellulite, she couldn’t ever find anything in a Target, and stretch marks covered her hips and breasts and upper arms in such a way that low-rise jeans and corset tops wouldn’t have looked half as charming on her, at least in her estimation. 

Not that the size of the people here was what had Marigold under the table–no, that was just what she’d been thinking bitterly about for the first fifteen minutes of the party, as soon as effortlessly beautiful Evie had shown up with equally effortlessly beautiful Amara, both of them looking practically emaciated, both of them wearing the sorts of things that Marigold had sort of thought people only wore for Instagram photos. And absolutely everyone at the party was beautiful, too, of course, with Marigold easily the biggest girl there, never mind that she didn’t know anyone there, because she still didn’t know a single meaningful thing about Evie. 

Evie had swanned off immediately once it was clear that Marigold was “settled in,” or at least “settled in” by her definition, which mostly seemed to mean “physically present.” Marigold suspected that she was off with Amara, or with one of the many boys bearing down on her like they could smell blood in the water. That was the sort of thing that was supposed to concern a sister, wasn’t it? Would have, if it was Marigold getting flirted with at a strange party and Roslin and Lenora lingering reprovingly in the corner–but Roslin and Lenora would never have left her alone at one of these, and Evie had, which was maybe the difference between adoptive and biological sisters. Wonderful to find that out now.

So Marigold had stayed standing there, awkwardly, and made excruciating conversation with people she hadn’t wanted to talk to, because she’d come here to talk to Evie, to spend time with Evie, to learn more about a sister who she’d lost and somehow found again, only to find that the feeling wasn’t mutual and Evie really just wanted to go be social with another party-goer in the host’s bathroom. And she wouldn’t have ducked under the table if not for the fact that one of the party-goers had asked, “Wait, you’re Evie’s sister? That chick she’s always talking about who got, like, murdered or some shit?” at which point Marigold had found herself so blazingly angry at Evie that she’d known she couldn’t talk to anyone at the party anymore.

Hence: table! Not the world’s most normal hiding place, but most of the party-goers were drunk enough that no one was looking very hard for Marigold. She’d seen a flutter of movement under the tablecloth, remembered that one of the hosts had mentioned a cat, decided that mortification was better than fielding even one more question about a story no stranger had any right to (and no sister had any right to tell). So she had ducked under the table, and she had found her eyes locked with eyes so green they seemed to glow in the dark.

Marigold said the only thing she could think of. “Is this seat taken?”

The eyes blinked. The face they belonged to was pale and sallow, possibly East Asian–though of course, Marigold, being something of a mix of things herself, had never been very good at ascertaining where anyone else hailed from, which made guessing probably not a good idea. The girl had long, dark hair, blacker than even the dim light around them, and she was wearing thick-framed black glasses that only added to the large luminescence of her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just tucked her feet in so that Marigold could shift all the way under the table.

Marigold never did well with silences, and she wasn’t really sure how to fill this one. What did the standard social contract have to say about dinner table conversation when one or both party members found themselves under it? “Do you, um.” She smiled awkwardly. “Come here often?”

The small smile that danced across the girl’s face immediately settled Marigold’s nerves. Anyone who smiled at an awful joke like that would probably be a very permissive conversationalist, which Marigold always needed in a conversation partner; her mouth ran on and she wasn’t very good at stopping it when it started. 

“I’m Marigold,” Marigold offered.

The girl raised a hand and waved. She was wearing quite a lot of rings and none of them matched. More than a few were the cheap plastic sort one might get as an arcade prize. She said something, barely a whisper, but the music was loud enough that even a whisper would have been impossible to hear.

“Sorry?”

The girl bit her lip. She leaned forward. At normal volume, she said, “Beetle.”

“...Beetle?” repeated a bemused Marigold.

The girl jerked her thumb towards her chest.

“Oh, you’re Beetle?”

The girl smiled again. She was wearing lipstick, Marigold noted, blood-red, but with a blackish undertone that made her look positively gothic. There were really quite a lot of things to look at when it came to this girl; it felt like Marigold could spend more than just a few centuries looking at her, and still have places she wanted to keep looking. Mostly the eyes. Her lashes were sharp and thin, like spider legs.

“I’m Marigold,” said Marigold, winced, and said, “I think I said that already.”

Beetle moved forward a bit more. Stared at Marigold, unblinking. Marigold felt pleasantly unmoored and incredibly aware of how pretty this girl was. Was this the sort of party where people kissed each other? Marigold was a bit too sober for drunken kissing, but maybe Beetle was drunk and wanted to kiss her. She didn’t smell like alcohol. She smelled…sort of like hand sanitizer. A lot of hand sanitizer. 

Beetle moved back again, still staring, still smiling. Clearly this interaction appeared to be going successfully, at least from her perspective, which was a baffling relief. Marigold was fairly certain all she’d done was say her own name and usurp Beetle’s solitary hiding place.

There was a crash from the living room, followed by raised voices. Marigold flinched involuntarily.

Beetle’s hand rested on her shoulder, feather-light, as if waiting for permission to close her fingers and hold Marigold all the way. It was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one; Marigold liked very much when people touched her, though she wasn’t always sure how much touching was allowed between people who barely knew each other. She shrugged her shoulder up a bit so that it connected more firmly with Beetle’s hand, which made Beetle smile again, reassuringly, and tighten her grip just enough to make it less of a hovering question.

“It’s a bit loud,” Marigold confessed.

Beetle nodded emphatically. 

“Do you think anyone will notice if we, I don’t know,” Marigold glanced furtively at the moving feet around them, “leave the table and go somewhere else?”

Beetle said, “Oh, I don’t care. I don’t know these people.”

Her voice, while warm, was somehow a lot lower than Marigold had expected–a warm alto voice. This, too, Marigold liked immensely. She let Beetle steer her out from under the table, made brave by Beetle’s hand on her upper arm. A few people by the table stepped back, alarmed and bemused, and Beetle fixed them with a hard look that held nothing of the still, sweet curiosity she’d shown Marigold under the table, which made Marigold like her even more.

Evie was kissing Amara on the sofa. Marigold turned her eyes away, towards Beetle, as they stepped quietly outside.

The street was silent save for the muffled sounds from the party indoors. It was chilly, but pleasantly so; Marigold hadn’t brought a jacket, and didn’t half regret it. She liked the cold. 

Beetle said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”

“So you don’t know these people, but you’ve been here enough times to know I’m new to this?”

“I live upstairs,” said Beetle. “They mostly just invite me to be nice. I came today because it’s November and I have a shit-ton of discount Halloween candy that I didn’t know what to do with, so I was just like, hey, why not give it to a bunch of drunk people and keep it from cluttering up my room forever?”

“Where did you get the discount Halloween candy?”

Beetle smiled. “At the grocery store.”

“Too much to just eat yourself?”

“I have little siblings,” said Beetle. “I was putting together a care package to send to them in California, but I guess I sort of overestimated how much Halloween candy was gonna be in those bags. You know how usually they fill potato chip bags only halfway? Kinda thought the Halloween candy bags would be like that. Or maybe I wasn’t really paying attention. I don’t know.”

Marigold asked, shyly, “Do you still have candy left over, or would we have to go back into the party to get it?”

“I got like seven bags,” said Beetle. “I think I brought four down. I left three upstairs because I felt like I might need them for something.” She shrugged, then smiled. “I guess it’s this?”

“You’re awfully nice, you know,” said Marigold.

“Not a lot of people tell me that,” said Beetle.

“Well, you are! I wouldn’t give my candy away to a stranger, if I had any–”

“Oh, please. You’re not a stranger. We’re under-the-table buddies. That’s basically like the antisocial shut-in version of brothers-in-arms.”

Marigold was opening her mouth to say something else when a car across the street honked its horn, once, twice, three times, with particular urgency. She recognized the sound immediately. Turning slowly, she exhaled through her teeth with exasperated frustration. “Oh, hold on,” she said, and crossed the street.

“No no no don’t come over here!” shrieked Roslin from the front seat. “We’re not here! We’re–Mom, why would you do that?!”

Thea said, “Bunny, did Evie leave you at that party by yourself? I keep saying–”

“Did you follow me here?!” Marigold demanded. 

“We came along to try to stop her,” said Lenora, who was sitting in the backseat with Sofie in her lap. She added, somewhat redundantly, “Didn’t work.”

Sofie babbled. Marigold said, “You brought Sofie?! It’s well past her bedtime! And you know I’ve been trying to get her on that regular sleep schedule–”

“Couldn’t find a babysitter,” said Thea.

“One of you could have stayed home! I told you,” Marigold continued indignantly, “I said it was fine, and it is, and I don’t need some sort of police escort if I want to go and spend some time with my sister–”

“I don’t like the look of some of the people that girl trusts,” said Thea ominously.

“You don’t like the look of anyone, Mommy,” said Marigold, even though she did actually agree. “Butt out.”

“Will you need a ride home?” said Thea. “Don’t see Evie round.”

Marigold had, in fact, come to the party with Evie, and her phone was still the old flip phone that Thea had gotten all of them because Thea didn’t believe in smartphones, so calling an Uber wasn’t really an option for her in the same way that it would have been were her mother, oh, remotely fucking normal about anything. But the thing about Thea was that because Marigold couldn’t call an Uber, Thea would also do things like this, which, annoyingly, pretty much balanced things out.

She said, “You came to give me a ride home?”

“Case you needed one,” said Thea. “Parties run late for girls your age. And you don’t go to these things often.”

Marigold said awkwardly, “Well, I’m–sort of going to go get Halloween candy from this girl’s apartment?”

Lenora sat up straighter, staring incredulously. Roslin said, “Bunny, how are you even a real person. Oh my god. She’s literally going to kidnap you.”

“I am twenty years old,” said Marigold.

“They’re going to–” Roslin was starting to laugh. “They’re going to have to put your face on the fucking milk cartons. You’re going to be the first ever college student to get kidnapped the same way they get kindergarteners. You would literally get into an unmarked van for candy. This is why we’ve gotta drive out with the baby at butt o’clock in the morning and make sure you’re not getting yourself roofied or something!”

Thea stiffened. Marigold said, “Rosie, do not say roofied in front of Mom?”

“You’re the one saying I’m going to get Halloween candy from this girl’s apartment in front of Mom!”

Marigold glanced over her shoulder. Beetle was standing across the street. The March family was pretty historically good at being really loud for no reason, which meant that there was a less-than-zero chance she’d heard all of that, even with the distance. “Look, just–wait in the car, I’ll call you,” she said.

“Not even slightly,” said Thea. “You’ll get the candy and you’ll come home.”

“I am twenty years old! Mom–”

“You’ve got class in the morning and you’re not taking the train before it’s light out, which you’ll have to do to get to campus on time. We’ll wait out here to drive you home.”

“God,” said Marigold, “fine,” even though she wasn’t really all that mad and they all knew it. Having a family who drove across town just to make sure you got home safe wasn’t always a guarantee. She leaned in through the open window and pressed a firm kiss to Thea’s cheek. “I love you, mommy.”

“My bunny,” said Thea. Her hand passed gently over Marigold’s hair. “Evie been good to you?”

Marigold didn’t really want to answer that question. She squeezed Thea’s hand and hoped that this would count as a response. 

Lenora said, “If she turns out to be a total bitch, we’ll stab her.”

“Do not talk about stabbing in front of the baby,” said Marigold immediately. She turned back towards the lit-up house and the too-loud music, picking up the pace. 

Beetle was still standing there, waiting. She said, “Cute family!” in a tone of voice that was decisively amused without being mocking, which Marigold liked. 

“They brought the baby out at whatever the fuck time it is,” said Marigold tiredly, “just to make sure I was fine, which I am. You’re not going to, like, take me up to your apartment and murder me with your Halloween candy, right?”

“I’m thinking of calling it Death By Chocolate,” said Beetle, straight-faced. Marigold snorted. “Bummer you’ve gotta go, though. Kinda felt like we should get to know each other.”

“Really?” said Marigold. Her heart flipped over.

Beetle smiled, that eerie, lovely smile, and said, “You ever just feel like maybe you’re supposed to know someone?”

Yes. No. Sort of. Marigold had felt that way about Thea, Roslin, Lenora, very much Sofie, but it hadn’t felt like this. “You could be wrong,” she said, carefully.

“Okay, yeah, I could be,” Beetle gamely agreed, turning on her heel to head back towards the house. Marigold followed. “Tell me about yourself.”

They walked through the front garden, everything halfway wet the way it always was on that kind of a cold November night. Beetle didn’t take the front door in, instead weaving carefully towards the side of the house and a rickety set of stairs leading up to an upstairs apartment. Plants, Marigold noticed: she had a whole bunch of plants in pots on the landing outside the apartment, which felt a lot like their home and all the plants Ros was always fussing over. Maybe that was one of those supposed-to-know-her feelings right there. 

“Well, I’m Marigold,” she said. “Marigold Baker. I mean, technically Marigold Riverborn, but that’s way too long a story to tell this early in the relationship, probably, so let’s just say Marigold Baker for now. I’m in culinary school—”

“Marigold Baker in culinary school?” said Beetle—again, laughing, but without any malice to it. “I’m kind of obsessed with you already. Keep going.”

Marigold grinned at her shoes, darting her eyes back up as they climbed the stairs. Beetle’s miniskirt rode up a little and showed off a rip in her fishnets, higher up her thigh. “I’m in culinary school,” she continued, “because I want to be a pastry chef, like, licensed and everything. My mom Thea runs a body shop and I think it would be super great if I could figure out a way to make it a body shop that also serves cupcakes. We kind of have to look into all the different business things we’d have to do for that? And Thea’s money’s still tied up in the divorce, which is—so not something I’m supposed to be talking about. Do not tell her I said anything.”

“Sure,” said Beetle, mouth twitching. “I kind of haven’t met your mom, so I feel like that might not be too hard?”

“Well, if we’re supposed to know each other and you’re obsessed with me, it stands to reason that you will meet my family,” Marigold pointed out, “them being my beating heart and all.”

“Oh,” said Beetle, “you’re one of those family-is-everything girls! Kinda dig it.”

What a complicated sentence. “I’m…adopted,” said Marigold carefully; it was not the whole story, but it was as much as she gave out. “As are my sisters. So, yes, they all mean a lot to me. We sort of chose each other.”

Beetle tilted her head thoughtfully. “Neato,” she finally said.

“What about you?” Marigold asked. “Is family everything?”

Beetle’s easy smile flickered. She said, “I’ve got a brother and a sister and I send them a shit-ton of candy whenever I can, like I said.”

Marigold knew the cadence of a half-truth. She didn’t press—just watched Beetle unlock the door.

The apartment was wallpapered, and poorly, in an intricate black-and-emerald pattern that made the space feel even darker than it probably was. Beetle turned on the lights to reveal that the walls were covered in photo frames. “Bugs,” she said cheerfully.

Marigold scanned the walls, a fascinated smile stealing across her face. Every framed photo was of a different insect—some of them drawings, some photographs, some scientific diagrams, all with a small identifying label attached to the frame. “Beetle!” she said, delighted.

“Yeah, it’s actually Beatrice, but Beetle feels like a better opening statement,” Beetle supplied. “Makes people go oh, okay, all the bugs make total sense, rather than whoa, that chick’s got so many bugs in her house! Is Marigold your name, or is it just ‘cause, you know, the hair?”

Marigold twined a red curl cheerfully around her finger. “Marigold is really my name!” she assured Beetle.

“Does anyone ever call you anything else?”

“Mari, usually.”

“How do you feel about Goldie?” Marigold’s nose crinkled. Beetle threw up her hands and said, “Mari it is. Or, I don’t know, what about Riri?”

Marigold felt a slimy shudder run through her. Face perfectly composed, she said, “My sister’s boyfriend calls her Riri. So.”

“Oh, which sister?” said Beetle with interest.

“...The one who invited me to this party,” said Marigold.

Beetle waited. When Marigold did not supply any further information, she said, with a note of friendly and deliberate finality, “Sounds complicated,” and moved further into the apartment. “Do you have, I don’t know, an Instagram or something? I kinda want to send you this artist I follow. I feel like you might really like her work.”

“...No,” said Marigold awkwardly. “My mom’s sort of got a whole Luddite thing going on. Like, right down to all the machinery-smashing.”

Beetle said, “You know the Luddites were just trying to go for job security, right? Not the worst thing to have happening.”

Marigold grinned a bit. “My mom is big on job security,” she agreed. “And also fucking up computers.”

“You should get an Instagram.”

“I use my sister’s. I’ll give you hers.”

“Your party sister?”

“No,” Marigold giggled, mostly because she wasn’t sure what else to do, “the sister in the car. Um, one of them. Roslin.”

Beetle was rummaging in a cabinet. She pulled out a large orange bag, handing it to Marigold, and said, “Take it. No razor blades, swear to God.”

Marigold opened the bag and laughed out loud. There wasn’t a trace of any name-brand candy—rather, the bag was full of themed chocolate, milk and dark and white chocolate insects in a variety of shapes and sizes. “You’ve got a really consistent aesthetic!” she observed. “So you just send a whole bunch of chocolate bugs to your siblings, usually?”

“Nah, they get the name-brand stuff,” said Beetle. “This candy’s what I bring out for the cute girls.”

Marigold blinked, nervously, and kept her smile on her face, not entirely certain what to say next. An affirmation, possibly? It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been considering it, only that as soon as it was on the table, it felt objectively terrifying. She wondered if her reticence would be read the wrong way and the candy would be put back in the cabinet. She hoped it wouldn’t.

Beetle’s smile softened a little and she ducked her head. “But if you want the name-brand candy,” she started.

“Probably it would be a bit easier to transport,” said Marigold awkwardly. “This is a full bag of unwrapped chocolate, and I really don’t want to take all of your good bugs home.”

“A good bug going with a good bug,” said Beetle, solemnly.

“I have no idea what that means.”

Beetle took the orange bag away and handed Marigold a fun-sized bag of Snickers bars. She said, “It’s seriously fucked up that I don’t have a party mix bag on me; this thing is depressingly uniform. Oh, fuck, are you allergic to nuts?”

Marigold shook her head.

“God. Good. Should have asked about food allergies before I just started handing you shit.” Beetle smiled again, self-deprecatingly. “Snickers okay? I might have some other stuff if you wanna see.”

Marigold didn’t care one way or the other. She liked this beautiful, strange liminal space she’d stepped into, where she was suddenly an almost-grown-up holding a bag of Halloween candy with a new friend who thought she was pretty. She wanted to stay in it a bit longer.

“What do you have?” she asked.

Beetle turned back towards the cabinet. “Uh, Three Musketeers, Butterfingers, and this one’s kinda polarizing, but a whole bunch of York peppermint pies.”

“What’s polarizing about peppermint?”

“I knew this guy who said it was like eating a bunch of toothpaste. Almost put me off it for a year or two before I forgot I totally love eating toothpaste.” Beetle shifted the bag down. “Is that a yes to the peppermint?”

“Norie loves peppermint,” said Marigold.

“Okay, but they’re for you. Do you like peppermint?”

Marigold blushed, and smiled again. “...Yes to the peppermint.”

“And because I’m kinda thinking maybe you end up giving all of them to Norie,” said Beetle, “because you’ve got that kinda sparkly-sweet thing going on, I’m going to give you the Three Musketeers too and say those are for your mom and your sisters, and the peppermint’s literally just for you.” She considered. “Two are for Norie, who I’m guessing is…your other sister?”

“My other sister!” Marigold brightly confirmed.

“So which one brought you to the party?”

Marigold thought about Evie, almost certainly throwing herself at someone who wasn’t her insufferably slimy boyfriend, and her jaw clenched.

Beetle didn’t ask again. “That enough candy for you?”

“Almost too much!” said Marigold.

“No such thing as too much candy,” said Beetle firmly. “At least not if you’re starting from zero. I’m starting from seven bags; I’ve gotta offload some of this shit.” She took a handful from the orange bag, pressing a collection of half-melted bugs into Marigold’s hand. “Take at least a few. Y’know, as, like, a token of my affection, or whatever.”

She was blushing a little, which showed up really easily on her pale face. Marigold felt a sense of profound satisfaction that her own golden-brown skin didn’t redden half as visibly. “Thanks for the beetles, Beetle,” she said, which made them both smile. “Can you actually hold onto them for a second, though? I’m going to give you—”

“Your sister’s Instagram?”

Smooth and sweet, Marigold said, “My number.”

“Oh, shit, okay!” said Beetle. Her blush deepened and she smiled in a way that was much more silly and excited. “Sure! But I do want your sister’s Insta too, because that thing in your pocket is super obviously a flip phone, and I’m one of those long texters.”

“I’ll just make an Instagram and text you,” said Marigold. “The handle is—”

“—no, man, you gotta check to see if it’s available before you—”

“Marigold underscore Baker underscore Tasty underscore Pastry underscore Nature apostrophe S no space Masterpiece.”

Beetle bit her lip, clearly trying not to laugh, and said, “Dude, that is not gonna work with the character limit. Just give me your sister’s for now so we don’t have to call each other like old people.”

Marigold pressed the melting chocolate into Beetle’s hands. It felt sort of like a kiss, somehow—wet and sticky and silly. Full of warm honesty. There was a magnetic whiteboard on the fridge, a schedule written out in neat handwriting. “Is it okay if I—”

“Go ahead, man!”

Marigold wrote her phone number, and Roslin’s Instagram underneath, then added, in parentheses, Marigold Baker the Party Girl, with a little heart next to it. She liked the thought of existing as Marigold Baker the Party Girl on someone’s fridge. She wondered if Beetle would do what she’d do were their positions reversed, and just never erase it, letting the erasable marker dry into that permanent foreverness that was the worst thing ever to clean. 

Beetle said, “Okay, cool. Tell your sister I’m gonna text her and it’s gonna be about you.”

“Ominous,” said Marigold. “I hope you say nice things.”

“No, dude, I’m gonna text her to talk to you. We’re not starting a group chat about you when there’s still so much stuff I don’t know about Mystery Marigold. Like, okay, what’s your favorite color?”

“Green,” said Marigold.

“Don’t tell me now!” said Beetle. She handed Marigold the chocolate back. “You go have a nice class tomorrow, okay? Get down there before your family thinks I killed you.”

“I don’t think I’d mind if you did,” said Marigold. “Bug girl.”

“Flower girl,” Beetle said, like they’d said goodbye like this forever. Maybe they really were supposed to get to know each other. 

~~~

Thea had put on “Baby Shark” to try and get Sofie to go to sleep, which wasn’t working, because whenever Sofie saw Marigold, she’d stay stubbornly awake until Marigold came back to rock her to sleep. Under most normal circumstances, because Sofie was the kind of baby whose idiosyncrasies seemed perfectly designed to psychologically torment her caregivers, “Baby Shark” would put Sofie perfectly to sleep so long as it was played exactly fifteen times in a row, but they’d hit seventeen and Sofie was still babbling half-coherent nonsense to an exhausted-looking Lenora, who kept trying to hand her off to Roslin.

Marigold hurried over to the car. Sofie said, “Mama!”

“We’re not doing that, she’s twenty,” said Thea, but Sofie was already making grabby hands towards Marigold, who scooped her up in a flurry of kisses. 

Roslin said, “Are you trying to reason with the baby?”

“The baby is a little terrorist who cannot be reasoned with,” said Lenora. “We need to get home so I can play first-person shooters and not listen to Baby Shark, ever again.”

Thea said, “Get in the back, bunny. How was the party?”

Marigold wasn’t sure how to tell them all about Beetle. She didn’t know if she wanted to. She sort of had to tell them about some of it, though, so she said instead, “Rosie, it’s okay that I gave someone your Insta, right? She wanted mine—”

“Dude, make your own,” said Roslin. “How many times is this gonna have to happen?”

“No one needs to be on social media,” said Thea immediately.

“Okay, well, Mommy, I am twenty-five, you don’t get to take away my phone,” said Roslin. “This would not be a problem if you just got, like, a MacBook or something. Whatever you have in your office is legitimately evil.”

“I bought a computer,” said Thea stubbornly. “I have a computer. I don’t see the problem.”

“That thing has to be from, like, the Revolutionary War!”

Marigold settled into the backseat with Sofie, resting her cheek against Lenora’s shoulder. She said, “Actually, there weren’t computers in the Revolutionary War—”

“Do not start this at like one in the morning.”

“You started it at like one in the morning.” Marigold buckled Sofie back into her car seat.

“Defending you! Do you want Mom to start burning laptops in the backyard again?”

“That was out of context,” said Thea immediately. “And mostly an accident, anyway. Didn’t realize lithium did that.” She started the car. “We turning off Baby Shark now?”

“No, Sofie likes it,” said Marigold.

“YES,” said Lenora. “Sofie’s awake anyway, Mari—”

Sofie had fallen asleep. 

“See, you have to leave it on now,” said Marigold, “she will wake up if you turn it off. We all know this.”

“Torment nightmare torture baby,” said Roslin affectionately. “You know sometimes it starts to make me sleepy when I listen to it? Something about the baby shark doo doo do do do do—”

“I will kill you if you start singing it, Roslin, it’s bad enough that we have it on without—”

“Doo doo do do—”

Thea said, “Quiet, I need to make this turn!”

Marigold cuddled into Lenora’s shoulder again. Lenora said, “Your baby is ruining our life.”

“Stop calling Sofie her baby,” said Thea. “Mari is too young to be raising a kid.”

“I’m twenty!” said Marigold.

“You’re a baby,” said Roslin. Her eyes lit up. “Baby Mari doo do do—”

Lenora said, “I am going to murder you, Roslin. I am going to kill you dead.”

“No murder until I’m done getting onto the highway,” said Thea, eyes on the road.

The girls quieted. Marigold cuddled into Lenora until Lenora leaned forward and towards her, letting Marigold use her as an all-the-way pillow. “Good party?” Lenora asked quietly.

Marigold didn’t answer. She wondered whether Evie would even notice she was gone.

“You’ll see her on her Monday shift,” Lenora said. “You can catch up with her then, if she wasn’t—I mean, you know, if she got. Distracted, or something.”

Marigold said, “It was a good party,” and realized that she did actually mean it. “I…met someone.”

“Oh, shit!” said Roslin from the front seat. “Goth Halloween candy chick does, like, bug taxidermy?”

“Roslin, do not stalk her Instagram!” yelped Marigold. “Just—just give me your phone! Give me your phone so I can—”

“I AM MERGING!” said Thea. “YOU ALL NEED TO FUCKING SHUT UP!”

Sofie squirmed happily and continued to sleep. Marigold was fairly certain it would be six more plays of Baby Shark before they were in the clear. 

~~~

beetlenecromancer: hi marigolds sister lol

beetlenecromancer: can u send me her insta when u have it? she said she’d make one

strawbrosie33: hey man if you fuck up my sister i’m going to use norie’s poison kit to poison you

strawbrosie33: HI THIS IS MARIGOLD

strawbrosie33: SORRY

strawbrosie33: SHEHS TRYINGG TO GBRAJB THE POHNE BACKC

beetlenecromancer: lmao

beetlenecromancer: nw

strawbrosie33: I AM ROSLIN I TRIUMPH

strawbrosie33: im so serious though bro i will literally kill you she is so fucking baby. you have no idea

strawbrosie33: you’ve known her for like five minutes we’ve known her forever she is THE BABIEST

strawbrosie33: Hi this is Marigold again I am So So So Sorry 

beetlenecromancer: dude you need a smartphone so bad this is so dire for you

[jaxaliel]

robin hobb should be writing yuri