#bc they KNOW you are wrong even if you don��t say it. kids are smart.

[damienthepious]

owo november is over babesssss back 2 your regularly scheduled full-size lizard content

Made A Garden (Chapter 3)

[ch 1] [ch 2] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Lord Arum, Rilla’s Parents, The Keep

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, (categorized as ‘other’ bc arum is nonbinary when i write him bye), Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, POV Alternating, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings, edited to feature my Rilla's Two Dads theory

Fic Summary: Rilla’s parents take her out when they do field work. She’s a smart kid, and she knows how not to get in trouble when they’re caught up with their experiments and research. This time, they’ve taken her to an enormous, beautiful swamp, and their theory is that the monstrous presence in this place should be entirely dormant- which is why Rilla is so surprised, when she meets a monster for herself.

Chapter Summary: Lord Arum tries to prove a point. Rilla gets excited!

Notes: no, i absolutely did not mean to take this long between chapters. i promise that i NEVER do. i'm just an easily distractible mess, is the thing. welcome to december here are the summery vibes again!!! loveyou

~

The Keep murmurs a question, a song that whispers in Arum's mind, awash with affection and concern. Are you not going to walk your swamp today, little Lord?

Arum scowls, pacing in a narrow figure eight as he reads through one of his predecessors’ journals. Again. “I do not need to do the same thing every day, Keep,” he grumbles. “And don't call me that.”

It hums an assent, clearly unconvinced. It pauses for a long moment, allowing him to continue his reading, but he isn't surprised when it chimes again, a light offer of assistance, a nudge towards what the Keep may do, to protect the both of them, if Arum wishes to have his swamp to himself again-

“Don’t-”

The book tumbles from his hands, thwumping to the floor as Arum winces.

It sings another nudge, pushing further in that direction, encouraging and warm.

“I simply do not feel like gallivanting around today!” he snarls. “It has nothing to do with her.”

There is another pause, and then the Keep trills in a vague, bemused sort of way.

Arum snatches the book back up from the floor with his tail, then clutches it to his chest. “I am not afraid of the humans,” he deflects, sticking his snout in the air. “They are utterly nonthreatening. They aren’t warriors or knights- they are some sort of- explorers,” he says derisively. “Scholars or researchers or some such. No threat, none at all.”

The Keep hums, even softer, how that will make it all the easier, to chase them out-

“No!” Arum stuffs the book back onto the shelves, his tail lashing behind him and his frill high. “It- it isn’t worth your effort, Keep. If they come close enough to be troublesome we can- can push them back away, but as it stands they hardly bear mentioning. It is highly obnoxious that we have spent even this much time discussing them.”

The Keep hums, clearly unconvinced, but Arum turns his snout up. He has ended the conversation. The conversation is over, and the humans need not be mentioned again. Obviously.

However. Arum has now put away his book, and he does not, in fact, know what he wishes to do next. He intended to spend his morning decoding and researching, but now- well, thanks to his meddling plant, he is far too agitated for that sort of focus-driven task, and he refuses to waste time trying to plug away at old Vetch ’s journals when his mind is not at its keenest. It would be pointless.

The Keep warbles again, and Arum bristles at the teasing edge in its tone.

“Fine,” Arum snaps after a moment, his frill fluttering at his neck. “Fine. If you should like me to prove my words, then I shall. You are in my mind, you ridiculous creature, but if that is not evidence enough for you, I will deign to assuage your pointless worries. I am not afraid of them,” he says, the hint of a snarl in his controlled tone. “I am not, and I will prove it. I shall go, and I shall walk my swamp, and no humans nor ridiculous ancient structures will deny me what I wish.”

The Keep hums one more question, its concern not quite assuaged.

“I know what I am doing!” Arum snarls, and he tries very hard not to wince when his voice creaks in the middle. “I will not be patronized! Am I Lord Arum, Keep, or am I some whelp for you to coddle and dismiss?”

It sings, patient, that he is Lord of the Swamp, and then after a moment it acquiesces, pulling a doorway open for him, out into his wilderness. It adds, gentle, that its duty is to protect Arum, just as Arum’s duty is to protect it in turn, and Arum stuffs down the little lance of guilt that stabs through him at that. He sticks his snout in the air, instead.

"And so I shall, if you simply allow me to do as I please."

The Keep pauses, and then it gives an indulgent hum as he steps out into the humid warmth of the afternoon.

Arum waits with his arms tangled across his chest until the Keep closes the way behind him, and then he-

He manages perhaps a half an hour inspecting his swamp before the curiosity worms through his scales. His tools and traps seem to be growing well, and those left by his predecessor are, he begrudgingly admits, even more promising. The fauna of the swamp seem perfectly content as well, with no management required from his part (excepting a particularly unlucky mongoose with a paw trapped between some tangled roots, but that hardly takes more than a moment to rectify).

He can't simply return home, though. Not this soon. That would hardly prove his point, would it? It would make the Keep insufferably smug, especially considering the wide berth he's given the humans and their little encampment.

Well. He can fix that part, at the very least, can't he?

It will play into the Keep's vines just as much to seek the humans out, he thinks irritably, but if he is going to lose regardless he may as well lose in the way he wishes to. He is not afraid of them, and if he wishes to make certain that they are not causing trouble, if he wishes to prove to the Keep that they are nonthreatening in no uncertain terms, then by the Universe itself he will.

They are embarrassingly easy to find. It is as if they have no desire to obscure their presence at all. Amaryllis mentioned, he supposes, that they had not been expecting to find much of an active monstrous presence here, but certainly since Amaryllis knows better now-

Has she not… told her parents? Or are they simply unworried over Arum himself, despite every reason they should have to be concerned? Clearly their hypotheses were wrong, so they should reassess their methods, should they not?

Her parents are doing something incomprehensible with glass vials full of swamp water. They perch carefully in a narrow canoe, each counterbalancing for the other as they gather their… samples, perhaps. Arum watches, suspicious, long enough to note that they are rather careful not to disturb the trees they are paddling between, that they avoid the floating flora. He watches long enough to observe as one of them accidentally ducks his hand too deeply into the water, his nose wrinkling as he pulls it back, and then he-

Grins, and his grin is the precise image of the one that Amaryllis wears, and then he flicks the water across the back of his companion, laughing as he squawks and smacks him in the leg.

They both laugh, then, and Arum is unsettled enough that he slips away.

Amaryllis herself it not difficult to find, after that. Still within earshot of the laughter as it subsides, unfortunately, but- the laughter does subside, and Amaryllis is smiling as she sketches away in that little journal of hers.

He watches her for quite some time as well, and he settles against the bark as he does, and he is comforted by the fact that he was, of course, correct.

These humans are entirely without teeth. He is certain that if he desired, he could frighten them away even without the Keep's help. He has no cause whatsoever to worry about them. No reason to fear, no reason to even keep an eye on them.

He remains in the tree for a good long while, however, watching Amaryllis summon with ink the detailed veins of leaves, the segmented bodies of insects, meticulously reconstructed pieces of his swamp.

~~~

Rilla yawns, suddenly, nearly startled by her own body's derailment and only barely managing not to ruin her latest sketch with an errant line. She grumbles to herself, shaking her head, and then she narrows her eyes at the page again, scrutinizing the roots she's drawn for this floating plant uncertainly. She's seen the roots when pulled out of the water, but that's not really representative of how they'd look underwater. She's tried to get a better look with her own head submerged, too, but- well, her eyes aren't really meant for that, and the water here isn't the most clear, either. She holds her breath for a moment, puffing out her cheeks, and then she huffs out the breath, tapping a finger on the page impatiently.

"They spread a bit wider than that," Arum says from above her, and Rilla startles. "And they curve slightly when there's a current, though I suppose most of the ones you've seen here would likely be in more calm waters than that."

Rilla tilts her head up, squinting against the sun until she spots the vivid violet of his eyes gazing back, narrowed and hesitant now that she's looking at him.

"…oh," she says, a little hesitant herself. "Uh-" she just barely stops herself from thanking him, considering how grumpy he got about it the last time. "Neat?"

"Hm," he grumbles, glancing off into the canopy rather than continue to look at her, and she bites her lip in consideration for a long moment.

"Would you- do you wanna show me what you mean?" she asks, lifting the book in her hands just slightly, and Arum's eyes dart to her again. "I think I know what you mean, but…"

He grumbles something, either wordless or just too quiet for her to understand, and then he slips further behind the leaves for a moment. She can still hear the scritch of his claws against the bark, though, which seems like a good sign. When he disappears, he seems to be able to do it without making any sound at all. She hears him growling low as he descends, and then his head peeks out from behind the trunk of a nearby tree, his eyes narrowed again in suspicion.

"Or…" Rilla angles her body a little, leaning sideways to see just a little bit more of the monster before he leans the opposite way in response. "I mean, you don't have to, if you don't-"

"Of course I don't have to," he snaps, "I don't have to do anything. I am ruler here. If I wish to ensure that your catalogue of my home is not full of incorrect information that is my business."

He steps out slightly, two clawed hands still curled around the trunk of the tree beside him, and Rilla realizes with a widening of the eyes that he has two other hands, as well, because the monster apparently has four arms, in addition to his long, twiggy legs and his dexterous tail. She hadn't been expecting that, hadn't realized that in between his first appearance mostly under the water and his second up among the branches, this is the first truly good look she's gotten of him so far. She knows that it's rude to stare, of course, but- but does that really count for scientifically significant and anomalous anatomies?

"Well?" Arum says, apparently wary of her scrutiny. "Do you want me to show you how it grows or don't you?"

"Which hand do you write with?" Rilla blurts, entirely unable to help herself, and Arum blinks.

"Whichever I wish to?" he answers, his scaly brow raising in confusion, and then he comes a little closer, watching her carefully as he reaches a hand out for Rilla to pass the journal to him. She doesn't hesitate, practically shoving it into his hands, extra plural implied. "Does it matter?"

"I mean-" Rilla watches him, noting the way he holds the book in his two lower hands, sketching with his upper left. "Yeah? Can you write with all of them equally well?"

"I'm a monster, not an idiot," he mutters, "of course I can write with all of them. It would hardly be convenient otherwise."

"But-" Rilla wants to bounce, instead she just steps a little closer, watching as Arum switches hands and continues to sketch with equal skill, his own style less detailed and more impressionistic than her own. "I mean, that's not how it is with humans, you know? Most people have a dominant arm that they can more easily perform tasks with, and usually they get so used to using the one arm for specific detailed tasks that the other one falls out of practice and isn't useful for the task anymore! There's a strange prevalence, too, a trend towards- the right hand side is more likely to be dominant than the left, and no one really seems to be sure why, just yet, though I bet we could figure it out if we just did a little bit more research. Though! There are people who can use both arms equally well, or- I mean, I guess some folks probably just train themselves to do so, and maybe it's not entirely an ingrained trait? I'm not sure about that one. Those people are called ambidextrous, which I guess would be okay to call you for a similar trait? Though, it means both sides, so I think a more accurate word would be omnidextrous, as in, all of your hands, though I don't know how many monsters have your limb configuration so it's hard to say how useful a word like that might-"

Arum narrows his eyes, his frill pressing tight against his neck as she talks, but she doesn’t recognize his annoyance for what it is until he interrupts her in a stammering hiss.

“S-slow- will you stop- will you stop yammering on so quickly that only your own shadow can follow? It is infuriating.”

Rilla snaps her mouth shut. She's convinced that her cheeks are flushing dark with the combined anger and embarrassment that smacks through her. This is even worse than when the shopkeep in market square told her to just shut her squawking little mouth already when her father sent her to fetch supplies by herself for the first time. Worse, because she never actually liked that shopkeep very much, but Arum-

“S-sorry,” she says, and her voice comes out quiet and blank and clipped. "I- sorry."

Arum huffs, wrinkling his snout and looking away, and then after a moment he flicks his eyes back towards her. She swallows, her shoulders hunching, and after another odd little pause his brow furrows.

"Well?"

She blinks. "W-well?"

He looks away again. "I did not think you were… finished with your explanation, little human."

"I- I wasn't, but-" she pauses, and Arum hazards another glance towards her, his expression wary. "I thought you- I thought you wanted me to shut up."

Arum pulls his head back. "What? No, I simply-" his frill flutters at his neck, and then it rises to frame his face as the monster winces. "I- I could not- understand, while you spoke so- so quickly. I do not converse in this way very often."

Rilla feels the sense of shame slowly, slowly bleed away, replaced by curiosity. "How do you… usually converse?" she asks, and Arum scowls.

"Monstrously," he says with a sneer, but when she only purses her lips at him he sighs. "I and my- my parent, as you would call it, do not need spoken words to communicate. They are merely … one layer of how we converse. It sings, and I sing, or speak, and we feel each other's intent," he explains, sticking his snout in the air. "It is far more efficient and accurate than a simple verbal exchange."

"Huh," Rilla says, furrowing her brow. "Huh, that's- I mean, Saints, yeah, that… that sounds like it would be nice." She pauses, frowning at her hands. "It'd be… It'd be nice if there was someone who always knew exactly what I meant."

After a moment, Rilla raises her eyes again. She expected Arum to have some sort of response to that, honestly. Seems like the sort of thing he'd leap at the chance to boast about, but- well, he looks distracted now, deep in thought. He seems to feel her attention, though, and he shakes his head.

"It is… nice, I suppose," he agrees, his tone a little begrudging. "It is difficult… difficult to imagine not having such. I suppose it must make it harder for you and yours to understand each other," he muses, "though, I suppose that you do still sing together."

Rilla blinks. "How… do you know that?"

Arum's eyes widen, and then he looks to the side, shrugging. "You were singing when I first found you," he says quickly, unconvincingly. "I simply- assumed."

"You've… you've been watching me?" she says, her tone rising, and Arum winces. "You've been watching my family?" She isn't even sure- she can't say if that idea bothers her, exactly, though it probably should-

"I- of course n-" Arum's eyes flick anxiously among the trees, and then his frill presses flat against his neck and his expression curls into a scowl as he looks her dead in the eyes again. "You are on my lands," he says, more sharply. "You are trespassers, not guests, so you may hardly complain when you are observed by those who are actually meant to be here. To live here."

Rilla opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. "Well- yeah, I guess that makes- sense. I just- I was surprised, I guess."

Arum blinks, and then his scowl goes even more furious. "Don't pretend to be- to be magnanimous about it, little creature, I saw the look in your eyes, I saw what you were thinking."

"I was surprised," Rilla says again. "And- and I didn't think you'd want to hear me sing. Most of the other kids don't."

Arum snaps his teeth together, a thin hiss slipping between them, and then he looks away again. "I- I didn't say that," he grumbles. "And- and I am not some other kid. I am a monster."

The word kid sounds- strange in his inhuman voice. Almost silly. She buries a laugh, mostly because she thinks that would probably make him even more grumpy. "I-" she starts, and then she cuts herself off as a thought occurs. "Huh. I had just been assuming … you are a young monster, though, aren't you? You're not just- small?"

Arum's eyes flash, and Rilla- Rilla can see for a moment that he's considering- something. Lying, maybe? And then he glances away again.

"I am the… new Lord of the Swamp," he mutters, begrudgingly. "But I am not a child. And I am not a hatchling anymore, either."

Rilla bites her tongue to stifle her curiosity at the distinction, but when she opens her mouth to respond, Arum interrupts.

"And I am not small," he snaps, a raspy growl in his throat. "I am precisely the size I am meant to be at the moment, and it is hardly my fault if other creatures feel the need to be so unnecessarily large."

Rilla can't help the laugh, this time, and it seems to derail Arum from his ranting. He stares at her as she presses a hand over her lips, and then he ducks his head, looking at her sulkily.

"You… do that rather a lot, don't you?"

"What," she asks through her fingers, "laugh?"

"Indeed. Do you find everything quite so amusing, then?"

Rilla tries not to feel- that stab of mortification again. She bites her lip, and the monster shakes his head.

"Don't-" he stumbles, winces, and then tries again. "I'm not demanding you stop. It was simply an observation and a question. Nothing more than that."

It's unexpected, honestly, that he would catch her reaction that quickly, and she nods more out of surprise than anything. "I just- laugh when I'm happy? Or- when I'm surprised sometimes."

He tilts his head. "Hm."

"You… you don't seem to laugh that much," she says, hoping that it just sounds like an observation in kind and not like a judgment.

"Hm," Arum says again, and then he looks down at the journal still in his hands, at the wavering lines of his sketches beside her own neater, less accurate ones. "No, I suppose I don't."

[one-abuse-survivor]

Tired is when you're sick of life, or feel weighed down by the stuff around you. Sleepy is when you want to go to bed. That's how me and my friend do it, anyhow. At this point, I'm fucking exhausted to the point where I feel too tired to let it out but im gonna anyways. There's bits in here that I can't tell my friend, or anyone, so i'm hoping bc this is anonymous i can let it out. Right, intro done lol. Onto the story. Last night, i have no idea what time, maybe five or six, (all i know is this

thing ended at 7pm), my mom storms out of the room and comes back holding a bottle of water and her bag. She proceeds to tell my dad she found the bottle at the bottom of my bed, (basically im not supposed to have anything at the bottom of my bead bc asian tradition believes that youre on top of it and thats dirty or whatever). Then she pulls out my school photo, puts it on the table and tells my dad to look at it. Starts ranting about how I never listen, i look horrible, worst photo i've ever taken. 

Basically, I go to a private school, and they think I should look good, and then they spent some time lecturing me about how i was supposed to look right when i was in the school, I look like a boy, i act like a boy, my hair's a mop, I look like a hooligan. Start talking about when i dress to go to school, how my shoes aren't polished and one of them has laces that show the white inner. How my hair's messy at the back, if i saw someone in jeans and someone in a suit in the street, who would i think was respectful? They told me they shouldn't have let me into the school, they loved me too much, that's why, they should have let me go to this public school that has a reputation for being a mess, that i belong there, waste of money, they regret letting me go here, thought i was a respectable girl. 

Dad asked me again, who wouldd i think was respectful, the jeans or the suit, and I told him I don't know. We'll get to that later, but at that moment he sneered and snorted and looked at my mom. 'says she doesnt know' he jeers. I'd meant it as in 'i have no idea, please help me'. He took it as 'she doesn't know, and doesn't give a fuck'. I don't know how to look proper. they never taught me. they tell me that something looks good so i wear it. mom still buys my clothes for me. I have no fucking clue what looks proper and what doesn't. 

Anyways, somehow they moved onto uni, and my current work, and how I pull all-nighters and how dad thought i was smart but nopw he has no hope, how he sees me get up in the morning and know i'm going to fail the assessment, how i get distracted, how i take too long to shower, how i never learn, how i never help them around the house, they do everything for me and if he was in my shoes then he would work until 'smoke came out' (vietnamese saying), how he would be so grateful but i'm not and they're going to leave me (which is a normal threat for them lol) and how they're going to die (another normal threat, dad has a lifelong illness and mom has been struggling with leukaemia for years) and they're not going to pay for uni if i get a stupid degree, only if i get a good degree like they want which will actually help me (law), if i want to become an engineer (something im considering) then i can pay for it myself, then again it's not like i'm even going to get into uni, when they look at me, they have to think of the girl i was when i was five because if they think about me now they feel sad, they won't look at me because I make them sad, they had so much hope for me, now down the drain, no, down to the sewers, look at my cousins going out, one of them had piercings and infections and almost got tattoos and is a nurse in a prison with a husband who stressed her out so much she passed out at work, do i want that, that's what i will get if i dont work, basd job, assisstants have to buy pads for their bosses, horrible child, this will end one of two ways, one i listen to them and come back years later to thank them or i'll look up at the stars and wish that i'd listened to them and they regret having me and caring for me, if only they'd been better parents, they'd been too lenient, but i don't care do i because if i cared it'd show in my working to please them and i haven't done that so that means i don;t care about them.

Dad told me it was too late to change, then switches to tell me it's not too late, they ramble on about my internet use, (i have to ask them for internet) and i'm not acutlalyu doping work on it, i'm just fucking around, they kjnow, they know, i can lie all i want nbut it's true. Horrible child, they'll die, they'll die, That's the end of the conversation, we're not going to talk about it anymore. No, stop talking. I'm going to tell you this until i die. I'm going to keep saying it, beccause it's better that i say it and you not listen than i dont say it and regret not saying it. (okay, i can;t currently remember anything else of what they said lol.). By the way, you wanna know abt

[asks didn’t arrive and I asked for the last bit again]

ok lets hope to god this sends then. i think i know where i was up to - 'do you want to know about what was wrong with the photo' i think was meant to be that. anyways, yeah. guess what was wrong with it. i had a fucking splinge. like my hair was parted and a bit of the part was split. that's all i can see that's wrong with it. maybe my hair looked oily? idk but that's all i noticed. also said something after that about do u remember when dad asked me abt who did i think looked better the suit.

also can i add something i just remembered which is that one of them put folders on my shelf and mom told me she knew i put them there to hide what i was looking at on my laptop from her when i??? didnt??? put them??? there??? in the first place???? (the layout of my room allows the folders to block the view of someone from the door basically) i put new folders there after i think my dad put them there but i didnt originally put them there??? sorry it was a full ask rant and i have no idea what the freak i typed and what i didnt lol. but u get the gist i think. big fat lecture.

i am tired. my eyes were puffy and there was like this pool of snot floating on top of this pool of tears if you did get the ask sorry u had to read that twice. :(. i mean even tho u didnt see it i was able to let it all out. not sure if it made me feel better about anything but being able to do it at all is rlly nice. Thank you for that.

-----

No wonder you’re tired, nonnie... I’m really glad you could get all of this off your chest, and really sorry that you have to hear those awful things about yourself coming from your parents.

I’m a white European, so I don’t share many of your experiences and I don’t know how it is to live in a Vietnamese family, but I hope it’s okay to compare it a little bit with my experiences in my (very Christian) family--if not, you can absolutely skip the next paragraph! 

I have had a bunch of conversations with my therapist about traditions, religion, and misogyny, because since I cut my mother off, my grandfather has lectured me many times about how I am a bad daughter for looking out for myself and putting my life first instead of being devoted to my mother’s wants and needs. He told me that she’s sick and I’m horrible for not caring about that and abandoning her, and that if she doesn’t love me, I just have to work harder until I "crack her walls”. (As if I haven’t tried already, and as if she didn’t use her very mental illness as an excuse to abuse me). My therapist basically told me that sometimes, being the Disney villain in some people’s stories means you’re doing something right, because their vision of what’s right and what’s wrong (especially when it comes to daughters and women in general) is designed to hurt you, to make you put your family before yourself. That it’s never wrong to put yourself and your needs first, and that kids don’t owe their parents anything just because the parents brought them into this world--that was the parents’ choice, not the kid’s, and therefore it’s the parents’ responsibility to care for their kid, whoever that kid turns out to be; and not the kid’s responsibility to be the model child that the parents had in mind or to care for them.

Your parents belittling you for things you have little to no control over and accusing you of being responsible for their future deaths, for not knowing things that haven’t been explained to you, for not living up to their expectations without even giving you a chance to try, and for not “working for them as hard as they would in your place”, are all red flags of emotional abuse. Accusing you of things you don’t do and constantly drilling into your mind that they “know” you’re a horrible person who doesn’t want to learn or change is a red flag too, and probably an excuse to take the guilt off their shoulders for not taking the time to guide you in life and to explain anything to you before accusing you of not knowing it already. “It’s too late” puts the blame on you, but what it actually means is probably something along the lines of “It’s easier to scream at you than to put realistic expectations on you and then help you achieve them while respecting your boundaries and allowing you to make mistakes, but I don’t want to feel guilty about it, so let’s pretend you’re a lost cause, yeah?”

I used to go to a private school too, and my mother repeatedly told me that was the reason she struggled economically and that I had ruined her life. It wasn’t until I talked about it in therapy that I realised that I never had a choice in what school I went to. Same as I never had a choice in anything my mother decided for me. So how could I be to blame for the consequences of those decisions? And how can you? If they buy you certain clothes, then they have no right to criticise how you look in them. If they chose to put you in a private school, then the money spent is on them, not you. You shouldn’t have to “prove” you’re worth their decisions for you or their basic care for you--they chose to give you that unconditionally the moment they decided to have you in the first place, and if they refuse to give it or threaten to take it away, it’s becuase they’re neglectful and/or abusive, not because something intrinsic about you justifies it. You’re not a bad kid; you’re just a normal kid with very bad parents. And I’m really sorry that you have to put up with them. You deserve better 😔

I’m here if you need to vent again in the future, nonnie. Sending a virtual hug ❤

[damienthepious]

i am running out of unique ways to say how Excite i am for Lizard Kiss Day, please understand that i am still SO EXCITE

Made A Garden (Chapter 2)

[Chapter 1] [ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Lord Arum, Rilla’s Parents

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, (categorized as ‘other’ bc arum is nonbinary when i write him bye), Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday, POV Alternating, canon typical Arum ignoring feelings

Fic Summary: Rilla’s parents take her out when they do field work. She’s a smart kid, and she knows how not to get in trouble when they’re caught up with their experiments and research. This time, they’ve taken her to an enormous, beautiful swamp, and their theory is that the monstrous presence in this place should be entirely dormant- which is why Rilla is so surprised, when she meets a monster for herself.

Chapter Summary: Little Lord Arum tries his best to keep his distance, despite his curiosity.

Notes:hehehehehehehe i am ENJOYING this fic IMMENSELY and i hope y'all are right there with me <3

~

Arum is absurdly careful to ensure that the human - Amaryllis - does not see him the next day, when she returns to the pond. He hides among the trees above, hoping that she will assume him more aquatic than he actually is. She seems… nervous, perhaps? Or at least expectant, for the first hour or so. She keeps scanning her eyes along the shore, among the foliage, and whenever there is a noise fairly close she perks up, her eyes lighting with… excitement?

Arum does not understand. Humans have not invaded his swamp before (not while he has been alive, at least) but he has read about them, in the coded journals and memoirs of his predecessors, and he has heard stories from his Keep. Humans are supposed to be… different from this. Different from her.

They are supposed to be weak, brittle, fallible, inflexible and slow-minded. Easily frightened. Easily drawn to violence by their fear, and even more vicious when frightened in a group.

Amaryllis appears neither fragile nor fearful.

She swims for hours, intermittently singing to herself (her song was what had drawn him towards her the day before, a strange, out-of-place warble among the frogsong and birdsong, a foreign sound in his wider home), and then when her strange, soft skin is over-soaked by the water she pulls herself out to sit on the bank. She finds a wide bed of moss and spreads out upon it, murmurs sphagnum girgensohnii in a pleased singsong as if she is greeting the flora. She carefully drifts her fingers across the softness before she sinks herself into the mound, and then she just- lays in the sun, for a while.

Arum is surprised to learn that humans enjoy basking, too.

Once she’s reasonably dry she pulls out a book from the little canvas bag she left on the shore and starts to write, starts to draw, and Arum creeps closer above so he can see the work of her hands. Her handwriting is clean and even, and too small to be read at a distance, but her sketches are curious. She scrawls out careful imitations of the curves of nearby ferns, then devotes some time to dragonfly wings, watching as the creatures dart along above the water, laughing her strange, high laughter when they come close to her.

When she grows tired of her book and returns to the water, Arum slinks down from the branches to the bushes, and pulls the book quietly from the bag during a long moment when Amaryllis is drifting in the water with her eyes closed.

Up close, her handwriting is full of interesting curls and curves, but it is still not quite parsable to his eye. He understands the language, certainly, but she seems to be employing a sort of shorthand he is unfamiliar with. He is still more interested in the sketches, anyway, and he nearly drops the book entirely when he sees-

Himself.

It’s a drawing of only half his face, really, from the snout up with his jaw and lower hidden beneath the surface of the water, and she captured the exact curve of his horns from memory somehow, and his eyes are glaring out from the page with wariness and- fear.

… she saw that? She saw that he was afraid?

No. He closes the book. No, of course she hadn’t seen- how could she have seen fear that was not there? Lord Arum has no reason to fear a single weak human, especially not some human child with an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation.

Arum tucks the book away again, back into the canvas bag, and while Rilla sings quietly to herself, he beats a tactical retreat.

The next day it rains, hard and relentless and cool, and Amaryllis does not return to the pond. Arum finds the large tent the humans are sheltering in after minimal searching, though.

Apparently humans are not so fond of rain. They remain inside the tent for most of the day, and he can see them in half-obscured silhouette through the cloth, through the flaps that ruffle in the wind, apparently sketching and writing in more books like the one Amaryllis keeps. They speak to each other in easy, fond tones about how certain ‘research’ should be ‘organized’, until apparently that begins to bore them.

One of the taller humans (Amaryllis’ parents? Was that what she said?) pulls out an instrument, a short-necked, pear-shaped thing with an abundance of strings, tunes it with skillful speed, and then he begins to play.

The song is adeptly performed. There are so many strings, and the human’s fingers move so nimbly Arum can barely keep tabs on them (they must have to, since he has so few digits with which to work), and then Arum is distracted from the effort of watching his playing when the three of them start to sing.

Amaryllis singing on her own was… pleasant. In a simple sort of way. A childish sort of way. And Arum is quite familiar with harmonies, of course. He hears the things the Keep is saying underneath its song, but he does still hear the song as well, and on occasion it will sing him a song he enjoys enough to sing along with. At night, typically, when he is close to sleep.

The harmony the three humans create is-

It feels familiar. It feels precisely how singing with the Keep feels.

It disquiets him, these humans and their strange-familiar song. He slips away in the rain, scrambling quick until he can no longer hear them, and then he calls for a way home.

The third day after he meets Amaryllis, he watches her as she picks her way around a patch of berry-laden bushes (not eating any of the berries, thankfully- they may look like an edible fruit, but magical flora can be quite tricky and not even Arum knows for sure if this happens to be a patch of something that would kill the human on ingestion or not), and as she wanders she becomes distracted by a grouping of overlarge purple-and-gold butterflies flouncing over her head.

She is too distracted. She does not see the danger.

Arum panics. He whips his tail down below the leaves, slips it around Amaryllis’ waist and jerks her back, just barely in time to keep her out of the way when the sickly gray-blue flower hanging from the branch ahead of her belches out a cloud of vicious, poisonous orange spores.

“Watch where you’re going,” he barks in alarm, “you stupid little human!”

He sees the moment when she recognizes his voice, and then- he panics again. He unwinds his tail from around her midsection (humans run unreasonably hot, he thinks) and clambers higher into the foliage, where she will hopefully be unable to see him.

Arum watches from his new perch as Amaryllis takes a large, careful step away from the still-hanging orange cloud, and then she aims her eyes upward, searching for him. He growls automatically, which- was the wrong thing to do, because her attention hones in close to his position and he feels compelled to scramble another branch or two away until he feels safe from her gaze.

“Ah… Arum?” she calls out, her eyes still scanning where the leaves are swaying in his wake.

Arum’s mouth curls into an unhappy frown, and he keeps deliberately quiet and still. Perhaps he can fool her into thinking that he has already gone away, and then he can leave in earnest when she runs back to her little family.

“Well…” she is still looking upward, still looking for him. “Uh… thank you for that, I think?”

“Don’t-” Arum snaps before he can stop himself, furious that she would do something so horrible as to- “Don’t thank me!”

He is still hidden from her, but obviously she knows generally where his voice is coming from, and she turns slowly on her heel as she continues to look for him, a slow half-smile curling her mouth. “I mean… I don’t know exactly what that plant is, but I figure it probably would have been pretty bad for me if I breathed any of that orange stuff in, right? And I definitely would have just walked right into it if you didn’t… kinda… you know… save me-”

“S-stop that!” Arum drops back down, just enough that he can stick his head through the leaves and scowl at her upside-down, his frill flaring with irritation and with gravity. “I did not save you, don’t be ridiculous-”

“What would you call it, then?” she asks, crossing her arms and looking up at him.

He opens his mouth to answer and- does not know. His jaw snaps shut. He tries again, with equal success, then settles for a glare as she raises an eyebrow at his lack of explanation.

“So…” she says, her voice musical, “I think you might deserve, y’know, just a little thank-you for-”

“No, I most certainly don’t.”

Amaryllis giggles, apparently unable to contain her mirth as she looks at him, and he glares automatically in response, his teeth snapping together, but then he feels his cheeks twitch and he- chokes out half a laugh of his own in response, completely unable to stop himself. He feels his his frill pull tight to his neck with mortification, and he pulls his head back up behind the leaves, where she cannot see him bury his face in his hands as he starts to scramble away.

Ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous- of course he laughed with- no, he was laughing at her, of course he was, because she’s just a silly little human, wandering and nearly getting her stupid self killed-

“Wait, don’t go!”

Scowling viciously, he pops his head back down, and Amaryllis has to turn to spy his new position. “Why not?” he snarls.

“Because-”

Arum waits. Amaryllis stares at him, and now it is her turn to work her jaw without giving an answer. After a moment, she clasps her hands together in front of herself and bites her lip.

“I… I don’t know. I just don’t want you to leave.”

Arum stares at her. He stares at her for what feels like a long time, but she does not say anything else. She does not look away from him either, her dark eyes catching the light drifting through the foliage and turning intermittently molten and deep amber, like buckwheat honey backlit by the sun.

“Don’t be foolish,” he says, his voice scratching low. “Run back to your family, little human. Clearly,” he growls, “clearly you do not belong here.”

Then, before the frown furrowing her brow can grow any further, before she can retort or respond, he bolts. He darts from branch to branch and away, his heart hammering with shame and confusion at his own actions and Amaryllis’ words, and this time she does not call after him.

He is confused by that, as well. Confused by his disappointment, when he does not hear her voice again.