#dipper can you serve? the country --

[grimm-bot]

here's both versions of the phoenix i did for operationjetset's IEYTD collab :] i do hope he wiggles in there somehow but if not that's okay!

[mallleus]

I totally see Stan with a Hispanic wife/husband/spouse. It just fits ya know?

Constantly has red lipstick somewhere on him

He brings home a pumpkin for Halloween one day and spouse turns it into a soup

“ it’s so hot, doll face, what’s on the menu?” “ Caldo de Pollo” dies a little inside, Soos appreciates the homemade food

He thought he’d be funny when he swapped their plate with his unaware they gave him a mild serving of chorizos and he had to chug a gallon of milk because they went scorched earth on their with hot sauce

Likes the homemade fruit popsicles

Uses mythology/scary stories from their country as inspiration for attractions in mystery shack “ and here we have the illusive La YA-rona” ( he tries his best but he can’t pronounce most words)

He was in a Colombian prison he speaks Spanish to an extent but learns more living with his partner

Dipper and Mabel are not immune to eating caldo de pollo on 172738949272 Fahrenheit degree weather btw

You are their Tia/Tio (y/n)

The oven is extra storage to you and he doesn’t understand why you need all those pots and pans

He got sick once and you gave him ginger ale, Vic’s vapor rub, Tylenol, the tiger blanket, and sent him to bed. (Told him the next day he got sick cuz he went to bed with his hair wet)

When mad at him you scold him in FAST PACE NATIVE SPANISH and he’s like that’s hot but also slightly intimidated because it sounds so mean

Wendy asks to learn the cuss words

You did the egg thing on Stan and it immediately turned black and there was silence for a good 5 minutes while you both stared at just how black the yolk was

Family cookout! autism be damned, Ford can work the grill

Watching tele novelas with subtitles for Stan, despite not understanding what’s being said he still cries

If you HC as reader being with Stan BEFORE the portal incident then, reader definitely calls Ford Cabron in passing (Stan’s ride or die fr) (Fords got like 12 phds, he’s gotta know a couple languages, he knows what you’re saying just not why)

If you HC being with Stan AFTER then they’re like ok whatever but I am distrustful of you (also probably married to StanFORD so you’re gonna have to divorce him to marry StanLEY. Congrats on that)

Calling Stan, mi Amor

Calling Dipper pequeño and Mabel Chiquita

I wrote this for me but if you want more let me know

Part 2 Part 3

[rabbitcruiser]

National Cheese Fondue Day

National Cheese Fondue Day is celebrated each year on April 11. Since cheese is such a popular (and delicious) ingredient, this day recognizes a food holiday that many enjoy. Fondue is a dish of melted cheese or other ingredients, served in a communal pot, known as the caquelon. This pot is placed over a small portable stove known as the réchaud. People then dip the bread into the cheese using long-stemmed forks. Meat, crackers, and vegetables may also be dipped into the cheese [No, just no. No way!]. Cheese fondue consists of a blend of cheeses, wine, and seasoning. It is a common delicacy that is available at most restaurants and can be easily made at home.

History of National Cheese Fondue Day

Fondue has been around for centuries, but the original cheese fondue recipe was only published in 1875. Before this, there was a dish called ‘fondue’ that resembled a scramble, which was a mixture of eggs and sometimes truffles. In 1905, cornstarch was introduced to Switzerland which led to eggs and truffles being removed and fondue becoming a cheese-based dish. The fondue is cooked on a stove and it is then poured into the Caquelon (fondue pot) where it is served at the table.

It is not known who made the first cheese. Some records suggest that it might have been accidentally made by an Arabian merchant. The merchant put his supply of milk into a pouch made from a sheep’s stomach, as he traveled across the desert. The rennet in the lining of the pouch, combined with the heat of the sun, caused the milk to separate into curd and whey. He found that the whey satisfied his thirst and that the cheese had a delightful flavor that kept him full for a long time.

Several different traditions go with eating fondue. One is the eating of the crispy cheese left at the bottom of the pot — it is referred to as ‘la religieuse.’ Another tradition is the custom of what happens when your cube of bread falls off of your fork. Ideally, if someone’s bread falls off, they have to buy a round of drinks for the table!

National Cheese Fondue Day timeline

80,000 - 10,000 Years Ago

The Domestication of Dairy Animals

Primarily sheep are domesticated for the human consumption of its milk.

100 B.C.

Cheese Making in the Roman Empire

The Romans document and find ways to perfect the process of cheesemaking.

17th Century

Cheese Manufacturing in America

The knowledge of cheese making is brought to the new world.

1900 -1950

The Spread of Commercial Cheese Factories

Cheese production rises to 148 million pounds in 1910 and 561 million pounds in 1950.

National Cheese Fondue Day FAQs

Which country's national dish is cheese fondue?

The Swiss Cheese Union declared cheese fondue Switzerland’s national dish in 1930. 

What are good dippers for cheese fondue?

Bread is a common dipper used for cheese fondue. However, there are other options to choose from such as french bread, breadsticks, and croutons. sourdough, pumpernickel, and bagels can also be used. 

Is cheese fondue healthy?

Fondue, as well as cheese fondue, can be unhealthy. A classic fondue starts with rich cheeses that are blended with spices and white wine. This blend creates a thick, savory sauce for dipping chunks of bread and other morsels.

How To Celebrate National Cheese Fondue Day

Host a fondue game night: Invite your friends over for a fondue game night on National Cheese Fondue Day. If someone’s bread falls into the cheese, they will have to buy everyone a round of drinks. You can also come up with your own games.

Post on social media: Post a photo of the cheese fondue that you made on social media with the hashtag #NationalCheeseFondueDay and encourage your friends to do the same.

5 Facts About Cheese That Will Blow Your Mind

Cheese can be addictive: Cheese contains a chemical that can trigger opioid receptors in the human brain.

There are more than 1,800 varieties of cheese: It would take about five years if you tried one cheese per day.

Cheddar is the most popular type of cheese: Cheddar cheese is a hard, smooth-textured cheese made from cow’s milk.

Pule is the world’s most expensive cheese: A pound can be sold for as much as $600 to $1,000.

Cheese is one of Pizza Hut’s main ingredients: Pizza Hut uses about 300 million pounds of cheese annually.

Why We Love National Cheese Fondue Day

It is easy to make: Cheese fondue is probably one of the quickest and easiest dishes to make. National Cheese Fondue Day lauds a dish that despite its simplicity, is delicious.

A day off from cooking: If you have been wanting to take a day off from cooking, then National Cheese Fondue Day is the perfect day to do so. Whip up this simple yet filling dish in a matter of minutes.

You can spend time with friends: Cheese fondue nights bring friends together. National Cheese Fondue Day is a great excuse to share a meal with your loved ones.

Source

All you need is: Grated Fondue cheese, corn starch, white wine, Kirsch (clear, colorless fruit brandy traditionally made from double distillation of morello cherries), garlic and pepper. Please, don’t use the prepared convenience food one!

[riyamusafircab]

The beauty of Nepal and Adventures things

Nepal is situated mainly in the Himalayas, bordered by China to the north and India to the south, east, and west. Nepal is known for its diverse geography, ranging from the lowland Terai plains to the towering peaks of the Himalayas Nepal is a popular destination for tourists, especially for trekking and mountaineering. Nepal is one of the countries known for its breathtaking natural beauty, diverse culture, and rich history. The tourism industry in Nepal has a variety of attractions, and visitors come from around the world.

There are some Magistic things in Nepal

Himalayan Majesty

Nepal has the world’s highest peaks, and mountains in Nepal including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. In Nepal, the Himalayan range provides stunning landscapes, trekking opportunities, and mountaineering adventures.

Trekking

When you visit Nepal You must be doing Trekking and many adventurous Things Nepal is the land of trekking (and climbing), offering some of the best trekking routes in the world The Annapurna Circuit, Langtang Valley, and Everest Base Camp treks are the Trekking point These treks offer not only stunning mountain views but also a chance to experience local culture and hospitality.

Cultural Heritage

Nepal is a cultural heritage with ancient temples, palaces, and monuments. The Kathmandu Valley, in particular, is a UNESCO World Heritage site with seven well-preserved monument zones, including Bhaktapur, Patan, and Kathmandu Durbar Square. and many more places like Pokhara, Chitwan, Lumbini, Bhkatatpur, Janakpur Janakpur is the place where Sita Maa Birth.

Adventure things to do in Nepal

Nepal is an adventure enthusiast, offering a wide range of thrilling activities amidst its stunning landscapes.

Mountaineering

Mountaineering adventure is such a beautiful adventure, This tour lets you get up close and personal with some of the most traditional Himalayan cultures and admire majestic peaks such as Mt. Cho Oyu, Mt. Ama Dablam, and Mt. Pumori at the same time

Water Rafting

Nepal’s rivers offer Various types of white-water rafting like risuli, Marshyangdi, Karnali, Seti, Sunkoshi, and more They have also been given imaginative names like ‘Surprise’, ‘Upset’ ‘Big Dipper’ etc. It’s a day or several days of fun floating down the river enjoying the beautiful scenery, sometimes views of distant mountains, and resting on sandy beaches

Paragliding:

Paragliding has been one of the most popular activities for the tourist in Pokhara. Pokhara is rated as one of the top 5 commercial tandem paragliding locations in the world. It gives a picturesque view of the surroundings that will spellbind a person.

Many companies in Pokhara offer paragliding in Pokhara. You can also go for a solo flight, you just have to ask for permission at the aviation office of Pokhara, and they will allow you to make your flight.

Canyoning:

One of Nepal’s hidden gems is the refreshing waterfalls, formed among the deep gorges, which are perfect hidden havens for hardcore thrill seekers. Canyoning in these deep gorges has become an alternative for thrill seekers who’ve done it all.

Famous food in Nepal

Food is always an important part of Every Culture. When we visit a new place, we try some traditional cuisine of that place. Nepali cuisine and these dishes represent just a small portion of the delicious foods you can find in the country Your vacation is memorable not only for the places you can visit but also for the food we eat and the people we meet.

Dal Bhat

This is a Nepali Dish in cuisine, dal bhat consists of lentil soup (dal) served with rice (bhat). It is often accompanied by vegetables, pickles, and sometimes meat or fish. If you like a simple and authentic taste, then you must try this national food of Nepal.

Momos

Momos are dumplings filled with a mixture of meat (usually buffalo, chicken, or goat) or vegetables. They are typically served with a side of dipping sauce, such as tomato achar or sesame sauce. You must try this food

Gundruk

Gundruk is the most popular dish in Nepal Gundruk is fermented leafy greens, usually mustard greens, which are dried and used in various traditional dishes. It is a popular side dish in Nepal.

Sel Roti:

Sel Roti is a traditional rice-based doughnut-like snack, usually enjoyed during festivals and special occasions. It is made from rice flour, milk, and sugar.

Thukpa:

Though originally a Tibetan dish, thukpa is popular in Nepal. It is a noodle soup with vegetables, meat (chicken, beef, or pork), and a flavorful broth.

Yak Cheese:

In the higher regions of Nepal, particularly in the Himalayas, yak cheese is a common and unique delicacy. It is used in various dishes or enjoyed on its own.

There are many more Dishes in Nepal if you are visiting Nepal You must try all this food.

Yomari

Yomari is a sweet Dish for sweet lovers. This is a dessert prepared from rice dough stuffed with coconut paste. Yomari is the most common dessert you will see during the festival season in Nepal.

If you are Planning for a Nepal Trip You Must Visit this adventure Place and try this Food also. We also provide you with a wide range of packages for the Nepal Tour Package that will provide you with a comfortable and safe journey by taxi, cab, and luxury cars all over Nepal from India. Our Experienced Team Can Help You to Organize the Best Trip. We Provide All the Information about the Best Places to Visit, Things to Do, What to Buy and Eat, And How to Reach Nepal. Our Executive is Available 24*7 to Help you Planning Your Trip.

[uj453]

what will we see on the other side of this... 

30/4/2021 

0 Comments 

I have now attempted to write about this more than 2-3 times. But what can be said about corona that hasn't already be said? The horror of it? The madness of it? The way the state has handled it? The way the right almost across the world have been able to take advantage of it? The way we had this opportunity to re look at the whole system and re imagine it, and instead as a society as a whole we have just somehow managed to justify this profit driven attitude ahead?

The multitude of levels we have failed ourselves is quite something. And in this individualised setup that has been created and we so pride ourselves, we fail to see beyond our own plights even now. Now that the virus has exploded in India, people here are in shock, and it's an emotion that is far away from the apathy shown by the state and in the larger narrative, where it was apparently Shiva whose lineage was protecting us all.

It is amazing how we value human lives. It only gets triggered when it is someone we know. In abstraction, it just remains an idea. Somehow in these times of the virus, we talk about how it afflicts the rich and the poor, but fail to talk about who comes out on the other side and in what condition. Someone once told me that being poorer in a rich country, is better than being rich in a poor country. If we can't see that now, I don't think we ever will. We are just blind. The rich, are so blinded in their convenience, and their luxury, that they can't really see how this kind of a social situation is killing themselves.

When the second wave was hitting India, and the other countries started announcing border restrictions, the first action of the uber rich was to get the fuck out. There were apparently around 10 private jets, some probably privately owned, some leased from the middle east, that landed in UK before the 4 AM flight ban that was instituted. It is everyone for themselves. And when it is that, you want to be in a state where the facilities are better. Where the provisions are universal, and even there you will demand for an eXclusive premiere facility of course. How can we in our blindness not see that if this place here, this situation here was more just, then it will be better for all of us. And then you won't have to protect yourself from the other.

It is always this other who is a problem. Be it the muslims who were the super spreader, against the holy dippers, who are purifying the world with the virus. Be it the poor. Be it the class that serves you. They should be sanitised, they should be kept at bay. The upper middle class Indians, love to talk about how the country has progressed, prospered. Mind it, I say upper middle class, because the middle class doesn't really exist. For whom is this progress, and prosperity? The other day on a news channel was an appeal for a vaccine for a child who suffers from a genetic disorder. The whole treatment is supposed to cost around 16 crore rupees (around 1.8 million euros). And the channel in all it's open hearted charity is asking for charity from everyone. Of course this is an English news channel. How can we in our blindness not see that a health system which is so profit oriented will inevitably lead to situations like this. Is it really so difficult to see through the facade of all of this. Instead of the blind short sighted privatization of everything (health education), is it really so difficult to see that this whole situation could probably have been better.

In celebrating the rich, in idolising the ambanis, in trying to be the adanis, in awe of the tatas, the ruias, the jindals, lost in this creation of the myth of 'the indian dream', can we all really not see that it's just better to have a stronger national system? Ambanis made a hospital. How many state run hospitals could have been run with the cost of that one hospital. How many tons of oxygen cylinders be bought at the cost of the opening ceremony of that hospital. Mind it, the opening ceremony had who's who of bollywood, and of course Modi flying in specifically for that. How much more could have been done had Ambanis at least paid the real cost of the land, on which they made a hospital which only the uber rich can access.

The irony of the situation is that now the celebration is of the philanthropy of Serum Institute of India's Poonawala. How graciously he reduced the price of the vaccine for the state government by 25 % to 300 rs. The same person who said that even at 200 rs, they were making profits, but NOT super profits. And they would of course want to make super profits. But he is our hero, our saviour in these times. He is the one who tweets the federal government policies before even the state governments know it. No there is no corruption in this efficient hard working government. How blind are we, when we do not see what we don't want to see (a digression to Rafale, Adanis, Ambanis being refrained). And the aforementioned English News channel host is criticizing the state governments for wanting to make the vaccines free for people. Of course it is with the political agenda, of course it is a populist measure, but shouldn't people of India the ones who have to make a choice on what to spend the money on, still get vaccines? Of course this host who only talks to the upper middle class again, says that when the state makes vaccines free, we are the ones who will pay through our taxes. But how blind are we to not see that if the society en large is vaccinated, we are all better for it?

Somehow this ingrained notion of the individual right, and might, is so ingrained, that you would rather take a chance on the fact that you will be able to protect yourself, than work towards living in a more healthier, more just society. A social situation where you do not have to make a choice. What is amazing to me is how we are still not seeing this. I have had to face a lot of critique and debate about this in the social circles that my privileged position helps me occupy. This i feel is the folly of this situation. Even now, even in this crisis, even when we are seeing things really crash down, we are unable to see, to imagine a world order which could be different. We cry about the deaths of our own. But we are unable to connect to the pain of the death of others. The corona deaths are just horrific. But so is a person who died in the riots in Delhi, or in Ahmedabad, or in Bombay, or in Amritsar. These are the places where in the past 4 decades in India, there were major riots, against the minorities. The last two against muslims being co-ordinated by the ruling party's commanders (and then there are the countless other atrocities that happen on a daily basis). And somehow the hindu majority population now claims it's victimhood. Somehow the hindus are under attack here.

And with this comes the silencing of the voice of critique. In Uttar Pradesh, NSA (National Securities Act) has been invoked for people asking for oxygen for their relatives on Twitter. People have been asked to maintain discipline and watch the tone of their voice. The aforementioned English news channel apparently does a sting operation on people in Delhi who are black marketing oxygen cylinder. Where as the celebratory news is that in Srinagar an organisation is hoarding up oxygen cylinders. A muslim business owner who is coordinating their city's oxygen response is being celebrated. He started using his own monies to get oxygen in and slowly the city apparently handed in the whole organisation of the oxygen cylinders to him. Of course, he is different than the muslims who were attending the tablighi jamaal. Would the hindu mobs coming back from the char dhaam yatra in the neXt riot care about that?

Of course, Indian understanding of diversity and inclusion is that the muslims celebrate holi and diwali with the hindus, in the spirit of one India. That the dalits be celebrated for the work they do, because it is god's work. What will the majoritarian in power hindu castes would do for the inclusion? Claim victimhood, because somehow muslims and dalits are taking what is rightfully theirs. Claim victimhood when the muslims and dalits and other minorities are being killed by them. It's an attack on their sentiments, on their way of life. 

We do not have to go that far of an 'other' to see how this works. This last year we have seen the sights of the migrant labourers being given almost no notice of an imminent lockdown. Of all the house helps being viewed suspiciously. Again ppl in my circles were so condescending about all these ppl on the street who don't wear a mask, who go around in groups. Who don't care or understand. 

This wave has been different. This wave has hit this class too, and now you can hear them cry fowl. This wave has hit the young too. Now the apathy of condition in hospitals is being talked about. And that too has become a thing about state govt vs central govt. The narrative seems to be the key. Thousands are dying. It is quite an overwhelming situation of distraught. Death of one person affects so many. Of course it also depends on how 'valuable your life is'. In villages in UP and bihar, where people pass away with TB still, death is more of an everyday reality. It is like how it is so horrible when europeans die, but not so much when Indians do. Had the virus been contained in europe early enough, I really wonder what the perspective of the whole world would have been. It is like how when 3000 USAnians die is far more important than the million Afghanis. What about the refugee crisis in Europe, and the Trump policy on mexicans migrating to the US. Interestingly, the upper middle class Indians, might empathise or relate or connect with this emotion, but would largely be blind to the 30,000 odd rohingyas who were seeking refuge in India who were kicked out. Or the thousands who have been disenfranchsed due to NRC/Citizenship registry in Assam. What about the people who killed themselves due to that? 

Death has become more of a reality in the larger Indian psyche with corona. We are hearing of people no more all around us. The numbers that are being shown, seems quite comparably smaller to that. Now a days my friends, people around me, overwhelmed with all of this, are unable to fucntion much. Especially for those who can work from home is there but it's difficult to concentrate and so on. My only thing is that let's just sail past through this, let's see each other on the other side of this. That is important. We need to take care. This too shall pass, at least for some of us.

My fear is what will we see on the other side of this. We are blinded by so much. 

[bellafarallones2]

a stranger in a strange land

Hollis recognized Indrid Cold like a traveler might recognize another from their home country. Indrid was studying the display of new nonfiction in the Kepler Community Library, arms folded across his chest. He was wearing jeans and a white tank-top.

Hollis moved confidently, black combat boots on gray library carpet. Indrid looked up a moment before they reached his side, and nodded to acknowledge them.

Hollis looked into their own face, reflected in his red sunglasses. Those sunglasses were familiar. They’d met someone, a few years back, when coolness was something they aspired to rather than claimed as easily as the double-black-diamond ski jumps, who wore sunglasses with a third lens in the center of their forehead. Indrid’s were mundane by comparison.

“Hey, I’m Hollis. They/them.”

Indrid waited a beat after they’d finished to start speaking. “Indrid. He/him. Pleasure to meet you.”

“You, uh, new in town?”

“One might say.”

Hollis laughed. “C’mon, man, not exactly a riddle.”

“Yeah, I am new in town.”

“Well, if you wanna meet people. There’s a bar called the Little Dipper. Cool spot.”

Indrid nodded. “Thank you for the recommendation.”

They didn’t see each other again until after the end of the world.

Indrid was sitting on the curb outside of the all-night diner. Mosquitos buzzed around his bare shoulders but did not bite. He’d been walking home along the dark highway, and the blend of neon and fluorescent lights leaking out of the big windows had been irresistible.

He heard the roar of a motorcycle before the headlight appeared around the bend. Someone in a yellow leather jacket and torn-up black jeans. They pulled into the parking lot of the diner and came to a stop right in front of Indrid. He saw his own face - sallow cheeks, round sunglasses - reflected in the opaque visor of their helmet, and wondered idly whether this was how other people felt looking at him.

Hollis pulled off their helmet and ran a hand through their hair, arranging it into their preferred state of dishevelment.

“Hello, Hollis,” said Indrid. Two futures stretched in front of him. Hollis might want to talk, or they might not.

“Long time no see.”

Indrid waited a beat before replying. It was still a conscious effort not to finish people’s sentences for them. “Yeah.”

During the apocalypse, Hollis was always the point of a V of motorcycles, but tonight they were alone.

“Where’s your…” Indrid could say gang, and Hollis would look sharply at him. Indrid could also say friends, and Hollis would laugh and say we’re a gang, old man. “Where are the rest of the Hornets?”

“Keith’s grandparents are in town, so he’s at home.” Hollis shrugged. “I don’t need an escort. You coming in, or what?”

Indrid pushed himself to his feet and followed Hollis into the brightly lit diner. The waitress sat them at a table near the window. The darkness beyond the dim parking lot was complete. It was like Indrid was a passenger on an ocean liner looking out into the Pacific at night, or rather that a bioluminescent sea had nothing on the darkness of thick pines.

Indrid flipped straight to the drinks section of the laminated menu and ordered an iced tea. Hollis seemed to know the waitress, joked with her, and there were a few futures where she flirted back, but it didn’t happen. Hollis asked for bacon and eggs and French toast and Mountain Dew.

They each had a paper napkin wrapped around a fork and knife and secured with a paper band. Hollis unwrapped theirs and laid the fork on the left side of their place setting, the knife on their right. The knife was thick and blunt, barely serrated, the kind of thing that could cut through eggs and pancakes but not anything sturdier without a fight.

Indrid’s compound eyes twitched. There were many possible futures, most of them benign, but in one Hollis gripped that knife white-knuckle hard and lunged across the table.

“Are you upset with me because I’m from Silvaine?” said Indrid quietly.

“What? No..” Hollis edged their hand away from the blunt dinner knife. “Why do you think I’m upset with you?”

“You’re thinking about attacking me.”

The waitress arrived with their drinks. Indrid dumped four sugar packets into his iced tea and stirred, watching the sugar swirl like flakes of snow. The futures shuffled.

Now he saw Hollis slashing at their own wrists, now holding the knife straight-up on the table and bringing their head down, forcing the metal through their own eye. The kind of violence Indrid hadn’t seen since the abominations.

“You can read my mind!?” said Hollis, angry but still speaking quietly enough that the waitress wouldn’t hear.

“No. I can see the future, or rather, all the possible futures, which means I can see what courses of actions you’re considering.”

“Considering is a strong word. I don’t want to do anything to you. It just… occurred to me that I could.”

Indrid sucked on his straw. Sugar crunched between his teeth. Now, teeth, that was something it’d taken him a long time to get used to.

“My therapist calls them intrusive thoughts,” Hollis continued. “I hate it.”

Indrid nodded. “Good to know you don’t want to kill me. It’d take more than a dinner knife, anyway.”

Hollis pressed their hands palm-down on the table, fingers splayed. “Am I going to hurt someone?”

“Well, just because I can see the possibility doesn’t mean it’ll ever become reality. The choice is always yours.”

The waitress came back with Hollis’ food. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything to eat?” she said to Indrid. “More iced tea?”

“More tea, please,” he said, and passed her his glass, which was now empty except for ice and undissolved sugar.

“So you’re telling me,” said Hollis, loading their fork with egg, “that you can see the future, and you’re still living in Kepler, West Virginia? You could be in a penthouse in Vegas, drinking iced tea out of a crystal wine glass. You could be absolutely drowning in pussy. Or dick. Whatever.”

“I won my Winnebago playing poker.”

“And you didn’t aim higher?”

“Nobody in Kepler will play me anymore.” Now Indrid was getting irritated. Who was Hollis to chastise him for lack of ambition? He'd moved all the way to another planet. He was the red light between the trees, the sound of wingbeats in the summer night, the silhouette on the trembling bridge. “Why are you still here?”

Hollis waved their hand dismissively. “I’ve been to New York, and I think I’m more suited to the big fish in a small pond lifestyle. I’m not interested in not being the best-looking, coolest person in town.”

“I have to exert conscious effort every second of every day not to be unacceptably strange. I can’t take my sunglasses off in public, ever, and my bedroom walls have dents from times they’ve fallen off when I’m asleep. I cannot afford to attract human attention.”

“Have you ever been to a big casino?”

“No.”

“What if you had a spotter? I could go with you, or Keith and I, or whoever you’re comfortable with. You wouldn’t have to do all the talking, and we could split the profits.”

Indrid saw plush carpet and hotel Jacuzzis big enough for his other body, bartenders serving Shirley Temples twenty-four hours a day. “Get me a Hornets jacket and I’m in.”

[dommexbritt]

FONDUE FOR TWO W/ SUE SYLVESTER // Fri. Feb 26th release

Hello, and welcome to the first ever and extra special edition of Fondue for Two on the Fondue Pot Podcast. A show where I, your host, Brittany S Pierce will ask the burning cheese melting questions so that you don’t have to. Today we have a line up of parents to shed a little light on their feelings on campus, school policy, and their terrible children... 

Now, first we have a well known alumni, renowned cheerleading coach, and all around bad guy... according to a whole slew of lawsuits but don't expect her lawyers to say so. 

Hello, welcome, I hope your time here this week has been as exciting as it used to be back in your day. Just as a background on you and to start, can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?. Let us know how many children you have attending the school and because you're an alumni, anything about today's campus that looks a little different now than how it used to....

Sue: It's good to be here, Miss Pierce, and thank you for the warm welcome.  First off, before I introduce myself, let me just say that none of those allegations were ever proven in a court of law. 

To the point, though, if your listeners don't know me then they should.  Sue Sylvester, cheerleading icon, one of the most successful coaches in the history of our sport.  I have two children attending this school, although whether I acknowledge them as such depends on their grades.

As for this campus...well, Brittany, frankly it's hideous.  This used to be a place for the elite.  The best of the best.  Scholarships?  What is this, Communist Venezuela?  I'd be willing to accept the kids who can pay for themselves, because why not let them spend their money, that's the American way.  But a scholarship?  Embarrassing.  Those kids drag this entire campus down.

B: You heard that Devereux? Sue Sylvester herself, coming at you. 

I know your daughters. 

SHOUT OUT TO TEDDY SYLVESTER ON THE TINY ECHO MIC~~   

As far as the rest of the campus and scholarships, that seems like a totally weird thing to be bothered by but I know a lot of people in your generation have a lot of anger issues from the prohibition days. I'll try not to ask too many rage inducing questions, to be accommodating. 

But while we are on the topic of progressive and dynamic school changes... In regards to the retesting that has been and continues to be issued, do you have a stance on the new tests validity? This has been a hot topic on campus for months since the holidays last year, and I'd love to get some parent perspective on it.

S: Prohibition?  How old do you think I am, exactly, Brittany?  That was repealed in 1933, and I certainly wasn't around to see it.  Tragic day anyway, this country would have been far better off it weren't filled with alcoholic louts. 

See, a person might think I'd be against something like that - after all, your mark is your mark and it's as simple as that.  But I am in favor of tests.  If someone really doesn't have what it takes to be a Dominant?  Tell them so.  Make them a submissive, slap some cuffs on them, and go on with your life.  And those people who show that they're more than just a submissive?  Good for them!  Upward mobility, Brittany, that's what this country was built on.

B: 1933. Yeah I totally know. This campus must have been, like, an entirely different walk of life back then. 

That is really understanding of you. I bet a lot of the students who are listening that might of retested feel pretty reassured that you think so. 

Follow up question, if you were still a student and faced with a retest yourself do you suspect it would impact your current role?

S: I...was not here in 1933, Brittany.  I wasn't even born. 

As they should be.  They should understand, like everyone else in this great country, that testing is the backbone of education.  If you test well, it means that you're a good student, and simple as that. 

Absolutely not.  I was born a Dominant, I will die a Dominant, and there is no test on Earth I could take that would ever say otherwise.  Sue Sylvester does not fail.

B: Uh-huh.  All of that is a totally interesting theory. 

It's pretty cool to be secure in your role. Would you like to share a fist bump with me on it?

S: A theory?  Brittany, unlike the president I can show you my birth certificate.

 Yes, of course - much more hygienic than a handshake, I believe.

[ * muffled fist bump sounds ] 

B:  Moving on... 

 Any feelings on the class list not including French courses or modeled under typical French curriculum here at Devereux Academy?

S: It's the best decision they could have made.  What was a student in Florida going to need French for?  I'm sure if they wanted to say "I surrender," or ask for cheese and a baguette, they can do that just as easily in a proper language.  And what did their curriculum ever teach them?  How to cut the heads off of women who were only enjoying a delicious piece of cake?

B: OH! Thank you for saying CHEESE.

 [ * buzzer sound ]  

That is the HOT WORD today and lined up perfectly with the fondue pot being just warm enough. Please help yourself. It's my own cheddar gouda blend and there are plenty of dipper items to dip. I recommend the marshmallows... 

The HOT WORD [ * buzzer sound ] brings the focus in on you personally and I have one very burning question for you that I'm sure a ton of our listers who know anything there is to know about you are on the edge of their seats wondering. 

 Is it true that you are legally married to yourself?

S: I haven't had a proper fondue since the seventies.  And now that I think about it, Dick Cheney never did pay for the vegetables.  

[ muffled chewing sounds ]

 [ loud swallow ] 

That is completely true, in fact.  I have some lovely pictures from the ceremony here, if you'd like to look them over.  Isn't that tracksuit stunning?  I mean, it's more me that's stunning than the tracksuit, but still.

B: Wow..it.. it actually is super good looking. Did you save it for any of your daughters to wear at their wedding?

S: Thank you - I'm glad that you can appreciate how tasteful it was.  I did save it, but not for them - it's in a glass case on a mannequin of my exact proportions in my office at home.

B: Oh, right of course. 

I'd like to also ask, since you're solo-married, would you ever consider entering into a long term claim with yourself as well?

S: Oh god no.  I would never wear a collar for anyone, not even myself.  I can't even stomach the thought of it.

B: Thank you for answering those. That was the HOT WORD [ * buzzer sound ] and a dip into Sue Sylvester. 

Now, we're nearing the end of our time here, there are just a few more things I feel we should cover while I have you here. 

As a Legacy I'm sure you're super aware of the type of pressures that can bring but, do you have an idea or a guess of what it might be like for a child of a well known individual like yourself to be wading through gossip and the literal meaning of the word legacy in your wake?

S: Of course - it's been a true pleasure knowing there are talented journalists like yourself on campus, Brittany. 

I have no doubt that it's the most difficult thing in the world to follow someone like me.  Knowing that everyone who looks at them is constantly comparing them to me, wondering when they'll follow in my footsteps and become more like me, I cannot imagine that sort of pressure.  But I trained them, molded them, just like any legacy parent should do, and I believe they're capable.

B: Thank you Sue, I super appreciate you saying that. I'm going to save it as a sound bite to play later. 

You heard it here folks, one Sue Sylvester believes her daughters to be trained an capable. It totally sounds like you're super proud, that's amazing. Speaking of when you were attending though, there is one more personal item my assistant has pointed out to me that I have yet to touch on and I think everyone would like to hear your side... 

I heard that when you were here at Devereux the then Intro to Dominance teacher reportedly had a public breakdown and resigned. Through the help of school records I have tracked down and reached out to said retired teacher and although they sounded ancient like the skeleton from tales from the crypt. They had this to say about it, and I quote:

"I never thought that the devil walked on Earth, and then I met Sue Sylvester.  How Devereux managed to survive her long enough to let her graduate, I'll never know.  That woman tried to kill me on at least three occasions, and whether anyone could prove it or not I know the truth.  She said on day one that I sounded like a Hippo wheezing in a desert, and from then on she had it in for me." 

 Do you have a comment?

S: Oh, them being capable doesn't mean that they'll actually put in the effort. Only that I gave them every tool possible to help them on their way.  What they do with that is up to them. 

 [ sound of Sue, laughing uproariously ] 

I can't believe that old bat hasn't keeled over in her study, surrounded by her little ceramic figurines and being gnawed on by the eighty seven cats I'm sure she owns.  I do have a comment, actually.  Now that the statute of limitations has expired, I'll say that I actually tried to kill her on at least seven different occasions, and she must have missed the other four.  And with the benefit of hindsight, she sounded less like a hippo wheezing than like the musty specter of death in a Vincent Price movie.

B: Seven.  Well. I don't know if legally I should air that but I bet your lawyers will be on it if there is any trouble. 

I also want to take a moment and add a disclaimer here, this podcast or any part of Devereux administration does not condone the use of violence or bullying against their employees. 

Well, that has been a ride. And I'd really like to thank you for taking the time to talk with me and give us your sizzling take on current goings on of our school. 

Before we go, and last of all... off the top you your head, what’s the hottest dish you have to serve up for us? Any context.

S: I, on the other hand, absolutely condone the use of violence.  How else do people learn? 

It's been a genuine pleasure, Brittany, and thank you for doing the good lord's work and getting the news out to your fellow students. 

The hottest dish I've got for you...oh, I've got just the thing.  I bet no one who goes here has ever figured this out, so consider this a Sue Sylvester exclusive.  If you find just the right brick to press on in the library, you can open a secret door.  Inside is a private gym and training facility that I dubbed "the room of pain."  The first one to find it will find a one hundred dollar gift card for Bullwinkle's Restaurant hidden somewhere inside.

B: WOAH. Completely unexpected dish!! You heard it here first people, a treasure hunt on our very own campus is now afoot. 

That was Sue Sylvester, this is Fondue For Two, and I am Brittany S Pierce. 

Signing off.

[takingcourage]

Kismet

Pairing: f!Hayden x m!MC (Tate)

Word Count: 2,825

Summary: A weekend getaway gives Hayden and Tate the perfect excuse to enjoy some time together and to think about their future. 

Note: This is one of those stories that’s been collecting dust in my drafts for ages. I could never get the ending quite right, so I kind of forgot it existed until I started seeing posts about this appreciation week and decided to finish it. The end result certainly doesn’t do Hayden justice, but I wanted to do what I could to recognize one of my favorite Choices characters. I’m still a little bitter that we never got to see Hayden’s continued growth in a third book. : / 

Anyway...

Thanks so much to @haydenyoungappreciationweek​ and @lizzybeth1986​ for organizing this event and giving me an excuse to finally finish this story.  

Tate stood outside Hayden’s front door, scratching the line of one thick eyebrow as he waited for the telltale rush of footsteps on the other side of the wood. His lips slanted into a smirk at the sound of his girlfriend’s bare feet coming down the hallway. As usual, she was running. Seconds later, the door flew open wide to reveal Hayden, breathless and giddy.

“Are you ready for the best weekend ever, Tate Park?”

Following her into the apartment, his mouth kinked up at her eager greeting. “I am, but it doesn’t look like you are…” he replied, surveying the piles of clothes strewn about her living room.

Hayden snagged a dirty mug from the coffee table, glancing over her shoulder as she carried it to the kitchen. “Really thought you’d be used to my messes by now.”

Her duffle bag sat open on the floor, empty save for a pair of tennis shoes at the bottom. Shaking his head, Tate sauntered over to the side chair and began folding the towels that were heaped into the seat. From the other room, he heard Hayden pull out the dishwasher tray. Based on the sounds that emerged from the kitchen, it seemed the mug was not the only dish making a tardy entrance into the machine.

“I’m just wondering how we’re going to have the best weekend ever if you haven’t even packed yet. And I never remember things being this cluttered when you lived with Sloane.”

“You never saw my bedroom.” Hayden reappeared in the doorway and threw him a suggestive wink. “Besides, I’m much cleaner when I’m living with another person.”

“Careful...l might hold you to that someday.” He caught her waist as she passed by and pressed a sound kiss to her lips. For a brief moment, she melted against him, and he savored the scent of warm vanilla against her skin. So much had changed since their first meeting more than a year ago, but at least one thing remained the same: her kisses still had the power to make his knees turn to rubber. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” she rejoined, eyes flashing with sincerity before the customary glint of mischief returned. “Even though you’re a neat freak.”

“I’m not a neat freak. I just prefer to use my furniture for its intended purpose.”

“Couches are overrated.”

“Ouch. I’ve clearly been slacking if you think that’s the case. Are you sure you don’t want to skip the getaway for a movie marathon? There’d be lots of blankets and snacks. And hours of snuggling…” His skin tingled a bit at the thought.

“We can watch movies in Cedar Rest.”

“If we ever get there…” the words were mumbled under his breath, but nothing escaped her hearing. He dodged the rolled-up pair of socks she threw in retaliation, then dropped them into the open duffle bag at his feet. If this was her method of packing, it was going to be a long night indeed.

“I just have to be there to check in with the organizers before the festival starts tomorrow morning. And I should be ready to go in the next ten minutes or so, which gives us plenty of time to get dinner and then go explore the town for a while.”

“Or time to chill at the bed and breakfast,” he offered, arranging the now-folded towels in a neat stack.

“Long day at work?”

“No, I’m just not convinced that we’re going to get out of here in the next ten minutes. And I think you’re forgetting that we have a ninety-minute drive ahead of us… after we’ve made it out of the city.”

“Oh, hush.” She shoved a pair of pajama pants into her duffle bag in protest, and Tate had to turn his face to hide a smirk.  

“Take your time,” he offered casually, lifting the precarious pile of towels from the chair. “I wasn’t in the mood for dinner tonight anyway…”

Tate had already rounded the corner to the bathroom by the time she called out after him, “You love me!”

He did. So very much. He could hardly remember the days before she’d come into his life, although he’d known her less than two years. And as he transferred the stack of washcloths from his arms to the cabinet shelf, he found himself wishing that he was putting away their towels in their bathroom. He’d caught himself having similar thoughts too many times over the past months.

Tate fully supported her decision to live alone, but in such moments, his resolve wavered. Recently, he’d missed seeing her every day -- missed those quiet, intimate moments they had shared during the many weeks they spent on the run. Staying over for weekends just wasn’t the same. He wanted all of life to be with her.

Much as her methods might frustrate him, he wanted to pack a single suitcase, together. They’d pull their favorite items out of the closet, comparing piles as they arranged them on the bed. Tate would check the forecast and watch Hayden cram everything from a bathing suit to her winter coat into the allotted space. She’d curl her nose at his planning and make quips about the unreliability of weather reports. 

Somehow, it was his idea of bliss.

But for now, he would continue to be patient. There was nothing to be gained by rushing her. He’d never ask her to do anything she wasn’t ready for, though he would be lying if he said he wasn’t ready to put all separation behind them. The engagement rings in his browsing history were a sign of just how ready.

When he returned to the living room, Hayden was tugging at the zipper on her duffle, all traces of clothing having disappeared from the couch cushions. She dropped the finished bag beside the door, wheeling toward him with a distinct sparkle in her eyes. “Shall we go?”

Tate shook his head at her bemused expression. “We may have time for dinner after all.” Hoisting the strap of her bag over his shoulder, he wove his fingers through hers and flashed her a cheesy grin. “Time for the best weekend ever!”

The last thing he saw before she flipped off the lights was Hayden shaking her head at him, eyes narrowed at his affected tone. He squeezed her hand as they made their way out into the hall.

______

“Dipper would have loved today. It’s a shame she’s with Sloane this weekend.”

Tate mumbled his agreement around the key card between his teeth. Behind him, Hayden turned on a lamp and continued talking. “It’s my penance for missing two Stir-Fridays in a row. I couldn’t have her living alone all weekend, especially with Khann out of the country for the month.”

He unburdened himself, setting the bags of food on the small table. Hayden placed her bottle beside them before rummaging to find the cups from their place beside the sink. “I’m sure she appreciates it.”

“She deserved to have her for a while. This joint-custody has hardly been a fair exchange with all the traveling she’s been doing with the AIC.” Hayden broke the seal on the wine, pouring generous servings into the hotel glasses. “We should find her a dog of her own someday. Dipper’s bound to get spoiled if we keep this system up.”

“She is your dog, after all.” He took the drink from her outstretched hand and drew a sip of the dark liquid. “And think of the playdates Dipper could have with a new dog. They’d have a great time.”

Hayden beamed at him as her quick fingers yanked an inscrutable object from one of the food cartons. Their dinner was a haphazard assortment of festival food, and most of it was cold. After a long day of socializing under the autumn sun, they’d both decided that a hotel-room dinner was in the cards. Luckily, between all of the food stands, they’d had a considerable selection to choose from, and Hayden had wanted to try it all. 

“I’m starving.”

Tate raised an inquisitive brow at her complaint. He rummaged through the packaging to find the burger he’d ordered.

“I know I had a massive lunch, but these jobs take it out of me.”

“I can see why.”

Tate reflected on the day, unable to control his smile at the memory of how much fun it had been to watch her work. Steve had been the point of contact for this job, it was true, but there was no doubt in Tate’s mind why the event organizers had chosen Hayden to document the day. The Equinox Festival had been a vibrant, colorful affair that was almost enough to make Tate miss the mundane bustle of New York City streets. But Hayden was completely at home.

Tate never stopped marveling at how good Hayden was at engaging people and bringing out their best features in her photography. He’d always thought of himself as an extrovert, but she gave new meaning to the word. Children, especially, had been drawn to her at today’s event, and he knew without even looking at the camera that the images she’d captured would be stunning. There was something in those candid moments that mesmerized her, and that fascination translated into her photography.

“You okay there?”

Tate raised his lukewarm sandwich in acknowledgment. “Yep, just thinking.” He watched as she withdrew a kebab from yet another container of food. “Do you want to take a look at today’s shots after we finish eating? I’m excited to see what you got.”

“Me too. I think the new tourism website is going to turn out great.”

“I’m sure it will.”

Once they had finished eating, Hayden transferred the images to her computer while Tate cleared the table. His task complete, Tate joined her on the couch, startled by a sudden change to her appearance.

“You started wearing glasses?” The question came out a bit more incredulous than he’d intended, but the sight was jarring.

“Not all the time -- obviously. Usually just when I’m working on my computer.”

“Your vision is better than 20/20, Hayden.”

“And I want to make sure it stays that way,” she insisted saucily, tapping the hard plastic frame at her temple. “These are supposed to protect my eyes from blue light.”

"Your eyes are....nevermind..." he mumbled, stretching his fingers to brush a strand of hair from her forehead. He narrowed his eyes and looked closer. "They look great."

“They’re supposed to make me look more competent and less threatening.”

Tate’s brows knit in confusion. “Is that something you’ve been worried about?” While he knew she was capable of incredible feats of strength, it would be absurd for the average observer to be frightened based on appearances.

“You never know. Harley looks pretty threatening when she wants to be.”

He had to admit that much was true. “But none of your clients have said anything about you being threatening or incompetent, have they?” The question prickled the skin at his neck;  the thought of anyone questioning her made his blood boil. 

“Of course not!” she brushed it off as though the thought were ridiculous. At his skeptical look, she added, “I promise. No one has said anything -- I’m just testing them out.” Her dark eyes looked even larger from behind the clear frames, and Tate smiled in the rush of affection that flooded over him. The underlying fondness was always there, but in these moments, he was struck by just how proud he was of her. With a sight pang, he also realized how much he missed being there to witness these little steps in her process of self-discovery.

“If you’re sure,” he answered, pushing the feeling aside. “Let’s look at what you’ve got.”

Computer in hand, Hayden moved to his lap and stretched her legs along the length of the couch. “Can you see?” She asked, sweeping her hair over one shoulder as she settled back against him.

“Uh-huh.” His eyes flicked down to the screen before settling again on her profile. The glasses were quite an attractive addition…

“This girl had the best fashion sense. I don’t understand how she put all of that together, but look! It’s perfect.”

He nodded, trying to concentrate on the picture instead of Hayden's warm, familiar scent. “I like the socks,” he murmured against the silky hair at his cheek.

“Me too! Maybe I’ll try to find some like that next time I’m out shopping. I bet Nadia would like them too.” 

Tate hummed in assent, watching contentedly as she flicked through the pictures and offered observations on each one. As expected, the images were a perfect representation of the day’s events. For the next hour, they chattered over their favorites and relived memories.

"...And that's the last one,” she announced, lifting her finger from the trackpad. “I'll start editing them when we get back tomorrow."

"And in the meantime?"

"I’m going to enjoy the rest of my weekend with you.” She closed the lid on her laptop before moving it to the coffee table. Stretching a hand behind her, she wound deft fingers into the hair at the base of his neck. "Maybe we should sleep here tonight -- I'm pretty comfortable."

“On the couch? Aren’t they overrated?”

“Mmmmm,” she considered. “No.”

He kissed the exposed shell of her ear. 

“Well,” she waffled, shifting in his arms so that she could see his face. “The one at my house is still overrated -- at least, most of the time. I don’t need it all to myself.”

“I guess that’s just one of the downfalls of living alone.” He tried to play the exchange off casually, but his heart sank at the reminder that they would be parting ways once they reached home the next afternoon.

She grew uncharacteristically still, one nail digging slightly into the outer seam of her pants. “I think that’s something I had to learn for myself,” she told him finally, the hesitance in her tone catching him off guard. 

Was she nervous? He thought back over the strange response, pulse accelerating at the possibilities. “What do you mean?” 

“That I don’t like living alone as much as I’d like living with you.”

His breath halted, and he couldn’t quite suppress the hope that was bubbling up inside of him. For the space of several anxious heartbeats, he held his tongue, afraid that breaking the silence would cut the opportunity short.  

“Didn’t you say you wanted to move in together?” Her voice was soft. Behind the glasses, he saw a flash of trepidation.

“Of course I do. But are you sure? You’ve been discovering so much on your own. I don’t want to hold you back.”

Swinging her legs off the edge of the couch, Hayden turned to sit sideways on his lap. Tate bristled with pleasure as one cool hand landed on the nape of his neck. “It’s been good for me -- don’t get me wrong. But while I still don’t know everything, there are a lot of things I’m sure of. One of them is that I’d rather be living with you. ” Her nose wrinkled as she met his gaze and removed her glasses. “You’re my kismet, remember? We were always destined to be together. Together together, Tate. Living together.” 

“I get the picture.” Taking the dangling glasses from her fingers, he carefully placed them on the coffee table.

“I’m pretty sure I get the pictures. We just finished looking at them, remember?” 

Tate groaned and pulled her tight against him, relishing in the small sigh of contentment that fell from her lips when she was secure in his arms. 

“Think you can handle me and my flawless sense of humor all the time?” 

“Your humor, your sincerity -- on the rare occasions when it makes an appearance -- your messes...” His lips curved into what was shaping up to become a permanent smile. Even the thought of sacrificing his spotless apartment couldn’t dampen his mood. 

“My massages?”

He laughed as her grip on his neck tightened. “Your massages -- I want to be there as often as you’ll let me.” 

“Then you’ll be there a lot. I hope you’re ready for it.” 

“I’d consider it a privilege,” he told her truthfully, combing his fingers through the pile of hair at his shoulder. Lulled by the repetitive motion, the events of the day started to catch up with both of them.

“Tate?” 

His eyelids parted in time to see her lift her face off his chest. Her eyes had grown a little tired, but they were steady and true. Soon, they’d be the first sight to greet him every morning. He could have pinched himself over the realization. “Hmm?” 

“Told you this was going to be the best weekend ever.” 

[skia-oura]

For the Want of a (non-magical, relatively inexpensive) Bedside Table

A/N: I wrote this over the course of, like, two or three months, so be kind please.

(ao3)

________________________________________________________________

The first thing Torako did when they officially moved in was spend a solid day integrating new security wards into the ceilings, around the outside of the house where the walls joined with the roof, and along the edges of every window and doorframe. The second thing she did was enlist Dipper’s help to bring all the furniture they didn’t want or need to the recycling center, where a very nice satyr wearing a baseball cap tried to charge them an exorbitant amount of money to take care of their belongings. Dipper managed to convince him to go down, seeing as the satyr was very nice, but he refused to budge past a certain point because of what he said were “handling fees.” Torako, very cognizant of the fact that they had just paid a gross amount of money for a house, reluctantly pulled out her wallet and paid the money. Bentley was thankfully not around. Otherwise, he actually might have accepted Dipper’s deal to just get rid of it for them. Even then, when he came home and Torako showed him the receipt, his first instinct was to say, “We could have used the bedside tables anyways, you know, they weren’t that old—” “Don’t even try selling it to me, they were bad,” Torako said. “One of them fell apart when we dropped it off. Besides, now we can get new ones!” Unfortunately, as they soon rediscovered, extra-dimensional storage spaces were all the rage, and new furniture without those specs was…nonexistent, to say the least. And while Bentley could use tools and such for short periods of time with his glasses… “I guess we don’t need them?” Bentley said, blinking furiously as he set his magic-cancelling eyeglasses back on the bridge of his nose. His vision swum a little, the glimmering of magics and extra-dimensional spaces burning into phosphenes in the back of his left eyelid. Even he wasn’t ready to consider the possibility of living with something like that in the room he slept in. “We can just, I don’t know, use the floor. For now. Until we find a better solution.” Torako put one hand on her hip. In the other, she held a store tablet, on which was their virtual shopping cart. In it was one new desk chair, an old-fashioned air-drying dishrack, and approximately thirty-seven picture frames of various shapes and sizes and non-magical for the most part. He certainly wasn’t telling her that the holding pins in several of them had minor enchantments to promote longevity. They didn’t bother him too much anyways. “Unbelievable,” Torako said. She scowled at the example bedside table display before them like the pieces had offended her, personally, for the sake of offending her alone. “Terrible. What a disgrace. You can’t have a home without bedside tables! KEIA, esteemed furniture store to serve the people, should know this. And yet! Here we are!” “Esteemed?” Bentley asked, raising an eyebrow at Torako. “The furniture is good, but it’s not exactly a posh place.” “It’s better than it used to be,” Dipper said from behind them, where he was appraising floor lamps even though they didn’t need any, really, one was still functioning and the other two had found very good homes elsewhere. Bentley didn’t understand why either of them couldn’t listen to reason. “It’s still affordable, but at least they aren’t accepting illegally forested lumber from protected lands in Hungary.” “From where?” asked Bentley, twisting around to look at Dipper. “Hungary, I don’t—is this another one of those really old countries that doesn’t exist under that name any more?” Dipper nodded and hummed absentmindedly. “The faux-metal is kind of weak on this one, though, it’s probably not the best choice…” Torako ignored both of them. “I thought KEIA was a furniture store for ‘Every person, no matter who,’ but no, clearly not, not with those customization options.” “You’re telling me,” Dipper groused. He flicked the wide, elegant hood of one lamp and made a disgruntled noise. “They wouldn’t let me custom-build furniture for Toby that included the Nightmare Sheep because the sheep were ‘clearly demonic’ and it ‘went against company guidelines for appropriate alterations.’ Sucks to be them, though, because I just did it myself, and you know what? Toby loved it. So did the sheep, actually; they wouldn’t stop hounding me about being included in future pieces.” Bentley, half-turned around, saw an older man frown in their direction. “Uh,” he said, “You mean, Tyrone, you did it with your excellent carving skills, and only because KEIA wouldn’t honor your creative differences, and the sheep were part of a dream and okay that’s enough let’s go home, clearly we aren’t finding anything here.” They didn’t get anything at KEIA. In fact, they didn’t even get anything moved into the new house at first, because Torako was seized by the mad idea that if they were going to make this house their own, they needed to redecorate all the walls first. Bentley stared at her, blank-faced in the middle of the night when she came to this realization, before she sheepishly tucked him back in and said that they could talk about it after he came back from work the next day.

Upon doing so, he was hustled to the new house by Torako and Dipper, who had procured paint and paintbrushes courtesy of Dipper’s house in the nightmare realm. Bentley looked at the paint cans, set down in the middle of a thin but sturdy tarp covering the entirety of the house floors (it glimmered, just a little, to his uncovered left eye), and pursed his lips. “Um,” he said, pointing at one which—while new-looking, was covered in an archaic form of English that made his head hurt to try to decipher—“does that say, by chance, that it expires in May of 2152?” Dipper hummed and lifted the can in question. “Close, that actually says March.” Even Torako, whose judgment was not always to be trusted on these matters, squinted at the paint can. Distrust crinkled into the corners of her eyes. “But he got the year right?” “Yeah, 2152. Not that long ago, I’m sure it’ll be fine! It was in the Nightmare Realm anyways. That place preserves stuff like nothing else.” “Dipper,” Bentley said. He tried to ignore the one paint tin he couldn’t make heads or tails of. He suspected it was in an entirely different language from any that currently existed. “Saying things like ‘oh, it was in the nightmare realm’ doesn’t exactly instill a sense of relief in me.” Dipper stuck out his tongue. Torako set down the pthalo green she was holding. “I hate to ask,” she said, “But will there be any bad…side effects from using this paint? Is it—is it even up to modern code?” “Ah,” Dipper said. He went slightly cross-eyed. Golden ichor brimmed up from under his eyes until they overflowed, trickling sluggishly over the slight swell of his cheeks. A scent not dissimilar to smoldering peat rose faint into the air. Bentley felt the hair on the back of his neck and along his arms rise on end. Torako shifted her weight as Dipper’s hair rose in a wind that affected him alone. They waited. Moments later, he blinked. His hair fell back to its normal flouncy poofiness. “Oh wow, gross,” he said, and used his gloved claws to wipe away the golden—blood tears?—from off his cheeks and out of his eyes. His nose curled up. “That’s a sensation—hey, wanna feel it? It’s a wild texture.” “Haha, no thanks, I’ll pass,” said Torako, who had learned many things since having her arm accidentally broken when they were college babies. “Anyways—did you find out if the paint was up to modern code?” “Um, so the can you’re holding is fine, and so is 2152! They hadn’t tried to introduce petrichorite to paint, yet. By the way, petrichorite is in Baby Mint #295 from 2799, so we should figure out how to dispose of that—but not with Tad, because he charged us an arm and a leg for our trash last time.” Torako’s brow furrowed. “Tad—do you mean Felix, the satyr at the recycling center? Where we dropped off those bedside tables that were in very bad condition?” Bentley ignored her side-eye-accompanied pointed comment, put his hands on his hips and counted the paint cans in front of them. “So, back on topic—out of the twenty-three paint cans here, which ones aren’t viable?” In the end, they pulled eight cans that would guarantee nasty side-effects from the collection, then the colors ‘Purple Olive’ and ‘Peat Moss’ because they weren’t personal favorites. Bentley took Torako’s pthalo green and a container each of black, gold, and what Dipper assured him was a ‘non-haunted glow-in-the-dark white’ to the bedroom while Dipper and Torako haggled over whether to use a deep red or an ultramarine as the accent wall color in the living room. Bentley set down the paint cans, then retrieved and prepared brushes of varying sizes and widths. He had to pop open the lid of the pthalo green with the end of one paintbrush, but the others opened easy enough when he pressed and held his thumbs to the (antiquated) locking systems on opposite sides of the rim. The somewhat suffocating smell of paint was quick to fill the room, and it drove him to opening a window. It had started drizzling, actually. Bentley stood there a moment and let the fresh rainwater air waft in, hands flat against the sill, head against the bottom edge of the frame he’d just moved out of the way. If he closed his eyes and just listened, he could hear the light tapping of rain against the leaves of the Sweetbay Mongolia tree growing only a few meters away. He took a deep breath, then ducked back inside. Time passed. Three of the walls were slowly painted in the pthalo green. Between coats of that color, he worked on covering the ceiling, the trimmings, and the wall across from the door with black, glasses on and a PaintKnight shield over his head to keep the worst of the paint off his face and clothes. He rolled the paint on until his shoulders ached and he couldn’t quite get the wet sound of the roller out of his head, even when he paused to work out the kinks in his arms. The rain outside dropped heavier, echoing against the roof and in through the open windows in a way that settled something in Bentley. Eventually, he finished the final coat of black on the ceiling. Setting down the roller across the paint well, Bentley set his hands on his hips and arched his back. His spine popped and cracked a little. He winced, then leaned forward to touch his toes. There was a knock at the door before it slid open into the wall. “Hey, Bentley. Dips and I were thinking of finishing for the day.” Bentley straightened up from his stretch slowly, arching a little past the twinge in his lower back. He blinked at Torako, then asked, “Did any paint actually get on the walls, or did you plaster it all over each other?” “Harr harr harr,” Torako said. She pouted at him, face almost entirely red from what Bentley assumed from the texture was a paint roller. Her bangs on the left side were clumped together and spiking up a little. “So funny, Bentley. Yes, we managed to get the living room done, though I still think that the ultramarine would have looked better.” “We can touch up the bathroom with it,” Bentley said. He bent down to pick up the roller. “So we clean up and start making dinner back at the apartment?” Torako wrinkled her nose. “I guess we have to wait a day for the paint to dry before moving anything in, don’t we.” “And I’m not done,” Bentley said. He twisted the handheld portion of the roller off so that it would be easier to carry. Paint-smell wafted up and overwhelmed the clear scent of rain from outside. “So the earliest we could be in here would be the day after tomorrow—honestly, though, we should plan on a week.” A rustle of cloth; Bentley turned his head to catch Dipper sticking his very colorful fingers down the side of Torako’s neck. She squealed, then cocked her elbow and slammed it into Dipper’s gut. Bentley laughed at the expressions on both of their faces. “Could be worse,” Dipper wheezed, even though he didn’t actually need the air. What a drama king, Bentley thought to himself. “It used to take like, a week to safely dry, not just a day.” “Still,” Torako said. She put her fingers to the paint smeared across her neck and scrunched her nose up at the sensation. “It’s a long time, now that we finally own the house. Nothing else is stopping us from moving in and it makes me itch. ” “Well,” Bentley said, pointing the still-black roller at her and grinning a little to take the bite out of his words, “the end is at least in sight, now.” She stuck out her tongue at him, then gacked when the dark red smeared on her lips came in contact with it. “Uuuugghhhhh, ewwww,” she said, and disappeared to the bathroom to the sound of Dipper cackling. Bentley raised his eyebrow at Dipper. Dipper looked back at him. They both shared a grin, shook hands, and Dipper made off with Bentley’s freely-given roller still saturated with black paint. Bentley looked down at the non-haunted glow-in-the-dark white and the ‘Guaranteed to Glimmer!’ gold. He remembered that he still had some old brushes back in his desk at the apartment. Torako screeched, and then Dipper did, their voices echoing through the mostly-empty house in a way that filled it. Bentley thought about what they would best like for dinner tonight. He turned, closed the window, and brought the trays out of the room to wash them. As he paused to try to remember where the bathroom was, he was smacked in the face with the very roller he’d just lent to Dipper for nefarious purposes, and well, that just meant that payback was due, right? They ended up ordering pizza. - Bentley had an early shift the next day so that he could be home in time for lunch at one. He’d dragged himself through about three hours of work on nightmare-riddled sleep before Karl Svinhish took one look at him and made Bentley sleep in the break room for ninety minutes. Even then, once Bentley woke up, he sent Bentley packing home with orders to ‘not try to explode us all through lack of sleep, don’t worry, we’re still paying you.’ Once back in the apartment, Bentley managed to crash on their (unfortunately, permanently magical) couch for a couple hours before he woke up from fear-anxiety-pain. In all, he managed to eat, pack up, and be out to the house by about 1:30. With Dipper out visiting somebody he vaguely knew in Europe, and with Torako having snagged a small case in the area to find a missing cat, he was alone. If he’d been alone in that apartment, it would have been one terrible thing. Being alone in the house—where the wards were freshly installed, the layout was completely different, and the only items that really glimmered to his left eye were temporary parts of their life—was another thing entirely. After he opened the window, Bentley slid on his glasses, activated the PaintKnight shield, and flipped through the music in his phone before settling on Comeback Kid’s Greatest Hits. Torako had introduced him to them, ages ago when they were both fourteen and not-studying in Bentley’s room. It seemed fitting, considering that he was going to paint parts of his childhood bedroom into this place. He lay back on the EZ-Liftr Lite they’d rented from a nearby library and thumbed at the controls until he was comfortably near the ceiling. After a moment of contemplation, he angled himself just a little bit up. Pulling a brush out of his apron pocket, he slid it into the glow-in-the-dark white and began to paint. It had been so long that the first stars turned out a little lopsided, edges a bit wonky where he still struggled to re-adjust to painting with a brush. The angle didn’t help; any time he’d painted in the past, it was either upright on a canvas or flat on a desk, not several meters above the ground and on his back. So they were a bit odd, bigger than he’d initially planned as he tried to mask the mistakes, less neat than he knew he was capable of. It would have frustrated him to tears just months ago. It still kind of did. But now, he breathed through the frustration and settled himself with the knowledge that he would adjust—it would just take time. It was a not-bad day, so the reminder worked. It was around the fourth song that things started to finally click. Using an extra-long paintbrush handle to steady his painting hand, Bentley drew a small seven-pronged star to the brassy trumpets of Comeback Kid’s “Horse in a Hospital” and didn’t wobble at all. His lines were clean and clear, the shape was even, and filling it in wasn’t nearly the exercise in concentration that the first few had been. Outlining in gold was just as easy. Bentley smiled a little to himself, refilled the brush, and continued. Over time, the light coming in from the bedroom windows shifted into the deeper warmer tones of evening, shadows from the overgrown garden stretching further into the room as it set. The bedroom was set on the north-western side of the house, just enough to be warmed in the evening without facing the glare of the sun head-on. Bentley sighed, stretched over the back of the EZ-Liftr Lite, and almost fell off when the door slid open. Thankfully, it was only Torako. Unfortunately, she had noticed. “Haha, got you and I wasn’t even trying,” she said, grinning. She had twigs in her hair and a couple scrapes on her face. “And hot damn you’ve been busy—wait, is that Comeback Kid? Talk about nostalgic.” “That’s a lot all at once,” Bentley said, shifting the EZ-Liftr Lite so that he wasn’t halfway to a concussion via headfirst fall to the floor. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about, nobody got me at anything.” Torako snorted and entered the room to better peer at the corner Bentley was working on. He only had a little more to go before the ceiling was done, but then there was the rest of the detailing. “Keep deluding yourself, I know the truth. And that is Comeback Kid! Wait wait wait—is this ‘Mr. Bittenbinder’? It’s gotta be ‘Mr. Bittenbinder.’ Is this the top tracks playlist?”   “Yes,” Bentley said. He turned his attention to the current space ahead of him, hummed, then added a few more dots in aesthetically pleasing places. “Why?” Torako flicked a finger at his socked foot. Bentley twitched it back before scowling down at her. She grinned, unapologetic. “It’s been ages. Like, since high school.” “You listened plenty in college, I remember you blasting it whenever I brought you stuff in the gym,” Bentley said. He pointed the paintbrush in his hand at her—gold, just enough left in the bristles that he could leave a mark if he wanted to. “But yeah, I was thinking about home. With—Dad.” “Oh,” Torako said. Her face softened. “Yeah, now that you say it, I can see the similarity to your bedroom. Back then, I mean.” He smiled at her, then turned his attention back to the ceiling. After a few strokes, a few quiet moments filled with the discordant keys of “Mr. Bittenbinder,” Bentley let out an ‘ah’ as he came to a realization. “If you—sorry for taking over things and making this my childhood—I mean, you had a childhood bedroom too, you know, and—” “Aw, lighten up, buddy,” Torako said. She patted his leg. “I’m not angry or upset or anything. Your bedroom was cool. Just let me put up some old hurling photos or stash my stick on the wall as some kind of deco and it’ll bring enough of me in. I like the stars, anyways. It’ll be nice to have them up at night.” Bentley reached over with his free hand and ruffled her hair. A couple twigs and half of a leaf were dislodged and fell to the ground. “Thanks,” he said. He thought a moment. “What about Dipper?” “We’ll see if he has anything he wants here in particular that aren’t too, you know. It’ll work out. It’ll be all of ours,” she said. Then, tilting her head so his hand was more on her forehead than in her hair (and how odd it was for her to be looking up at him), she grinned. “Need any help painting?” “Uh,” Bentley said. The memory of their college fridge, covered in drawings of Korato and Alcor, flashed through his mind. “I, uh, that’s very nice of you but, how do I say it—” “Your drawings suck,” Dipper said from over Bentley’s shoulder. Even feeling him tesser in wasn’t enough to stop Bentley from startling. This time, it took both Dipper and Torako reaching in to steady the Liftr and pushing him back onto it in order to keep Bentley from falling off. His glasses were still knocked askew from the jostling. “Look what you did!" Torako said, wiggling her index and middle fingers together at Dipper, mock scowl on her face. “You nearly made him fall—what if he’d hit his head?” “Even if he had fallen, he would’ve been fine,” Dipper said. He narrowed his eyes at her fingers. Bentley nudged his glasses back into place. In the background, “Mr. Bittenbinder” finally drew to its eight-minute close. “I would have caught him. You’re just mad that I said you suck at drawing.” Torako rolled her eyes. “I know I suck, I just thought I’d lighten the mood, you doofus. Anyways—the reason I came in here in the first place was to see if Bentley wanted dinner. It’s a bit early, but I’m hungry and we’ve all been working hard today. How was whosit over in Europe?” “Oh, Olla?” Dipper flipped upside down and drew his legs together, criss-crossed, as the song track changed to “Then I Didn’t”. His gaze remained fixed on Torako’s outstretched fingers. “She’s doing great, working hard at school and all that. Had to skedaddle before her mom came home and ripped me apart, but it was a good visit overall.” “Rip you apart?” Bentley said. He lifted his brush and picked up where he left off painting. “If she can do that, I think you’ve lost your position as most powerful being in existence.” “Did he have it in the first pla—ow, what the fuck Dipper, my fingers!” “Serves you right,” Dipper said. His voice crackled with half-realized laughter. “Stick your fingers in my face and get bit.” “I’ll bite you, you little—” Dipper’s voice got all low and purr-y. Some half-forgotten instinct in Bentley tensed. “Where you gonna bite me huh, sugar?” There was a pause. Bentley pulled his paintbrush away from the ceiling. Not a second later, Torako said, “Where you want me to bite, honey? Here, or here, or…here?” “If I look down,” Bentley said, “and you two are playing het chicken in front of me, at this moment in time, while I have paint and you don’t, we are going to have yesterday happen again except I am going to win. Hands-down. I will decimate you.” Bentley gave them three seconds before he looked down. When he did, they were staring up at him, Torako’s outstretched finger brushing against one of Dipper’s collarbones, his shirt collar unbuttoned just enough to give her access. They blinked—at the same time, eerily enough at the exact time Jonathan from The Comeback Kid crooned after a long piano solo, ‘Oh, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t stop myself, the pages were calling but the party’s calling louder…’ He pointed his paintbrush at them. “Don’t.” Torako laughed, and what tension there was in the room dissipated. She papped Dipper’s cheek, looking into his eyes, and said, “Well, looks like we’ll have to save this for another time. His Majesty commands us.” “Well, if it’s His Majesty’s edict…” Dipper grinned and swung himself back upright to lay on thin air, his chin propped on an open palm. “Would you also like food, your Majesty? We could go back and get it started while you finish here.” Bentley narrowed his eyes. “This is a very sudden change of topic.” “True,” Torako agreed. “But it’s like, five, and if we divide and conquer, we can get stuff done. I’ll paint tomorrow, and I’m sure Dipper could get a room done right now if we throw him a bag of Peach Wheels.” “Make it a bag of Peach Wheels and a TimTom Bar, and we have a deal,” Dipper said. Without looking, Torako slid her hand out. “Kitchen in royal blue with gold trim and switch out the cabinets and countertops for that Eggshell White we saw in HomeReno Catalogue #539 Issue twenty…three, yeah, sure, deal.” “Ugh, fine,” Dipper said. There was a flash of blue flames. He frowned and patted his stomach. His stomach. Bentley’s turned at the thought, cold nothingness tickling at the back of his mind before he bit at the side of his mouth to bring his attention back into the present. “—hard bargain, now. When did you even learn that trick? Tacking on specifics in the seconds you go for the handshake.” “I live with you, dumbass,” Torako said. She ruffled his hair and ignored the way Dipper hissed and patted it back into place. “Also, I have a degree in this shit. Practice makes perfect—anyways, Dipper, Bentley, how do we feel about fried rice tonight? Lettuce wraps?” “Sounds good,” Bentley said. He pushed the thought of—that—out of mind and resolved to bring it up with his therapist the next time they met. Lifting his paintbrush back up, he added, “I’ll try to be back by six or six-thirty, okay?” Torako nodded. “Call us when you leave, okay? And if anything happens on the way back, it doesn’t matter who’s around, just summon Dips—” Bentley paused, turned his head, and stared at Torako. “I’m not going to summon Alcor the Dreambender in the middle of the street,” he said. “Ok,” Torako said. “Just—be careful, okay?” “Yeah, I promise,” Bentley said. It was easy to—the streets were well lit, and it would be early enough when he left that anybody involved in Norfolk’s relatively low crime rate was unlikely to be active. Also, Fantino was dead and nobody else had any hare-brained ideas about Bentley being a Mizar or something like that. Torako grinned. It was a little strained. Bentley narrowed his eyes when he remembered that Torako still hadn’t started looking for a therapist they could all bully into signing a ridiculous NDA. Bentley still thought that Dr. Anikulapo-Kuti would be a good fit, but Torako kept avoiding the topic. He sighed, then reached out his hand. “Nothing is going to happen,” he said, threading his fingers through her hair. “And if it does, I’ll be prepared. I promise.” “Yeah,” Dipper said. He patted her shoulders with both hands and hooked his chin over one of them. “Ben’s tough, he can take care of himself—and just in case anything does happen, I’ll keep an extra close eye on the bond, okay? Torako closed her eyes. She tipped her head to rest against Dipper’s. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right.” “Besides,” Dipper said, giving Bentley a sly look before tilting his head to whisper in her ear. She grinned and giggled a little, eyes cutting over to Dipper and then to Bentley and back again. Bentley’s suspicions resurfaced. He narrowed his eyes. From his phone on the ground, the ‘15% battery left’ alarm chirped a whistly little tune over the final stanza of “Then I Didn’t”. “You want me to pass you your phone so you can charge it?” Torako asked, already leaning over to pick the phone up from off the ground. The sound quality wobbled a bit as the speakers adjusted from reverbing off a solid surface and to sounding through the open air. “Sure,” Bentley said, switching his brush to the opposite hand so that he could receive the phone more easily. He held his hand out and wiggled his fingers. Dipper threaded his fingers through Bentley’s. “Um,” Bentley said. He blinked across at Dipper. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but I was actually going for my phone?” Dipper grinned, wide and a little soft. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I did it.” Then, Torako jammed his cold phone down the front of his sweater. Bentley yelped, jerked, and they all went down in a tangle of limbs. Somehow Bentley managed to be sandwiched between Dipper and Torako, whose arm was still stuck down his sweater. “Torako!” Bentley screeched, his hand still comfortably in Dipper’s. They both burst into cackles, one cut through with bursts of static, the other clear and resounding. Bentley scowled up at Torako and the line of gold that slid wet down the curve of her cheek. Seconds later, a grin fought its way past the façade and he couldn’t help but laugh along. This really could be home, he thought. - “I can’t stand it,” Torako groaned from where she was sprawled face-down on the floor. “I can’t do it, Bentley.” “Yes you can,” he said from his seat at the kitchen table that they had found in an antique store. It was a little inconvenient in that it didn’t have functions to store and consequently automatically drape tablecloths, but it also wasn’t an eyesore first thing in the morning without his glasses, so everybody considered it a win. “Bentley, it’s not a proper home yet,” she said into the floorboards. Dipper rolled his eyes and sipped at the overly sweetened coffee he’d exchanged for dragging Torako from where she’d been languishing on the bed. “Torako, we don’t even have a couch yet,” Bentley said. “Or mirrors other than the one in the bathroom. How do bedside tables even make a home in the first place?” “It’s a place to put all your stuff,” Torako said. “That you need when you’re sleeping but don’t want to get up to get and I’ve fallen out of bed five times this week reaching for my water bottle.” “I keep saying that I have furniture at my house,” Dipper said. Bentley eyed the scratches in the rim of the mug—even after millennia of being a demon, Dipper kept forgetting to watch his teeth around the dishware. “But you guys are all nooo, what if it’s haunted, nooo, what if the demonic energy, nooooooo.” “I had enough problems dealing with your ambient energy affecting things like security sensors when I first started working at the company,” Bentley drawled, hands curled around his own cup of tea. “And now? With this incomprehensible body? I don’t need even more exposure. Besides, everything we’ve vetted hasn’t passed Torako’s ‘Bentley Safe’ test.” “Except the coffee table,” Dipper pointed out. “Except the coffee table,” Bentley ceded. It was the ugliest coffee table he’d seen, but it was solid wood and was void of any enchantments or extra tech, unlike everything else they had been able to find. Any demonic energy that had lingered on it had dissipated in hours without a supernatural handhold.   “Unfortunately,” Torako groaned, “Bentley makes sense. I hate it, but Bentley makes sense. Bentley, stop making sense. I want bedside tables.” Dipper sipped at his coffee extra loud. Bentley raised his eyebrows in Torako’s direction, even if she couldn’t see them. “Well,” he said. “I seem to recall that we did have bedside tables that weren’t very magical except around the hinges, and you could barely see those anyways. I wonder what happened to them?” Torako groaned extra loud. She turned her head just so that she could glare at him past the hair in her face. “One of them fell apart when we dropped it off,” Torako said. “Like, legitimately, we put it down and it collapsed.” “But you could have had one,” Dipper pointed out. He drummed his claws against the tabletop. Bentley squinted at the little pricks that started forming in the surface and realized that he was going to have to figure out how to non-magically reinforce the surface. Somehow, he didn’t think that Dipper would react well to claw-caps. “Then just Bentley would have to suffer.” “And I’m okay with that,” Bentley said, still staring at the claw dents. There was a pause. Bentley blinked, then registered what he said and started waving his hands. “Wait—no, I meant, like, I don’t mind not having a bedside table for a little longer, Torako’s the one who keeps falling out of bed, not me, she needs the table, it’s not that—” “Hey,” Dipper said, frowning. He reached over and slid his hand over Bentley’s, eyebrows serious over his dark eyes. “Being the masochist is my job.” After a beat, Torako burst into laughter. Bentley considered the ramifications of threatening Dipper bodily harm, and dismissed them very quickly on the grounds of ‘this will never end if I do.’ “Anyways,” Bentley said in a voice just loud enough to be clearly heard over Torako’s giggling, “We’ll figure out the bedside table thing. In the meantime, Torako, you could always take one of the chairs and use it.” His chair shuddered a little and there was a smacking noise. Bentley looked down to see Torako’s hand wrapped around the chair leg, her hair tangled between her eyes. “This chair?” she asked. Then she looked at Dipper and wheezed. “I think I don’t need to answer that,” Bentley said. “Why do you keep laughing, anyways? It wasn’t even that funny?” “Rude,” Dipper said. “Is…” Torako choked out. “Is because he—oh gosh, he’s unemployed, Bentley!” Dipper scowled at her. “Am too employed,” he said. “As a maSOCHIST!” Torako screeched out the last word and started smacking her feet against the ground and howling in laughter. Then she squealed when Dipper leapt over the table (and Bentley) to get at her. Bentley shifted his teacup in his hands and felt himself settle further. His phone pinged a notification as Torako and Dipper began to actually wrestle on the floor. He took one look at the phone, winced a little at how sparkly it was, and slid his glasses on to check the notification. At first, it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t remember having any business with Celestial Spaces Storage Services. That branch didn’t even exist out in Norfolk, that was strictly a Federation thing. The only ties he had there were Torako’s parents and his dad’s urn in the City Ancestral Home. The apartment had long been leased to…wait. The apartment. Bentley opened the message. Dear Customer, We hope this message finds you well. We write to inform you that your lease on Unit 4968 is set to expire approximately one month from now, on October 24th, 4042. Please indicate to us whether or not you would like to renew your lease or change the terms. We are accessible by phone, message, or in person at the facility you rented space from. Thank you for your time, L’lanee Etchen Celestial Spaces Storage Services “Oh,” he said out loud. In his bare hands, the battery ticked up from 88% to 89%. “I forgot.” “Forgot what?” Dipper asked. Bentley looked up from his phone to see him laying on the floor, Torako’s heel in the small of his back and both his arms wrenched up and behind him. Bentley winced at the thought of him in that position, but of course Dipper was nonplussed. His wings were relaxed and everything. Torako, on the other hand, was panting a little, cheeks dark and hair even wilder than it already had been. “Forgot what?” she asked. “How awesome I am at wrestling?” “Dad’s…stuff,” he said. Torako blinked and let go of Dipper’s wrists. “The stuff from our apartment, the lease on storage is expiring.” “Oh,” said Torako. She sat down on Dipper’s back. He let out a soft whoof of air that was more for fun than because Torako was pressing down on his non-existent lungs. “I forgot too.” Dipper reached back and jabbed at Torako’s sides until she squirmed far enough off of him that he could sit up. “It sounds familiar,” he said, peering up at Bentley from where he was nestled under Torako’s chin. “What do you want to do, then? For the right price, I can always blip it all here.” Bentley opened his mouth to refuse. Then he closed it, tapped his forefingers against the face of the still-warm teacup, and considered Dipper. “Our living room is pretty empty,” he said. “No sofa or bookshelves yet. All our stuff there is still in boxes.” “And it would be very economical,” Dipper wheedled. There was a glint in his eye that never failed to set some very deep, animal part of Bentley’s brain on edge. He was good at pushing past it by now, though. “In one sense of the word,” Bentley said. He pulled one hand off his teacup and set his chin in the heart of his palm. “But what would you want in exchange for this little chore?” Torako lifted an eyebrow. Her eyes flicked momentarily down to Dipper before she met Bentley’s eyes again. Bentley closed his eyes and shook his head a little; he could handle a deal like this. Alcor intertwined his fingers together in such a way that only his index fingers were free, flush against each other as he pressed the tips of them to his chin. He suddenly had gloves on. “Good question,” he said. The reverb in his voice had grown stronger, a little deeper. He sounded like he knew the answers to all your questions, had the power to fulfill every desire you had, and would never sink his fingers into your chest to pull out your soul. Not that, you know, that part actually mattered to Bentley, what with his soul not even being his to begin with. Dipper’s actual sister had given it up millennia ago.   Bentley hummed. “I agree, it was,” he said. “So what would you say is a fair price?” Alcor’s face was relaxed even as he draped an arm over Torako’s bent knee. “Usually I’d ask for a couple of teeth, an eye, maybe your left pinky—something noticeable for all these priceless, sentimental items I’d have to transport out of an extra-dimensional plane into this very well warded house. But it’s your lucky day! For you and just you, I’ll do it for the low, low price of one treasured memory of your father!” Bentley swallowed and tried to not let the grief well back up. He closed his eyes, considered the deal for half a second, and then dismissed it completely. Memories with his dad were priceless. He wasn’t going to be able to make any new ones. “Dipper, what the fuck,” Torako said. Bentley opened his eyes to see her leaning back a bit. Dipper flinched, and something about his face shifted. He leaned forward, towards Bentley, his cheeks softening to something less twenty-five and more sixteen. “Bentley, I—” “You’re right,” Bentley said. He looked Dipper right in his wide, childish eyes. “That is a lot of work. It wouldn’t be fair to ask you for something so big you can’t resist crossing lines.” “I shouldn’t have asked anyways,” Dipper said. He twined his fingers together and worried them against each other. “That was wrong, I know it was wrong and I did it anyways because it was right there and it seemed—it was just. Tempting.” “I understand,” said Bentley. He rubbed at his temples. “I’ll call the company and ask what it would cost to ship everything here.” “That would be so expensive,” Torako said. She leaned back forward, smoothed her hands over Dippers, and tucked his head under her chin again. It was easier than it had been before. “The Federation is so far, and then there’s customs to go through, and we’d have to choose an option that didn’t rely on shipping things with exdim spaces.” Bentley inhaled and then exhaled, deep. “I’ll call the company,” he said, again. That night, Torako dragged a chair from the dining room and set it up by her side of the bed. She still, somehow, managed to fall out by reaching out too far for her water bottle. - What ended up happening was this: Bentley called the company to extend the lease. Then he called the company again, after a couple days of first arguing and then discussing the details with Torako, to ask if actually they could arrange a video tour of everything in the unit. After the company explained that they didn’t have the time or resources to devote to that (which was utter bull, but Bentley wasn’t willing to shell money out for the Perk Plan Copper Edition), Torako took time to physically travel to them, visited her parents, and used her phone to show Bentley around the place. It was nostalgic, but the level of magical interference was faintly visible even through the screen and his glasses. Bentley was glad that he let Torako argue him out of going himself. When he made soft eyes at the long, old dresser from his father’s bedroom, Torako slapped a ‘removal’ sticker on it without hesitation (“We can put it in the living room or by the entrance or whatever, there’s definitely a place for it somewhere!”). When Torako started cackling over the ugliest coat rack in existence, awkwardly heavy and brassy at the ends of each hook, Bentley didn’t protest too much over her demands to bring it back (“It’ll go with that awful coffee table Dips brought back, I love it so much.”) When Dipper showed up halfway through the call and interrupted their discussion over the merits of bringing or leaving the sofa with its simple seat-warming enchantments, Bentley cackled at Torako’s initial screech of surprise and then Dipper’s squawk as she wrestled him down to ruffle his hair (“Sea’s mercy, don’t sneak up on me like that—say, what do you think about this couch, it’s got enchantments but I think my dads can hook me up with somebody who can strip it off…”) When discussion turned to a possible matching (mostly) set of lamps that Dipper had stashed somewhere, Bentley set his chin on his hand and watched his family go back and forth about logistics and re-wiring and oh, wasn’t that a really nice bookshelf, wouldn’t that look good in the house too. In the end, they found nearly everything they wanted, arranged to have the whole lot of it shipped by non-magical means (paid for by Torako’s dads, who were apparently side-eyeing Dipper with less fear and apprehension than they had initially), and came home. It would take a month for everything to arrive but until then— “It’s come to this,” Torako said, laced fingers under her nose, elbows set to the sides of her empty dinner plate. “We need to search harder than ever for the final, most vital piece of our home.” “The bedside tables?” Dipper asked sullenly. He scowled down at the vibrant claw tips Torako had slipped on him while he was napping earlier. “You don’t deserve them, you heathen.” “Even heathens deserve bedside tables,” Torako countered, eyes bright with something Bentley couldn’t name. “It’s a basic right of Personhood.” “You violated my Personhood,” Dipper hissed, eyes narrowed in mock-betrayal as he wiggled his capped claws at her. “You don’t deserve a bedside table. Besides, I don’t even get a bedside table, so why should you?” “I keep telling you,” Bentley said after taking a sip of his water, “if you want a shelf above the bed, we can put one up there for things you wanted to put up there that weren’t, like, eyeballs or the shriveled dismembered fingers of that one dude who tried to enslave you when you were a baby demon.” “I also veto the cursed paperweight that croons the regretful thoughts of all office workers ever into your dreams,” Torako said with a shudder. “For more than just the fact that it might be a pain to Bentley. It’s just super, super disturbing.” “You have no taste,” Dipper sniffed. He gnawed a little at the rubber claw caps and then made a face. “Also, these are disgusting.” Bentley couldn’t stop himself from laughing a little. He avoided Dipper’s wide betrayed eyes and looked out the kitchen window instead. It faced the front, where there was a little pathway leading up to the house and there was a stone wall that was covered with aesthetically pleasing moss. Dipper had said it was installed a couple centuries ago, when everybody had their ‘ye olde cottage in the woods’ phase. Bentley liked it, at least. He watched as a small songbird, dark brown back over light brown belly interrupted by a dull crest of yellow, fluttered down to perch on top of it. It cocked its head this way and that, then trilled out a few notes. “Sucks to be you; you keep putting holes in our super hard-to-find dining table, we take preventative measures,” Torako said. Outside, the bird hopped forward a couple steps. “Could have just told me,” Dipper groused. “Woulda stopped.” “Not nearly as much fun,” Torako said. “Now—the bedside tables. The Quest to end all Quests. The most honorable, invaluable, unbelievably necessary endeavor yet on our long journey towards houseownership.” The songbird pecked down once, twice, and picked up a twig. Bentley watched it fly off with its prize. Weird, he thought, that a bird might make its nest in fall. He blinked. “Why not make our own bedside tables?” When he turned to look at them again, Torako was blinking in mild confusion. Dipper had stopped chewing at the rubber caps that he could absolutely take off himself but didn’t for whatever reason. “I thought you didn’t have power tools?” Bentley frowned. “Power tools? I’m not going to…I don’t have any magical tools, remember? We got rid of everything overly magical.” Even the wards could have been a pain to deal with if Torako hadn’t researched and then integrated the time-consuming, archaic, and possibly illegal additions that rendered the wards magical signature null. Dipper sighed. “Mechanical saws that go buzzity buzz through wood and stuff to make it the size you want. Or things to screw in screws without agitating your wrist. Machines.” “Oh,” Bentley said. “Yeah, Tristools. The library has a workshop; we could find the right materials and make our own with their resident Carpenter?” Without warning, Torako stood up and slammed the table. The dishes clanged and clattered as they were jostled, and Bentley only barely saved his water from spilling everywhere. Dipper screeched, his hair fluffing up and out in momentary alarm. “Bentley!” Torako yelled. “You’re a genius.” Bentley blinked at her rapidly. His fingers curled around his glass protectively. “I…thank you? I guess?” “I am going to make,” Torako said, a terrifying grin on her face, “the biggest, baddest, most amazing bedside tables ever.” “Oh,” Bentley said. He tugged the glass closer, as if he could stop Torako’s enthusiasm from bubbling over and making everything more complicated than any of them could handle just by protecting his water. “Oh, no, Torako, we just need—we just need function. We just need something we can put things like pain medication in and water bottles on.” “That’s boring,” Dipper said. He was floating off his chair, a matching grin on his face. “And we’re not boring, we need exciting furniture. Personalized furniture. Furniture with as many non-magical bells and whistles as we can manage.” Neither of them, as far as Bentley knew, had built anything in their lives. Dipper tended towards destruction anyways—and thinking of Torako’s several collisions with opposing hurling players that ended in somebody with fractured ribs or concussions or, in one memorable case, a flattened nose that needed emergency on-site reconstruction, so did Torako. “Guys,” he said weakly. “Think—manageable projects?” “I want a carved dragon in mine,” Torako said. Then she gasped. “No, wait—Korato holding Alcor in her arms as they’re flying off on a carved dragon—oh I have to write everything down.” “Mine is going to have so many hidden drawers,” Dipper said, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t going to use a bedroom table. “So many traps to dissuade thieving fingers. You won’t be able to open anything without first solving the initial puzzle lock. I can’t wait, I have so many ideas.” “Just…a drawer?” Bentley offered out, loudly so that Torako could hear him from where she had burst into the master bedroom. “Maybe a couple shelves? A flat surface? Maybe a fancy handle for the drawer if they have them?” “It’s gonna be A WORK OF ART,” screeched Torako from across the house. Dipper had dissolved into muttering about which traps and tricks would be best for its size, and they could mount it on the wall so it could have a secret bottom that held all the best things. Bentley looked down at his water, and could only think about the poor resident Carpenter who would be dealing with them all. - “I’m so sorry,” he said to Mx. Tchaikovsky, resident Carpenter at their nearest expanded Library, as zi looked first at their plans, then at the materials they had sourced and brought with them. Zir nameplate, which displayed zir name and pronouns, fritzed a couple times before steadying out. “I tried to talk them out of it, but…” Mx. Tchaikovsky looked at him. Then, zi grinned wide and said, “Are you kidding? These are the greatest things I’ve ever seen!” Behind Mx. Tchaikovsky’s back, Torako and Dipper high-fived each other. Bentley made the mistake of making incredulous eye contact with them. In response, Dipper put his thumb on his nose, crossed his eyes, and wiggled his fingers at Bentley. The gesture was unfamiliar; the childish, gloating triumph on his face was not. “I…” Bentley said, slowly, “I thought that they would be too…complicated for our skill level. Those two, at least,” He said, tapping the plans that he knew weren’t his. “Oh, for sure,” Mx. Tchaikovsky said. Zi half-turned to Torako and Dipper, and asked, “You two don’t have any carpentry experience, do you?” Dipper opened his mouth. “I made a custom bedroom set for my—for a child, once,” he said. Bentley, who had not seen Dipper do anything without using supernatural powers ever, widened his eyes at him. Dipper clearly saw, but elected to say nothing. “Oh wow,” Mx. Tchaikovsky said. “That’s really cool! Do you have any pics? How many pieces was it? Were there any custom decorations? What tools did you use? I want to know what you’re familiar with in here.” This time, it was Bentley who felt that cathartic burst of childish triumph. Dipper laughed and started scratching at the back of his neck. “Oh, sorry, I—it’s a running joke we have after somebody misheard me say that I had commissioned a custom bedroom set for a child, nobody’s child in particular, just a child that I thought needed a custom bedroom set with appropriate thematic imagery, I haven’t used any of these tools, but that’s fine because you, a professional, a professional carpenter employed by the Library, is here to help us and I think that’s just great, don’t you? Say, Torako, what experience do you have??” Torako grinned. “Nothing and you know it, dweebus.” Mx. Tchaikovsky returned the smile, long, thin hands on zir hips. “Okay, great to hear! Thanks for being honest, I really appreciate it. What about you, Mr…Farkas, right? You got any experience?” Bentley repressed the urge to stick out his tongue at Dipper and turned his attention to Mx. Tchaikovsky. “I took a couple sculpture classes in undergrad and used some tools there—a 3D printer, a pattern cutter, and a handheld rotary tool, if I remember right—but it’s been several years.” Mx. Tchaikovsky nodded, then stroked zir chin. “Okay, I see what’s happened—you know how hard it’s going to be and how much time it’s going to take, whereas these two—” Zi gestured at Torako and Dipper “—don’t have an idea of what they’re getting into. But, like, if you guys are willing to spend a significant amount of time on these custom bedside tables…why not go for something you want in your life for a long time?” Bentley blinked at zir. He looked around the room, machinery piled against the walls, spare materials organized (mostly) into shelves and containers. The thin light from an overcast sky filtered in through the windows and highlighted lazily floating dust motes. “Huh,” he said, a little quietly. He looked back at Mx. Tchaikovsky. “You sure that wouldn’t be too much work for you?” “It would be a challenge,” Zi admitted, still grinning a little, lopsided, and zir boot scuffed against the concrete flooring. “For everybody, really. But I like teaching, and if things get too difficult to manage partway through, we can improvise and level down.” A glance at both Torako and Dipper told Bentley everything he needed to know about what they thought of levelling down. To be fair, he thought, he was also feeling…competitive. “Okay,” he said, holding a hand out for his previous proposal application. “I can change it up.” Torako and Dipper high-fived again. Mx. Tchaikovsky said, “That’s the spirit!” and handed over the proposal. Bentley took the holographic file in his gloved hand and looked down at it, before smiling over at Torako and Dipper. His design was going to crush theirs. - In late November, they were finally able to take their monstrous creations home. Monstrous, in Dipper’s case, meant that he’d made an almost seamless shelving unit that they installed above the bed for a package of shrimp chips. Even if anybody were to figure out how to get into the hidden drawers in each wide span of wood framing the open shelves, they would be very hard pressed to not lose any fingers (or noses) in the process. In Torako’s case, it meant that her bulky, stupidly heavy bedside table that was more sculpture than functional furniture was so dense that it took bribing Dipper with a pint of ice cream and a bag of anatomically correct gummy hearts (scaled down) to get it from the workshop and into the bedroom. Torako had gleefully chucked the dining room chair out into the garden the morning they went to pick up their pieces—and then promptly was made to go outside into the snow to get the chair because “Those were a bitch to find, Torako, and if you’ve broken it you get to fix it.” In Bentley’s case, it was simply shaped, fairly light-weight. The overall shape was rather boxy, as opposed to Torako’s (hourglass) or Dipper’s (in a word: aerodynamic). There was a single drawer above an empty space at the bottom for any larger things he might need. The biggest visual difference, however were the flowers carved into the sides and carved into the top of the table—spider lilies, vibrant reds and yellows and greens standing out from a dark-varnished background. They had been painstakingly carved, and recurved, and glued back together when the support was too weak and he went too far. Then they had been painted, shaded, dusted here and there with shimmering gold powder, and on the underside of one petal near the bottom-right corner, Bentley had very carefully inscribed his name as small as he could. He set the bedside table down, took a step back, and looked the room over. Torako was sprawled across the bed to take up as much space as possible. Dipper was floating upside-down in the corner. Their tables—new, custom made—matched even less than the rest of the furniture in the house, cobbled together from several sources and time periods. Bentley appreciated matching furniture and themes as much as anybody but somehow this just…suited them. He rubbed at his mismatched hands, and smiled a little. “So,” Dipper asked, hair unbound and floating around him in a way he probably thought was cool but just made him look even dorkier than usual. “Why spider lilies?” Bentley thought about it for two seconds, then said, “Because they’re the most stupid difficult flower I could think of to render in three dimensions?” Muffled by the pillow she had her face pressed into, Torako said, “I knew it, you competitive little shit! You couldn’t just let me have my figure of the three of us, you had to outdo me!” “Three of us?” Bentley asked. He looked at the flying dragon (that resembled more of a badger than anything else) and the two figures on its back that made up the support for the top of her table and narrowed his eyes. He knew the one in something resembling armor was Korato, and the figure with too-long arms draped across Korato’s back was Alcor, but he didn’t see anything like… Dipper started cackling. “He’s the dragon?? The dragon!!” “A talking dragon,” Torako said, rolling over so that she could speak easier. “I decided it halfway through the project—it just. Made more sense if it was all three of us, you know?” With a sigh, Bentley stepped forward and flopped onto the bed, half-on Torako’s legs. “Goddammit,” he said. “If it’s all three of us, I guess you win.” She laughed. Dipper sputtered. “But—but look at how smooth and seamless mine is! How perfectly hair-trigger the traps are! It’s even and sleek and beautiful and I can’t believe you’re saying Torako won!” “Torako’s may be ridiculously heavy and technically unrefined,” Bentley said, curling over onto his side so he could look Dipper better in the eyes, “but she made me a dragon. She wins.” “Also you hella cheated,” Torako said, pointing a finger up at Dipper. “Even Mx Tchaikovsky was baffled as to how you managed a couple of those traps, and zi held our hands all the way through this mess. You definitely used a couple tricks to get things to work.” Dipper flushed all the way to the tips of his pointed ears. “So what?? I used the tools at my disposal, and I made the perfect trap furniture.” “Bentley got second place,” Torako said. She reached down to scrunch her fingers into Bentley’s hair. He sighed and tipped his head back a little, eyes sliding shut as she began to lightly massage his scalp. “What the heck!” Dipper said. The air itself bristled a little. Bentley inhaled deep, counted to three, and exhaled slow. “The heck,” Dipper said, the air loosening up again. “You two are—you’re in cahoots! You have to be!” “So take some pics and show them to other people,” Torako drawled. Her leg shifted underneath Bentley, and he obligingly lifted his weight so that she could rearrange herself into a more comfortable position. “Or, instead, you could join our ‘the house is finally a home’ victory snuggles.” “That’s what these are?” Bentley asked, draping an arm over Torako’s waist. “Yes,” she said, her fingers moving out of the way so that she could press a kiss to the crown of his head. “That’s exactly what these are. Yo, Dipper, you going to sulk or you going to cuddle?” “Both,” Dipper grumbled before settling in on Bentley’s other side, an arm sliding over his side and curling around his chest. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten this injustice.” Bentley hummed. “Okay,” he said, and shifted himself further up the bed. “You do that, buddy.” After a moment, warm between their bodies and under the soft cover of sunlight coming in the window, Bentley heard Dipper whisper to Torako, “So—you happy with everything?” “Yeah,” Torako said, after a moment. Her long fingers stilled on his head. “Yeah, this is good. This is—really, really good.” A heartbeat, and then Dipper, soft: “I’m glad.”

[ddp456]

A Little Lumberjane Christmas - A Gravity Falls Christmas Story/Poem (Re-post)

Hey, all!  @ddp456​ here, and due to the season, I wanted to re-share one of my favorite creations to spread some holiday cheer.  I changed the format a bit, hopefully making it a bit more readable on Tumblr than the original versions here and here.  Again, happy holidays, and please enjoy!

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Written by @ddp456​ Illustrations by @codylabs​ Based on an idea by Wolf90

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It was Christmas Eve and time to deck the halls, in the podunk town called Gravity Falls. Weirdmageddon had pass, its horrors thankfully gone, bringing peace back to the sleepy state of Oregon.

Its natural weirdness seemed to had taken a pause, as the whole town awaited the arrival of ol' Santa Claus. Stockings were hung and trees were dressed really bright. From a distance, the whole town looked like a giant Christmas light.

Families were brought together, and friends would come and unite, proving enough Christmas cheer can make anything right. But one unfortunate soul didn't see things that way. She sat on a rooftop, watching nightfall rise up from the passing day. Who was this person, seemingly unaffected by Christmas joy? Why, it's the Lumberjack Princess, Wendy Corduroy!

Wendy hidden herself away at the top of the Mystery Shack, as the brutal winter winds blew away at her back. She didn't mind the cold, save for the tips of her boot-covered toes, and the feeling of frost nipping away at her stubby little nose. Wendy wanted a safe place to brood and mope and think, as she sipped from a thermos of hot cocoa, her favorite winter drink.

She had gotten out of her dad's apocalypse training by lying about work. She avoided Soos's Mystery Shack staff party by saying it wasn't her quirk. The rest of the town was swept away in the Christmas action, as McGucket threw a huge celebration in what was once the Northwest Mansion. Her friends Tambry, Lee, Nate, and Thompson begged her to come. Wendy refused. "No thanks. It sounds kinda dumb."

Even the Pines twins made their own attempt. An offered trip to Piedmont, California only added to Wendy's contempt. Wendy turned down their invitation, hoping Mabel and Dipper wouldn't shed a tear. "Sorry, guys. Maybe we'll see next year."

All Wendy wanted was to be left alone with her pain. Why did the world make it feel like she was insane? To her loved ones, she didn't want to seem like a grouch, but because of all the lies she told, Wendy couldn't even go back to her own couch.

Wendy's wandering mind instantly came to a halt, as she could hear crushed snow beneath a heavy foot fault. She sprang into action, her ninja-like moves were so slick. Wendy couldn't believe her eyes, "Holy crap! It's St. Nick!"

Santa Claus stood before Wendy in all his glory. The red outfit and fuzzy beard definitely matched the often-heard stories. Despite her older age, Wendy didn't doubt her own eyes. After all, this was Gravity Falls, where the weirdos loved to hide!

Wendy asked, "Santa, no offense, but what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be posing on soda cans with a cute polar bear? Don't you have, like, a zillion presents to give out today? I won't bother you. You can be on your way!"

Santa laughed. "You need not worry. My deeds with get their well due. But tonight, dearest Wendy, I've come to speak with you. It makes Santa sad to see you so blue. Your Christmas spirit I intend to renew. So, come join me this night. Give me a chance to help make things right. By Christmas Morn, I make this promise so true, your outlook on Christmas will gain a new view."

"Thanks for the invite, Santa." Wendy scoffed at the plan so bland. She sat back down in the snow, "But, yeah, a hard pass from me, my man."

With her back turned, Wendy was definitely out of range, to see "Jolly ol' St. Nick" undergo a sudden change. His famous smile faded into a frown turned amiss, as his opened, gloved hands turned into enraged fists.

"Young lady," Santa said without as much as raising his voice. "I'm afraid you don't understand. I'm not giving you a choice."

"WHA – "

Before she knew it, Wendy was tackled to the ground, She punched, scratched, and kicked, but in the end, was helplessly bound. Left in a hogtie, Wendy could only look around, the identity of her attackers made her let out a disgusted sound. "The gnomes from the woods?! This can't be right! Why are you bugging me on Christmas Eve night? And what's the deal with the elf uniforms? What's your beef? I thought you reformed?"

Jeff the gnome stepped up, since the other gnomes weren't very social. "Sorry, kid. It's just business. I swear this isn't personal. We gnomes need extra scratch for these long winter seasons, and the big man likes to outsource. Need there be a better reason?"

"HO HO HO! Well done, my boys!" Santa heaved with huge amounts of joy. "Please place Miss Corduroy in my big sack of toys! For a job well done, expect a little extra in your checks. Consider it a gracious extension of my respect."

The gnomes cheered as they started to drag Wendy away. Their redheaded captive did everything she could to stay. She pulled and tugged and screamed with all of her might, but the ropes holding her were simply way too tight.

"You can't do this to me!" Wendy yelled. "I have rights! What's the matter, Santa? Too scared to fight your own fights? You know against me, you'd have no such luck! For the last time, let me go, ya fat fu – MMPH!"

The angry ginger's potty mouth was hurting the simple gnomes' brains, so they decided to gag her with a candy cane. From her lips, Wendy couldn't get the sticky treat to waver. The only positive in all this was that it was mint-flavored.

They tossed Wendy into the oversized bag, usually filled with cheer. She let out a muffled cry, landing hard on her derriere. The sack's top was then tied off, robbing Wendy of all light, as Santa and prisoner sailed away well into the night.

Hours felt like seconds until the sack's top was undone. Wendy sprang up from the bag. This was her chance to run! Her ropes and candy cane gag had disappeared. The road in front of her had been perfectly cleared. Before Wendy could take one step, a sturdy hand clamped onto her shoulder. She turned to find Santa, about two seconds away from scolding her.

"Welcome, Wendy," he greeted, "to my humble abode. I wouldn't bother fleeing, for there's nowhere to go. We're at the North Pole, far away from civilization. This is my workshop. Call it my own private nation. Your cell phone won't work. All internet access is password-protected. My best advice is for you to do what you're directed. Now, join me, won't you? The next room is pretty fine. I really want you to see my toy assembly line."

Wendy sighed. There wasn't anything she could do. What if Santa's words were absolutely true? The best course of action was to play along with the part, and trick the geezer that she had a change of heart. The two walked down and across a large loading bay while Santa's nine reindeer happily ate their servings of hay.

Santa led Wendy to the toy assembly line, when the annoyed teen let out a whine. "I don't mean to be rude, but I'm telling you, I can't stay. Can't you just leave coal in my stocking, and send me on my way?"

"HO-HO-HO!" Santa chuckled. "Why, Wendy, you're such a kidder! You can't lie to Santa. I must insist you reconsider. I know alone in the dead of winter is what you'd prefer. But in this case, I really cannot concur. There are reasons to my seemingly harsh way. I promise you'll reflect fondly on it one day.

Wendy crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue. "I really doubt that, you kidnapping pile of cow dung!"

Santa beaded his eyes, as he tried to stay reserved. "Maybe it's time to get what you deserve. With that negative attitude of yours – and your bad behavior. Santa's got the way to curb that. How about some hard labor?!"

With a hard push, Wendy nearly crashed into the conveyor belt. She looked around to see the hand she'd been dealt. An army of elves stood neatly in line, they slaved and worked tirelessly to finish their projects in time. An endless supply of toys, games, and electronics flew by at frenzied rates, to order to reach children in every country, province, and state.

"Whoa!" Wendy noticed. "Those aren't the gnomes. These elves are real!" "Of course they are," Santa prided. "Back home, this job needs the real deal! Who else could deliver such gifts with speed and joy? They pull out all the stops so each child gets a toy. These wondrous folks are able to look past their own wants and needs, to bring Christmas cheer by doing good deeds. Such is the lesson I expect you to learn tonight. So, jump right in and help, and please don't put up a fight!"

Wendy stepped up to the belt, finding that she was way too tall. "Hey, how can I help? These tools were made for someone super small!"

"Hmm…" Santa stroked his beard. "By George, you're right! Why didn't I see it before?" The old man snapped his fingers. "There! Now, you can easily do your chore!"

With a blink of her eye, Wendy had shrunk by half. She was horrified to see that she barely reached Santa's calf. Her lumberjack outfit and thick winter coat, were now a dorky, striped one piece, and curled shoes that looked like boats. Dipper's pine-tree cap became a cute matching hat with bell tips. Her long copper hair turned pigtails made her lose her grip.

"AHH!" Wendy shrieked as she felt her now-pointed ears. "Change me back!" She demanded. "Don't think I can't kick your chunky rear!"

Santa used one hand to hold back the pint-sized, fist-swinging threat. "Oh, give it up, kid. Just look at me! I'm not even breaking a sweat! All this protesting is really getting you nowhere. Help the elves with the toys, and I'll think about changing you back. I swear. Only when your Christmas spirit is revived, will you be allowed to go home. I'll leave you be now. Santa's got better things to do than listen to you drone."

Santa took his leave, when he stopped after a few paces. "I hate to do this to you, but to be honest, I'm really too old for chases." He snapped his fingers once more, the room echoed with a click. Wendy looked down, "What's this? Another one of your tricks?"

A metal tether was placed around her ankle, meant to hold her in place. Wendy couldn't run away or jump. She could barely walk around or pace. "You think you got me, old man?" Wendy bragged. "I'll be outta here super-quick." She reached under her hat, "As soon as I find my lock – "

"Looking for these?"

Santa flashed a grin, displaying Wendy's trusty lockpicks in his hand. "That's right, kiddo. Santa knows all your secrets. That's why he's the man!" Wendy was left speechless as her captor soon disappeared from sight. She pulled on her chain with all her might. The freckled elf tugged and yanked and fought against the shackle, but every escape attempt resulted in a painful ankle tackle.

Now faced with no other choice, Wendy turned around to accept her fate. She grabbed a toy off the assembly line and followed alongside with her elven mates. But after a few minutes, Wendy found the task to be a bore. She elbowed the nearest working elf neighbor, "So, what are you in for?"

The tiny elf stared at Wendy in a confused state. "I don't think you understand. We elves choose our own fate. We each have free will. Santa doesn't force us to stay. All of us volunteer here. We don't even ask for any pay!"

Wendy looked around at the other elves workers walking around scot-free. She was the only one chained down to the heavy machinery.

"Then, I don't get it." Wendy asked. "Why do you do all this?" The elf replied, "Because the end result is truly pure bliss. Seeing the happy, smiling faces of the grateful girls and boys, it's what powers our great quest. It brings us great joy!"

Wendy grew more curious. "But how can you see all of these things? There's too many to see and they're so far away. Are you just pulling my strings?"

"Watch…"

Wendy grew silent as from the assembly wall came something new. From a small crack, some kind of electrical portal grew. The portal shifted from different planes into a whole new world. Before Wendy's emerald eyes, did the elf's story unfurled.

A little girl knelt on the side of her bed, praying to the powers that be to watch over her loved ones' heads.

"That's little Clara," introduced Wendy's new friend. "She volunteers to take care of her grandma, helping around the house to no end. Even though her family has little money for presents, she gives them little grief. For this, we're giving her a special dollie to provide her some well-needed relief."

A new item flew down the conveyor belt at rocket speeds. Dozens of elven hands rushed to give it the details it needs. A blonde, huggable doll was the final result. Its design was truly perfect. There wasn't anything possible to insult. It flew off the line and into Santa's bag in an almost magical way, and soon, into Clara's awaiting arms on Christmas Day.

"I have to admit," Wendy's mood began to lighten. "That was really neat." She no longer felt like fighting.

"Then, why don't you give it a shot," the elf did suggest. "You're part elf now. You can do it. Try your best!"

Wendy began to picture a child in need, someone who was indeed worthy of the elves' creed. She opened her eyes and gasped aloud, as Wendy was soon presented with her very own cloud. The other elves murmured and gathered around, to see what child Wendy's mind had found.

The image became clear, displaying a teenage boy in punk clothing. His hair was blue. His jeans were torn and holey. But man, was his attitude loathing. The teen was with his mother, doing some late holiday shopping. But to Wendy's shock, she could make out some swears dropping. "No, Mom, you moron! What were you thinking? Are you always this dumb, or have you been possibly drinking? I said I wanted Super Linguini Bros. 3, not Part 2! Man, I honestly can't believe I'm related to you!"

As the image in the portal faded away, Wendy's blood boiled, perhaps more than anytime that day. The boy's expected present had appeared before her, half-finished. But her budding Christmas spirit had been quickly diminished. She picked up the video game machine, and threw it over her shoulder. Wendy let out a chuckle as her insight became ever bolder. All of the elves were shocked and frozen in pause, as the now-wrecked toy landed at the feet of Santa Claus.

Wendy spun around in horror. She knew an apology would be way too late. This latest outburst would surely seal her fate.

Instead, he approached Wendy without a sign of anger and rage. Santa rubbed his bearded chin, knowing he had to take from another page. "Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. We need to go inside to find why you despise Christmas Day."

He stepped up to Wendy, who was still stuck in place, and placed his black glove over her freckled face.

"What are you doing?" She tried to pull away. "Stop being a creep! Get your stinking hand off me! I can't see a peep!"

Santa removed his hand, and Wendy was now filled with a sense of dread. She had been warped to a dark room with a yellow light hanging ahead. "Hello?" Wendy called out, no longer shackled. "Is anyone there?" "Sorry!" A new voice answered. "I'm on my way. I had to finish my hair!"

A purple and pink glow invaded the darkened space. Wendy entered a fighting stance, just in case. The small ball became a pixie, straight out of a fable. "Weird." Wendy noted. "You kinda look like my friend, Mabel."

The brunette fairy gave off a familiar smile, "Hey, there! Welcome! I hope you stay awhile. Beyond this point, lie the doors three. They represent Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Yippee! Each door will take you to a different point in time on Christmas Day. By journey's end, we'll learn the real reason of why you feel this way."

Wendy shrugged, "It isn't like I have any choice." The pixie agreed and waved, "No, not really. Just follow my voice! If you need anything, I'll be your busy bee! All you need to do is shout, "Hey, Christmas Fairy!""

The fairy led Wendy to the door labelled, "Christmas Past." She opened the door, "Come on! This will be a blast!" Wendy was reluctant, but did what the sprite asked. The redhead couldn't believe it! She was now ten years in the past!

They stood in a better version of the Corduroy household, one that hadn't been yet damaged by Manly Dan's tantrums left uncontrolled. In the farthest corner of a somewhat messy kitchen, a super-tall, redheaded woman baked cookies as her pigtailed daughter pitched-in. The child was covered in white flour from head and toe, and her chubby, little fingers were caked in sticky dough. But the deed was finally done. Into the oven, the cookies went in. The mother tightly hugged her baby, looking over her proudly with a grin. "I'm so proud of you, my little one. You perfectly made my recipe: Chocolate-frosted Christmas trees with just a pinch of sesame. One day, you'll be able to do it alone. Maybe to impress some lucky boy, or when you have a family of your own, my dearest Wendy Corduroy."

The little girl held her mother even tighter, her hidden anxiety and social fears became a tad bit lighter.

"Mama…"

The Christmas Fairy watched the heartwarming scene with glee. "How adorable!" She turned around, finding something unexpectedly. Wendy had turned away from the memory, as she hugged her own shoulders. "Can we get out of here, please? This all is getting older and older."

The pixie sighed, as she waved the memory away. "Maybe we can find something even better here in present day." Wendy followed the fairy to the next Christmas door, "Are we almost done? I'm not gonna lie. This is becoming a chore."

The fairy reached the large door, marked with label, "Present," so that Wendy could bear witness to ongoing Christmas events. This time, she was presented with not one window, or two, but three! On her left side, Wendy could make out a familiar, half-broken Christmas tree. The Gift Shop of the Mystery Shack was decorated with green and red. A nearby buffet table held quite an awesome spread!

The new Mr. Mystery, Soos, stood at the counter with elbows resting. His saddened face was downright depressing. Melody, his girlfriend and partner at the Mystery Shack, suddenly snuck behind him and gave him a hug-attack. "Hey, why so glum, big guy?" she wondered. "Gee, Melody." Soos lamented. "This party was nothing but a blunder. Everybody went to that McGucket shindig instead. With the way things are going, maybe I should have stayed in bed. Even Wendy, who works here, couldn't even bother to attend, Let's face it, this idea was nothing but a dead end."

Melody lowered her head against Soos's shoulder fat, "Oh, don't be silly. Just you forget about that! They can have their stupid party. Let them be. We'll have our own little Christmas; just you and me! And don't mind Wendy. You know she doesn't mean to hurt you. Besides, with us alone, we can make our Christmas a bit more "blue.""

The couple's lips met as they shared a Christmas kiss, though Wendy turned her head and quickly dismissed. "Okay! Moving on!" She fled the scene with swift feet, though she secretly thought the moment was sorta sweet.

The middle window allowed Wendy to view the snow-covered woods, as four burly soldiers followed a path, their heads covered in hoods. Wendy easily recognized those running around in the dead of winter making noise, It was her father, Manly Dan, and her brothers, the Corduroy boys!

Marcus, Kevin, and Gus followed along with dear old Dad, "Keep going!" Dan barked. "Onwards, my beefy lads! Those monsters this summer were only the beginning! We'll practice and train day and night to make sure we keep winning!"

The youngest boy, Gus, started to complain, "How'd Wendy get out of this? She's totally to blame! She said she couldn't come because of work? Yeah, right! She's full of it! What a jerk!"

It was then when Manly Dan came to a stop. The boys crashed into his mighty form, and dropped. He stuck a finger in his smallest son's face. "You watch your tongue, boy! Don't be a disgrace!" That girl beat the odds and surprised us all, She helped saved this town from its ultimate downfall. Wendy's proven herself to me. My stone-cold heart she had won, I only wish she was here to show you boys how to get the job done! But my girl's not here, so us four will have to do. We'll work together on this blessed day to show the world that Corduroys rule!"

The boys rallied around their father's battle cry, and Wendy watched them march without batting an eye. "Don't think I'm not touched by Dad's words. I hate to betray his trust. I just wanted to get out of apocalypse training without a fuss. Living through Weirdmageddon was more than enough for me. After that mess, couldn't we relax and let things be?"

Wendy's attention was drawn by the window on the right. Every part of the Northwest Mansion was bathed in glorious light. Its new owner, Fiddleford McGucket, had really turned things around. To properly celebrate, he threw a Christmas party for the whole town! Mingles of classes, both rich and poor, engaged with each other without signs of bore. Gathered at a distant table were a collection of Wendy's chums, Thompson, Tambry, Nate, Lee, and even Robbie V., that gothic bum. They sat bored out of their minds, their attention spans were wearing thin, without their fearless leader to swoop in for the win. The plucky cashier's mischievous mind usually created their favorite dares, games, and pranks, and now without her around, the mellow atmosphere really did stank! Surprisingly enough, Thompson threw his fist down! "Why are we just sitting here? Sure, Wendy's not around, but would she want us to sit around and pout? No way! She'd tell us to get off our butts, no doubt! C'mon, guys. Let's make our Wendy proud! We'll cause a little mayhem and make this party loud! He lifted his half-drank cup of punch into the air, as the rest of the teens joined in with the cheer:

"For Wendy!"

Wendy backed away from the third open portal, "I'm not really sure if I get this moral. Sure, all three present views have people that miss me, but their Christmases seemed to be better if I left things be."

The pixie bobbed her head, "Oh, Wendy. Try looking at this way instead. All of these groups would be better if you were there, but in your absence, they refuse to let their Christmas fall into despair. They celebrate what they have, versus what they have not. Now, with that said, maybe is there something more to Christmas that you thought?"

"Perhaps…" Wendy said, stroking her chin with curiosity. "Great!" The fairy proclaimed. "There's one last thing to see!" However, Wendy's interests soon broke away, as the door called "Christmas Future" made her want to stay. "Hold on!" The sprite cried out. "There's nothing interesting in here, I bet, and I'm not sure if Santa wants you to see that yet."

"It's nice to want things." Wendy opened the door and smirked. "What's Santa hiding now, that big, colossal jerk?" To Wendy's amazement, she was back at Santa's workshop. The lines of elves went on building toys non-stop. The big man himself surveyed his on-going mission, as he stood at the assembly line with his newest addition. Santa patted the shoulder of the pigtailed elf with a familiar, striped uniform. Her frozen, freckled beam was anything but the norm. The elf didn't even so much as breathe or blink, as her hands blindly manufactured new goods with a "clink, clink, clink!"

Wendy covered her mouth, "No! No way! This cannot be! I know that mindless little elf – that's me!"

Wendy's stomach grew nauseous as she stumbled away. Her pixie friend pleaded with her to stay. "Please, Wendy. You don't understand! This possible future is not Santa's ultimate plan!" But Wendy refused to hear her anymore. "Stay away from me! Let me outta this place!" she roared.

The blackened arena shattered like broken glass, Wendy was back in front of Santa and his elven class. The force of the mighty ginger had broken Santa's spell, as her outburst made him land on his jingle bells.

Wendy marched towards him with a nasty glare, until she was pulled back by her ankle snare. "I've had it with you, fat man! You've hit my last nerve! Now, it's about time that I give you what you deserve! You kidnap me and bring me to this awful place, and then you turn me into one of the elven race! You threaten me with child labor? So what? Big deal! Do you know the geezer I work for? He's an even bigger heel! Then, you dare to invade my mindscape and some, and pervert my most private of memories, you scum! You wanna make me your slave? I'd want you to try. Come a few steps closer, and I'll be happy to give you a black eye! I'll give you one last chance to change your mind. I'm too generous, I know. I'm not asking, I'm telling: LET-ME-GO!"

The other elves remained silent as Santa stood upright. His demeanor had changed to that of sorrow, not fright. "My poor Wendy Corduroy. I feel I failed you. For on this night, I was unable to give you Christmas spirit renewed. Your anger and pain is just way too great, I fear this time, ol' St. Nick had arrived too, too late. Your fate has been sealed. I'm sorry it sounds so grim. I have no other choice but to leave you to…him…

With that, Santa and his elves took their leave, leaving Wendy stunned as she couldn't believe. "Where are you all going? What? The truth was too much to bear? Didn't anyone hear me? I said lemme outta here!"

Now, left by herself and trapped in the empty hall, Wendy slumped down into a saddened ball. Her green eyes grew watery, but she refused to cry. To give her captors the satisfaction, the girl would rather die. The worse thing of all no one knew she was stuck here, as they enjoyed their Christmases without worry or care.

"I can't really blame them." Wendy said, with her chin on her knees. "I know I have hang-ups about Christmas. That part's solely on me. Still, I wish that someone could look beyond their bliss, and see that I was missing and things were amiss."

Little did Wendy know, as her mind began to wander, a new portal formed on the assembly wall beyond yonder. She didn't notice the window leading away from this nightmare, until she could make out familiar voices she'd know anywhere.

"Dipper? Dipper? Are you in there? Where are you now? To where did you disappear?"

Wendy climbed on top of the conveyor belt, as the icy feeling in her heart started to melt. Dipper Pines sat on his bed, with a wireless phone in hand, as his twin Mabel charged into the room with a demand. "Dipper, come join the party! What's the matter with you?" He explained to his sister, "Mabel, it's Wendy. I can't get through! All I wanted was to wish her a Merry Christmas, but no one seems to know where she is! I tried the Shack, and Tambry and Nate and the other teens. And no one picks up at her home. The phone just rings and rings! I don't mean to be overprotective, Mabel. I know I have a choice, but I'd feel so much better if I could hear Wendy's voice."

"Oh, Dipper," Mabel sat next to him on his bed. "Quit being such a big worry-head. Wendy's a big girl. She can handle things by her own. The last thing she'd want you to do is make this overblown. It's not a big deal. Christmas isn't Wendy's thing. If she wanted to be here, she would have given us a ring. Remember last summer? Here, I'll give you a clue. You can't force someone to do something they don't wanna do. Now, come on, already! Turn that frown upside-down! Let's get back to the party before anyone notices you're not around!"

And with that, Mabel went back on her way, but in spite of her speech, Dipper still wanted to stay. His parents' party was filled with family friends unknown, and older cousins that rather spend more time on their cell phones. The thirteen-year-old felt like a stranger in his own house, wishing for something that could keep his Christmas spirit from being doused.

He sighed, and lurched forward with a sigh. "Mabel's right, but I couldn't help but try. I know Wendy's busy, but I still wish she would have come. Maybe then, this stupid party wouldn't be so lonely and dumb."

It was then that Dipper made a wish that he hoped would travel far: "I hope you're having a Merry Christmas, Wendy…wherever you are."

A heartbroken Wendy rested her forehead against the portal's seem, when at long last, her eyes started to teem. A line of tears traveled down each cheek as she started to cry. She didn't think of herself, but of her special little guy. "I'm so sorry, Dipper." Wendy sniffled. "I really made things a mess. I wish I could make it right. I should have said "yes.""

"Wendy?" "Dipper?"

"AAH!" The boy screamed as he flew off the bed, convinced at first, he was hearing voices in his head. But sure enough, in a wavy window above his room, contained the image of Wendy, with a sense of doom.

"Wendy?" Dipper asked again. "Is it really you in there?" "Of course it is, dork." She said from the portal in mid-air.

Dipper moved towards the vision of his crush, and upon seeing what was wrong, his voice went in a rush. "Wendy, what's happened? Why aren't you tall? Your hair! Your ears! And what's the deal with that weird hall?"

Wendy wiped her face and started to plead her case. "Dipper, you gotta help me get out of this place! You're not going to believe this! I'm at the North Pole! Santa kidnapped me, and he won't let me go! He's forcing me to make toys and talk to Christmas ghosts. It's like he's trying to find what irritates me the most!"

Dipper immediately sprung to the rescue. "Don't worry, Wendy. I'll find a way to save you!" He examined the portal up and down and side-to-side, But hadn't an idea how to reach his secret love without a guide. After a few minutes, Dipper stood on his bed, as no more plans danced around in his head. "I'm really sorry, Wendy. I haven't a clue. I've never seen anything like this before. I don't know how to help you."

The two teenagers stood on different borders of time and space, as they met for the first time in months face-to-face. Dipper placed a hand against his side of the plane, The shine in his eyes had vanished and drained. "I – I wish you were here with us…with me…" Wendy set her palm against her devotee's. "I do, too, buddy. Trust me. Right now, there's no other place I'd rather be…"

All of a sudden, as though a Christmas blessing, their hands were able to touch through the barrier's meshing! Wendy and Dipper's fingers entwined as they laughed in disbelief, the ability to make physical contact came as such a relief.

Dipper said, "How can this be? I don't understand. Is this really happening? Or is it sleight of hand?" Wendy squeezed harder, "Hey, kiddo? Not at all trying to be rude, but Santa's coming back soon, so please, pull me though, dude!"

With that, Dipper tightened his grip and gave a tug, His noodle arms pulled Wendy into a huge bear hug. Once the slender redhead was more than halfway through, their worries returned with a threat somewhat new.

"What's wrong now?" Dipper strained. "Of all the dumb luck…" "I almost forgot, Dipper." Wendy explained. "I'm stuck! That old fat jerk snapped a cuff on my foot super-tight, to make sure I'd stay in his crummy workshop all night!"

Dipper wouldn't stop trying. "There has to be something I can do. There's no way I'd ever give up on you!" Though the kind words touched Wendy deeply in this situation out of whack, a second later, she could feel something try to pull her back. "No!" Dipper dug his heels deep into the blankets of his bed. "Don' t think this is over! I'd rather drop dead!"

"Dipper! Don't let go!" "I won't!"

Both Dipper and Wendy screamed as they were pulled into the wormhole, They landed back at Santa's workshop back at the North Pole, where Santa awaited with a horrific beast by his side, a ten-foot, horned demon, a so-called protector of yuletide. It was bearded and dressed in tattered clothing, its appearance was terrifying and somewhat loathing. The screams of the damned came from a container on its side. It held a wooden paddle, meant to tan wicked hides. Upon seeing this monster, the partners-in-crime shrieked, holding each other in terror as their knees became weak.

Santa shook his head, "Wendy, I've tried my best to make this right, but I feel there's nothing I can do to have you see the light. There's only one way to curb your attitude so pompous. I introduce to you, the Christmas monster known as the Krampus!

The fanged behemoth unleashed an unearthly roar, that even managed to shake the whole floor. It took a hooved step forwards in its quest, far from trendy, to claim the soul of the wicked child known as Wendy.

"Wait!"

Dipper shielded his still-ensnared sweetheart, He held his arms outwards, ready to do his part. The tiny boy's eyes met with his one-time rival, "Santa…" he greeted, thinking only of Wendy's survival. "Dipper…" Santa replied in the same, sober tone. "So, how goes those "Anti-Santa" traps in your home?" "You already know," Dipper grimaced, "That they're far from okay, but that's not the reason I'm here today. I don't have all the details, but I think I know enough. Please let Wendy go, and we'll be gone without a huff! I know at first, Wendy seems aloof and really tough. But she's so much more than that! Take it from this cream-puff! I get that Christmas spirit is your thing. That's okay and fine. If it's such a big deal, then what about mine? There is nothing I want more than to have Wendy to come home with me, so I ask you kindly, can't we please just let things be? I don't have a leg to stand on. But still, I'll beg this of you today: Please, Santa. Don't take my Wendy away!"

Dipper turned back to see Wendy slightly blushing. He corrected the mistake he made by rushing.

"I mean, "Don't take Wendy away!"

Santa and his pet gave each other a quick look, Their combined decision no more than a split second took:

"NO!"

The Krampus crept by Wendy, as she froze in a trance, as Dipper fought back with a second chance. "All right! You want a bad kid to give your curse? What if I could name someone even worse? A person that definitely deserves your type of misery? Here's a thought. How about you take me?!"

"Dude, don't!" Wendy said. "You really need to shut up now! If you keep going, you'll end up as this thing's Christmas chow!"

But Dipper ignored his crush's protests, and began to list off his sins and confess. "I've lied, cheated, and stole too many times, and that's only the beginning of my crimes! I beat up a gang of gnomes and marked them for dead. I fought living wax statues and cut off Larry King's head! I raised zombies up and left those secret agents to die, and made my sister, Pacifica, and even Wendy cry. I won't fight you, creature. I'll admit I made my own bed. I'll ask you a second time, leave Wendy, and take me instead!"

The Krampus licked his lips with a sense of glee, truly fascinated by Dipper's dirty laundry. He changed course to add Dipper to his collection, as Wendy dashed in front to offer her protection.

"Ain't going to happen, ugly! Not no how, or no way! Lay a claw on that kid, and I swear you're going to pay! If you want Dipper, you'll have to go through me first! So, come on, tough guy! I'm prepared to take your worst! If anyone deserves a decent Christmas, it's Dipper, my boy! And it's gonna happen, or else, my name's not Wendy Corduroy!"

To Wendy and Dipper's surprise, both tormentors began to laugh. Santa and Krampus supported each other so they wouldn't split in half. The elder's smile returned, "See, Wendy? I knew you would come through! Your act of sacrifice shows your Christmas spirit has been truly renewed! Santa's deed has been done. There's no further need for this. You two are free to go and enjoy Christmas bliss!"

Wendy raised an eyebrow, worried if there was another trick to be found. "Seriously?" Santa snapped his fingers a third time, as her shackle opened and fell to the ground. "Seriously."

Dipper and Wendy walked to the portal shining so bright, as Wendy realized something still wasn't quite right. "Santa, my man, I really don't mean to stall, but before we go, can you please make me tall?"

Dipper elbowed his friend, "I dunno. I think I like you better this way." "Please, Dipper, don't give him ideas." Wendy whispered with dismay.

Santa let out another joyful laugh, "Oh, I almost forgot, my dear. When you go home, your natural height will return, so have no fear." He and the Krampus offered a wave as the duo traveled back to California. "Have a Merry Christmas! But if not, you can't say we didn't warn ya!"

Back in Piedmont, Wendy and Dipper landed back in his bedroom, as she discovered she was no longer fitted in elven costume. Wendy's lumberjack clothing and height were rightfully restored, as the portal closely behind them, hopefully forevermore. Relieved, they rushed in for a snuggly embrace, their hearts still racing from escaping such a crazy place.

Dipper looked up at Wendy, "Are you sure you're alright?" "Thanks to you, buddy." She grinned and held him tight. "I don't know what to say, Dipper. Tonight, you really came though." "Oh, it was nothing." He blushed. "If reversed, I'd know I could count on you."

Their touching reunion was suddenly interrupted, as from the doorway, a shrill squeal erupted: "Ohmigosh!" Mabel grabbed her cheeks. "You're really here!" She wrapped around Wendy's waist as the much-taller girl rubbed her brown hair. "I knew I heard your voice! Did you change your mind?" Wendy turned to Dipper as she was caught in another bind. "Actually, Mabel." Dipper started. "Wendy wanted to surprise us. She spent all day and night traveling here on a small bus." Wendy followed along with Dipper's white lie about her stay. "I hope I'm not too late to join you guys on Christmas Day?" "What? No way!" Mabel exclaimed with excitement and great cheer. She flew from the room, "Hey, everybody! You won't believe who's here!"

With the two following along at a safe distance, Wendy gave Dipper a love tap, "Hey, thanks again for the quick assistance." "No biggie." He said with an embarrassed modest. "But if I can ask, are you sure you're ready for all this?" She threw her arm around her favorite little dork. "Of course I am, but now, let's get to work! I have something special to share with you two. Call it an old family recipe: Chocolate-frosted Christmas trees with just a pinch of sesame."

As they rounded the corner, Mabel teased, "Hey, you two! Guess where you're below? You guys are right under the mistletoe – "

"O-kay! That's enough right there!"

Wendy leaned forward on her knees as Dipper remained cross-legged on the colored rug on the floor. They looked up at Soos, dressed in a Santa cap, as he read from a selection of his fanfiction in Stan's recliner.

"Wow…" Dipper rested a heavy head against his fists. "I really didn't believe Soos when he said he made a Christmas story starring us, but there it is…"

"What's the matter?" Soos asked with a disappointed look. "You guys didn't like my Christmas rhymes?"

"No offense, Soos." Wendy threw out an arm in outrage, "But that story was kinda sexist, don't cha think? Why was I the one kidnapped? And Dipper saving me? Isn't that sorta cliché?"

"Well," Dipper held a finger up. "There was that one time at the Dusk2Dawn…"

"Exactly, buster! One time! Check the rescue scorecard, pal! I guarantee I have more saves checked off than you. Bet on it! And you really think Santa can take me on? Let 'im try! I'll punch him in the mistletoe, and break my foot off in his ho-ho – "

*CRASH!*

A thunderous crash could be heard on the Mystery Shack's roof. The sound made all three freeze in their tracks.

"Um," Dipper mumbled. "What was that you were saying, Wendy?"

"I – I," The lumberjane rambled nervously. "Like I was saying, maybe we should take a break, and get some hot cocoa and cookies, and see if there's any wholesome Christmas TV specials on."

"Good idea!"

"Sounds like a plan!"

The boys and Wendy jumped up and left the room, pressed together back-to-back. Their eyes searched every corner, in fear of a possible yuletide attack.

-------------------------------------------------------------

"And from this point here, our story finally concludes. Have a Happy Holiday, my friends. And remember, Santa's always watching you…"

[newmusicmonthly]

2019

Hello,

Missed me?

No longer a monthly mailer – just another end of year round up.

On reflection, perhaps I’ve played it a bit safe this year, but I didn’t feel there was as much great music out there as in previous years.

Yes, I too use Google, so I have listened to all the end of year Best Of lists online, and so those artists not included just didn’t resonate with me this year.

I maintain ‘bad guy’ off Billie Eilish’s record sounds like a Super Mario bonus level (probably in a spooky dungeon)… which I suppose isn’t a bad thing. And I love Lana, but I just didn’t think the latest record was all that. And the same was true of Angel Olsen, Nick Cave, Kanye, Hot Chip… but don’t get me started on Bon Iver: avant-garde “Kum ba yah” at best (sorry Rob).

But then that’s part of the joy of music, variety and differing opinions… so please share yours! What have I overlooked? What should be revisited? Where in the depths of streaming services is that killer track from 2019?

For now, here is my list of songs, somewhat crowbarred into the monthly format (as mentioned, this email was once called New Music Monthly Mailer with five tracks a month, and surely we need some level of constancy and accountability this year).

Enjoy, or not – but please do share your own choice picks.

Merry Christmas.

R x  

NEW MUSIC 2019

JANUARY

Sharon Van Etten - Seventeen Just go and watch her performance from Glastonbury: https://youtu.be/BM6jn891seU Seriously, from 2:45, just fucking brilliant.

J.S. Ondara - Saying Goodbye Lovely acoustic number and a great voice that evokes Tracy Chapman. 

Basekou Kouyate, Ngoni ba - Kanto kelena (feat. Habib Koite) Malian ngoni master returns to acoustic roots.

Delicate Steve - Selfie of a Man Synthy silly catchy instrumental pop-rock.

Steve Gunn - Vagabond Guitar troubadour telling stories of solitude with unostentatious guitar tones.

FEBRUARY

Mara Balls - Ikävä ikävää Driving Finnish Doom-lite.

Julie Jacklin - Body A narrative masterclass, sombre and brooding, but also simmering and pulsating.

Strand of Oaks - Weird Ways Big widescreen rock, which builds into a gorgeous swirl of sound, with Timothy on fine yet reflective form, backed by the band of My Morning Jacket.

Crows - Hang Me High Long awaited debut from Idles approved band, loud fuzz Mary Chain / Dom Keller vibes.

Kel Assouf - Fransa Desert blues, with all the best Tuareg styling, but added beefy production.

MARCH

Nick Waterhouse - Man Leaves Town Mr Waterhouse and band well in the pocket.

Dave - Streatham Heavy beats and piano lines soundtrack story of growing up in SW16. 

Karen O, Danger Mouse - Turn The Light Danger Mouse brings the gentle disco grooves underneath Karen’s swooning vocals.

Small Feet - The Lake Down tempo reverb and echoes float throughout this woozy directionless jam. 

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Tombes Oubliées BJM do what BJM do best... in French. 

APRIL

The Comet Is Coming - Summon The Fire How can you not move to this?!

W.H. Lung - Empty Room Great new band (c.f. mailer 2017!), and as I already included ‘Inspiration!’ this is my second favourite cut from a top album.

Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation - Feel The Sun Another great artist (championed back in 2016 I think you’ll find), spectral psych grooves.

Weyes Blood - Mirror Forever Great opening line, there’s a coldness but also strangely comforting.

Foxygen - News Now a lot people had fallen off the Foxygen wagon recently, including me, but this is catchy melody filled vibes, with a completely unexpected stonking T-Rex style groove that kicks in around the 3:30 minute mark

MAY

Lizzo – Juice Speaking of good vibes… I mean, again, just go watch the Glastonbury set: https://youtu.be/R9CTs1NsZRI.

Tyler, The Creator - EARFQUAKE Production values: A*, chances of not leaving… C-

The 100 Knights Orchestra - Soul Fugue Celebrating Daptone Records 100th RPM single, this special features every horn player the label has ever worked with, and it is glorious.

Death and Vanilla - A Flaw In The Iris Devendra Banhart vibes to begin, fazing in Mazzy Star style reverb and guitars.

Desert Sands - Are You There The best psychedelic space rock released… ever! 

JUNE

Rose City Band - Fog of Love Warm tones and laid back ambles, which has producer Ripley Johnson’s stamp all over it.

Madonnatron - Goodnight Little Empire Disco ditty extraordinaire.

The Black Keys - Lo/Hi Have you heard of ZZ Top? You have?

The Amazons - Doubt It Future rock heroes get dark.

Fat White Family, Parrot and Cocker Too - Feet - Parrot and Cocker Too Remix Gone for the remix version of this great track: what isn’t improved by added shakers and throbbing techno?

JULY

Michael Kiwanuka, Tom Misch - Money (with Tom Misch) The first of two Kiwanuka tracks in this list, but this was a standalone single, and has all the bubbly bass groove it was impossible not to include.

Drake, Rick Ross - Money In The Grave (Drake ft. Rock Ross) Speaking of money… bounce!

DOPE LEMON - Salt & Pepper Weird keys give way to J.J. Cale style guitar noodles, whilst Angus heaps on the druggy references adding to the meandering stoned atmosphere.

The Quiet Temple, Moon Duo - The Last Opium Den On Earth (Moon Duo Remix) Speaking of druggy… 12 minutes of acid psych jazz in the last opium den on earth.

Nev Cottee - Hello Stranger Cinematic and pastoral, but also searing

AUGUST

Palace - Running Wild Top class indie pop nugget with great simple guitar solo to end.

Kandodo 3 - Everything Green's Gone This definitely isn’t for everyone: think Nine Inch Nails soundtracks at their most impenetrable, if you can make it two thirds of the way through this 13 minute wig out, there are some great slide guitars.

Clairo – Bags Breakout bedroom pop with one of the hookiest melodies all year.

Mini Mansions - Works Every Time Behind the beat smooth grooves.

Death Hawks - Whisper Squelchy over produced 80s style pop bananas,

SEPTEMBER

Native Harrow - Can't Go On Like This Inevitable Laurel Canyon / Joni Mitchell comparisons on this retro analogue sound ballad.

Ty Segall - The Arms Ty does a rare acoustic number, and even throws in a rather tasteful mandolin line.

Pixx - Funsize Synth bleeps and beats disguise a Radiohead-esque creeping guitar line.

Sleater-Kinney - The Future Is Here Love the motorik dirge vibes here, underpin lovely vocal lines and melodies which remind us: the future is here, and we can’t go back.

Marika Hackman - i'm not where you are Great pop hooks and guitar lines.

OCTOBER

Dylan LeBlanc - Renegade I’m a big fan of LeBlanc and his retro stylings, and this track is super lilting 80s driving rock.

TOOL - Pneuma I struggled to get TOOL for a while, but this record and this track in particular is fucking phenomenal.

Lightning Dust - Devoted To Amber Webber and Joshua Wells’ solo project (previously of Black Mountain), conjure spectral dreamscapes.

Sturgill Simpson - Remember To Breathe Sturgill goes electronic rawk – and Tomoyasu Hotei wants his production back.

Michael Kiwanuka - Hero Here he is again, with the standout track from a truly brilliant album.

NOVEMBER

Kelsey Waldon - White Noise, White Lines Kentucky country groove rock.

WIVES - Waving Past Nirvana Churning fuzz rock underpins laconic loose vocals, cool.

Pumarosa - I See You Tense synth verses give way to soaring superb choruses.

Jaako Eine Kalevi - Dissolution Finnish synth pop architect doing a very good Matthew Dear impersonation. 

Warmduscher - Midnight Dipper “The offspring of a match made in hell between Fat White Family and Paranoid London” – full-on sleazy glam.

DECEMBER

Pond - Don't Look at the Sun (Or You'll Go Blind) – Live My favourite track the band perform live, now finally available on streaming.

Staff Benda Bilili - Jamais de la vie The famous Congolese street band return with tight uplifting grooves.

Khruangbin, Leon Bridges - Texas Sun Sit back, open a cold one, and enjoy (when summer comes back around).

Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Catfish Blues Mississippi delta blues from the 72 year old Holmes, produced by Dan Auerbach.

Mikal Cronin - Show Me Long-time Ty Segall collaborator serves up some Tom Petty-esque soft rock.

[thoughtsofatck]

I’ve Never Felt More...American

15 February, 2020

Location: Taiping, Perak

Three weeks in location! I spent time thinking about whether I wanted to post “More American” or “Less American” first. As the program progresses, I think I will have had more time to process all of the emotions and reflections that I had when first starting the program in Kuala Lumpur to post “Less American”. Therefore to start this post, I feel that many of my fellow ETAs and I will be able to relate on so many of these situations and dissimilarities between the two countries.

Growing up in the United States as a first generation Asian-American, there are certainly many traits and behaviors that were taught to us as children that we lead in our own lives to this day. Of such peculiarities are things like having a plastic bag of plastic bags to be used as trash bags later on (economical right!), and having a ton of tupperware - I have tins and containers out the wazoo here.

In conjunction, growing up in the United States, we unconsciously have adopted many traits and behaviors that are distinctly American regardless of our ethnic origins. One of these is the concept of time - Americans are notoriously on time for all meetings, events, and appointments. Malaysians however, well run Malaysian time. This means arriving anywhere from 20-40 minutes late and sometimes even 1-2 hours later than expected (in extreme cases). Understanding the implications of meeting at 2pm (read: 2:30~) has saved us from wasting so much time being confused and waiting and looking awkward. 

Furthermore, as a teacher in the United States, we constantly hear about the boundaries that we need to keep in place between student and teacher and even between teacher and teacher. Work life, personal life, and social life generally do not mix in the States but in Malaysia, these overlap immensely. In a culture that emphasizes community, it’s almost as if teachers and students become friends (somehow while still maintaining a level of respect and authority that is designed in their roles). Social media between teacher and student is strictly prohibited and can get both parties in serious trouble but here teachers and students follow each other and keep updated on each others’ lives, message outside of school and meet up on the weekends. Perhaps this is the way that teachers and students build relationships - students (and teachers) post what they want voluntarily instead of being pulling answers out of students in the States. So many of my school activities are focused on building relationships through interests/opinions, and finding ways to incorporate my students’ likes into the work they do. Since the curriculum is so tight, there isn’t much room to truly get to know students during school time. This is also likely why there are many awkward and overly personal questions we as ETAs get in the first few weeks (dare I say all year(?)) since the concept of personal vs professional (from the American framework) is blurred. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked if I’m married yet, what my religion is, my age, and my salary under the program. Any American reading this is surely horrified of the social boo-boos being committed here but all of these questions hold cultural significance in reference to honorifics, dietary restrictions, and class designation - general taboo topics outright in American culture but necessary to properly identify (and respect) an individual in the distinct boxes that Malaysians have created. The difficult part is that, as Americans, we inherently lie outside of these boxes and it can be difficult to label us in these pre-defined boxes that offer surface level identification but also differ in our individualized underlying reasoning for identifying a certain way. Vegetarianism is very common in Malaysia, observed by the Hindus in the country. Many Americans are also vegetarian for certain dietary requirements, ethical reasoning, and environmental causes that have no correlation to religion. As the weeks progressed, I realized that by me saying that I do not eat pork, many of the teachers assumed that I was also Muslim - a logical but false conclusion to my truth. 

Here comes the fun part.

Y’ALL. Squat toilets. Listen dear reader, please laugh, but nothing could prepare me to use squat toilets. As a first time traveler to Asia, I’m glad that I was alone for no one to witness the confusion, horror, and bewilderment on my face pushing open the stall door and seeing a step platform with aptly-fashioned hole in the floor.  Anyone who has travelled to Asia must have come into contact with these before and certainly has their own mental question marks to how to properly navigate this situation. No Western toilet, no toilet paper, and just a water hose (sometimes called a cebok). Some places just have a huge bucket and a water dipper. For the majority of us ETAs, this was a point of discussion because none of us knew what to do and were afraid to put ourselves in a situation that would ultimately make us very uncomfortable if not executed with true precision. It is not as if we could ask a local to teach us the proper way without flooding the place or giving ourselves a leg cramp. Wikihow(?). To the ETAs that have these “squatty potties” in their houses, I don’t know if you’re using them - but I salute you in navigating this new contraption. For future ETAs in Malaysia or Asia in general - BUY travel tissues! S/O to Watsons (a Malaysian pharmacy chain) because they’re economical and come in packs! For reference - I have yet to take the risk using this type of toilet and pray I never encounter the chance. 

Even coming to Malaysia from different locations in the US and different home living situations and ethnic backgrounds, I fundamentally believe there are so many ways that we as a cohort are bound together by - namely our openness to say what we think (freedom of thought and expression) and our commitment to individuality and our personal beliefs. As I discussed previously in a post about losing a lot of control in our lives, the way we think as Americans is a part of us that we get to keep but need to share cautiously. We tread this line between planting seeds of thought-provocation or committing social-cultural offenses. Even as a Malaysian-American, there are so many nuances that make it difficult to determine the appropriate response simply because of who I’m talking to. No generalizations can be made. Additionally, there are so many situations that as an American, I have not experienced and have no prior knowledge on to offer advice or even navigate myself. In the three weeks since beginning school, I think of a plethora of examples where I’ve had to recognize my own framework of thinking and respond in a way that (hopefully) wouldn’t offend who I’m speaking to and also not infringe on my own identity, beliefs, and desires for my time here. And believe me, it is not easy to protect and respect all of the facets of who we are and who we are interacting with. 

With that in mind, I resonate with a quote from J. William Fulbright**. “We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.” In the cases where I’ve had to explain my way of thinking and/or my uncomfortability/disapproval to things viewed, said, or experienced, I attempt to do so in a way that shares what I am used to or believe and why I feel it is important for me to keep as an individual, especially when it seems encouraged for me to take part in. At the same time, I also ask for them to explain to me why certain occurrences happen - rather than their viewpoint on the subject. In this way, both of us feel validated in our contexts and neither of us is dismissed in the cultural and social exchange. Many times I feel like it is easy for us as Americans to write off cultural practices as simply weird or “just different” but all practices are logical and serve a purpose that we at guests in this country may not be aware of. I invite my fellow ETAs to seek out why confusing practices exist and not label them at face value. Many of my teacher colleagues have done the same in areas such as my teaching practices and eating habits. Without judgement, I’m able to explain my rationales and they respect them. If it is important enough to them for me to adopt/fulfill a cultural practice, they surely make it known. 

**I also recognize the problematic historical views of Mr. Fulbright and wish to explain that I do not support the mentality and viewpoints presented by him in many speeches and articles of legislature. 

[dadvans]

hot fireman sidney crosby - 2

oh boy, well. here’s 5,000 words of pure self-indulgent nonsense! previously: [insp.] [1] 

MALKIN 71

At the beginning of his four-day shifts, Sidney usually likes to get to the station an hour early with fresh carafes of coffee that come from the coffee shop down the street.  Sidney likes being liked, and has found out it’s the easy things over the years that endear his men to him and earn their trust; coffee a step up from the mud the ancient pot at the engine house spits out is a kindness that Sidney can afford a couple times a month, and it’s earned him the respect and loyalty of anyone who has ever had to go seventy-two hours with nothing but Folgers.  

It’s the first week of August.  The sun comes up at five and Sidney wakes up with it and drives with his windows down to smell the grass-sweet air that comes with summer while it’s still cool, before the heat catches up with the morning.  It’s quiet this early, and Sidney loves it, yearns for it in a way he never would have thought possible when he was a lonely kid, before he signed up for a lifetime of sirens and alarms and guys who play grab ass in the communal showers.  The barista at the coffee shop unlocks the doors as he parks, and when he gets inside it’s quiet there too, the music still off, no line of people mumbling sleep soft to wait behind, just the bell chiming as he walks in.

“Just gimme a sec,” says the girl behind the counter, rubbing the top of her register.  She’s got his carafes ready and waiting, sleeves of cups and packets of sugar and creamer that he doesn’t need but can add to the communal drawer back at the station.  “My computer’s sleepy this morning too.”

Sidney smiles at her and fumbles for his phone, because even years of dealing with the public have left him absolutely inept at small talk.  She has her own mug of coffee and sips at it, not seeming to mind.  

The register finally boots up and he pays.  While he’s scooping everything up in his arms, the bell over the front door rings again.

In walks the hottest, weirdest looking guy that Sidney has ever seen.  A complete stranger--well, he half walks in; he’s standing still in the doorway like a cat Sidney had as a kid, one that could never decide if she wanted to be inside or outside, so she would just sit in the open frame of their sliding back door and cry.  Sidney says, “huh,” trips over himself while looking at the guy, and drops a sleeve of coffee cups on the floor.  

“You okay?” the guy asks.  Thick accent, deep voice, like water getting sucked down a drain.  He’s still standing in the doorway, oh, probably holding it open for Sid who had his arms full.  Sidney picks the sleeve up and feels like a dumbass and smiles and does not look the guy in the eyes as he walks past.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Thanks.”

The guy hums.  Sidney’s stomach churns.  He doesn’t let himself stare until he’s out of the shop and he can see the guy standing at the counter, smiling up at the menu and rubbing at his chin with one big hand.  Sidney hadn’t noticed the hands before, just that he was all legs in shorts that would be short on a normal person but are tiny on him, and a long-sleeved blue warm-up shirt from Pitt.  God, he’s a monster, Sidney tries not to think, and he blindly fumbles for his keys so he can get the fuck out of here and go to work, but he can’t stop staring.  The guy turns to the barista and through the windows Sidney can see the name MALKIN stretched across his shoulders with the number 71 underneath.

Oh, Sidney thinks, and he files it away for much, much later.

Sidney doesn’t date and he doesn’t sleep with anyone he knows in town.  That’s what conferences are for.  He has conferences in Philly, and conferences in New York City, safety seminars and management training in Atlanta and Los Angeles and Denver.  He’ll download Grindr for a night and find some dude’s dick to suck, some guy to hold down in his hotel room and use all the strength he’s built up saving lives and serving his community to pin someone faceless to his bed until he’s coming red-faced into the sweat at their hairline.

He learned when he was little that the things you love are the first thing that someone uses against you, and looking at another boy too long and too openly in the locker room would get you called a faggot at lunch, and that the way he felt about people--strongly--was too real, realer than every other real thing that he let people tear away from him.  So he’s never let himself love anyone for keeps, and no one’s ever been able to hold it against him.

It doesn’t stop him from looking, though.

GENO

Halfway through September the local high school spends a day bringing the new freshman class in groups to tour the fire station.  It has something to do with accountability and community service and fire safety.  Sidney was freaked out the first few years, when he was still a teenager and self-conscious and shy until he realized that most fourteen-year-olds either didn’t give a shit, or they were still kids who just wanted to ride in the fire truck and make the siren go off or slide down the fire pole.  And kids can be shits, but they’re still kids, and Sidney’s a whole grown-ass man who can take care of himself.

So he actually kind of likes the field trip days.  Hell, some of the kids actually think he’s cool and look at him with big hero eyes the same way he used to be when he was their age, and isn’t that something.  He finds himself having fun even, trying to show off maybe, greeting kids by coming down the fire pole himself just to hear them collectively whoa about it.

He’s seen Malkin 71 from the coffee shop frequently around town from a distance for the past month; leaning against bike racks talking with friends outside of bars, on his morning runs when Sidney’s driving to the station, leading the high school cross country team around town after school gets out and more than once using an arm to clothesline a student about to run into traffic.  Sidney hasn’t done any sleuthing besides taking the time to notice what should seem fairly obvious about a new person in a small town, but he still feels unsettled with the way he can pick out Malkin 71 in a crowd the way most people can find the big dipper in a sky full of stars.

The second time they’re face to face is when Sidney comes down the fire pole to greet the freshman tour group and sees him right there, a head and some change around the crowd.  He’s been laughing, both of his arms wrapped playfully around some students’ necks in an arm lock in mock-condescension--chaperone, Sidney’s mind unhelpfully adds to his mental file, right underneath high school teacher? and sleepy eyes.  He stops laughing when he sees Sidney.

Sidney smiles despite himself, his weird, too-big nervous smile that he’s self-conscious about but can’t help when he feels like he’s gotta carry the weight of the whole room.  He starts talking and hopes that whatever comes out of his mouth makes sense, his eyes flickering over Malkin 71 every three seconds until he’s done and Schultz and Dumo take the group away to slobber all over some CPR dummies.  One of the kids says something snarky on the way out, and Malkin 71 steps on the back of his shoe completely on purpose, and the kid trips forward.

“Geno!” the kid says, and Sidney’s almost worried for a second until the kid starts laughing, and knocks him on the chest lightly with the back of his hand.

“What?” Geno replies, innocent enough, pulling him close by the shoulder.  “Maybe not be so clumsy?”

Geno, Geno, Geno, Sidney repeats in his head, like a password, like a secret, like the combination to a safe.

MR. MALKIN

Rotary meetings are Wednesday afternoons, and Sidney usually goes to represent the district, because Mario is too busy with other shit.  Sidney owns one suit, and he’s owned it for seven years and he doesn’t wear it hardly ever, but he’ll wear it to Rotary.  It’s not the most expensive suit, but it’s got some flex to it, which has been great as Sidney’s grown into his body and muscle over the years and stretched out the thighs.  The jacket has become too tight through the shoulders though, and the back cut fans out awkwardly over his fireman butt, so he’s starting to wonder if he should just give up and toss it out and wear the same starched shirt and slacks he wears every other day to the office.

Geno is sitting at one of the tables when he walks into the banquet room, and Sidney instantly has sweaty palms, and finds himself fiddling with the hem of his jacket.  Geno’s also wearing a suit, but Sidney can tell it actually fits him even though Geno’s just sitting down, thanking the girl pouring him a glass of water.  

He’s sitting at Sidney’s usual table.  Fuck, Sidney thinks, and counts to five and tries to contort his face into some friendly expression and not lust-derived terror, and goes to sit down.  

“Fire Captain Sidney Crosby!” Geno greets him, which oh no, is so much worse than Sidney imagined.  

“Yeah, I, uh.  Hi,” Sidney says lamely, and he stares at Geno’s name tag which has EVGENI MALKIN scribbled on it in bold, red sharpie.  Did he mishear, back at the fire station?  “Hi, Mr. Malkin.”

“You maybe not remember me, I’m new teacher at high school!  I bring freshman to station on field trip,” Mr. Malkin says.

“No, I remember you,” Sidney says, which is stupid because they saw each other for maybe five minutes that day, so he says, “you tripped a student,” because he’s an idiot.

Mr. Malkin’s eyes go wide, and he stiffens slightly through the shoulders, embarrassed.

“It was funny,” Sidney continues, because he’s terrible at this.  Apparently it’s the right thing, because Mr. Malkin warms up at it.  He gives Sidney a Cheshire Cat grin and looks like he’s about to say something else when they’re both interrupted by the assisted living director who wants Sidney’s attention before the meeting starts.  They don’t get the opportunity to pick up the conversation again, as Mr. Malkin is introduced as such: today’s guest, a new staff member filling in multiple vacancies left by recent budget cuts at the high school; athletic director, phys ed teacher, varsity cross country coach.  

“Haha, go Pens!” Mr. Malkin says, getting up in front of the group and flashing his polo with the high school mascot above his name tag, before bringing up a fundraiser the school is having so they can afford new gym equipment.  He seems more nervous talking in front of adults than he does in front of kids, which is endearing in its own awful way, but everyone in the room still laughs at all the right places during his speech, and crowd him to ask questions when the meeting lets out.  

Sidney’s type has always been the popular boy.

He leaves without saying goodbye, not wanting to take up any more of Mr. Malkin’s time for selfish, personal reasons, so he lets himself out the back quietly.  When he looks up from the doorway this time though, he sees Mr. Malkin a head taller than everyone across the room watching him leave.

GENO, AGAIN

“‘Geno,’” Mr. Malkin clarifies at the charity ball, “is nickname.”

He twirls Sidney out then on the dance floor, before reeling him back in.

It’s Sidney and Kris’s turn to make dinner at the station, so around three they pile into Sidney’s car after doing routine inspections to go to the grocery store.  They’re halfway through another four day shift, and it’s the dead cold heart of January, so Sidney is thinking something warm and filling and easy like chili.  

He doesn’t expect to see Geno outside the IGA with a small army of girls selling cookies.

“Firemen! Come buy cookies for the station!” Geno calls out to them shamelessly across the parking lot, waving a mittened hand at them.  He’s wearing several layers, a hoodie and a scarf underneath a peacoat that makes him look thicker and more inviting than usual, soft.  His nose is red, and so are the tips of his ears that poke out from underneath his beanie.  The girls in front of him are doing high-knees and running in place to keep warm, no doubt Geno’s idea.  

“Geno,” Sidney greets when they make it across the parking lot.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’m scout mom,” Geno replies, gesturing at the girls before him.  “Trying to sell cookies so girls can go to camp in the summer.  How many you boys wanna buy, one hundred?  Three hundred boxes?  Many hungry boys at the fire station.”

It’s true.  Sidney’s cooked in serving sizes upward of fifty before, and it still hasn’t been enough.  He laughs.  

“Get me some thin mints,” Kris says.  “I’m going inside.  It’s freezing.”

He pats Sidney on the shoulder, and Sidney shakes his head and looks down at the plastic fold-up table with its Dollar Tree plastic checkered cloth and several colorful boxes displaying different types of cookies.  He’s always been a tagalongs guy.  “Three hundred, huh?”

“Please, Sidney, look at my girls, so cold!  So sad!  Want to get out of cold and go to summer camp in June and become empowered women!”  Geno pleads, and leans down to the girls and loudly whispers,  “Look colder!  Look sadder!”

The girls instantly turn their deepest, saddest pouts on him, some chattering their teeth loudly, and Geno stays down on their level and sticks out his fat bottom lip too.

Sidney’s a sucker.  

“Fine, I’ll take whatever you guys got.”  The girls cheer, and Sidney wonders how he’s going to explain this to Kris when he meets up with him in the store. “But you’re helping me load it in the car.”

“Of course,” Geno says, like it was a given.

“We take credit card,” one of the older girls says, handing him a phone with a square reader plugged into the top.  

Geno lets the girls wait in his own car, a large Explorer, while it warms up and he gets a grocery cart to load boxes and boxes of girl scout cookies into the back of Sidney’s station van.  

“You make lots of kids really happy,” Geno tells him, passing him the last box of trefoils, which even between twenty-something ravenous guys, they’ll probably be sitting on for at least a month.  

“Yeah, yeah,” Sidney says.  “You don’t need to sell me on it any more than you already have.  I bought the cookies.  Anything else?”

“Coffee, maybe?  Or beer, sometime,” Geno replies, pushing his hands into his pockets.  Sidney freezes from where he’s closing the hatchback of the trunk, before slamming it harder than necessary.  Has he been so easy to read?  Shit, he thinks.

“Uh,” he says.

“My girls need so many badges, like Respect Authority, First Aid,” Geno continues.  “I’m thinking for a bit we organize a trip to the station.  You guys have CPR classes, stuff like that?”

“You can find all the information for our CPR classes on our website,” Sidney says automatically.  The relief cuts through him like a sharp knife.  He’s always wanted the idea of someone, but he’s never wanted a person specifically the way he finds himself wanting Geno, and the only thing worse than being nobody at all to Geno would be to find out that Geno wanted him back and not knowing what to do with it.  

Geno is looking at him expectantly though.

“I don’t get off--I don’t have another day off until Friday,” Sidney says nervously, not knowing how else to fill up the silence.

“Perfect!  I coach kids until seven but then I’m free for whole weekend.  You want go get beers, talk about fun events?”  Geno looks so hopeful.  His face opens up with every feeling he has, it seems like, in a way Sidney’s always thought he’s had to reign in.  “Nine, you think?”

Sidney should make an excuse.  Sidney should tell him no.

“Nine sounds perfect, yeah.”

ZHENYA

Geno’s already holding an empty pint glass when Sidney gets to the bar, foam lacing up the sides as he traces one of his agonizingly long fingers around the rim and talks to some guy sitting at the table with him.  Sidney doesn’t know if he should interrupt, because they look pretty deep into it, but Geno spots him soon enough and waves him over enthusiastically.  

“I’ll take another please,” he says, handing his glass to Sidney when Sidney gets to the table, and the other guy laughs.  

“Don’t let Zhenya get his way, or he’ll never let up,” says Other Guy, pushing Geno’s hand away.

“Yeah, so I found out,” Sidney says, sitting down across from them.  No one has let him live down the girl scout cookie purchase at the station, even though they’ve gone through a quarter of them in the past few days.  The guy laughs.

“Sergei,” he says, reaching out for a handshake.  

Sidney takes it.  “Sidney.”

“Trust me, I know,” Sergei replies.  “You made my daughters very happy buying all their cookies.  And my wife buys your calendar every year.”

“Oh gosh,” Sidney says.  His whole body burns, mortified.  “I didn’t know people bought those.”

He does know, actually.  He oversees the department budget and even though it’s Kris’s wife who does the calendars every year, he sees the kind of revenue they pull.  It’s a little ridiculous, and Sidney doesn’t really understand it, because it’s not like the guys he works with are super models.  Everyone Sidney works with has always been strictly off limits to him, but even if they weren’t, most of them are pretty gross.  He had sort of assumed that Catherine didn’t use any pictures from their actual department.

“Before I get my own apartment, I’m stay with Sergei last summer when I move here.  His wife keeps calendar up in office where I sleep every night,” Geno says casually, like he’s not ruining Sidney’s entire life right now.  “First time I see you was in coffee shop, you probably don’t remember, but I’m see you and think, ‘oh, Mr. August!  Local celebrity!’”

“Really?” Sidney says instead of oh no.  He hasn’t seen the picture, but he can guess--Catherine had him sweating, stripped down to his suspenders in front of a controlled fire, doing really stupid poses with an axe.  He’d kept having to brush his bangs out of his face and the sweat dripping from his brow, and she had just told him yes, lovely, keep it coming, and he had just assumed she was saying those things because she’s a nice person.

“Zhenya asked if he could keep it when he moved out,” Sergei says, teasing, and Geno elbows him in a way that looks a little more mean than fond.  “Fine, fine, I’ll go get more drinks.  What do you want, Sidney?”

Sidney wants to die, but he just says, “whatever you guys are having is fine.”

Geno takes Sergei’s absence as an opportunity to pull up a very meticulous calendar on his phone to talk about scheduling and Sidney is so thankful.  He is very specific about getting Sidney to personally lead the classes and work with the girls, which is fine and understandable, even if Sidney hasn’t done that sort of thing on a regular basis in years like some of the other guys.  He understands he’s a good role model in town and could recite CPR instructions in his sleep.  It’s fine.  

Sergei comes back with a pitcher of beer and they split it, coordinating with him whether the girls have this or that weekend free, if they can take this afternoon off school for a job shadow and will Ksenia please make them all lunch, Geno included.  Sergei gets a call from her no more than five minutes later and says, “I’ll ask,” but then returns to the table and says, “she’ll make you lunch, but only if I come home early for dad duty.”

“So boring,” Geno says. “Have her make enough for Sidney too.”

“You’re pushing it,” Sergei says, fondly.  He claps Sidney on the shoulder.  “Nice seeing you.  Keep an eye on Zhenya, will you?”

“Sure,” Sidney says, even though he should be going.  His beer is almost gone, and the pitcher is empty.  He should go home and get settled in bed with a book, maybe jerk off and get over himself.  

He should, but he won’t.

Geno says, “I’ll get next round.”

He comes back with another pitcher.  Sidney’s not going to be able to drive home, already a lightweight, but also too cautious of the law with a company vehicle.  People will see it parked in the same spot tomorrow morning and he hopes they won’t talk.

“Why you look so worried, Sidney?  Probably you need more to drink, here,” Geno says, topping off Sidney’s glass at looking at him expectantly.  Sidney laughs, and takes a big gulp.

“I guess I do worry a lot,” he says, because he does.  

“Fire captain job very stressful, yes?”  Geno says, and Sidney laughs again and says, “yes,” because it’s incredibly stressful, and all of a sudden his mouth is opening up and he’s telling Geno all about it, all of the hard things and weird things and probably boring things that Geno could give a shit about, but Geno listens anyway.  Geno even laughs, and makes noises of agreement, and says things like, “sounds very hard.”

“It’s a tough job, but it’s worth it,” Sidney says, four beers deep now and hot around the eyes and feeling the confidence of his buzz wrap around him like a blanket.

“Yes, job, obviously, we already agree job is hard, but also being in own head all the time, Sid!  How do you handle all that?  Think so much about what others think about you, spend so much time thinking for everyone else.  Of course you want die from stress sometimes,” Geno replies, and he says it so easily.  He must be like this with his students too, listening and relating and that’s probably another reason why they love him.  He’s nice.  God, he’s so nice.

“I mean, well, yeah,” Sidney says, not knowing what else there is.

Geno laughs.  “Poor baby.”

“What about you?  You know, you do a lot too, it can’t be easy, uh-- school, and coaching, and running those fundraisers and being Sergei’s daughter’s troop leader, it’s gotta be--Aren’t you stressed? just running around all the time, everywhere all at once.”

“Maybe I not do so much, I get bored, you know?  I get in trouble,” Geno says, smiling, and he sounds dangerous.  Sidney wants to run toward him like a house on fire.

“You can’t be trouble, everyone loves you,” Sidney says instead.  “You could never, you’d--I mean, your students look up to you, your friends give you nicknames, call you ‘Geno,’ and uh, what did Sergei call you?  Zhenya.”

“Zhenya,” Geno agrees, but he stops smiling.

“What’s that mean?”

Geno fidgets, wipes at the condensation on his pint glass. “Just uh, Russian thing.  Sergei and I know each other long time, so he uses a nickname like, it’s close friend thing?”

“Oh,” Sidney says, and shakes his head. “So many nicknames.”

“Jealous?” Geno asks, leaning forward.

“What? No, I mean,” Sidney replies, and it’s like--he never really had nicknames or anything.  When he was a rookie, the older guys at the station would call him “Sid the Kid,” but he grew out of it pretty fast, and it’s never really been like, a thing that he’s needed.

“Not of nicknames,” Geno says, snorting.  “You jealous I get so much attention?  Local Celebrity Sidney Crosby want me all to himself.”

“I,” Sidney says, throat dry, tongue swelling.  He takes another sip of beer. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“Who says I’m make fun?  Feel very special, have to run all over town to get your attention, and now you jealous,” Geno replies, smile spilling back onto his face.  

“What?  Stop,” Sidney says like a reflex.  He wants to want this.  He wants to let himself have this if it’s something he can have, but his body doesn’t know how.  “Zhenya.  Sorry, should I?  I shouldn’t, Geno.”

He can feel Geno’s foot press against his ankle under the table, and his voice is so low in the bar that Sidney almost doesn’t hear him when he says, “like the way you say my name, Sid.  You can call me anything you want.”

[thehungrykat1]

Chili’s Philippines Celebrates 25 Years With New Menu and Promotions

Chili’s Philippines is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the country with a series of exciting promotions and a new menu that promises an even more flavorful dining experience. Get ready to taste five new items that will surely entice you to keep coming back for more.

Chili’s is of the country’s most well-loved restaurants and I always enjoy eating here with my friends, especially when they have their unlimited Margarita offers. They will be releasing new promos and giveaways every month for the entire 2022 so it will be a whole-year celebration. I visited Chili’s Greenbelt last week with my friends to check out these new items and to see how the restaurant has thrived even during the pandemic.

Chili’s continues to offer its distinct mix of Southwestern-inspired and classic American and international flavors. With more than 1600 locations in over 32 countries and 14 branches in the Philippines, Chili’s continues to be a popular hangout spot for families, friends, and anyone looking for good food and a relaxing venue.

The Greenbelt 5 branch is one of the most popular Chili’s locations in the city, especially with its big al fresco dining area overlooking the busy Greenbelt shopping and dining areas. Those who are still not fully confident dining out can choose a more secure spot with their spacious outdoor seating.

The last time I dined here at Chili’s Greenbelt was three years ago before the pandemic, so I was really happy to see how everything is almost getting back to normal.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, we ordered a few cocktails to liven up the afternoon. The Strawberry Vodka Margarita (P340) comes with Absolut Blue Vodka, Cointreau Orange Liqueur, house-made fresh lime sour, and strawberry purée. I also tried the Tequila Red Sangria (P320) with its Red wine and 1800 Tequila shaken with organic agave nectar, triple sec, and fresh lime juice then topped with 7UP.

One of their ongoing promotions this year is Tipsy Nights. Guests can enjoy a Buy One, Take One deal on Chili’s Pomegranate Margarita available all day, everyday.

We started our lunch with some Classic Nachos (P450). These crispy nachos are topped with melted cheese blend, jalapeños, beans, queso and a hint of seasoned beef. They are served with house-made pico de gallo and sour cream.

The Triple Dipper (P625) is also a good appetizer for the entire table. You can choose any three items from among Original Chicken Crispers, Signature Wings, Southwestern Eggrolls, Onion Rings, or Calamari.

Now here are the five new items on the menu at Chili’s Philippines. First is the Salsa Bacon Pasta (P450) with its penne pasta tossed in spice tomato and cream sauce. This tasty treat is then topped with bacon, cheese blend, southwest Cajun spice, and house-made pico and cilantro.

The Green Chile Chicken Enchilada (P520) is another interesting new item. It comes with shredded chicken, green chile sauce, cheese, corn salsa, cilantro, house-made pico, black beans and Chili’s rice. This one has a more tex-mex cuisine feel to it and should offer diners some new flavors to explore.

One of my favorites that afternoon was the Ancho Chile Salmon (P740) with its seared chile-rubbed salmon, spicy citrus-chile sauce, cilantro, and white queso. It is served with Chili’s rice and steamed fresh veggies to complete the healthy and refreshing meal.

Burger lovers will surely enjoy Alex’s Santa Fe Burger (P520). This is the creation of their own Chef Alex who crafted this beautiful burger with avocado, Swiss cheese, red onion, roasted jalapeños, tomato, pickles, cilantro & spicy Sante Fe sauce. It comes with french fries on the side.

They saved the best for last because the Beef Tenderloin Steak (P895) is definitely my favorite among the new items. I am a certified steak lover so I obviously enjoyed this 8 oz. US Tenderloin steak served with chimichurri garlic potato and steamed fresh veggies. Chili’s steak and chimichurri sauce is also served on the side.

The new items are great additions to the already jam-packed lineup of flavorful dishes at Chili’s. You can still order your favorites like the Country Fried Steak (P595) with its hand-battered beef steak, mashed potatoes and black pepper gravy served with sweet corn on the cob.

I also love ordering the Beef Salpicao (P825) with its grilled marinated tender steak tips sprinkled with garlic flakes. This is also served with Chili’s rice and steamed fresh veggies.

Then there’s the Cherry Cola Baby Back Ribs (P725-Half Rack). These tender baby back ribs are slow-smoked over pecan wood and basted with a sweet cherry cola glaze. They are served with homestyle fries and grilled corn on the cob.

To cap off our meaty afternoon, we had the High and Mighty Pie (P330) for our dessert. This huge plate has vanilla ice cream piled high over a crushed Oreo cookie crust and drizzled with caramel and hot fudge.

Dexter’s birthday week was made more special when the Chili’s crew offered him his own Molten Chocolate Cake (P395) accompanied with a birthday greeting. This warm chocolate cake comes with chocolate fudge filling and is topped with a big scoop of Vanilla ice cream covered in a crunchy chocolate shell.

Here’s another exciting giveaway from Chili’s! Get a chance to win P2,500 worth of gift certificates by simply posting a photo of you and your go-to Chili's dessert or drink this summer from April 15 - 25, 2022. There will be new giveaways each month so follow their Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok accounts (@chilis_philippines) so you can join. Congratulations Chili’s Philippines for 25 delicious years and here’s to another 25 exciting years ahead.

Chili’s Philippines 

2/F Greenbelt 5, Ayala Center, Makati

www.chilisphilippines.com

www.facebook.com/ChilisPhilippines

[gadgetgirl71]

A Walk with Nature

On Wednesday mum and I went out for a walk, we both felt that we needed to go out that just being in our gardens wasn’t enough. So I took mum to our local country park, which is only down the road from where I live.

To say that I live in what was classed as an industrial town for textiles, we only need to travel half a mile maximum to be surrounded by nature. The country park long ago actually used to house cotton mills. There is also a caravan park and people from all over come and say there.

The country park is called “The Burrs” and it been popular with locals for many years now. On our walk I couldn’t help but take lots of photo’s and a couple of short video’s of the River Irwell as I just had to capture the sound of the river.

After going out for this walk mum and I felt so much better not only with getting the fresh air, but with being surrounded by nature and all of the colours and sounds it has to offer. So I thought I share with you some of my photos, as every time I look at them I feel uplifted, I hope that you also get some pleasure from them too.

As you can see some features from the lands past have been left as a nod to the lands past history the factory chimney among others. I didn’t take any photos of the other remnants that have been left, as we didn’t go that far in to the Burrs to come across them.

More Information on the Burrs Country Park

When we aren’t dictated by the Covid 19 Pandemic hopefully all of the activities that usually go on there will resume as normal.

The Irwell Sculpture Trail runs through the park

The East Lancashire’s Railway has a Halt in the park

Outdoor pursuits (walking and orienteering trails)

Canoeing (training pool and slalom course). The long established Bury Canoe Club is based at the Burrs.

Playground

Industrial archaeology – interpretation boards explain the history of the mills and cottages

Picnic tables

The Lamppost Café (Open Wednesday to Sunday) Check their Facebook for opening times as these can change

The Brown Cow public house is also housed in the country park and serves real ale and hot food food. Tel 0161 764 3386

Caravanning – The Caravan and motorhome Club has recently opened a purpose built camping and caravan site.

Fishing by licence only

Birdwatching – resident herons, dippers and kingfishers

Cycling (lies on the National Cycle Route 6)

Nature study (woodland, wetland and open space habitats)

Friends of Burrs : The Friends of Burrs group is a collection of local residents and park users who are passionate about Burrs Country Park. The group carries out fundraising and practical park improvement projects including a gardening club, balsam bashing and litter picking.

#AWalkWithNature, #CountryPark, #FreshAir, #Health, #Health&Wellbeing, #Nature, #RiverIrwell, #TheBurrs, #TheBurrsCountryPark, #Walking

[animeonrails]

12 Days of Rail Wars!: Episode 10 Please Keep This a Secret

Prince Bernina from the country of Atella has come to visit, and it is up to K4 to be his guards. Unfortunately, there are some people on the train that would rather have the prince not be a passenger…

The train that K4 and the Prince are riding is the Hokutosei Limited Express.  Named after the Big Dipper Constellation, this train began operation in 1988 and traveled from Ueno Station in Tokyo, to Sapporo Station in Hokkaido, an approximately 16.5-hour trip.  

Due to the long nature of the journey, the Hokutosei offers sleeping accommodations.  There are two kinds of sleeper cars, type “A” and type “B”. Type A rooms were larger and had more amenities, like personal showers and a table and chair set.  The Type B rooms were smaller and usually just had sleeping accommodations.  

The Hokutosei also had a dining and lounge car.  If you wanted to eat dinner, you would have to make a reservation ahead of time, but after dinnertime, Pub Time begins.  During Pub Time, one can get a la carte items and alcoholic beverages.  The dining car also served breakfast.  

The Hokutosei used to be the fastest train up to Hokkaido, but with the introduction on the Hokkiado Shinkansen in 2015, the Hokutosei service was discontinued.  But fear not.  If you still want to experience sleeping on the Hokutosei, there is a hostel in the Chuo ward of Tokyo called “Train Hostel Hokutosei” that is built using the bunks and fittings from the sleeper cars.