#he looks more like a pig or a bear now orz

[luminessdoodles]

Yuu lends Rook a blanket

[sweetcatmintea]

What does Mary Know?

Flash fiction Friday!! I’ve gotta just do this upload quickly because it’s 3:43 am and cold as anything XD I failed the prompt challenge by going a liiiitle over the word limit <.<;; But I hope you like this story! Feedback is appreciated ^u^

Prompt: Peachy Kissies

Words: 2501 (orz)

Character(s): Xavier, Mary, and Will

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          “Xave, if you want to come to the creek, you have to get ready.” Exasperation tinged Mary’s voice. Progress was cut short, yet again, by her little brother. They were supposed to have been out the door ten minutes ago, but she hadn’t even finished brushing her short, ginger snap brown hair yet, constantly stop-starting thanks to Xavier’s dawdling.

          “I am ready!” He just hadn’t brushed his teeth. Or gotten his hat. Or his sandals. Totally ready.

          Mary sighed. “Have you put your sunscreen on, or do you need help?” He was remarkably autonomous for his age, but that wasn’t what she was really asking. As expected, he puffed his freckled cheeks, crossing his arms with a huff.

          “Don’t wanna!”

          “Xave. You can’t leave the house unless you put sunscreen on. You’ll get burnt.”

          He thrashed his tail, the image of petulance. “No!”

          Another sigh. “Then you’ll have to go to school with Mama today instead.”

          Oh boy. Here it comes. An angry flush coloured his skin. “Nooo!! I wanna go wif youuuu!!!”. His face, usually dimpled with a smile, was overtaken with a deep scowl. Mary resisted the urge to bury her face in her paws, and maybe scream a little. Barely. Why did this always happen when it was her turn to look after him? Frustration bubbled in her guts, trying to claw its way up her throat. Logically, she knew it wouldn’t help anything to lose her temper. Unfortunately, logic was benched right now. Before everything boiled over, Will popped his head around the corner.

          “What’s all the noise?” Toothbrush dangling between his teeth, he took a second to survey the room and exchange a Look conversation with Mary. Catching onto the situation, he feigned a shocked look. “You’re not telling Xave to use sunscreen, are you!?” He waited a beat, glancing down at his brother. A stage whisper now. “You know he’s not ready for that yet!”

          Mary shrugged. She wasn’t quite sure what Will’s game plan was, but she could run with it. “I thought he was. You’re probably right though.” A deep sigh. “He’s still just too little.”

          “Whaddya mean?” Xavier eyed his siblings, trying to wrangle the answers out with his mind. Something suspicious was happening here.

          Will stumbled over himself a moment, surprised that Xavier caught on. “Ah, well, you see, only big kids get to put on sunscreen. It’s very important so little kids like you can’t do it yet.”

          “I’m not little! I’m a big kid too!!” Xavier stood as tall as he possibly could, fox tail wriggling with earnest. “See!”

          Will and Mary exchanged looks again. Will shook his head. “I don’t know. What do you think Mares?”

          “Hmmm. I think he’s still too little… Maybe a big kid should show him how it’s done.”

          “When you’re right, you’re right. I was just about to put some on myself. Do you want to come and put sunscreen on with me, Xave?”

          “I do I do I dooo!”

          “Come on then.”

          Xavier didn’t waste another second, pouncing onto his brother’s outstretched hand and dragging him off to the bathroom. Mary mouthed a thank you to Will as they went. The air always seemed a little lighter when Will was around. Probably because he seemed so unfazeable. She was a little envious of him for that. The frustration had simmered away, but watching her brothers had left a cold pebble in her chest.

~

          Thanks to Will’s intervention, they were out of the house in no time. Xavier begged for his big brother to join them, but he was stuck with Mary for the day. Will had work to do. They were lucky enough to catch the bus just as it rolled to the stop, shuffling on board and claiming the back row. It wasn’t all that unusual for this bus to be close to empty. It was a route less travelled.

          Mary stared idly out the window, half leaning on the plasticy frame of the chair in front of them. Motion sickness was a pain at the best of times. With the way the bus was swaying over every bump in the near-dirt road, one look down and she’d be redecorating the seat covers.

          “Hey Maary?”

          “Hm?”

          Xave was already pretty much flush against her, but he managed to scoot closer. He put his face up to hers. She could feel his warm kid breathe with every whispered word. “Mary?”

          “What’s up Xave?”

          “Mary, what’s boredish mean?”

          “What do you mean? Where’d you hear it?”

          “The lady up there.” A nod to the middle-aged woman perched on the reserved sideways seats. “She said ‘I can’t belief they let someone so boredish on the bus’.” The woman flinched. Xavier’s whispering skills were not nearly as strong as he thought. She stared ahead, stiffly avoiding Mary’s honey gaze. A totally average person. No claws. No fur. No tag. Privileged.

          “Is that right?”

          “Mn hm.”

          “I think you mean boarish. It means ‘boar-like’, someone who is rude. A boar is a wild pig.”

          Xavier looked thoughtful, considering her explanation. “Are boars rude?”

          “I don’t know. I’ve never met one.”

          “How come she said it then?” He continued before she could answer. “Isn’t it more rude to say mean things when you don’t know if someone is rude? ��Cause then, you don’t know. You know? Because maybe boars are actually very nice but maybe they get grumpy because people say mean things about them. An then maybe they be rude because they’re grumpy? I think maybe we shouldn’t say that word unless we meet some really rude boars. But not boars that are grumpy because people are mean to them. Right?” He fiddled with her paw as he spoke, cold little fingers working through the thick fur.

          Mary managed to fight the urge to chuckle as the woman’s embarrassed fidgeting increased at every word. Instead, she nodded solemnly along with Xavier’s reasoning. “That sound like a good idea to me.” He beamed at her agreement.

~

          Much rocking and waiting later, their stop came into view. To Xavier’s unyielding delight, Mary let him press the stop button. They hopped off the bus to hike the rest of the way. In honesty, it wasn’t that far. It was the thick humidity that weighed them down, making every movement heavy and sluggish, delaying their arrival further. They took their time and finally reached their destination. Water babbled quietly over smooth river pebbles. Bugs sang to the sweaty sun, hiding from its gaze in the long tufts of grass bordering the creek. The water wasn’t that deep, the heat of the season left it lucky to reach over Mary’s belly button in its deepest parts. Still, she’d have to be vigilant. Any aquatic body can be dangerous for a child. Speaking of, Xavier was already making a beeline to the water.

          “Wait a minute! Floaties or no swimming!”

          He spun around, hopping from foot to foot. “But!”

          “Come on, it’ll just take a minute.”

          He whined but returned to her as she fished the deflated water wings from her patchwork backpack. She was still proud of how that had turned out. She pulled them out carefully, the rubber as soft as it was slippery between her long claws. The last thing she needed was to accidentally puncture it and then have to explain to a very upset fox child why he couldn’t swim. Managing to grip them in her paw pads, she snapped the lids open, blowing them up while answering Xavier’s questions between breaths.

          “Hey Mary?”

          Blow! Breath. Answer. “Yeah?”

          “Are floaties for big kids?”

          Blow! Breath. Answer. “Yep.”

          “How come you don’t got any?”

          Blow! Seal. Breath. Answer. “They don’t fit my big ol’ bear arms. I’m very jealous you get to be so cool with these fire floaties.”

          “Really!?”

          “Mn hm. Really really.”

          He bounced on his toes, sliding the water wings up as far as they would go. “Well, you can borrow mine then! Um! But you can use just one. We’ll put it on, uh, your, on your foot! And then I’ll have one! And then together, we’ll be cooler than Will, right? Even though Will is the coolest, I think if we’re both cool with the floaties, we can be coolister than Will, ‘kay? ‘kay! Can I go swim now?”

          Mary laughed, nodding. “You can swim, but stay where I can see you. Otherwise, we will have to go straight home. Okay?”

          He was already running for the water. “’Kay!”  

          It was really something else, the way Xavier looked up to William. Whenever he was around, Xave was practically attached to him, and not always metaphorically. There were fights, or the closest approximation you can have with someone who barely reaches over your knee, sometimes. Of course there were. All siblings have disagreements. They’d probably get into more arguments now that Xavier was becoming more articulate. He had Opinions now. But ties were always mended quickly. Will had a knack with children. He always seemed to know what to say and how to act around them. As far as role models go, he was a pretty good choice too. Maybe it was because he’s a lot like Mama. In a way, Mary was embarrassed by it. Not because of Will acted, but because her brother was so much better with children than she was. When they had first been told of Xave’s conception, she’d imagined herself as a nurturing big sister who would share the world with the new baby. And, while he was still a little bean, she’d been good at the nurturing stuff. Once he’d gotten bigger, started thinking and exploring for himself, she didn’t know what to do. She struggled to understand his garbled baby talk and couldn’t keep up with his games. Her paternal instincts hibernated while Will’s thrived. It she had to put her finger on it, she’d guess it was his creativity and natural intelligence that did it for him. Where she was playing by the book, he was working the court, three moves ahead. It was hard not to feel inferior at times. It wasn’t that she resented him, quite the opposite, she greatly admired her brother. It just would have been nice to have a special bond like theirs.

~

          It didn’t take long until the sweat clinging to her hair and her fur urged her to join Xavier. The water was unbelievably nice. Cool, clear, sparkling. Freshness you couldn’t bottle. And, more importantly, a reprieve from the unbearable weather. Dragonflies zipped around, far too fast to be concerned with new comers. What more could she want? 

          They splashed around, enjoying the freedom of the quiet country around them. Most of the fish spooked the instant they’d arrived, noisy and laughing, fleeing the scene to hide in whatever cracks they could find. Some grew bold, creeping back as they gained courage. The longer Mary and Xavier stayed in the water, the closer they came. When Mary pointed them out, Xavier charged after the flickering silver, determined to catch one. She called him back almost immediately, trying to distract him with a frog. Too late. Scrambling wildly over a mossy rock, his paw slipped, sending him face first into the water with a loud splash. He pulled himself up, dripping and processing what had happened. Mary restrained herself from running over and scooping him up. Wait. Give him a chance. Does he need help of was he just surprised? For a long moment, only the water moved. Gently gliding past the pair as though they were nothing more than the environment it knew so well. Xavier stared at his palms, skinned and bleeding. Tears welled as he shouted for his sister.

          “Maarryyyyy!”

          She was there in an instant, easily pulling him into her arms and onto dry land. She settled him onto a log, pulling everything she needed out of her bag. Xavier was, to put it lightly, accident prone. She’d learned quickly to always be prepared. Just last week he fought a door. The door won.

          “Marryyy! My floaties didn’t save meeee!” He sobbed, devastated at their betrayal.

          “Here, let me see. Did you hurt yourself?”

          A tearful nod. “Mn hm.” He held his hands out, palms to the sky and fingers half curled like a dead spider.

          “That’s no good. Let me fix it up, ‘kay?” She towelled down the area, drying his skin so she could better see the extent of the injury. It wasn’t too bad. She gave him a reassuring smile. Sure, there’d probably be a good bruise tomorrow but the grazes themselves weren’t too severe. He’ll live. Popping the lid off her first aid kid, she cleaned the site. Years of fiddling with a sewing needle had given her a surgeon’s steady hand, despite her clumsy paws. She just needed to be in the right mindset to do precision work – not thinking about it.

          Xavier whimpered as the antiseptic got to work. “It hurts, Mary.”

          “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt a little. There are tiny little, uh, knights, in the cream that have to go and, beat up any baddies that might have gotten into the cut.”

          He was still crying, but intrigued enough to ask. “Really? There are knights in there?”

          “Yep. You can’t see them because they are very, very, tiny, but they’re there.” Mary finished her work, sticking on water proof bandaids. “Do you want the magic healing spell?”

          “Mn hm.”

          “Ok.” She kissed his palms. “One kiss, two kisses,” then his forehead “and a big kissaroo so my love can heal you!” She threw her hands in the air to finish the incantation.

          Xavier mimicked her, sniffle giggling, before wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug. He looked up at her, his chin pressing into her shirt. “How come you smell all sweet Mary?”

          “Hm. It’s probably my lip balm. I put it on earlier.”

          “Can I have some?”

          “Yeah, here you go.”

          He took the tube, concentrating to not overwind it. When he was satisfied that his lips were appropriately caked, he planted a noisy smooch on Mary’s cheek. “Now you have a kiss too! Aw, you can’t see it though. There’s no colour. Can you smell it Mary?”

          She could certainly feel the waxy balm smeared across her skin. Well, the peach one was her favourite, so it wasn’t too bad. “Sure can! I reckon Mumsie can probably smell it from all the way in the bakery, there’s so much on us!”

          That satisfied him. The freckles across his face crinkled into new constellations as he grinned up at her.  “Hey Mary?”

          “Yeah?”

          “Mary, do you know?”

          “I don’t know.”

          He was whispering again. “Mary, do you know, Will is my favouritest brother?”

          “Really?”

          “Mn hm. But Mary, do you know? Mary, you’re my favouritest big sister. ‘Cause I love Mary lots and lots. Do you love me too Mary?”

          She kissed his forehead again. “Lots and lots.”

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