#i managed to summon him after like summoning the whole catalogue i was so happy tho

[kidura]

I’ve missed tumblr I really need to stop abandoning it, it’s so comfy here

how has everyone been, have you been cryiNg at Brave Roy like I have been because that’s what i’ve been doing for like 2 weeks now (･ั///ᗜ///･ั)و ;;;

here some proud dad

 Watercolour on 200gsm

[ladyknightleyisundercover]

best laid plans

Happy New Year! Here’s one for everyone else planning on snuggling down in pajamas and going straight to sleep.

“It’s nearly time!”

“QUICK Daddy! It’s NEARLY TIME!”

“Nearly time, nearly time!”

“Come on, everyone in—that’s it, over here—ow, James, put that broomstick down right away—”

“But I need to do a loop-the-loop for the new year—”

“Not in my living room you don’t, now, quick! Look at the clock!”

“It says one minute to midnight!”

“Daddy, Daddy!”

“Alright Lily, I’m here! Are we ready to go?” Harry hurried into the living room, subtly giving Ginny the thumbs up, as their three children bounced around the sofa in barely restrained excitement. The clock on the mantelshelf showed it was about thirty seconds to midnight and a quick flick of Ginny’s wand meant that the wireless next to it started up, static at first and then, after a few moments, the unmistakable sound of a countdown began. Ten, nine...

“Eight! Six! Ten! Three!”

“Muuuuuuuum, Lily’s doing it wrong!”

“AM NOT!”

“Quick, we’re going to miss it!”

“THREE!” bellowed Harry. “TWO! ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

“Happy new year!” echoed Ginny. “Happy new year, everybody!” The wireless began to play Auld Lang Syne and she and Harry joined in, the children—who, between them, managed some mixture of the correct words and tune—adding contributions here and there. Mostly, James and Al enjoyed the opportunity to pump each other’s arms up and down so vigorously that they both fell off the sofa in a tangled heap, but before any tears could begin, Harry scooped them both up.

“Ssh!” he said. “Can you hear that?!”

They both froze, listening intently, and Lily stopped bouncing, too, eyes wide. “FIREWORKS!” cried James, having identified the loud bangs first, and the two of them raced to the window.

“They’re in our garden!” Al shouted, racing out of the room and towards the back door, hotly pursued by his brother.

“Cloaks and wellies!” Harry called, racing after them. “And both of them on before you go outside! Boys! Are you listening?!”

“Do you want to go out and see the fireworks, too, Lily?” asked Ginny.

Lily thought for a moment. “Loud,” she said solemnly. Ginny smiled, knowing she would never, ever admit to being afraid of the noises in front of her brothers.

“They are a bit,” she said. “But how about we turn off all the lights and watch them from in here, where it’s quiet?”

Another moment’s thought ended in vigorous nodding, so Ginny opened the curtains, turned off the lights (and added a subtle, half-silencing charm to the window so the sounds were muffled) and the two of them watched a twenty minute display of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes’ finest.

George had stocked them up at Christmas with a special personalised box—Ginny had worried, slightly, at first, about what this meant but it appeared that he’d simply modified the fireworks which exploded into the missive HAPPY NEW YEAR into reading HARRY’S NUDE YEAR instead. He had slightly overestimated his niece and nephews’ reading ability, so this passed unnoticed by the children (who were much more amused by the ones which read, somewhat inexplicably, given the festive occasion, POO) although Ginny managed to catch Harry’s eye from inside and tip him an enormous wink.

After the display was over, James and Albus were eventually persuaded to come back inside, tripping over themselves in their excitement to recount the display. Lily, that bit younger, was starting to get more than a little overtired, and did not take kindly to her brothers’ teasing her for not wanting to go outside to see the fireworks. Tears threatened, but were averted by Ginny’s suggestion that they all have a glass of Mummy’s very special drink to celebrate the new year and the champagne (lemonade, with magical glitter charms added) was duly passed around and imbibed with enthusiasm. Shortly thereafter, it was agreed that almost one o’clock in the morning was indeed a suitably late time to deign to go to bed, and, in various states of sleepiness, the three Potter children, accompanied by their parents, climbed the stairs.

By the time they reached the landing Lily, still in her mother’s arms, was actually asleep, so Ginny indicated to Harry that she would deal with her if he got the boys to bed. She managed to get her daughter into bed, tucked up, curtains drawn and nightlight on without her stirring, and, after dropping a kiss on her head, crept out of the room.

Harry appeared to be having some difficulty with the boys—“James, I think five stuffed dragons is enough for one bed—honestly your Uncle Charlie has a lot to answer for—”. As a magnanimous gesture, she therefore decided to go downstairs to ensure that the real champagne (a Christmas gift from Bill and Fleur) was suitably chilled and settled herself on the sofa in front of the fire. She flicked her wand at the wireless again, which was now playing something from Celestina Warbeck’s back catalogue, and a few minutes later, Harry arrived.

“You missed one,” he informed her gravely.

“One what, child? Have we another I’m not aware of?” she asked absently, shuffling up to make room then immediately snuggling down on top of Harry as soon as he was comfortably ensconced.

“A clock,” he said. “The jig was nearly up!”

“Oh no!” she said. “Which one?”

“Bathroom,” Harry replied. “Al said he needed the loo before bed which I think had less to do with bodily functions and more to do with being allowed to stay up a minute later than his brother. I went in with him, to make sure he didn’t fall in, and noticed that the bathroom clock was displaying five to nine, and not five to one as he thought it was. Fortunately—” and here he broke off for a moment to yawn hugely, “—I managed to catch it before any harm was done, and he happily went to bed none the wiser.”

“Such observational skills and quick thinking are clearly what have made you such a great Auror,” said Ginny, summoning a blanket to wrap around them both.

“Mmm,” he agreed. “And such creativity with the truth is what makes you such an excellent writer.”

“Oi!” she said. “No mocking my profession. If it wasn’t for me, we’d still have three overexcited children bouncing round the room for three more hours, getting more and more wound up and, I guarantee you, tears before ten thirty. As it is, it’s just gone nine o’clock, it’s New Year’s Eve, and we have the whole evening ahead of us, with three soundly asleep children upstairs. Am I a genius, or am I a genius?”

“To be fair, you did say that it was your Mum who gave you the idea to wind all the clocks on and—ow! Alright, okay! You are a genius.”

“I still can’t believe she did that to us when we were little,” Ginny said, sounding slightly miffed. “Or that none of us spotted it. I even remember being amazed one year at how quickly the evening had gone—we were allowed to stay up til midnight, but it didn’t feel like we’d been awake any longer than normal. Well! Now I know why!”

“Very sneaky,” agreed Harry, pulling the blanket more tightly around them. “And now, we have the whole evening ahead of us…”

“Mmm...” agreed Ginny, closing her eyes for a moment.

Harry yawned again. “How did you get the radio to play the countdown?” he asked sleepily.

“When I went in to do that interview with Lee just before Christmas, he let me listen to the recording from last year and I duplicated it on my wand,” she said, pausing several times to yawn. “It wasn’t really the wireless playing, just that duplication.”

“Oh. Cool.”

“Told you. I’m a genius.”

“Genius,” Harry agreed. “Mm.” There was a very long pause. “D’you want some champagne?” he murmured, for the bottle and glasses were currently just out of reach on the coffee table. He hoped she wouldn’t: he’d have to move to get them, and that would mean disturbing the comfortable nest they’d built here on the sofa...

“Maybe in a minute,” Ginny said softly. “Just going to...enjoy the quiet for a moment...”

“Genius idea,” agreed Harry, feeling the softness of her body on his and snuggling deeper into the sofa. “Just...in a minute...”

*

Ginny awoke with a start. The room was dark, and cold—the fire had long since gone out. Harry, beneath her, was snoring away. Her eyes adjusted to the dark and she blinked twice, picking out the numbers on Uncle Fabian’s battered old watch. A quarter past three!

“Harry! Harry!”

“Wassamatter?” He stirred sleepily, then sat bolt upright, forcing her up, too. “Gin? What’s wrong?”

“We missed it!” she said in dismay, shivering from the sudden cold as the blanket slipped away too.

“What?”

“We missed it! It’s gone three in the morning!”

“Missed...oh! Midnight! Oh, dear. Oh well, there’ll be other new years’ eves,” he said. “And may I be the first to wish you a happy new year, Mrs Potter.”

“Happy new year,” she echoed. “But never mind about that! We missed our child-free evening!”

“Oh. That,” he said.

“Yes, that!” she replied.

“Don’t worry,” he said, lying back down on the sofa and pulling her down beside him. The blanket started tucking itself back around them. “Ron owes me one—don’t ask. But we can cash in some favours soon and go out all night if you want, leaving the kids with him and Hermione.”

“Or we could just stay in,” said Ginny, having considered this.

“So many options,” he agreed sleepily. “Just as well we’ve a whole year ahead of us, then.”

[purkinje-effect]

The Anatomy of Melancholy, 66: Baggage

Table of Contents. Second Instar, Chapter 33. Go to previous. Go to next. TWs: Body horror, joint trauma, nudity, disability-related deprecation/catastrophization. How we carry ourselves.

________________

The last of the suds fizzled, leaving ‘Choly submerged in cold opalescent bathwater. A similar surfactant quality popped his daze, and he shifted in an attempt to sit up in the tub. The fluid’s inertia instead sloshed him further back against the enameled iron. He grunted with a squint as some water got up his nose. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the real trouble hindering his exit. His joints had fallen as slack as his lucidity. He felt like a marionette without a yoke. His stomach shuddered for him, as the slow continued sway of the water, once more settling, tugged at his arms half afloat.

So it was possible, after all, to relax too much.

He lay there for some time longer, barely able to string together the thought to devise some plan. His state left him reeling beyond the rationality that he might call out for help. Angel would worry itself apart to see him like this, and Sticks might very well toss him out in the Merrimack, beyond salvage. Besides, they hadn’t come to his rescue when he fell hours earlier, and he managed to get himself to the dinner table and back up here with nearly a nonzero amount of assistance. He could do this himself. He needed to learn how to do it himself--for his own safety, in the event something estranged others from coming to his aid.

He prayed this whatever-was-happening wouldn’t endure. But at least, he could in the moment assess his limitations.

His musculature and tendons remained connected and functioning, but necessitated an entirely other manner of physiological prescience: to not simply manage his own proprioception, but to apply it forward like some telekinetic mess of connective tissue cat’s cradle. It took every scrape of mental faculty to process and focus to where he could grasp himself by the wrists, by the elbows, by the shoulders, and so on, to grip each errant joint in turn, and to administer the force and torsion necessary to right the dysfunction. The bangs and bruises from the citywide chaos of the day before only served to compound how his throbbing body resisted total exhaustion.

He pushed himself up by both hands off the side of the tub, to stand. Instead, he spilled over the side and across the concrete flooring of the balcony. Flat on his back and defeated, he flopped back with a wheeze and stared up into the joints of the patio cover. The string lights burned a reverse image in his eyelids when he shut them.

He could hear rummaging inside through the open door yards away. His Stygian eyes fluttered open. The sight of twin mounted radstag heads hanging over the balcony door choked him.

“--Angel?”

The appellation came out far weaker and more broken than he expected.

When Angel didn’t respond, he bristled, and once more underwent the slow, quiet, deliberate process of summoning himself together. He found the Mister Handy had set out on the workhorse nearest to the tub for him a towel, his robe, and his glasses. He managed the loosest sense of drying off, and draped the towel around his neck and shoulders; then, he put on his glasses, and tied off the robe. Unsure exactly whom had come upstairs, let alone what--or whom--they sought, he grabbed an awl from the workbench and edged nearer the door frame on bated breath.

In the dark of the upstairs room, he could only make out the edges of lime split lighting in contrast to the figure’s lit Pip-Boy screen. He shivered at a prickle of draft. The white uniform with black apron. Symmetrical, if not keloid-riddled, features. Sticks rifled through the secretary as though it didn’t belong to him. Unsure how to even begin to ask what the ghoul could’ve needed, 'Choly meekly closed the door behind himself.

“Need more light?”

Sticks jerked up to look at him.

“...Of course, of course.” He loosed a rumbling, agitated chuckle. “It’s all right, pal, that you, ah. Sealed that negotiation for me like that. It’s all right, because... because we’re partners. Isn’t that right? Partners.”

The ghoul rose to flip the switch for the three overhead lamps strung across the roof beams. Right off, ‘Choly noticed the ghoul’s black eye, and a ripped dishevelment marred with bits of fresh blood. ‘Choly chewed at his lower lip.

“Partners... Yeah.” He swallowed, and rubbed at his forearm with his free hand. He’d only been trying to help. “Are you okay? Could we-- talk? We need to talk. If-- if that’s all right.”

The juxtaposition of the encounter startled Sticks to a cautious desperation.

“Everything’s all right between us, right?”

“Of course. It’s not that. ...I need to sit.” He walked over to the secretary and took the desk chair for himself. Sticks sat on the corner of the bed. “I know I fucked up a lot yesterday, but I think I may have fucked up something else.”

He set the awl down on the desk, and swiveled to face Sticks. Picking what he felt he could afford to potentially damage further, he took hold of his left calf and knee, and purposefully loosed it again with a hollow chain of cartilaginous pops. His breath stuttered as he dangled his leg by the foot, but he kept his cool as he gave the ghoul a sardonic glance.

Sticks looked to him agape, with unfiltered, nauseated fascination.

“The cryogenic chemicals damaged my joints and skin, but I’ve managed for months until today. This is... something completely else.” He worked at resetting his knee as he continued, stifling jolts of revulsion. “I mean, even if it is the condition progressing, why all at once? And why-- this? It would be too much of a coincidence if the X-Cell Squared weren’t related... or the inhaler. That fucking inhaler.” He seethed, cupping his face in hand. “I was so tired when she handed me that stuff last night and told me it was Addictol. Fuck me, I’m stupid--”

“--You’re not stupid. She just knows how to trick people. ...Do you really suppose she gave you something that wasn’t Addictol?”

“I checked my Pip-Boy’s health diagnostics earlier. I’m still in withdrawals from chems I took prior to her giving me the inhaler. I could show you, if I-- if I knew where it was.”

“Hey now. I’m sure it’s safe. It’s just you, me, and the robot now.”

‘Choly toweled at his hair again, only to swivel around and look in the secretary for himself. He produced the Walden Drugs catalogue from one slot, and thumbed through it in search of specific pages.

“My current set of orthotics aren’t doing it. The officer’s gloves help, but that’s just my hands. The ankle and wrist braces, the postural corset--they’re just for sprains and such, not full dislocations. Neither you nor Angel seemed to notice earlier, but I fell down the stairs. I’m struggling to put one foot in front of the other. I’m a liability as I am. You called me wet cardboard the other day, and it just keeps feeling more true.“ He slapped the catalogue down in his lap, and shut his eyes to rub at them under his glasses with thumb and forefinger. “Look, I’m bad at asking for help. So: This is me asking for help. I know you don’t have to help me and that it’s probably prudent to ditch me... but I hope having me in your life means more to you than that.”

He held out the booklet turned to the relevant page. Sticks leaned to take it, and looked it over, uncurling the front half to inspect the cover, then back to the items. He face slacked in earnest as he flipped over to a locations listing.

“The closest one was Nashua, you said? Lexington didn’t have them?”

“I lived in the Lexington Walden’s stock room for months before it went up in flames. What I’ve got is the best I could find. Only the warehouses that stocked hospitals would have what’s on that page. They’re surgical grade. ...The Merrimack swallowed up the Lowell General Hospital, didn’t it?“ He slumped, unable to recall the building in the skyline as they’d passed through Downtown Historic. “You have no idea how badly I want to stay put. I love it here, with the bathtub, with the bed, with the you... But...” The idea of it eroded him to trembling. “I know it’s a long way. Especially on foot. But I can’t do it with just Angel. Especially since it’s out of ammo.”

“No, no. If you need this, then we need this. We needed a good reason to blow this place for a while. The Unfolded may seem to want to continue respecting the history this place has, Glenn Johnny’s included... But Lowell as a whole? They weren’t out here on exterminator duty, Mindy. They were doing recon on the locks and channels equipment. For the General.”

That nearly knocked ‘Choly out of the chair. When it clicked, he paled numb.

“The fuck do they want to-- Oh. Oh no.”

“Yeah. I’m not happy about it, either. Bare minimum, it’s gonna be like when a company puts a new building in. Except you and I both know that wont just be, what was it? Skunks? But worst case scenario? I don’t even want to begin to speculate what they plan to do with the river.” Weary, Sticks circled back to the catalogue. “Have you got a time estimate for this little recon? How long you think it’ll take to get there, and how long you intend to stick around?”

“I’m not sure. Does it matter much? We’re in agreement that a change of scenery’s desirable.”

Sticks traced at the details on the page, distant and in deep thought.

“It’s not just a change of scenery, is the thing. It’s a change of climate. I don’t know if you realize this, but Lowell’s on the southern threshold of the Hinter... and we’re coming up on Nor’easter season. Sure, the wildlife has got all big and wild, but so’s the weather. I’ll be mostly all right up there, being a ghoul, provided our shelter’s sound. But you? And the Handy?” The ghoul waved off his own train of thought. “You know what. Don’t sweat it. We’ll manage this. My experience, your grey matter.”

“Nor’easters? You’re worried over a chance there’s one this year? I’ve weathered dozens of ice storms in my life. Even a few hurricanes. And you’re a native Yankee, so you’ve got to have, too. We’ll be fine.” Denial wheezed from his nostrils, his lips pressed together tight. “I know it will put us even further from New Hampshire, but I do have one obligation first. I have to go to Billerica, to escort someone to the Concord suburbs. I should’ve taken them to safety before getting here, but I also didn’t know what I was getting myself into. They’ve been waiting for the Lowell conflict to blow over, and like me, they’re the last survivor of their location. I would have had to go check on them soon even if we stayed here.”

The ghoul squinted at him.

“Hazarding you’re confident they couldn’t just travel there themselves.”

“It shouldn’t take long at all!” ‘Choly threw his hands up. “One day, tops. We just need to get from here to there to Sanctuary Hills. It’s a Mister Handy. I couldn’t have brought it to Lowell and just left it. And it just feels too many kinds of wrong to just leave it all alone there, when it could be among some normal people again for once.”

Sticks weighed the various aspects about the proposition that didn’t sit well.

“If you’re having trouble just walking, do you suppose you’ll be in any condition to ride Angel down?”

“I, I don’t know.” 'Choly wilted into begging that left his companion too tongue-tied to object all the while. “We’ll figure that out, too! And you know what? This trip to Nashua isn’t just for me. Partners. I meant it, that we’re in this together. The long haul. The Lexington Walden was a smaller location, and even it had a sizable chem lab arrangement, with a large cache of stock. The Nashua Walden was classified as a full regional warehouse: it shipped to a dozen locations in the New England Commonwealth. Olivia gave me all those military chem formulas. That is what you were looking for just now, weren’t you? I’m as interested as you, to see what all I can make from a chem cookbook culminated from two hundred years of research.”

Sticks sat up at once and looked to him knowingly. He swatted his knee with the catalogue.

“Now that, I like to hear! What initiative! We’ll start out for all this tomorrow. You hear me? Let’s get to gathering things up tonight. We can do a once-over in the morning to make sure we’re not leaving anything important behind.”

“You’re not exhausted after all that stuff downstairs? After cooking for thirty?”

‘Choly felt even more pathetic than he sounded. He hadn’t even lifted a finger with a thing, yet was this worn out.

“We’ll go until we pass out, at least. We’ll sleep better that way. Hey Angel!” Sticks called out for the robot. “Set down that broom and dustpan for a bit and help us out up here!” He chortled excitedly. “Ohh, bless it all. You want to cook chems for me. And you want to wear this for me. I could kiss you.”

Something between a grimace and a grin tore ‘Choly’s face.

“You... you could kiss me, you know.”

“You’re not wrong.” Sticks swept him up in both arms and plopped him back on the freshly made bed, only narrowly taking the care to be delicate with him. He leaned down over the top of him, a hand to each side of ‘Choly’s shoulders, to smooch him. “We’re great together. You know that, right?”

‘Choly squinted awkwardly, and reached to turn off the screen light on Sticks’s Pip-Boy. He pulled him into another kiss, and looked him in the eye with adoration.

“Always have been.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve no intention of leaving this place without first cleaning up after such horrid house guests.” Angel scoffed in frustration as it appeared upstairs, oblivious to the pair making out on the bed. “And I hate to be the bearer of such information, but if I’m to carry Mister Carey, we must pack as light as possible. It’s not to guilt you, Sir, but even with the refinements you’ve made to my hydraulics, the added weight does result in a higher fuel expenditure. My ammunition isn’t the only thing running low after this week.”

“So we’ll make more frequent refueling pit stops for you, buddy,” Sticks mumbled over his shoulder, still pecking all over ‘Choly’s face and neck and shoulders where he could get at it. The little creep soaked it all up, squirming like it tickled. “You just worry about carrying Carey here. Anything heavy I need to bring, I’ll carry myself.”

‘Choly grabbed his face to get his attention.

“Hey. Maybe Angel could carry all the supplies, and you carry me? I’ve got to weigh less than that Flamer did, and you hefted that thing all over town without hardly ever setting it down.”

The ghoul melted into dopey chuff.

“Mindy. Babe. You do not weigh less than a Flamer.” He smiled, heavy lidded. “You’re on something, though. Sounds like it might work. I can guarantee you, that everything I’m bringing totally weighs less than you. So if I carry you, and Angel carries everything I’m bringing, that’s less strain on its flame.”

“Can I entrust you with my most precious cargo, Mister Hawthorne?”

He planted one more forceful smooch on ‘Choly before meeting gazes in a dreamy determination.

“He’s my prize, too, ya know.”

Go to Next »»»

[puffdragongirl]

In Name Only - Team Really Royalty Reveal

Set several weeks after the events of Catch

After another endless day of squinting at notebooks, Ryuu closes the door to the pharmacy and turns blindly towards his quarters. He had been expecting a challenge – even looking forward to it – when he was granted the position of Wilant’s Head Pharmacist. He had imagined most of the difficulty would come from dealing with staffing the largely empty roster or interacting with the members of the frosty Northern court. What he hadn’t been expecting was the entire wing to be a disorganized mess of cabinets full of questionable contents, drawers crammed with mysterious vials, and spotty, near-illegible notes. Many days the sheer chaos of the pharmacy he’d inherited made him want to throw the poorly-kept logbooks out the window and retreat under his desk to scream into his pillow, but somehow Obi’s supportive humor and Shirayuki’s unflagging determination had managed to keep him sane long enough to get most of the supplies identified, labeled, and properly catalogued in the imminently sensible Lyrias style.

Speaking of Obi and Shirayuki, the only thing keeping Ryuu going tonight is anticipation for their weekly shared dinner. Although Obi still spends a good part of his time helping out in the pharmacy, his conscription to helping out with the paperwork surrounding Prince Zen’s permanent relocation meant he often took meals in the Prince’s office rather than the pharmacy. Not to say meals with Shirayuki alone aren’t enjoyable – they are. He just always feels that something is missing. He didn’t realize the missing piece was Obi until the fiasco with the sprained wrist a few weeks back had kept him away from paperwork (“Pens are different than knives, Miss Kiki!” he had exclaimed when Kiki had inquired about his apparent ambidextrousness, which did not extend towards writing with his left hand, “I had more pressing things to worry about at the time than writing legibly.”). Despite frequent whining about not being allowed to climb things occurring every day of those two weeks, the knight’s presence back at their lunch table those two weeks made everything feel right again. Ryuu tries not to think too hard about what the warm and fuzzy feeling being with Shirayuki and Obi means (They are not his parents. They aren’t.), but he does make a point to never miss their weekly meals.

As he approaches his rooms, the scent of roasting meats and savory spices grows stronger. Getting to eat delicious food is another benefit of sharing a meal with Obi. Pushing open his door, he follows his nose directly to the kitchen, where Shirayuki is setting places at his table while Obi stirs a steaming stirfry at the range. They are deep in conversation, although he only catches the tail end of it.

“And Master wants what, from us, exactly?” Obi asks, flipping the contents of his wok in the air to keep them moving.

“He asked if we heard anything about it in our travels,” she replies, setting a pitcher of water on the table before settling in her chair, “Apparently, one of the rumors was that the heir went North.”

“Hmmm…” Obi hums, face contemplative as he adds some last-minute seasonings to the dish, “I can’t recall hearing anything of the sort.” He thinks for a few minutes more, then shoots a sly grin across the counter, “Then again, I didn’t spend as much time with the gossips as you did, Miss.”

Shirayuki sputters, color blooming in her cheeks as she protests, “Look here, I don’t believe for a second that guards don’t gossip just as much as-”

“Gossip about what?” Ryuu interrupts, resisting the urge to smile fondly. Months on the road with the two of them taught him they would bicker and tease each other endlessly given the chance.

“Little Ryuu!” Obi calls, raising his spatula in greeting, “Dinner is almost ready!”

“Oh, Ryuu!” Shirayuki echoes, sending an unrepentant Obi a look but dropping the argument for now, “You’re just in time; we could use your help with this.”

As Shirayuki explains the situation, he wanders over to the counter, grabbing a mug from the table and filling it with water. He leans against the counter as Shirayuki speaks. It sounds like any other story of greedy nobles at first – a “missing” heir, with younger half-siblings looking to take their place – but something about the story sets him on edge.

“…So essentially, it is rumored that there is a son from his first marriage that would have the claim on the title, but no one has seen him for many years or is sure that he ever really existed.” Shirayuki frowns as she recaps the background, “I’m not sure why they didn’t try to figure this out sooner, especially since it sounds like the child would have been young when he went missing…” She shakes her head, and gets back on track, “Anyway, now that the previous title holder has passed, they need to figure things out as quickly as possible. The widow sent a petition for her child to be declared the official heir, but Zen wants to look into the claim of the older child first, to make sure the widow’s claim is valid.”

“What was the last name again?”  Obi asks when she finishes, shuffling the pan absently to keep the stir fry from burning, “Ga-something, right?” He turns off the heat and starts piling the steaming dish on a serving platter, “Galirat? Galiro? Gabirin?”

He makes several more attempts at the name, and a chill runs down Ryuu’s spine, but he pushes his worries down. It had been years, nearly a decade, and it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be…

“Gaboriault,” Shirayuki corrects, and somehow, what he feared is true, and it feels like his whole world has dropped out from under him.

His mug drops from suddenly nerveless fingers, but he barely registers the clatter of porcelain breaking against the floor. The room spins and his ears ring as panic threatens to consume him. There are gasps, voices asking if he is okay, wondering what is wrong, but he doesn’t hear anything over the pleas racing through his mind. No, no. Please no. Please don’t make me go back, not when I’m finally happy, finally me.

Overwhelmed, he flees, leaving the broken pottery and the alarmed calls of Obi and Shirayuki behind.

It shouldn’t surprise him that it doesn’t take them long to find him. He is curled up under his desk, leaning against the back wall with his knees pulled tight to his chest. After several years of growth spurts, he is perhaps too tall now for it to be a perfect fit, but he is comforted by the familiarity of the small space all the same. Barely ten minutes have passed before he hears the pharmacy door open, and although their words are too quiet to make out, he would recognize their voices anywhere.

Even colored with distress, he finds their familiar back-and-forth comforting. Shirayuki first, her concern evident in the wavering tone and rapid pace of her words. Obi next, voice deep and steady as he soothes her, but touched with the slightest hint of strain. Their voices separate, and he hears the quiet sound of footsteps echo through the room. One set, still somewhat unfamiliar given he has only heard them a handful of times despite their long acquaintance, draws close to his desk, and the fabric separating his nook from the world parts to reveal Obi’s face peering in at him. His mouth is set in that way that means he is worried, and Ryuu can’t quite meet his gaze, upset with himself for worrying them.

“Over here, Miss,” Obi summons Shirayuki to the desk and before he knows it, somehow all three of them are wedged in the space, with Ryuu pressed securely in the middle. Although he can feel their concern, they don’t speak, content for now to have found him. He soaks in the comfort to their presence, and eventually unbends enough to explain.

“You probably guessed this,” he begins, staring hard at his clenched hands, “I am the ‘missing’ son they are looking for.” He can’t help the bitter laugh that spills from his lips, “Or maybe it’s better to say, the one they are hoping not to find.”

“They told me my mom… died right after I was born,” he continues, and now that the words have started, the story just tumbles out, “I’m not sure if my father really cared about her, but I know he didn’t wait long to remarry.” Ryuu didn’t have any memories without his father’s second wife, and his half-brother was only a year or so younger than him, so his father couldn’t have waited more than a couple of months to remarry. “She was…ambitious, to say the least, and resented that her children couldn’t inherit because the orphan a dead woman was still hanging around.”

“My father was always very busy, and more often than not was in Wilant or Wistal on some kind of business,” Ryuu could probably count on one hand the number of times he had spoken with the man, “He never really had time for any of his children, so the housekeeper and maids looked after me.” He pauses for a moment, then admits quietly, “I’m not sure I even remember what my father looked like.”

“Oh, Ryuu…” Shirayuki breathes, and her hand reaches out to wrap around his tightly-clasped fists. Obi says nothing, but his arm does settle across the stiff line of Ryuu’s shoulders. Neither of them miss the implication that, even if Ryuu wasn’t neglected, precisely, he was never really cared for either.

“It wasn’t so bad,” he offers, weakly, “I spent most of my time with the gardener, and that’s how I found out about plants and herbs.” He will always remember her patient explanations of which plants were used for food, and which for medicine, and the best times to harvest them both. He tells them how, once his questions had outpaced her knowledge, she started to bring him books from the library. “And one benefit of growing up…where I did… was the size of the library. There were books in the collection I didn’t see again until the library at Lyrias.”

“One day, she brought me the old gardener’s notebook,” he can still see the notebook, carefully kept despite the decade or so since the man’s departure from the property, “I found an old advertisement looking for apprentice pharmacists in Wistal Palace inside.” The yellowed paper had slipped from its place tucked between two pages detailing a particularly grueling insect extermination. It had seemed like a salvation, a way to escape the indifference of his father, and the resentment of the woman who could have been his mother. “I knew it was crazy, but it seemed like the only way out.”

He finishes his story, describing how he packed a bag with his clothes, the pocket and gift monies he had gathered over the years, and the notes he had compiled from the gardener and the library books; the way he researched the roads to and from Wistal from some maps his father stored in his office; and finally, the way he left in the dead of the night.

“I would call it running away, but that place was never really a home to me.” Drained by the telling, he leans back into the arm still around his shoulder, and fiddles his fingers against the grasp still warm against his hands. They sit in silence for a moment, then he asks, “Are you…going to tell Prince Zen?”

The pharmacy is dark, but he sees them turn to each other anyway, communicating in that silent way of theirs. What must be only a few minutes, but feels like hours, passes, before Obi moves to face him.

“Let’s start with this,” Obi proposes, “What is it that you want to do, Little Ryuu?”

“I don’t want to go back there,” he admits, the words leaving him in a rush, “I like it here. I like the pharmacy, even if it’s a mess right now. I like having dinner together, and traveling to get plants, and complaining together about how terrible fancy parties are…” He scrambles away from them, or at least as far as the cramped space allows, and bows his head, “My home is here, with you. With the both of you, wherever you are. Please…please let me stay with you.”

There is a beat of silence, then a slender hand is reaching for his chin, tilting his head to meet watery green eyes and a wobbly smile.

“Of course you can stay,” Shirayuki assures, her eyes taking on that familiar glint of determination, “If I have anything to do with it, I hope we can stay together always.” Her gaze drifts to Obi’s, and she admits, “All of us; no matter where we go, it feels like home because we are together.”

“You heard her, Little Ryuu,” Obi grins, and reaches a hand out to ruffle his hair, “And you know wherever the Miss goes, I follow.” His grin softens to a soft smile, “I guess you’re stuck with us both for the long haul.”

If the three of them spend the next quarter hour hugging, at least two of them crying at any given moment, at least no one outside the family would ever know.

The next day, Obi reports to Zen that none of them heard anything about the missing Gaboriault heir during their travels through the North. Indeed, given the ways of the North, where rumors were just as often born of boredom than grains of truth, they suspected the heir, if there had ever really been one, was long gone by now, and wanted nothing to do with the title. However, if you were to listen carefully to conversations on quiet days in the pharmacy, when only the three of them were around, you might hear the occasional reference to Ryuu, Lord and Master of the Pharmacy. And that was one title that Ryuu was happy to bear, as long as it stayed between the three of them.

[dragomer]

The Neverborns

Hey, I'm back and this time I want to talk about something that happened a while after the whole Mirror ordeal. It had been a very tense time, but I managed to get the cops to back off and leave us alone with the help of the kid. He tried to insist that he be called 'Prince', though I had to insist he be called ...almost anything else, so we settled on [to be decided].

The official story was that I owed the kid a lot, he supposedly saved my daughter Sarah from a child trafficking ring. Something about how my home was so isolated, and they wanted to add to their 'catalogue'. We had told everyone that he had been with them as some kind of pet / mascot / guard, and that his parents had sold him due to being disgusted by his deformity as a toddler (or so he had been told). We said they had put him in charge of keeping an eye on the adult prisoners. After all, who would try to escape when you have a demon child right next to the door? But they did not usualy put him in charge of the children, the chief was afraid of him connecting to them. Which was exactly what people think happened. An underling who was in charge of the kids had decided to go have fun for a while, and he made the kid watch both adults and children, leading to him connecting with my Sarah and letting the prisoners run amoke so he could escape with her in the confusion. After which, she led him to back to the house and I wanted to adopt him out of gratitude.

I was very skeptical about this whole story, but the kid assured me that the cops would jump at the chance to bust a group like that. But when I raised concerns about them not finding anyhing, the kid told me that he saw many things through his mirror and it would be easy to set the cops on the trail of one such group when interrogated so I dropped the subject and just went along with it.

Surprisingly, that was the hardest thing we had to deal with, his ...particularities were easily dismissed as a birth defect and people seemed to get over it rather quickly, which surprised the kid even more than it surprised me. I guess that's just how it goes in a world where 'Elephant Man' and the 'Tree Man' are well known cases of extreme deformity, compared to them, the kid DID look pretty tame.

Though, what I really wanted to talk about did not happen until after all of that had been settled.

His acceptance into the school was still pending, due to the whole 'never went to school and barely laerned math or how to read from the human traffickers' cover story. So while Sarah and Cassie were in school, the kid and I were trying to finish preparing his room and the boredom that came with moving furnitures around made me unable to contain my curiosity anymore.

'So, what are you ...really?'

That one sentence started off the whole thing and I instantly regretted my choice... No sooner had the words left my lips, than a vicious smile crossed his face, like he had been prepared for that question, and was waiting to start his show. He was usualy no harder to handle than my kids, and I was genuinely starting to like him, but whenever he got that look on his face, it served as a reminder that he wasn't human and had pretty sick disposition.

He slowly positioned himself right in front of the mirror, knowing full well how much I hated it. Whenever he does that, it felt like that darkness inside the mirror would come pouring out, engulfing the whole room and giving him full control.

'Took you a while to ask, hey?' He always used that weird speech pattern, I mean, who ends a sentence like that?

Then he asked me if I wanted 'the long or short version'.

I hesitated a bit before deciding what to say. 'Let's go with the short version first, whenever you go too deep, I feel like I'm hearing stuff I shouldn't. I can always ask you to go into more detail if I need it.'

'That's because that's exactly what's happening. Anyway, here's the short version... I was a Neverborn.' He responded shortly, clearly baiting me to ask for more details.

'Okay, and what's a neverborn?' I stupidly took the bait.

'We are the incarnation of the path not taken. What could have been but wasn't. There are as many Neverborn as there are possibilities. The stillborn that could have lived, the unrealised genius, the justice that was never delivered, the crime that could have paid... Whenever there is a 'but' or an 'if', a neverborn is present, but me and my kin of the mirror are special.' He became more excited as he talked and the mirror started shaking at the word 'kin'.

'What kin, and what do you mean by special?' I could not resist the question, I was pretty worried about the possibility of others like him being in the mirror, that could still be dangerous.

'By special, I mean me and my kin are not the neverborn that came from what COULD have been, we are neverborn that came from what SHOULD have been. You see, the thing is, that the whole world that you know, it isn't as it should be.' He spoke like magician explaining his latest sleigh of hand, and like the typical layman, I was confused.

'And how should the world should be, what changed it?' I was now far too curious, in spite of the fact that I knew with every fiber of my being that I shouldn't be hearing this information. But as they say 'curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back', so I took the risk.

'Well, you see, sometime before the first world war of your world, another conflict took place between France and the UK, it was supposed to be a bloody war for both sides, but suddenly, the British troops started dropping like flies before any fighting could happen. It was because the French had, through pure luck, discovered how to weaponize disease. Yup, a bacteriological war in the hands of a world that wasn't even out of the Napoleonic era of warfare, how could that possibly go wrong? Oh, I don't know, maybe by having every country immediatly start copying the French, and hastily making their own version without anyone thinking, before even knowing the short term consequences? By the time France's weapon had turned on them and started ravaging both the UK and France, it was already too late, and dozens of bacteriological weapons were spreading around from all over, killing everyone, and by the time the diseases had burned themself out or had been cured, only around ten thousands humans were left alive, all huddled together in one makeshift town.'

I kinda had difficulty actualy internalising the idea that this was something that really happened rather than a random alternative history plot to justify a post apocalyptic setting in a novel, so it probably didn't have the impact it should have had, which is probably why I could more or less continue the conversation normaly.

'And? How could such a small population, with subpar technology and access to infrastructure, change the past?' I was feeling dumb before I even finished asking that question, I had a goddamn demon child in front of me, science was obviously not what did it.

'Simple, they didn't, what changed the past was something much much bigger... There were twelve families reigning over what was left of humanity, all of them having survived and risen to power through their occult knowledge. While still rare, it was much more widespread in that history, and the lack of knowledge in this world is directly linked to that event. See, the twelve families simply couldn't believe nor accept the current state of humanity, how it had been brought low and how much they had lost, not only materially, but spiritualy and personaly. The same went for their followers so they took drastic measures, they used all their knowledge to summon as many beings of power as they could, demons, angels, old gods, abominations, pagan idols, everything they managed to find. They summoned them at once and asked them to 'set right what went wrong'.

'The demons, angels, and idols were more than happy to do this, as the whole event had put a big strain on their own conflicts and taken away the majority of their followers, nor did it hurt that it would also give them a better foothold in this world. Although, the other entities were a more difficult crowd, and it was only when the families offered to give them all of their knowledge that they agreed. You see, this was because the more humans that knew about the occult and these beings, the less powerful they became, and the more danger it posed to them, so they jumped at the opportunity to essentially bring humanity back to a supernatural powerlessness ...that is at least until the secrets they had 'forgotten' were re-discovered.

'So these beings upheld their end of the bargain and the world was restored, but there was one last problem ...us. My kin and I, twelve Neverborn created by the change from the world that should have been, to a world that could have been, we had to be compensated, such are the rules, and so we were given the twelve families. In this new world they had been merged into one giant family, and each generation, one special member of the family would be born and claimed by one of us. The order was decided by a game of chance, but it was easy for each older kin to dupe the slightly younger ones and thus it went by order of birth. Though in my case, I was less 'fooled',  and more disinterested.

'I was already busy observing the world and the young children that would be claimed decades later by my older kin while they all bickered. The generations went by and with them my kin, we shared the whole family as a plaything while waiting for our turn to take our special members and disappear for parts unknown until I was the last one and only had the old man who sold you the mirror to pick from, but I wasn't really interested so I kept playing until I was bored of him and then let him sell off the mirror to find new entertainment.' As he spoke, he was clearly getting sidetracked into telling his own story rather than answer my question.

'If all that is true, then why did you bother accepting the pact we proposed to you? You could have joined their family since they were already yours.' I could not help but wonder, not really understanding the difference between being given a family and being given a family to play with given his disposition.

'Because that's not our pact, you didn't give me your family as compensation of any kind, remember when I said I WAS a neverborn? That's because I'm not anymore, our pact means you gave 'birth' to me, I'm the realisation of the wishes of all the children who should have rebuilt that abandonned world, and I now truly exist. It isn't enough to change history, while the angel who made time is long gone, his work is still way too sturdy for me alone to upset, but trust me, you, Cassie, Sarah, and me? We are bond by blood and flesh.' As he finished speaking, he showed me his hand as it opened itself, seemingly cut by an invisible blade to allow a few drops of his blood to fall upon the ground, as if to hammer his point home before it returned to normal.

'See, this is why I can't let you out of the house yet, you can't just go dropping forbidden knowledge of a hidden world on someone just because they asked what you are.' I prefered to play it cool, put all of this in the back of my mind and jokingly chastise him because that was way too heavy for me to handle as a response to something I asked out of boredom.

For once it seemed that the kid decided to be merciful and went along with my obvious attempt to change the subject, suggesting with feigned offense that nothing less could begin to explain his grandeur before we finished our task.

And that was the end of that day's excitement, yeah adopting supernatural entities can get really heavy over the simplest things sometime, and I just needed to share some of it, I can't even fathom the headache his first day at school is going to be, especialy when he insisted on dressing like goddamn King Louis the 14th, I'll keep you updated on that.

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Author note starts here ! as you can see, i wrote a sequel of sort (it’s more of a lore addition but whatever) to my previous short story, if you haven’t read it, you can find it here , i recommend it since the story probably make less sense if you don’t know the background/ previous story.

Anyway, hope you liked it (and if you didn’t, don’t hesitate to tell me) and for those who asked me about my Zucest fics, i’m still trying, i just haven’t produced anything worth publishing, i’m still practicing writing as you can see here and i hope you find this story to be an improvement over the first one and thanks you for reading !