#i wanted to doodle a bit but i figure it best to do standalone doodles with better quality

[hummingjay]

Hi!, idk if I have done this before, but this is when I ask 🫵✨you ✨🫵 to share any random fun fact (about any OC) that you want to share, but haven't had the opportunity to do so

OHOHOHOH THANK YOU THIS IS GONNA BE FUN!!! (and long)

Okay so let's start with Eddie! I did mention that she hates getting touched except by close friends, and of all the said friends it's usually Cricket. Whenever Cricket's panicking Eddie'll just quietly sit down with her to give her something tangible to hold. I just think it's a cute image.

OH! Eddie's not very sensitive about her face either. She rarely takes off her mask but she doesn't purposefully hide it from everybody per se. So if you spend over a couple days with her you'll see it. She also has a shrapnel scar on the side of her face.

Millie is the only one who routinely does something with her hair! She braids it mostly, while the other kasuars just use their low ponytail. Rosa likes styling it. Cricket also wears flowers in her hair whenever her visor is up, mostly cause she likes seeing Jensen happy. After Rosa gets used to Cricket's overall creepiness, Rosa also styles Cricket's hair.

Cricket ALWAYS smells like blood no matter what she does, and Jensen always smells like sulfer and potassium nitrate, just barely covered by the scent of wildflowers she finds. Also you know how Cricket likes tapping on Jensen? She has a favorite spot, on Jensen's palm, she just rubs it with her fingers whenever she's holding hands. Other than that, she puts her head in the crook of Jensens neck, leaning on her shoulder, whenever they're actually sitting down and snuggling. (Cricket is also the little spoon)

Eddie hangs out a lot with the Storches and Starlings. They think she's cute and has an odd polyculish situationship going on. At least 3 want her carnally. Eddie is unaware.

If you hit Eddie with a shovel that says "I want to kiss you" she'd ask you if you dropped your shovel.

Ritterhelm, if not under supervision and off-duty, will get drunk and eventually will snort gunpowder. She's rowdy but mostly harmless. Ritterhelm is the 'funny friend with a darkness in her eyes'. She's the most humorous and thrill-seeking, cracks the most Jokes, and the is overall the most spirited. She also wears the ruined hat of her dead lover as an armband and carries a photo of the two of them on her at all times. She's also the best wingwoman and helps Millie and Cricket out with their girls.

Eiche teaches Eddie swordplay! Ritz eventually loses her glaive and gets taught too after she replaces it with a sword.

Eddie is pretty much Eiche's adopted daughter, and she was the first to get transferred to Eicheholz's unit. Eiche is pretty much the mom of the group.

Originally (as in story-wise, not just in my head) before she stole the sword and blunderbuss, Eddie used a club and a pistol. She still has the pistol and gave the club to Cricket. She didn't have a name before she got her distinguishing weapons, just her designation.

Cricket's original design featured much bulkier armor and I plan on bringing it back. Despite the fact that Cricket is the big, hulking, violent monstrosity of a Kasuar who would 100% fistfight a god and win simply because she refuses to die, she's the baby of the group.

You can't really tell what Cricket is feeling by facial expression. she has a perpetual deer-in-headlights look. Nobody knows if this changes in combat because she flips her visor down. She also won't die. In reality she can obviously but she refuses to on account of she's worried about what'll happen to her friends. She's been impaled, shot, stabbed, and poisoned but somehow survived.

Cricket has never once used a nickname. Ritz is Ritterhelm, Eiche is Eichenholz, Jenny is Jensen, Millie is Millipede, and Eddie is Edward, sometimes Edward Teach or just Teach. She's not humorless, just not a nickname person. Everybody calls her Kiki after they get to know her though. Jensen is the only one who ever uses a separate nickname; "Little bug" or "little Cricket." (though Jensen still does call her Kiki often.) Cricket won't say it aloud but she loves it.

Kasuars are not inherently afraid of Falkes themselves. Just their voice. Once a Falke starts talking they freak out, then they're agitated by the Falke's presence. If a Falke is nice enough they can acclimate and get over said fear, like Eiche did. ÆON got wind of this and started forcibly making Kasuars work under Falke units to make highly efficient strike teams. They acclimate, and sometimes it works well if given time. Usually, they're thrust into it too fast and it shows, like they're not all there. I'll yap more about that later so I'll pause now.

[todisturbtheuniverse]

FIC: Liminal Grief [3/3]

Rating: T Fandom: Stardew Valley Pairing: Shane/Female Farmer Tags: Pre-Relationship, Developing Friendship, Grief, Alcoholism, Depression Word Count: 10,613 (total) Summary: The new farmer has a level of equal-opportunity-friendliness that reminds Shane of an old friend, but when the mask comes off, it’s more like looking in a mirror. Also on AO3. Notes: Very much based in the game, but littered with my own headcanons, both for this particular farmer and for Shane. Like other stories in this series, this could be considered standalone, but follows the same farmer (named Lydia) and the same Shane, and shares continuity with those other works. Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about building fences or treehouse ladders, and neither does Lydia. :)

Part 1 here, Part 2 here.

"And this is the pond. Archimedes thinks it's his pool, as you can tell. It's pretty deep, so don't try and swim in it. The bottom is composed of Sticky Mud, which is very dangerous."

"Sticky Mud?" Jas repeated, hanging on Lydia's every word.

"Eh, that's what Granddad always said. Personally I don't think this mud is stickier than any other mud, but he was trying to keep me safe."

Jas nodded solemnly. "I won't swim in the pond."

"Perfect." Lydia flashed a smile at Shane. "Let's go get the treehouse fixed up then, huh?"

Jas clapped her hands in glee. "Yes!"

She ran out ahead of them, hair fluffing out behind her in the summer breeze. Archimedes barked, shook the water off his coat, and rushed after her. They'd already passed by the treehouse once today, and it was clear that Jas remembered the way; she didn't wait for the two adults to take the lead, merely kept up her pace about fifty feet ahead, chattering away to Archimedes.

One bad habit already picked up from the farm girl. Great.

"She's a sweet kid," Lydia said, watching Jas trot ahead of them. "Curious as hell, huh?"

He tried to remember why he'd agreed to this. Lydia had helped him find that sweet kid last weekend. Stuck her neck out when she didn't have to. She'd been so damn nice about it.

But she talked so, so much. That was part of the nice shtick. He wasn't hungover—not this time—but he somehow felt worse for it. Felt...dry. Like those three beers at the saloon last night, so carefully rationed, had left him worse off than six, or nine. He sure hadn't slept any better for cutting back.

"Yeah," he said, with a monumental effort. "Once she comes out of her shell."

"Family resemblance, maybe?" she said, with a sly smile.

He didn't bother to correct her; he just looked away, focusing on Jas. That much, at least, he could enjoy. Jas skipping through the meadow grasses, back and forth across the path, Archimedes jumping along with her as she sang some song he only caught snatches of. It sounded like a distortion of one of those clapping games kids were always playing. He knew a few of them.

"I can take care of the treehouse," he said, trying to sound casual about it. "You probably have a dozen other things to deal with."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of her shoulders lift in a shrug. "Nah. I got all the watering done this morning. This is my budgeted project for the day. Part of it, at least. Shouldn't take too long."

Well, he'd tried.

"Though I have to say," she said, coming to a stop beneath the treehouse, right beside the pile of lumber, "I think this is a little much for some hand holds."

Some of it was for her fences, but he wasn't about to tell her that outright. "Figured a full ladder would be sturdier. She's not exactly going to get smaller, and if I ever have to go up after her again, I don't want to fear for my life."

Lydia chuckled, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Fair enough." She set her backpack down against the tree trunk. "You have a plan, then?"

It went easier after that. When she was focused on something, she wasn't so chatty; she said only what was needed to work out each new problem they ran into, only enough to make sure that neither of them were in the way when one of them was cutting a piece of lumber, assembling the ladder. Jas clambered up and down the nearby boulder for a while, teasing Archimedes when he couldn't follow her up, before eventually settling in a patch of grass with a book. The dog lolled beside her, apparently perfectly content.

"Okay," Lydia said, eyeing the handholds, "let's get it sort of in the right place, and then I can get up there and nail it down." She hooked a hammer and bag of nails to her belt.

They got the ladder upright, braced against the tree trunk, and then, quick as a flash, Lydia scrambled up the old handholds. Once she was safely seated above, Shane eased the ladder into place.

Lydia glanced around before she started hammering. "I can't believe all my old doodles are still up here. Wow, I...was not great at coloring inside the lines."

"I wasn't going to say it, but yeah. You're not exactly an artist."

She snorted. Seemed like everything he meant as an insult, or a judgment, she took as a joke. Or maybe she just didn't read into every word other people sent her direction, the way he did. Must be nice.

"I'm not," she agreed, unfazed. She double-checked the position of the ladder—Shane kept it braced against the ground—and then fished out a nail and began to hammer it in. "Forgot Granddad carved his initials up here, too. Can't believe he managed to climb this old thing."

"B.I.V.," he recalled.

"Bernard Isaiah Vesela." Her mouth tugged down. She moved on to the next nail. "He did the junimo carvings, too. I just tried to fill them in."

"Junimo," Shane repeated.

"Yeah. Forest spirits." She sighed. "Probably a lot like Sticky Mud, I guess."

He didn't really know what to say to that. Nothing nice, probably. Nothing reassuring. That wasn't his thing. He kept his mouth shut, and she didn't speak again, continuing to fix the ladder in place.

"All right," she said finally. "Moment of truth."

She hooked the hammer back to her belt and started the climb down. The ladder didn't so much as wobble, firmly braced between ground and tree.

"Perfect," she declared, though she'd clearly lost some of her earlier sunniness.

"Is it done?" Jas called, jumping to her feet.

Shane saw the way Lydia tried to hitch up her smile. It felt like watching some private, painful struggle. It felt like every moment he'd tried to do exactly the same thing, usually for Jas, like someone was holding up a mirror to his own face. He looked away.

"All done," Lydia confirmed. "Come test it out, will you?"

Jas squealed with delight and ran over. Archimedes followed at a more sedate pace, clearly worn out from his earlier exertions. As easily as Lydia had scaled the handholds, Jas climbed the ladder, miniature backpack bouncing on her shoulders. There was a happy sigh from above them as she settled in.

"This is a perfect place to read," she declared, and stuck her head out the window to wave down at them. "Thanks, Miss Lydia! Thanks, Shane!"

Shane scuffed a foot through the dirt. It'd been a long time since she'd seemed so happy. "Sure, kid."

Lydia's smile looked a little steadier when Jas vanished back inside. "She's sure got a handle on life's simple pleasures." She nudged the remaining lumber with her foot. "Lots left over here. I'll help you cart it back when she's ready to go home."

No putting it off any longer. "It's for your fences," he said. "They're pretty rough in places."

She looked up at him, head tipped a bit to the side, frowning now. "What?"

"You spent a lot of time helping me look for her last weekend, and...this." He gestured vaguely at the treehouse. "I owe you."

She huffed out a breath, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "That's...nice, but it's not necess—"

"I don't want Jas to climb one of those things and then it breaks beneath her, okay?" He picked up a bundle of the lumber. "Kids getting stabbed with broken old fences is bad."

He didn't like the look in her eyes. It was too soft by far, and she was fighting a smile at this point, rather than trying to prop it up. She was going to get the wrong idea from this, clearly.

"Okay," she said, nodding. "Let's fix some fences, then. Archimedes, stay with your new best friend, traitor."

The dog barked once and settled at the base of the ladder. Lydia picked up a bundle of lumber, too. Coming this way, he saw that the thin path trod through the grass by feet actually led to a gate, one that came out on the hard-packed dirt framed by fencing.

Taking a look around at the fences, she let out a long, tired sigh. "Jeez. You're right. I cut back a lot of the weeds, but...it's still a mess."

It was too similar to that instant just moments ago, when the mask on her face had slipped. He saw too much he recognized there. Someone who was overwhelmed. Someone who was underwater.

"No offense," he said, "but it seems like you've really got your hands full."

She huffed, leaned down to put the lumber on the ground,  and straightened up, knuckling her back. "That obvious, huh?"

"All this was overgrown a few months ago. No one had so much as set foot on the property in years. It was all just weeds and woods."

She folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at him. "That so?"

"That's what Marnie said, anyway," Shane clarified. He was not about to admit to his midnight wanderings.

"Yeah, well, I'm working on it." She sounded a little defensive, for once. She certainly looked it. "It's just going to take more than a season."

He considered letting it drop, starting in on the fences, but he was...curious. Morbidly, maybe. All this time, all these weeks, she'd been unrelenting in her attempts to ingratiate herself with the town. Even with him, even though he'd kept trying to send her scurrying. He'd had one perception of her, of a relentlessly friendly person, but this was slowly revealing another, different one. One that he liked better, actually. That look that had crossed her face as she sat in the old treehouse, the way her mood had dimmed afterward…

Maybe they were right, and misery really did love company. Maybe he just wanted to know that someone else had figured out how to fake it. Maybe he wanted lessons.

"How'd it end up getting dumped on you, anyway?" he pressed.

Her voice hardened. "Granddad died. Obviously."

"Right," he said, pushing onward despite the warning in her face, "but why you?"

"Fuck, is it that obvious I have no idea what I'm doing? You think I don't deserve the land or something? Was Marnie hoping to buy it?"

So she could get upset about something. Angry, even.

"Not that I know of," he said.

She glared, hazel eyes fierce, shoulders up around her ears.

"Just seems like it would've gone to one of your parents," he said, shrugging. "That's all."

She laughed—not like before. It was a cutting sound, furious. "Dad's the one who left it this way. He doesn't deserve it."

He waited, listening. Interested, despite the way she was looking at him, which indicated a clear desire to stab him to death.

She let out a low breath, visibly tried to compose herself. "Did I do something to piss you off? There a reason you're picking a fight with me?"

"I asked a question," he corrected. "I wasn't picking a fight."

"Forgive me for interpreting it that way, but it seems like your default state of being, frankly."

"Just curious. That's all."

He felt her eyes on him as he moved over to one of the busted sections of fence, assessing what needed to be done. After a moment, she followed.

"Needs to be rebuilt entirely here," he said.

She nodded. "I cleared some fallen debris off this section. Probably what caused it."

They went to work in a new, strained silence, cutting and framing. After the second section had been repaired, and Lydia was holding a few boards in place for him to hammer, she spoke again, like she couldn't take the tension any longer.

"Dad hated this place. Hated growing up here, hated living in the middle of nowhere, hated the work. So Granddad willed it to me. Only problem was, I was nine."

Shane considered. "So your dad was supposed to upkeep it until you could take over."

"Yeah. He just...couldn't be fucked, I guess."

He snorted despite himself; it'd been hard, half an hour ago, to imagine her using that kind of language, but his pushiness had exposed some other side of her.

"If I'd realized he wasn't looking after it, I'd have come sooner." She trailed off, took another hopeless glance around. "But I didn't," she added under her breath, almost like she'd forgotten he was there, like she was talking to herself. "So all I can do now is fix it." Visibly, she straightened: shoulders squaring, chin lifting.

She'd alluded to magic, to spirits, but to him, this seemed like magic. A weird round alien that lived in the woods wasn't capable of this.

It was clear how much she missed her grandfather. Family that'd been gone most of her life, now, but in these last few moments she'd worn the grief like it was fresh. And maybe, in other ways, it was. Maybe her dad's actions had reopened the wounds. But she was persevering.

"You could rent it out," he pointed out, lining up another nail. "Sell it, even."

She pulled a face, nose wrinkling. "Never." And then, hesitating, "Well. Not yet, anyway. If I do everything I can and still can't turn a profit, then...I guess I'll have to be realistic. Hand it off to someone who knows what they're doing. I don't know if I could bear it." She took a deep breath. "He gave me this place. I was sick of my job—it was making me sick, honestly—but more than that…" She cleared her throat. "You ever lose someone like that, and just want to be close to them again? This is where I feel closest to him."

He nodded, a little unwillingly. "Yeah. I get that."

She looked a question at him over the fence. He didn't have to answer; he knew by now that she didn't push, not like that—not like him. She pushed for a hello, maybe, or an acknowledgment, or a few minutes of small talk, but not for this.

Still. She'd revealed something that hurt her, and he hadn't made it easy. Turnabout was fair play.

"Jas's parents," he said. He meant to make that a sentence, meant to add a verb at the end. It stuck in his throat, though, unpracticed as it was. "Guess I'm lucky. She's still small enough to cart around with me wherever, mostly."

She sat back on her heels. "Shit. Your brother? Sister?"

"Nah. Just...friends." That didn't seem sufficient to describe them. It never had. He'd made his peace with it, as much as he'd made peace with anything. "She's my goddaughter. Unfortunately for her."

She didn't argue with that, and he appreciated it. Everyone had rushed to reassure him at the beginning, told him Jas was lucky to have him, but what did they know? They hadn't seen what he would become. How low he would sink. How much better Patrick and Charlotte had made him; how much worse he was, a shell, now that they were gone.

She looked back toward the treehouse, back toward where they'd left Jas.

"Recent?" she said.

"About a year ago." He wasn't about to tell her the exact date. He doubted the resulting pitying look would be good for his health.

He braced himself for what came next, regardless. He'd always hated the condolences. They were awkward. They didn't help. Any religious platitudes only made him angry; any promises that things would get better eventually seemed empty. Things would never get better, because they would never be the way they were.

"Poor Jas," she murmured. "No wonder."

"Yeah, I'd act up too if my parents died and left me with someone like me."

She looked back to him, eyes softening. "It's not you, though. You could be the perfect person...the perfect substitute parent...and she'd still want them, at least sometimes."

They'd been crouched over this pile of lumber, no longer building a fence, for several minutes now. He sat down in the dirt, giving his knees a break.

"That what happened to you?"

She smiled, but it had a grim edge. "Dad wasn't any substitute, if that's what you're asking. And yeah, I bet I was a brat for a few years." She sat back, too, looped her arms around her knees and hugged them to her chest. "And obviously we've had our disagreements, but I still love him. He did what he could. We all have a limit." She rubbed a hand over her eyes, smearing a little dirt over her face. "He lost his dad, same time I lost Granddad. Everybody has their own grief."

That was true, sometimes. Sometimes, he had his grief. And other times he had his resentment, or his anger, or—worst of all, maybe—nothing at all. Just a little girl to raise and no idea how to do it. No idea how to live to do it.

But at least she didn't tell him she was sorry. At least she didn't tell him it would be okay, someday. She just sat with him in the quiet, both embroiled in their own thoughts, and for once, it was sort of nice to have company.

Off in the distance, there came a strange, hollow, piping call. Lydia lifted her head from her knees, turned her face toward it, smile creeping over his face.

"That's the sound," she said. "The one I was telling you about. It's probably just some weird bird, but Granddad always said it was the junimos." She laughed a little. "I'd convinced myself I imagined it, or maybe he ran off at night and made it to entertain me. But then, the first night here...I heard it."

She glanced at him, questioning, a trace of worry on her face. Like she thought she was still imagining it.

He wasn't about to agree to forest spirits, but she wasn't totally crazy, either. He could give her that much.

"You're right," he agreed. "That definitely sounds like a noise a weird bird would make."

She laughed, loud and relieved, and knocked the dust from her hands. "Okay," she said, businesslike and focused again. "Under threat of attack by weird birds, we should probably get this show on the road."

Wordlessly, he raised the hammer. She held the boards in place. Occasionally, they heard Jas laugh or shout down to Archimedes from the treehouse; occasionally, as the sun sank lower, that far-off call repeated.

Weird bird or not, he sort of liked it.