#it's a surprise to everyone including me

[warpedpuppeteer]

Wip Wednesday for yet another new fic I started because impulse control whomst??

Anyways this time I'm trying a fic full of cliché lovable tropes! We've got a high school au with nerd Eddie in glasses, sweetheart jock Buck and fake dating amongst other things! We also have Linda and Terry as Eddie's bffs because I love them 🤷🏽

Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin when he closes his locker door and is met with a “Hey, Diaz” and their school's star football player leaning in way too close into his personal space. He adjusts his glasses nervously, looking around to see if this is some sort of bullying attempt but sees none of the other players around. “Buckley. How can I help you?”. “C'mon man, you know everyone calls me Buck”, the tall blonde replies with a playful whine. Eddie doesn't have time for this. His next class starts in a few minutes. “And I go by Eddie. What do you want?”. Buck's face lights up like a puppy and he crowds Eddie against the locker. Which okay, Eddie's not that much shorter than him and he's by no means skinny but Buck is definitely bulkier and it makes him feel much smaller than he actually is. He doesn't really wanna think about why that makes him feel good. He tries his best not to rear back or flinch as Buck leans down so that his face is close to his. His eyes are such a pretty shade of blue, Eddie's brain unhelpfully supplies. “Listen, Coach has been nagging me about picking my grades up and you're like one of the smartest people I know in our grade. Do you think you can help me out with some tutoring after school? I'll pay you for the time of course”. Of course. What else would someone like Buck want with someone like Eddie. “Depends on how much you're offering. I do have work after school, so we'll have to work around that. And we have to do it at your place”. Something flickers across Buck's face at that but it's gone way too fast for Eddie to decipher. He shrugs and says “Works for me. I can pick you up from work and head to my house. 3 days a week sounds good to you?”.

Eddie can work with that. He'll have the remaining days to do his own studying. Plus, money's money and he can save up faster now to finally get a car for himself. Also, Buck is possibly the least offensive jock in their school anyways so he'll probably be alright.

Probably.

Some inspo pics:

[seiwas]

instagram dump with your selfship! (model/actor!au sel x satoru ver.)

seltoru behind-the-scenes dump — work days and winding down~

liked by sstoru and others

sellybelly last week's shenanigans ✨ 1: shoot day! 📸 2: nails sponsored by mr. gojo satoru 💅 3. loved our outfits for the awards 🥺 (thank you dior! 💫) 4. that feeling when you change into home clothes tho >> 5. maybe he's pretty sometimes 🙄 6. caught him in the act (texting me during a meeting 😭) 7. satoru in hair & makeup (some good sleep he's had there 🤧) 8. our lil treat to end the week 🍓😋 9. phone hijacked by mr. gojo satoru 🧿🧿 👁️👁️

sstoru knew you were obsessed with me 😌

thanks for the tag my love @tteokdoroki this was so so fun 🥺 tagging: anyone else who wants to do this!! it's so pretty and so fun 🥺

[age-of-portal-masters]

skytober victory lap - days 29-31

31/31 completed,, at what cost? i have drawn more things for skylanders in this one month than i have in years LMAOOO

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[sad-scarred-sassy]

The tragedy of Spring - Chapter 7

Summary: Settling into the new Spring Court, Feyre has a conversation with the High Lord of Spring.

Notes: I couldn't stop writing this so here is an early update. I hope you enjoy the Elucien cameo on this one!

Tag list: @foxcort @viktoriaashleyyx @ninthcircleofprythian

Read on ao3👇 or keep reading below the cut

“Mama?” Nyx’s little voice sounded from her arms, he had finally calmed down and his soft call had brought her back from her thoughts.

“Look baby” She half-heartedly pointed at some deer grazing contentedly in the distance and Nyx giggled. He was in a far better mood than he had been when they had first arrived here, and she was glad. They were standing in a big room with a huge arched window in the new Spring Court manor, if you could call the intricate villa created out of stone, connected by bridges and tunnels a “manor”. If Feyre had the mental capacity to enjoy the view she would, much like she could see Nyx was enjoying it from the huge window that separated them from the luscious Spring forest in all its glory. She would have never imagined what the forest could look like without those horrible foreign creatures stalking the lands, she had never seen the Spring Court during actual peace until now.

For a moment Feyre did lose herself as she stared at the landscape, the multiple levels of buildings intertwined with nature, coexisting with the enormous trees, with the crystalline waterfalls that cut the land, wildflowers and tended gardens mixing with each other, all alive and thriving with so many faeries of all types, working, living, laughing together. It was the most wonderful thing she had ever seen.

Her brief trance was cut short when she heard Tamlin’s voice give some more orders to his people. Her eyes traveled to his broad back facing her.

“Please, have a room ready for our guest” Tamlin said finally and the fae with green scales nodded before taking one last look at Feyre and exciting the room. Only then Feyre noticed the furniture. It was a drawing room.

She braced herself, tightening her grip on Nyx’s body, bracing his weight on her hip. When Tamlin hesitated before looking back at her she felt a cold sensation run to her stomach. Why did she think this was a good idea?

“I’m sorry, Tamlin” She blurted out as he finally turned to her. He paused.

His emerald eyes studied her for a second and she stiffened her posture.

“I will leave as soon as possible, I-I shouldn’t have come here.” She continued, her voice was rough from crying so much but she couldn’t stop the words. “This place- This place is beautiful, wonderful. It was a mistake coming here” She repeated.

Tamlin frowned slightly, then he walked slowly towards her, his hair still tied in a knot, messy. His clothes were slightly dirty and wrinkled. He had been doing hard labor when she arrived, she now realized.

He stopped just in front of her and Nyx, her eyes didn’t leave his even though they were so intense she had the unbearable urge to look elsewhere. Her face flushed as she imagined what he must be thinking.

Her, coming here, with his enemy’s son in her arms, crying for help, barefoot and looking half crazed. She almost laughed bitterly at the image.

Tamlin shook his head slightly. “There’s nowhere else I would rather you be than here” He startled her by saying, almost as a whisper.

Before she could say a word his green eyes dropped towards Nyx’s big blue eyes staring right back at him. The toddler smiled a small toothed smile at him and Tamlin’s features softened inadvertently. He smiled back.

His gaze lifted back up to hers then, and she felt her heart pound in her chest for an unknown reason.

“He has your eyes” He only said.

Feyre let go of a strained sob-laugh.

Tamlin only stared at her some more, concern painted all over his face and she couldn’t hold his gaze anymore, it felt too raw, she felt too pathetic. She looked out the floor-to-ceiling window, trying to hold herself together.

“Feyre” He tried. “Tell me what happened” He urged a bit too softly. She hated it. Hated the care in his words. She deserved this, all of what was happening to her, how couldn’t he see it, how didn’t he agree?

“I won’t bother you for long” She said, still not meeting his piercing eyes. He sighed.

“Can you sit down for me, at least?” He pointed at the couches surrounding the fireplace with his thumb. She bit the inside of her cheek as she nodded.

Her bare feet paddled through the wooden floor before feeling the soft rug on her achy soles. She was so tired.

She sat down on the couch as he took the loveseat right next to it. Nyx was already yawning when she cradled him on her lap. She tucked his wings and pushed his black hair back from his soft forehead as he drifted to sleep.

“I’ve already sent reinforcements to guard the borders. You’re safe here” He said softly and she nodded, not meeting his eyes. She knew she should tell him, she owed it to him to be clear about the actual risks of giving her refuge. But the words felt so heavy on her mouth, so foreign and unreal.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” He said. “Just… enough to be prepared. Does he know you’re here?”

She finally reunited their eyes and somehow it was even more unbearable. Shame and guilt and embarrassment flooded her veins when looking at him. She took a steading breath.

“I don’t know” She said. “I don’t think he knows where I am yet. But I think he will figure it out soon” She wet her dry lips before looking at him again. “Tamlin, it’s worse than I thought, I honestly don’t- I’m scared he will come and destroy-“

“Don’t worry about that”

“But it is very likely, I have his heir-“

“You have your son.” He said matter-of-factly and she swallowed hard. “Trespassing would be considered an act of war, and I don’t think he’s in the position to start one” He said calmly. “Either way, we are prepared.” He rubbed his hands on his pants. “You should rest, let me take you to your room” He stood up and she simply nodded, picking herself up along with her baby as she let him winnow her just to appear right in front of a wooden door.

He grabbed the knob, his body closer to hers than he had been since she arrived, she could feel the heat emanating from him, his manly scent invading her senses which she ignored. He paused.

“Feyre, what did he do?” He said so low she felt it coursing through her body. His green eyes were digging themselves into hers so deeply, she couldn’t help herself anymore, he was looking at her like he needed to know, and she needed to have the truth out of her system.

She took a calming breath before she spoke. “I found out he made me seal a deal with him Under The Mountain when I was drunk on faerie wine” She said with a small voice. Tamlin’s body tensed instantly, every cell listening carefully as she spoke. She gulped and took a breath, holding Nyx closer as her extremities trembled. “He created our mating bond with a bargain” She said, the words so cold and nauseating that bile rose up to her throat. Tamlin straightened at her words, face unreadable, eyes moving quickly as he took the information, face turning from lost to shocked to outraged.

His mouth opened and closed, grabbing the door handle so hard it was a surprise it hadn’t broken yet.

“H-how” He managed. “Hybern… the king should have broken it along with the other one” He blinked.

“I don’t know… I think he may have thought he was breaking both when we only knew about the first one… still I don’t know the ways he managed it and why exactly he did it, other than…” She trailed off as she looked down at her son sleeping beautifully in her arms. Tamlin’s eyes only widened. She could see the battle going on inside his head, he looked like he wanted to crush something, someone, but he surprised her when he took a steading breath and gulped his anger down.

“I’m sorry” He said and she only stared at him. “We will talk about it more if you want, now, please rest.” He finally opened the door. “If you need me just ring the bell next to your bed” He stepped back as she stepped inside the spacious room.

“Thank you” She said. He bowed his head slightly and then he closed the door, leaving her and her baby alone

—

When Lucien Vanserra finally found the High Lord of the Spring Court in the depths of the forest, shirtless and half-ferally cutting tree trunks with an ax that had obviously lost all sharpness years ago, making the wood splinter instead of slicing through it, he knew for sure they had come to the right place.

“What did that oak ever do to you?” He asked as a way of greeting, but Tamlin didn’t even look at him as he continued on. There was a silent rage in him he had never seen before, and he honestly felt bad for those logs of wood.

“What are you doing Tamlin?” He tried again.

“I’m cutting wood” He mumbled, as he exploded another trunk almost as thick as his torso.

“In the middle of the night” He pointed out. Tamlin simply ignored him.

Lucien sighed. “Is she okay?” He asked and Tamlin finally paused for a second, before he delivered a final blow to the last remaining log, making splitters fly across the air, getting stuck in his hair.

“She’s resting” He said, breathing much less heavily than he should be for the amount of work he had put in. “Do you know everything?” His eyes didn’t meet Lucien’s as he began to load a cart with all the wood he had exploded.

“Elain was the one who saw it for her,” Lucien explained. The whole thing was still hard to process. Lucien had seen plenty of vile things during his long life, but a betrayal of this magnitude was something that would make Beron hesitate. When Elain had explained to him and Nesta what had happened, he knew they had to leave the Night Court immediately. He had winnowed them to Spring almost instantly, after trying to get Nesta to come with them. She had declined with a determination he had learned to never cross when it came with Archerons. Elain had known Feyre would be here even before arriving, while Lucien still struggled to believe it. He had spent hours looking for Tamlin as his mate tried to gather where exactly her sister was located, since no one was willing to tell her.

“How are you feeling?” He asked his friend as he helped him with the logs of wood. Judging by the haggard look on his face he wasn’t taking the events too well.

“I’m not the one you should be asking that” He replied.

“Quit diverting my questions. I can see right through you, and you look like shit”

“Then it was a stupid question to begin with” He replied and Lucien granted him that it was.

Tamlin sat down on the floor, back resting on the wooden cart, grabbing a used and abused handkerchief from his back pocket and cleaning his face with it. Lucien brushed his hands together, getting rid of the splinters, and sat down next to him.

“How didn’t I see it?” Tamlin said to himself, looking at a distance.

“Why would you? It looked like a real mating bond, even if it was a bit… odd”

He had always thought their bond seemed a bit unbalanced, to put it in some way, but he had assumed it was a natural occurrence to Rhysand’s overly controlling nature.

Tamlin sighed loudly. “She has nowhere to go” He continued. It was a truth Lucien had known for a long time, how Feyre’s deeds had isolated her from the rest of Prythian. Now he realized it probably hadn’t been pure coincidence.

“She has you” He said. The High Lord shook his head.

“I also failed her before”

“You can make up for it now. Will you let her stay?” He asked him, but he already knew the answer. Tamlin’s hands gripped the piece of cloth tightly.

“I would never turn her away”

“He’s going to come, one way or another” Lucien said as a matter of fact.

“Let him” He spoke eerily. Lucien knew that determined gleam in his green eyes, he had only ever seen him look like that when it came to Feyre and no one else. Lucien rested his head on the cart on his back as he took a breath.

“Elain told me he made her do that promise back when she was a human… back in Under the Mountain. Why?” Tamlin tensed instantly. It was confusing, the fact that Rhysand chose a mere powerless human to mate and bear his heirs, as if he somehow knew that she would be one of the most powerful beings in Prythian. He would have to discuss this with Elain later, try to figure out what else she can gather from this whole ordeal, what did Rhysand know beforehand?

“It makes no sense” Tamlin rubbed his eyes. “I should have fought harder for her back then” His voice was hoarse.

Lucien shook his head slightly. “How?” He knew he still faulted himself for everything that had happened to her back in that gods’ awful place. “You were overpowered, we all were”

Tamlin shook his head, lost in thought, probably reliving everything. “I should have sent her further away with her family, I should have-”

“Tam” Lucien cut him off but the male barely registered it. His green eyes were bloodshot, his body so tense it was almost trembling. “Listen to me” He said with a stern voice and his friend’s gaze finally met his. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this, not this” Lucien said, holding his eyes unflinchingly. Tamlin understood what he meant then, he could see he remembered all the times he had also looked Lucien in the eyes and told him those exact words whenever he felt like giving up after Jesminda, when the guilt had been too much to bear. He wouldn’t let him fall down that path too, not again.

“You fucked up, yes. You lost her trust once. Don’t make the same mistake” Lucien placed a hand on his shoulder. Then he stood up from the ground and offered his hand. “She’s here for a reason, Tamlin. She didn’t hesitate, she took her baby and winnowed here without a second thought”

His friend looked at him for a long moment before taking his hand as he helped him up to his feet again.

“Thank you” He said quietly but not weakly. Lucien only nodded.

“Now, quit moping and get some rest. Gotta be prepared to kick some bat’s ass if they dare present themselves” He half joked. “And knowing them, they won't take long”

—

Feyre was sitting in the bed while Elain combed her hair when the thought lit up inside her mind like a wildfire.

“Did he know?” She blurted out to her sister, who paused her movements to look at her.

“What?” She asked softly.

“That I would die and get the High Lord’s powers” She blurted. “D-did he know?”

“I don’t know” Elain said, dropping the comb on her lap.

Feyre’s mind had not stopped for one moment since she had arrived, piecing clues and conversations together as if she was finally seeing things for the first time. When Elain had finally found her she had discovered her sitting on her bed, wrapped under a towel, looking at the wall, lost in thought. This idea in particular had arrived to her like a stone falling on her head.

“He told Amarantha about me” Feyre said. “He had made Tamlin and Lucien beg on their knees for his silence, but then he told her anyway”

She looked at Elain’s face, her sister was looking at her with a mix of sadness and anger in her beautiful brown eyes.

“I can try to look.” She said. “But it may take me longer, since I can’t touch him” She said, and Feyre only nodded.

Things didn’t add up, and the fact that he had been the one to set things in motion for her to go save Tamlin made too much sense now. All of the things she had never questioned herself, had never questioned him, were now coming back to her in waves, as if she had woken up from a glamour he had placed upon her.

“Feyre” Her sister called her. “You need to rest, we will figure this out tomorrow” She caressed her hair. Feyre’s eyes landed on her sleeping child in his crib.

“Elain, I don’t think-” She swallowed hard. “I don’t see what’s the point of anything anymore”

“Don’t talk like that” Her older sister said, but Feyre couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t stop the words coming out of her mouth.

“It’s true, he destroyed everything I am, everything I was. I- I couldn’t even recognize myself anymore and I thought at least I had him, at least I had a mate and I had a family. I finally had a family and it was all fake” She couldn’t help but sob as she said the last words and Elain held her to her chest. Feyre hated crying, hated feeling weak, and that was all she felt for so long now, she didn’t know who she was, who she was supposed to be, what she was supposed to fight for. Did she even deserve to fight?

“Listen to me” Her sister held her tightly to her chest. “He didn’t destroy you” She said as she grabbed her with both hands and with surprising strength pushed her to look at her fawn-brown colored eyes. “He tried to own you, he tried to tame you and he couldn’t do it” She said, her face the definition of determination. “He will pay for what he’s done, and you-” She looked at her directly into her eyes. “You will thrive”

Feyre felt silent tears sliding down her face as her sister spoke to her in a way she had never done before.

“You have a family. You have Lucien, Nesta and me. You have him” She directed her gaze to the sleeping baby and Feyre felt the fire in her gut, the deep maternal need to protect him, to never let him go. “And you have Tamlin” Elain said more quietly, making Feyre’s eyes snap back to hers. “He will not let anything happen to you, or Nyx. I know it.”

“I don’t think I deserve it” She said with a small voice, speaking the darkest thoughts in her mind. “These people Elain, I’ve wronged them so horribly, I don’t deserve their help, their care. I don’t deserve you or Lucien or Nesta. I don’t deserve Tamlin and I certainly don’t deserve Nyx” She let the words spill from her and Elain only listened, her eyes wide and glossy.

“Then make yourself worthy again” Elain said calmly. “Look these people in the eyes and tell them you’re sorry. Help them as they help you.” Elain smiled at her softly. “Right the wrongs, find your power again. Do it for him” She nodded at her son again. “Do it for you”.

Feyre only nodded her head softly before Elain embraced her again and she let her, let herself cry and be comforted by her older sister in a way that she had never let herself before.

After a long time of crying and Elain telling her it would all be okay, Feyre finally managed to fall into a deep sleep, feeling like a child in her sister’s arms but knowing that when the day came, she would find the woman she had been before, the one who had found the strength to enter a cursed mountain and save the one she loved, the woman who had endured unimaginable things and persevered, the woman who had learned the truth and had taken a decision to leave, she would find her and she would pull her from the inside and she would not break.

Not anymore.

[hunxi-after-hours]

bai liu: if I met my younger self in a scenario, I simply would not kill him bai liu: instead I would lie, cheat, exploit, and emotionally manipulate my younger self into working for me bai liu: it's called profit maximization 👍

[spotaus]

Late Night quick thing (New Age Sillies)

Bad news: That joke post about including Reset + Orchid is definitely not canon. (I legit got sad thinking about Reset being in a universe where Orchid isn't- because their stories are so so intertwined- but Nightmare 100% would NOT risk the whole twins exploding Error's soul thing.)

Good news: This means I COULD include Kane (Reset's older brother who usually dies in timelines where Reset is born) and use it to develope his character a bit more! Also! Perhaps a Blue × Dream kiddo is finally in the stars for me to design?

[fakeoutbf]

five stages of grief but it’s five stages of social anxiety

[daily-hanamura]

[altruistic-meme]

the worst of the storm should be passed me now, thankfully, and the damage i could see outside isn't too bad, so yay

[br1ghtestlight]

i dont actually know when the american election is just sometime within the next few days right

[thaliasthunder]

do u guys really think nico will see the ghost of jason since the elysium wasnt in the tsats map?

[brainrotfm]

you are getting very sleepy . . . . . . . .

come one come all to sydney's first ever performance for kinktober 2023 ! introducing: the sideshow spectacular !

ignore the delay to my announcement and marvel at the wonders waiting for you this month as we traverse the perverse and erotic. all contributions to kinktober will be reader self insert fics. if you are interested in being added to a taglist for this event, please do not hesitate to reach out via ask or private messages ! any updates to schedule or changes to teasers will be edited here and reblogged. continue below to see the teasers for the updates taking place each week !

thank you @cafekitsune for the dainty chain divider !

☞ week one: yandere!ryomen sukuna + medical play ( located here ! )

☞ week two: ryomen sukuna / yuuji itadori + voyeur + threesome

☞ week three: boyfriend!nanami kento + exhibitionism

☞ week four: ryomen sukuna / yuuji itadori + domme!reader

☞ week five: a super special secret surprise !

[dapg-otmebytheballs]

Haven't watched the video yet but it looks fun! I also haven't gotten back to a lot of tag games so sorry for being kinda absent guys! Feeling kinda ill and generally not great 😅 should be back to regularly scheduled fun soon enough

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

If there is at least one thing I can credit FE for doing better than Tales in localization, it's not trying to actively go out of their way for an entire game to avoid subtext or direct text between two men that is romantic or implied romantic. Funny when it's so present that the attempt doesn't even work; infuriating that it was attempted to begin with.

So as much as I often have issues with some of FE's localizations, at least they have a leg up on loc Tales for that.

[confetti-cat]

Each, All, Everything

Words: 6.5k

Rating: PG

Themes: Friendship, Self-Giving Love, Romantic Love

(Written for the Four Loves Fairytale Retelling challenge over at the @inklings-challenge! A retelling of Nix, Nought, Nothing.)

The giant’s daughter weeps, and remembers.

—

She remembers the day her father first brought him home.

It was a bit like the times he’d brought home creatures to amuse her while he was on his journeys, away on something he called “business” but she knew was “gathering whatever good of the land he wanted”. Her father had brought back a beautiful pony, once—a small one he could nearly carry in one huge hand. One for her, and not another for his collection of horses he kept in the long stables. She wasn’t as tall as the hills and broad as the cliffs like he was, so she couldn’t carry it easily, but she heaved it up in both arms and tried nonetheless. (And—she thought this was important—stopped trying when it showed fear.) She was gentle to it, and in time, she would only need speak to it and it would come eat from her hand like a tame bird. She’d never been happier.

(The pony had grown fearful of her father. Her father grew angry with anything that wasted his time by cowering or trying to flee him. There was a terrible commotion in the stables one day, and when she sought her pony afterward, she couldn’t find him. Her father told her it was gone, back to the forest, and he’d hear no more of it if she didn’t want beaten.)

(There was a sinking little pit in her stomach that knew. But when she didn’t look for the best in her father, it angered him and saddened her, so she made herself believe him.)

The final little creature he brought one day was so peculiar. It was a human boy, small as the bushes she would sometime uproot for paintbrushes, dressed in fine green like the trees and gold like her mother’s vine-ring she wore. He seemed young, like her. His tuft of brown hair was mussed by the wind, and his dark eyes watched everything around him, wide and unsure and curious.

When he first looked at her from his perch on her father’s shoulder, he stared for a long moment—then lifted a tiny hand in a wave. Suddenly overwhelmed with hope and possibilities (a friend! Surely her father had blessed her with a small friend they could keep and not just a pet!), she lifted her own hand in a little wave and tried to smile welcomingly.

The boy stared for another long moment, then seemed to try a hesitant smile back.

“This,” boomed her father, stooping down in the mist of the morning as he waved away a low cloud with one hand, “is what I rightly bargained for. A prince, very valuable. The King of the South—curse his deceitful aims!—promised him to me.”

“He looks very fancy,” she’d said, eyes wide in wonder. “How did the king come to give him to you, Father?”

“How indeed!” the giant growled, so loud it sent leaves rattling and birds rushing to fly from their trees. He slowly lowered himself to be seated on the weathered cliff behind him and picked up his spark-stone, tossing a few felled trees into their fire-basin and beginning to work at lighting them. “Through lies and deceit from him. When he asked me to carry him across the waters I asked him for Nix, Nought, Nothing in return.”

The little boy shifted, clearly uncomfortable but afraid to move much. Her father scowled, though he meant it as a smile, and bared his yellowed teeth as he laughed.

“Imagine his countenance when he returned to find the son he’d not known he’d had was called Nix, Nought, Nothing! He tried to send servant boys, but I am too keen for such trickery. Their blood is on the hands of the liar who sent them to me.”

Such talk from her father had always unsettled her, even if he said it so forcefully she couldn’t imagine just how it wasn’t right. Judging from the way the boy curled in on himself a little, clinging meekly to her father’s tattered shirt-shoulder, he thought similarly.

“Nix, Nought, Nothing?” She observed the small prince, unsure why disappointment arose in her at the way he seemed hesitant to look at her now. “That is a strange name.”

Her father struck the rocks, the sound of it so loud it echoed down the valley in an odd, uneven manner. He shook his head as he worked, a stained tooth poking out of his lips as he struck it again and again until large sparks began alighting on the wood.

“His mother tarried christening him until the father returned, calling him such instead.” He huffed a chuckle that sounded more like a sneer, seeming to opt to ignore the creature on his shoulder for the time being. “You know the feeling, eh, Bonny girl?”

The boy tentatively looked up at her again.

The fire crackled and began to eat away at the bark and dry pine needles. A soft orange glow began to creep over it, leaving black char as it went. With a sudden, sharp breath by her father, a large flame leapt into the air.

“It is good that she did so. He is Nix, Nought, Nothing—and that he will remain.”

—

Nix Nought Nothing grew to be a fine boy. Her father treated him as well as he did the prized horses he’d taken from knights and heroes—which was to say that the boy was given decent food and a dry place to sleep and the richest-looking clothes a tailor could be terrified into giving them, which was as well as her father treated anything.

Never a day went by that she was not thankful and with joy in her heart at having a friend so near.

They spent many days while her father was away exploring the forest—Nix would collect small rocks and unusual leaves and robin’s-eggs and butterflies, and she would lift him into high trees to look for nests, and sometimes stand in the rivers and splash the waterfalls at him just to laugh brightly at his gawking and laughing and sputtering.

Some days she wished she was more of a proper giant. She wasn’t large enough for it to be very comfortable giving him rides on her shoulder once he’d grown. She was hesitant to look any less strong, however, so she braided her golden curls to keep them from brushing him off and simply kept her head tilted away from him as they walked through the forests together.

He could sit quite easily and talk by her ear as they adventured. Perhaps she would never admit it, but she liked that. Most of the time.

“I’m getting your shoulder wet,” he protested, still sopping wet from the waterfall. He kept shifting around, trying to sit differently and avoid blotching her blue dress with more water than he already had. “I hope you’re noticing this inconveniences you too?”

“Yes,” Bonny laughed. “You’re right. I hope there’s still enough sun to dry us along the way back. Father won’t be pleased otherwise.”

“Exactly. Perhaps you should have thought that through before drenching me!” he huffed, but she could hear the grin in his tone even if she couldn’t quite turn her head to see it. He flicked his arm toward her and sent little droplets of water scattering across the side of her face.

Her shoulders jerked up involuntarily as the eye closest to him shut and she tried to crane her neck even further away, chuckling. Nix made a noise like he’d swallowed whatever words were on his tongue, clutching to her shoulder and hair to steady himself.

“You’d probably be best not trying to get me while I’m giving you a ride?” Bonny suggested, unable to help a wry smile.

“Yes. Agreed. Apologies.” His words came so stilted and readily that she had to purse her lips to keep in a laugh. As soon as he relaxed, his voice grew a tad incredulous. “Though—wait, I can’t exactly do anything once I’m down. Are you trying to escape my well-earned retaliation?”

“I would never,” she assured him, no longer trying to hide her smile. “I’ll put you in a tree when we get back and you can splash me all you like.”

Somehow, his voice was amused and skeptical and unimpressed by the notion all at once.

“Really? You’d do that?” he asked, sounding as if he were stifling a smirk.

She shrugged—gently, of course, but with a little inward sense of mischievousness—and he yelped again at the movement.

“Well, it would take a lot of water to get a giant wet,” she reasoned. “I doubt you’ll do much. But yes, for you, I would brave it.”

He chuckled, and she ventured a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Bonny and brave,” he said, looking up at her with a little smile and those dark eyes glimmering with light. “You are a marvel.”

It would probably be very noticeable to him if she swallowed awkwardly and glanced away a bit in embarrassment. She tried not to do that, and instead gave him a crooked little smile in return.

“Hm,” was all she could say. “And what about you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m Nothing.” The jest was terrible, and would still be terrible even if she hadn’t heard it numerous times. “But you are truly a gem among girls.”

If by gem he meant a giantess who still had to enlist his help disentangling birds from her hair, then perhaps. She snorted.

“I don’t know how you would know. You don’t know any other girls.”

“Why would I need to?” His face was innocent, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth and mischief. “You’re the size of forty of them.”

The noise that erupted from her was so abrupt and embarrassingly like a snort it sent the branches trembling. She plucked him off her shoulder and set him gently on the ground so she could swat at him as gently as she could—careful not to strike him with the leaf-motifs on her ring—though it still knocked him off his feet and into the grass. He was laughing too hard to seem to mind, and she couldn’t stifle her laughs either.

“Well, you are really something,” she teased, unable to help her wide smile as she tried futilely to cast him a disapproving look.

That quieted him. He pushed himself to sit upright in the grass, and looked out at the woods ahead for a long moment.

“You think?” Nix asked quietly.

She smiled down at him.

“Yes,” she laughed softly. “Of course.” When he looked up at her, brown eyes curious, she held his gaze and hoped he could see just how glad she was to know him. “Everything, even.”

A small smile grew on his own face, lopsided and warm. He ducked his head a bit and looked away from her again, and embarrassment started to fill her—but it was worth it.

It often weighed on her heart to say that more than she did. She supposed she was the type of person who liked to show such things rather than say them.

She had a cramp in one of her shoulders from trying to carry him smoothly, but the weight on the other one—and on his—seemed far lighter.

—

She remembered the day her father came home livid.

She couldn’t figure out what had happened. Had he been wounded? Insulted? Tricked? He wouldn’t say.

He just raged. The trees bent under his wrath as he stamped them down, carving a new path through the forest. He picked up boulders and flung them at cliffsides, the noise of the impacts like thunder as showers of shattered stone flew in all directions.

She was tending to the garden a ways off—huge vines and stalks entwined their ways up poles and hill-high arbors made from towering pines, where she liked to work and admire how the sunset made the leaves glow gold—and suddenly had a sharp, sinking feeling.

Nix was still at his little shelter-house at their encampment. Her father was there.

Dread washed over her.

“Riddle me this, boy,” her father boomed, in the voice he only used when he wanted an excuse to strike something. “What is thick like glass and thin as air, cold but warm, ugly but fair? Fills the air yet never fills it, never exists but that all things will it?”

There was silence for a long moment.

...Silence. The answer was silence. Her father was trying to trick him into speaking.

Her hands curled around the bucket handle so weakly it was a surprise she didn’t drop it. Her father could crush him if he felt he had the slightest excuse.

Hush, hush, hush, her mind pleaded. Her hands shook. For your life and mine, hush—

There continued to be silence for a moment—and then, Nix must have answered. (Perhaps in jest. He tended to joke when uncertain. That would have been a mistake.)

There came the indescribable sound of a tree being ripped from its roots, and the deafening thunder of it being thrown and smashing down trees and structures.

Her whole body tensed horribly, and all she could see in her mind’s eye was nightmares.

No, she thought weakly.

Her father kept shouting. But not just shouting, addressing. Asking scathing rhetorical questions. She felt faint with relief, because her father had never wasted words on the dead.

I should have brought him with me. The thought flooded her body and left room for nothing else but dread and regret. I could have prevented this.

The stables were long and broad and old. Once, they had housed armies’ steeds and chariots. Now, they were run-down and reinforced so nothing could escape out the doors. The roof was broken off like a lid on hinges at intervals so her father could reach in to arrange and feed his horses.

Her father had seen no reason to keep the stalls clean. When one was so packed with bedding it had decomposed to soil at the floor level, the horse was moved to the next unused stall. There were so many stalls that she barely remembered, sometimes, that there were other ways of addressing the problem.

“The stable has not been cleaned in seven years,” her father boomed. “You will clean it tomorrow, or I will eat you in my stew.”

She couldn’t hear Nix’s response, but she could feel his dread.

Her father stormed away, more violently than any storm, and slowly, after the echoes of his steps faded, silence again began to hang in the air.

That night, it was hard to sleep. The next morning, it was hard to think.

She did the only thing she could think to do in such a nervous state. She brought her friend breakfast. His favorite breakfast—a roast leg of venison and a little knife he could use to cut off what he wanted of it, and fried turkey-eggs, and a modest chunk of soft brown bread.

When she arrived with it, he was still mucking out the first stall. There were hundreds ahead of him. He was only halfway to the floor of the first.

“I can’t eat,” Nix murmured, almost too quietly to hear and with too much misery to bear. “I can’t stop. But thank you.”

The pile outside the door he’d opened up was already growing too large. Of every pitchfork-full he threw out, some began to tumble back in. He was growing frustrated, and out of breath.

Why would her father raise a boy, a prince, only to eat him now? Her father was cunning; surely he’d had other plans for him. Or perhaps he really was kept like the horses, as a trophy or prize taken from the human kingdoms that giants so hated.

Was this his fate? Worked beyond reason, only to be killed?

Pity—or something stronger, perhaps, that she couldn’t name—stirred in her heart. A heat filled her veins, burning with sadness and a desire to set right. Would the world be worthwhile without this one small person in it?

No.

This wouldn’t end this way.

She called to the birds of the air and all the creatures of the forest. Her heart-song was sad and pure—so when she pleaded with them, to please hear, please come and carry away straw and earth and care for what has been neglected, they listened.

The stable was clean by the time the first stars appeared. When she set Nix gently on her shoulder afterward, he hugged the side of her head and laughed in weary relief for a long while.

—

She remembered the lake, and the tree.

“Shame on the wit who helped you,” her father had boomed. He’d inspected the stable by the light of his torch—a ship’s mast he’d wrapped the sails around the top of and drenched in oil—and found every last piece of dirt and straw gone. Had he known it was her, that she could do such a thing? She couldn’t tell. “But I have a worse task for you tomorrow.”

The lake nearest them was miles long, and miles wide, and so deep that even her father could not ford it.

“You will drain it dry by nightfall, or I will have you in my stew.”

The next morning, soon as her father had gone away past the hills, she came to the edge of the lake. She could hear the splashing before she saw it.

Nix stood knee-deep in the water, a large wooden bucket in his hands, struggling to heave the water out and into a trench he’d dug beside the shore.

When she neared him and knelt down in the sand, scanning the water and the trench and the distant, distant shoreline opposite them, Nix fell still for a moment. She looked at him, hoping he could see the apology in her eyes.

“Can I help?” she asked.

He shook his head miserably.

“Thank you. But even if we both worked all day, we couldn’t get it dry before nightfall.” He gave her a wry, sad smile, full of pain. “The birds and the creatures can’t carry buckets, I’m afraid.”

It was true. They could not take away the water.

But perhaps other things could.

She stood and drew a deep breath, and called to the fish of the rivers and lake, and to the deep places of the earth to please hear, please open your mouths and drain the lake dry.

With a tumult that shook the earth beneath them all, they did. The chasm it left in the land was great and terrible, but it was dry.

Her father was livid to see it.

“I’ve a worse job for you tomorrow,” he’d thundered at Nix as the twilight began to darken. “There is a tree that has grown from before your kind walked this land. It is many miles high, with no branches until you reach the top. Fetch me the seven eggs from the bird’s nest in its boughs, and break none, or I will eat you before the day is out.”

She found Nix at dawn the next day at the foot of the tree, staring up it with an expression more wearied than she’d ever seen before. She looked up the tree as well. It seemed to stretch up nearly to the clouds, its trunk wide and strong with not a foothold in sight. At the top, its leaves shone a faint gold in the sunlight.

“He is wrong to ask you these things,” Bonny said softly. Her words hung in the air like the sunbeams seemed to hang about the tree. There was something special about this place, some old power with roots that ran deep. “I’m very sorry for it.”

“You needn’t be,” Nix assured her. His countenance was grey, but he tried to smile. “But thank you. You’re very kind.”

She looked up the tree again. Uncertainty filled her, because this was an old tree—a strong one. Even if it could hear her, it had no obligation to listen. “Will you try?”

He laughed humorlessly. “What choice do I have?”

None. He had none.

He could not escape for long on his own—he could not be gone fast enough or hide safely enough for her father not to sniff him out. The destruction that would follow him would be far more than he would wish on the forests and villages and cities about them.

She, however, bit her lip.

She slipped the gold vine-ring off her hand, and rolled it so that it spiraled between her fingers. It was finely crafted, made to look like it was a young vine wrapping its way partly up her finger.

“This is all I have of my mother,” she said quietly. “But it will serve you better.”

Before he could speak—she knew him well enough to know that he would bid her to stop, to not lose something precious on his account (as if he weren’t?)—she whispered a birdlike song, and pleaded with the gold and the tree and the old good in the world to help them.

When she tossed the ring at the base of the tree (was it shameful that she had to quell a sadness that tried to creep into her heart?), it writhed. One end of it rooted into the ground, and suddenly it was no longer gold, but yellow-green—and the vine grew, and grew, curling around the tree as it stretched upward until it was nearly out of sight.

Nix stared at her with wide eyes and an emotion she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it made her ears warm.

She smiled slightly and stepped back, tilting her head at the vine.

“Well?” she said. He was still staring at her with that look—some mix of awestruck and like he was trying to draw together words—and it made her fold her arms lightly and smile as she looked away. She quickly looked back to him, hoping faintly that her embarrassment wasn’t obvious. “You’d best hurry. That’s still a long way up.”

He seemed to give up finding words for the moment. Nix glanced up the tree, now decked with a spiral of thick, knobby vine that looked nearby like uneven stairs.

“Give me a boost?” he asked with a bright grin. “To speed it up.”

She laughed and gently scooped him up in both hands. “A boost, or just a boost?”

He beamed at her. “As high as you can get me,” he declared, waving an arm dramatically.

She laughed and shook her head. ”Absolutely not. Ready?”

Nix nodded, and she smiled thinly and poured all her focus into a spot a good distance up the tree. With a very gentle but swift motion, she tossed him upward a bit—and he landed on his feet on the vine, one shoulder against the bark, clutching to the tree for support as he laughed.

“A marvel!” he shouted down to her as he climbed. “Never forget that!”

The sun was nearly setting when he descended with the eggs bundled in his handkerchief. He was glowing.

He triumphantly hopped down the last few feet to the ground.

A moment after he landed, a soft crack sounded. He froze.

Slowly, he drew the bundle more securely into his arms against him and looked down. There, by his foot, was a little speckled egg, half-broken in the grass.

She put a hand over her mouth. Nix clutched the rest and stared.

A grievous pain and numbness slowly filled her heart, and she knew it was filling his too.

His shoulders began to shake, and his eyes were glassy.

“Well,” he laughed weakly. ”...That’s it. That’s... that was my chance.” The distress that overtook him was like a dark wave, and it threatened to cover her too. He only shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Thank you for—for helping me.”

For everything, she didn’t give him a chance to add. He was looking at her with the eyes of one who might say that. She couldn’t afford to be overcome with the notion of saying goodbye now.

“No,” she said. Her voice was quiet, at first, but it grew more resolute. “It won’t end this way.”

He blinked up at her, still clutching the other eggs to his chest. She looked down at him, then across the stretch of forest to their home.

Without a word, she gently picked him up and set him on her shoulder. Her jaw tensed as she strode quickly through well-worn paths of the forest, walking as fast as a horse could run.

Once home, she set him down. He was still looking at her questioningly. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and she hoped he couldn’t see the anxiousness rising in her and battling with the excitement.

“I will not let him have you,” she announced firmly. The trees and hills all around were witness to her promise. “Grab what you need. We’ll leave together in the hour.”

—

She‘d barely had time to fix her hair, grab her water flask, and decide it would be best this time of year to go south.

Her father’s footsteps boomed closer across the land.

—

They fled.

They ran, and ran, and struggled and strove, and she called for the help of anything she could think of that would have mercy on them.

Her comb grew into thorns, her hairpin into a hedge of jagged spires. Neither stopped him. Her dress’s hem was in tatters and sweat poured from her brow when they were finally safe.

Her flask lay behind them, cast down and broken, its magic used up.

Her father—her father—lay stretched out motionless in the flooded plain behind them, never to rise again.

—

There was a tiny spark of hope they had that they clung to. A hope of a future, of restoration, of amending the past and pursuing peace—of a life worth living, perhaps far, far away from things worth leaving behind.

(“I’ll go to the castle,” he’d said, his voice brimming with nerves and hope and uncertainty and sadness and an eager warmth. It made her heart try to mirror all those emotions alongside him. “I can tell my mother and father who I am. I’d still recognize them, even if they don’t know me. They’ll take us in, I’m sure of it.”)

He set out into the maze of village streets, assuring her he’d ask for directions and be back promptly. She stayed back by the well at the edge of the town so not to alarm anyone, too exhausted to go another step, but full of hope for him. She would wait until he returned.

(And wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait and dread—)

The castle gardener came to draw water, and—as if she weren’t as tall as the small trees under the huge one she sat against—struck up a conversation with her about the mysterious boy who’d fallen unconscious across the threshold of the castle, asleep as if cursed to never wake up.

(The spark didn’t last long.)

—

She remembered when he could move.

“Please,” she whispered, as soft as her voice would go. “Please, if you can hear me. Wake up.”

(“Oh, dearest,” the gardener’s frail wife had murmured to her when the kind gardener brought her home to partake of a bit of supper. “I’m afraid they won’t let you in as you are. Would you let me sing you a catch as you eat?”)

The gardener’s wife was frailer by the end of it, but her heart-song could change things, like her own. Instead of towering at the heights of the houses, she was now six feet tall by human reckoning, and still thankful the castle had high halls and tall doors.

(Their daughter, a fair maiden with a shadow about her, had watched from the doorway.)

Nix Nought Nothing lay nearly motionless in the cushioned chair the castle servants had placed him in. His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was in a deep sleep.

He was still smaller than she was, but not by much. He seemed so large, or close. She could see details she’d never noticed before—his freckles, the definition of his eyelashes, the scuffs and loose threads in his tunic.

The way his head hung as if he could no longer support it.

She held him gently—oddly, now, with both her hands so small on his arms and an uncertainty of what to do now—and wept over him. She sung through her tears, her heart pleading with his very soul, but to no avail. He did not wake up.

He didn’t hear her—likely couldn’t hear her. All around him, the air was sharp and still and dead. Cursed.

Still, her heart pleaded with her, now. Try, try. Don’t stop speaking to him. Remember? He never stopped trying.

“You joke that you are nothing," she said, with every drop of earnestness in her being. "But I tell you, you are all I had, and all I had ever wished for.”

There was power in names. She knew that. But was his even a proper name? It really wasn’t—though it was all he had.

It was all she had as well. She had exhausted everything else close to her. There was nothing left to call on, to plead with, but him.

“Nix Nought Nothing,” she said softly. “Awaken, please.”

Her voice, no longer so resonant and deep with giant’s-breath, sounded foreign in her ears. It was mournful and soft like the doves of the rocks, and grieved like the groan of the earth when it split.

“I cleaned the stable, I lave the lake, and clomb the tree, all for the love of thee,” she said, her voice thickening with tears. A drop of saltwater fell and landed on his tunic, creating another of many small blotches. “And will you not awaken and speak to me?”

Nothing.

—

She didn’t remember being shown out of the room. Her vision was too blurred, and her mind was too distraught and overwhelmed. The next thing she could focus on enough to recall was that she was now seated on a stiff chair in the hall. Someone had been kind enough to set a cup of water on the little table beside her.

The towering doors creaked softly behind her, and at last, someone new entered. She looked over her shoulder, barely able to see through the dry burning left behind by her tears.

A man and a woman stood in the door. They were dressed in fine robes, and looked like nobles.

"What is the matter, dear?" the woman asked, looking over her appearance with eyes soft with pity. She came close, and her presence was like cool balm, gentle and comforting. "Why do you weep?"

The gold roses woven in the green of the woman's dress swam in her vision as she dropped her gaze, unsure what to say. These people seemed kind. But were they? Would they send her out from here, unable to return to him?

They would be right to do so. She was a stranger here, and Nix could not vouch for her like he'd planned.

"No matter what I do," she finally said softly, "I cannot get Nix Nought Nothing to awaken and speak to me."

In one moment, only the woman stood there—in the next, the man was beside her. The air was suddenly still and heavy like glass, and it felt as though there was a thread drawn taut between them all for a moment.

"Nix Nought Nothing?" they asked in unison, their voices full of something tense and heavy and sharp. When she looked up, nearly fearful at the sudden change in their tone, their faces were slack and pale.

Something stirred in her heart. Look. What do you see?

Green and gold. Their wide eyes were a familiar warm brown.

—

Now, things are changing.

According to the servant who'd been keeping an eye on him, all from the kingdom had been offered reward if they could wake the sleeping stranger, and the the gardener's daughter had succeeded. It was a mystery how it had happened—by whom had he been cursed? Her father? Then why could she not wake him, but a maiden from the castle-town here could?—but now, with the King and Queen hovering beside her and unable to stay still for anticipation, no one cared.

The gardener's daughter was fetched, and bid to sing the unspelling catch for the prince. (Prince. He was a prince, while she was a ruffian's daughter. She kept forgetting, when she was with him.) It was a haunting one that grated on her ears, as selfishly-written magics often did—and as if bitterness still crept at the girl's heart at the sight of all who were here, she left as soon as it was finished.

Nix Nought Nothing awoke—he awoke! He opened his eyes and sat up and looked at her as if seeing the sunrise after a year of darkness, and how her heart leaps high into her throat at the sight—and true to form, only blinks a few times at her as he seems to take her in before coming to terms with it.

"You look a bit different," he remarks, tilting his head slightly. "Or did I grow?"

She chokes on a snort.

"Hush," is all she can say. What had been an attempt at an unimpressed expression melts into a wavering smile. "Are you done napping now?"

He opens his mouth to retort, but a grin creeps onto his face before he can. He snickers. "Have I slept that long?"

"Nigh a week," the Queen says—and when Nix turns his head and sees her, his eyes grow wide. The Queen's smile grows broad and wavers with emotion, and the King's eyes are crinkled at the edges, and shining. "It has been a long time."

Her own father had never shown love like this—like the way Nix tries to leap from his chair at the same moment his parents rush to hold him, all of them laughing and sobbing and shouting exclamations of love and excitement and I-thought-I-would-never-see-you-agains. So much joy rolls off of them that she thinks she could have stood there watching forever and been content.

The first thing he does, after the first surge of this, is turn and introduce her to his parents, who had barely finished hugging him and kissing him and calling him their own dear son.

"This is the one who helped me," Nix says, already gesturing to her in excitement as he looks from her to his parents. "She sacrificed much to save me from the giant. Her kindness is brilliant and she blesses all who know her."

She tries not to look embarrassed at the glowing praise as Nix comes and stands beside her as he recounts their blur of a tale to his parents.

"Ah! She is bonny and brave," says the King. By the end of Nix's stories of their escapes, they're smiling warmly at her with such pride that she dips her head and smiles.

Nix Nought Nothing glances sideways up at her and raises a brow, a knowing smirk tugging at his lips.

"I've tried to tell her that," he agrees. "I don't think she's ever believed me."

She purses her lips and glances down at him. "I'll believe it the day you believe you are not nothing."

"Alright." Simple as that, he folds his arms and raises a brow at her. "I believe it. Fair trade?"

"Fair enough," she decides, with a crooked little smile. He beams, as if she's done something worth being proud of, and looks to his parents, who indeed look proud of them both.

"We would welcome you as our daughter," the King declares heartily, and both the Queen and Nix brighten, which makes her too embarrassedly fixated on the thought of family? Starting anew? to register what comes next. "Surely, you should be married!"

Nix looks at her, arms still folded, his eyes twinkling. There's something hopeful in his eyes that makes her certain this diminutive new heart of hers has skipped a few beats.

"Should we? Surely?" he asks, as if this is a normal thing to be discussing.

She works her jaw and swallows a few times, unable to help how obviously awkward she still likely looks. A flush tickles her face, and the queen seems to put a hand over her mouth to smile behind it.

"I... don't... suppose... I would mind," she manages, and—with those bright eyes so affectionate, and on her—Nix starts snickering at her expression. It's rude, but so, so warm she can't mind. She only discovers how broadly she's smiling when she tries to purse her lips and glare at him but is unable to. "Oh, go back to sleep!" she chides, too gleeful inside to truly mind, even as she makes a motion as if throwing one of the chair-cushions at him.

"Never!" he declares, pretending to dodge the invisible pillow. He makes broad gestures that she presumes are meant to emphasize how serious he is about this. When he stands straight and tall and sets his shoulders, she thinks that the boy she's explored the forest with really does look like a prince. "I have my family and my love all together in safety at last. We have much to speak of, and much time yet to spend with each other." He's a prince, but of course, he's also still himself. He immediately gets a mischievous glimmer in his eyes and puts a hand to his chest nobly as he does what he's done for as long as she's known him—jokes, when his emotions rise. "I shall never adhere to a bedtime as long as I live!"

My love, her heart still repeats every time it beats—as payback, likely, for her calling it diminutive. My love, my love, my love.

She doesn't let it out, for she doesn't know what it will do. But the words weave a song within her, so vibrant and effervescent and strong, brighter and clearer than any she's had before.

"I am glad to see you are certainly still my dear son," the Queen says, her own eyes twinkling. "I'm certain you both need fed well after such a journey. Come, perhaps you both can tell us more of it as supper is prepared."

They fall into an easy tumble of conversation and rejoicing and genial planning, and her heart is so light she thinks it must be plotting to escape her chest.

On the week's end from when she brought him here, Nix Nought Nothing and his family welcomes her into their home. It feels natural. It feels warm, and homey, and so pleasant and right that she often has to stop tears of weary joy from welling up as she considers it all.

Once upon a time, she thought she'd known happiness well enough without him. She had known what it was like to be without a friend, and without love.

Now, it’s hard to remember it.