#story excerpt

[valentines-diary-too]

"I have spent most of my life waiting for it to begin."

— valentines-diary

[i-am-trans-gwender]

Sometimes when I'm writing a make sentences like this and I cant tell if I'm genius or stupid:

Julia responded with a grunting noise that meant “Same as always.”

[thesadstoryteller]

Prologue excerpt — Bitten by History

When Emelia arrived home almost an hour later she got the cab driver to drop her off at the bottom of the street rather than right outside the house.

All the lights were off, and she punched in the security code at the front gate with great care, not wanting to risk drunkenly getting it wrong and setting off the alarm.

Emelia went around the side of the house to the lesser used side entrance in order to avoid the motion sensors. It took her three tries to get the key into the lock and she whispered profanities until she got it right.

She didn't dare turn on any lights once inside, instead using muscle memory to safely navigate across the foyer and up the stairs and down the hall.

All was silent behind her parents' door as she passed and she made it to her room without incident, breathing a sigh when she softly shut the door.

The relief was short-lived.

A human-sized shadow by the bed caught her attention and she almost screamed.

'Where have you been?'

'Dad?' She slumped against the bedroom door, heart pounding. 'You scared me.'

She fumbled for the light switch and blinked rapidly against the brightness.

'What are you doing in my room?' she asked.

She couldn't remember the last time her father had stepped a foot through her doorway. His presence was disconcerting.

How long had he been in here, waiting in the dark for her to return home?

'Where have you been?' he repeated. It was 2AM and he was still wearing his suit.

'Just out with friends.'

'And you didn't think to let us know you would be gone all weekend? Your mother was worried sick.'

'I texted,' she said.

'On Friday evening,' her father snapped. 'It's Sunday, Emelia.'

She grimaced. Shit. 'I'm sorry.'

Her father's eyes narrowed as he appraised her, his critical gaze all to familiar.

'You've been drinking.'

'A little,' Emelia said. There was no point denying it; he could probably smell the vodka from where he stood. She was just thankful her speech wasn't slurred. One less thing to be embarrassed about.

'And there's vomit on your dress.'

Blood rushed to Emelia's face after she glanced down to see that he was right. The slurring would've been better.

'You're a mess,' her father said and she barely suppressed a flinch. 'Do you think this is an appropriate way to be behaving? Staying out all hours of the night. Getting drunk. Dressing like a slut.'

A flash of anger then and Emelia glared at him.

'It's the twenty-first century, dad. Women can wear whatever they want.'

'Oh, so you want to shame yourself?' he said, his upper lip curling. 'You want to waste all of my and your mother's efforts to raise you right?'

'No,' she replied, 'Of course not.'

'Well, you certainly have me fooled,' he said. 'The way you're behaving  makes you seen you want to amount to nothing.'

Emelia swallowed, the anger dissipating as fast as it appeared and leaving nothing but painful numbness.

'Look, dad, I've had a rough night,' she said weakly, knowing that he probably wouldn't care. 'And I'm really tired. Can we continue this tomorrow?'

'You can guarantee we will,' he said. 'Your mother and I have had enough and will be having a serious discussion about your behaviour tomorrow which we expect you to be present for.'

Emelia looked away and gritted her teeth. Yay.

[heartofmuse]

She had always been aware of what she was. She had never desired to be something other than that. There was no delusion in her for she knew her strengths as well as her faults. She had no ambition, or use for whatever lied outside of the walls of her soul, and yet tonight she envied her, envied her so much she felt the violent green bile of it fill her veins, rush forth in her blood, and constrict her throat until it was hard to breathe. It angered her too. Yes, it lit up the bonfire of her wrath that she could want to be someone, something other than herself. She was well aware of her worth, of her imperfections, and yet also of the uniqueness that inherently came with it, and yet here she was, wishing she was that vile creature all because of him, because of how he felt for her, something she would never comprehend, but would always desire, something beyond her grasp that always lied in the realm of the madness of desire.

e.v.e.

[arihi]

“Did you think you were somehow immune to me? Did you think you were better than the sluts being paraded around the club floor downstairs? Every single one of them came to me just like you did, and every single one broke right here, in this very spot. It’s too late to do anything about it now. If you wanted me to believe you didn’t want this, the least you could do is not look so excited at the prospect of losing.”

- excerpt from Untitled #2

[weepingfoxfury]

"I know you're in there" said a very exasperated Lucrezia ... "No, I'm not" came Thomasina's muffled reply.

Thomasina inched her way between the pencils and crayons and took up a position at the back of the top drawer on top of one of the Librarian's diaries. As she tried to make herself more comfortable, her foot caught a small pot of ink and she watched in horror as it tipped over, divested itself of it's lid and washed it's contents over a packet of the Librarian's favourite envelopes.

"What was that?" queried an increasingly frustrated Lucrezia ... "Look ... I know you're in there, you know you're in there and the Librarian is certainly going to know you've been in there judging by that little clattering noise and your sharp intake of breath."

Thomasina remained silent. She tucked herself further into the corner of the drawer and began to chew absentmindedly on a small piece of eraser that she'd found in her pocket.

Lucrezia sighed, slumped onto the floor and wondered how long it would take for Thomasina to come out of the drawers this time. She really should have brought something to eat with her. She was just trying to get comfortable with her back against the drawers when she realised, with horror, that the Librarian was returning.

Inside the drawers Thomasina realised the same thing and dropped the piece of eraser ...

[just-some-castaways]

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕽𝖎𝖙𝖚𝖆𝖑

(Excerpt from the first draft of an original novella, part 1)

~

The date? October 19th, 1998.

The place? North Carolina, Appalachia foothills.

The incident? Well, let me try to tell you what happened, before the memory slips my mind, or Garenth goes and makes a big to-do of things by blaming me for the whole mess.

~

12:11

I shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot, which was difficult when one was crouched in the untrimmed grasses of a long abandoned field. Spikes of needle sized green blades kept poking through my thick woolen cloak and clawing my skin. Somewhere in the woods at my back a barn owl cried, causing me to tense anxiously. Wild animals prowled the trees and called to each other in strange voices I couldn't understand. Shadows shifted and distorted everything, making it difficult to keep my eyes trained on the wooden hut nestled across the grasses from me. In a fruitless attempt to soothe my nerves, I checked my watch again.

12:16

Had it only been five minutes since I'd checked it last? True, I did enjoy fiddling with the silver embossed cover of the antique pocket-watch, the clicking noise as it sprung open to reveal the cogs keeping time inside was deeply satisfying. Yet no matter how hard, or how often I tried, I could never seem to speed up the rate of the little fragile fingers keeping track of the hours and minutes. Apparently, nature cared not for my impatience.

12:21

A black clad figure, distorted by the dense fog and shifting grasses stepped free of the treeline roughly thirty feet to my left, giving me just enough time to sound off a sharp whistle before it vanished again. Moments later I sensed a presence behind me and I shuffled back to the cover of the creaking oaks.

"About time." I couldn't help but keep the irritation out of my voice. "We were supposed to meet fifteen minutes ago."

"I had to avoid some unexpected additions to the party." My companion replied, his voice gruff and deep. Following his pointed finger, I searched the far side of the field to the hut once more, this time spotting two dimly lit bobbing lights, making their way to the building.

"Kegors bones." I swore. "That makes five, we weren't expecting that many."

"What does it change? The ritual is starting, we can't choose our enemies, only our battlegrounds." His tone was firm, though his words echoed a voice I knew well. "We both know what happens if we're too late."

Natural law is upended, people are hurt, and you're to blame if you do nothing. My old teacher's voice drawled in my head. Do you go to battle armed with a stick or a sword?

"Speak for yourself," I smiled, spinning a throwing dagger around my pointer finger. "I wasn't the one late to the meeting." Without waiting for a reply, I pressed towards the shack, using the fog and trees to conceal my path. A muttered curse, aimed in my direction, came from my companion before he too began making his way to the hut, and by association, the forbidden ritual.

[darkandstormydolls]

Decided to try sharing one of my story excerpts!

This is from my Undercity story. It’s from Ashling’s POV after he’s had a long week and explores a bit of his complicated and unusual relationship with religion (which is one of my favorite parts of his character)

Without further ado:

I recognized, somewhere in the back of my mind, that lying on my clean sheets in dirty and mud-splattered clothing was something that my future self would resent me for, but after days of fighting, running from people, trying to squish myself into too-small hiding places, and falling off of roofs, everything hurt too badly for me to care overmuch about the inconsequential opinions of my future self.

I’m not much of a religious person, but I was praying. Eyes closed, lying in bed, counting off on my fingers the way my mother had taught me when I was little and she didn’t trust me with her prayer beads. She wasn’t Undercity-born, but she’d taken to their saints quickly enough. Most people ask saints to pray for them to have another voice in God's ears. In the Undercity, we do it because there’s no way God will listen to our prayers otherwise. He doesn’t care about people like us.

They say desperate people find faith, which I’d say is fair. I only seem to come back to God and saints in my worst moments. The moments when it helps to think that there’s someone out there who actually cares about me for more than what I’m worth as a tool of the trade. The times when I need to lean on the only tie I have left to my mother.

Our saints, the crooked saints, all have ties to the Undercity, but some run darker and deeper than others. I start with the one’s I’m expected to pray to; Saint Aino, patron saint of spies, Saint Alora, patron of the city itself, Saint Mora, patron of liars, Saint Tameni, patron of revenge. Thinking of Arin, I say a quick set of prayers to Saint Maran, who, along with executioners, jailers, bounty hunters, suicides, and judges, is the patron saint of murderers, and Saint Endar, patron of traitors and turncoats.

Then I switched to the other saints, the ones Phantom would tell me I didn’t need anymore. Saint Solen, patron of orphans. Saint Mika, patron of the children of the Undercity, the ones who, through no fault of their own, just so happened to have the misfortune to be born here. I’ve long ago lost my right to ask Saint Alessen, patron of children and innocent victims, for help, but I still pray to her for the sake of every other child in this viper’s nest that calls itself a city, in the slim hope that they wouldn’t end up like me, Arin, or any of the other children that this place has foraged into cruel, heartless monsters or killed far too early. I pray to Saint Tanor, patron of the abused and manipulated, and, to cover all my bases, Saint Ono, who, along with his much better known patronage of weavers, is the patron saint of illegitimate or rejected children. I suppose it says something about the Undercity that we have so many crooked saints for such things, and well-known ones as well, but even the more religious of us would probably have to think to tell you the patron saint of love.

Well, there are many. For most people, Saint Maila and Saint Aster, well-known twin patron saints of young love and marriage, respectively. But in the Undercity, it’s Saint Lia, who jumped into the Emori river after her lover was killed by the Lord of Spies because she couldn’t bear to live without him.

Considering I was the heir to the current Lord of Spies, I doubted I would find much favor with her.

I did have things to do. Rather important things. I needed to finish putting all of the things that I’d learned into writing. Check in with the other people who’d been waiting for my report. Take an assessment of how injured I was and if actual medical attention was required. Changing into clean clothes and washing the mud out of my hair would also have been a good idea, or even taking the things that were poking me in the side out of my pockets before lying down again. But those things all required getting up and moving, I was tired, and worn out, and in pain, and I had a feeling that as soon as Phantom returned, I would be a lot more of either some or all of those, depending on the mood she was in. And so I stayed in bed, eyes closed, taking refuge in my crooked saints for as long as I could.

[mad-bird-writes]

Better To Reign In Hell: Susannah In The Churchyard

One late Spring night, Susannah Lawrence slips out of the house to read a book with her mother.

(content: graveside talk, mentions of death in childbirth and bereavement, ends on a cliffhanger because author is a humungous chicken and too scared to get into big plot elements just yet)

***

Long after dark, long after her father had taken his final, furtive smoke of the evening, said his prayers, and retired, Susannah Lawrence, sleepless yet, rose from her bed. She slipped on her housecoat and crept out; an old, hand-bound book tucked carefully under her arm. In truth, this subterfuge was unnecessary. Her father slept like the dead, and she was a grown woman besides, free to do as she liked – within reason – but sneaking barefoot from her bed like a wayward child gave her a thrill. A slight one, but she had always been one to savour life’s mundane pleasures when they could be found.

It was a short walk to the churchyard, and the moon was bright enough to make the way easy, even with bare feet. The night air was warm, the close heat of summer still a few weeks away. Susannah had no reason to fear being seen, either; Whitwell was as sleepy as small towns came, everybody knew everybody else, and there were none who’d look twice at her, regardless of her standing as the town pastor’s only child.

Avoiding the shrill scream of the little gate’s rusted hinges by simply stepping over the low wooden fence, she trod carefully through the empty churchyard, making mental note of the well-tended graves, and sparing a brief, silent prayer for those who lay long-forgotten and overgrown with grass and weeds. She knew her path well as her own mind by now, and on her way, she knelt to pick some daisies, gathering them into a childish posy, tied with a wide blade of yellowish grass.

A meagre offering, truth be told. Childish, laughable in the palm of a woman’s hand. But what could she do?

Her mother hadn’t lived long enough to receive such tokens from her when she was a child.

The grave she sought was as humble as most of its fellows, but its meticulously tended plot and oft-left tokens of flowers and feathers, pretty stones from the river and folded notes made it grander, in Susannah’s eyes, than the Pearson family’s crypt of pocked white stone and carved, flowering vines.

She kissed the posy in her hand, knelt, prayed quietly for a few moments, and left it at the foot of her mother’s grave. Then, with that familiar, welling feeling of solemnity, she sat herself in the dry grass beside the headstone and opened the book, resting it across her bent, nightgown-covered knees.

The third name written on the first age-yellowed, fragile page was the same name carved into the simple grey headstone.

Rachael Mary Lawrence

A Loving and Faithful Wife

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness,” – Jeremiah 31:3

No mention of motherhood in that brief epitaph, for she’d scarcely lived long enough to lay eyes on her newborn daughter and smile, proud and ecstatic, even as the colour fled her labour-flushed cheeks and her life’s blood rushed into the sheets between her legs.

According to her father, she’d left this world with wide-open eyes and that same, radiant smile on her white lips.

Susannah, at four and twenty now, could not recall the scene herself, that face, that smile, but she’d carried the idea of it in her mind since childhood, and now she could picture it vividly. The beauty as much as the horror of it. As a girl, she’d imagined her mother to have looked something like an angel in human skin.

What more fitting bride for a pastor?

Now, she ran a finger down the carefully written table of contents, squinting as if in deepest thought, though she knew this book as well as she knew her Scripture, perhaps slightly better. In fact, she could have looked up what she needed at home, with minimal effort and no need for a night walk.

But she wanted to read her book with the one who had given it to her in the first place. She wanted to imagine a gentle voice guiding her, repeating the familiar words with care and pride, as her mother had done before her, and her mother’s mother, the author of the book, in her turn.

The hand-bound, hand-written tome was the most valuable thing in the Lawrence house, and yet any thief who picked it up would just as soon cast it aside as worthless. It was a compendium of local plants and herbs, complete with their various applications as food or physic, and a time-honoured list of common remedies.

In a town such as this, with one doctor, so far away from so-called “true civilisation,” it was worth its weight in gold.

Finding what she sought – a cough remedy – she took a moment to familiarize herself with the ingredients. Thyme and wild mint she had in abundance, always drying in bunches in the kitchen, but she was less certain about the mallow, and sure she’d used up the last of the slippery elm during the last bout. Though she could read, barely, by moonlight, she’d be better off waiting for daylight to go foraging, and the situation at hand was hardly dire enough to warrant trying now. All that ailed her father was another bout of what he dismissively called his “night-cough,” an aggravation not worth troubling Doctor Clayton about. He hadn’t asked for her help either, he never did, but it worried her to hear him stifling his coughing fits of an evening. Privately, she believed he wouldn’t cough half as much if not for his sole vice of smoking, but getting Pastor Nathaniel Lawrence to quit that habit was a task she was sure even steadfast Moses would have balked at.

[reptilian-angel]

Day 6: Golden

"What in Hell’s name are you?"

Inspired by @HelluvaIolite’s absolutely spellbinding Stolitz series “Efflorescent Agony” if you haven’t read it GO READ IT RITE NOW!!!

[knitasha]

Untitled Solarpunk Story Excerpt

I pulled something in my back while ironing 2 days ago (yes, really) and I've spent most of my time since trying to sit very very still so it stops spasming.

On the down side, it's kept me from my sewing, baking, and socializing plans. On the plus side, it's been good for storyboarding a short solarpunk story I'd like to get out.

Here's a little piece of it. Mostly a brain dump, very little editing. Also you will never convince me that names aren't going to be absolutely ridiculous in the future. Lean into it.

----

The oxygen mask bumped rhythmically against her left leg as she walked down the narrow passageway. She synced her breathing with her steps, keeping her mind on the brief echo of her footsteps and the bobbing of the light from her headlamp and definitely not on the question of just how much dirt and questionable infrastructure sat above and around her.

2 steps, breathe in. When was the last time a real earthquake had come through?

2 steps, breathe out. When was the last time someone had checked the walls down here?

2 steps, breathe in. How long ago did those cracks show up?

2 steps, breathe out. How long would the air down here last if the air pumps stopped? How long would she last until her tank ran out?

Olive’s nails bit into her palms, bringing her mind back to the job, and she quickened her pace.

The next section of lights blinked on as she passed the motion sensor. A cold wave of anxiety churned in her stomach at the idea of the now-empty sections behind her going dark, a seemingly endless tunnel of blackness. Even after a decade of working in the pipes, Olive had to force herself not to give in to the ancient instinct whispering urgently for her to run from the dark and whatever watched and waited in it.

Her eyes scanned for the latest section number. She’d gone deep enough that she should be getting close to the offshoot. 220Z, 221A, there – 221B. Digging her pad out of her tool bag with one hand, she wiped years of grime off the code beneath the number with her other.

The screen flashed to life and the EcoSphere logo appeared, its 10 colored rings pulsing around the Earth, one for each of the services the utility company oversaw globally. Her foot tapped impatiently as the logo dissolved only to be replaced by the AquaTech sector’s logo. Her finger was already hovering over the screen as the authentication prompt appeared. She pressed firmly against the screen protector that was already peeling in the corners and WELCOME OLIVE MCGARDEN greeted her.

“Come on, this century already,” she muttered as the pad struggled to find its connection to the wireless this far from the hub.

Finally in the system, she quickly scrolled to her active work order and scanned the code beneath the section number. She made sure the check-in had registered before stowing the pad back in the bag and pushing the old offshoot door open with a resisting creak that echoed down the hall.

She recalled Apple’s teasing when they had received their work orders that morning. Apple was overseeing the installation of the main pipes for the new office wing on the north side of town – “I’ll bring you back a bar from the fancy new replicator they just installed” – with its brightly lit corridors and smooth automatic doors.

Olive, on the other hand, had been assigned to one of the oldest pipe sections on the flow. Not that she minded. She’d take grimy doors and stale air over running into whatever found a way to survive just under the subscape any day. Nothing survived this deep in the sections.

Stepping into the offshoot, Olive widened the scope and increased the brightness of her headlamp. The AquaTech system could determine there was an issue in the section, now it was up to her to figure out where it was coming from, what was causing it, and get it fixed. The newer pipe areas could self-service most leak alerts, but the maze of aging pipes and narrower tunnels this far down hadn’t been worth the trouble – and cost – to upgrade and so required manual inspection and maintenance whenever a leak alert was picked up.

She spent the next hour walking through the tunnels, looking for puddles and other telltale signs of a leak significant enough to trigger the alert. As the tunnel began branching, she pulled colored flags out of a pocket in her bag and began to mark the forks. Blue for main pipe. Green for first offshoot. Yellow for third. They helped keep the paths organized for future maintenance needs while also making sure she could find her way out when she was done. The fact that there were none down here already here told her she was the first to come down this offshoot in a good, long time.

Expecting the leak to be deeper in the flow grid, she walked past the first dozen branches and picked one at random to begin flagging.

Olive had just pulled out a purple flag to mark the newly found fourth offshoot in her branch when her foot stepped on something soft. Flinching back, she shone her light down where she’d stepped, expecting to see some long-dead remains. Instead, she found a small green patch of moss.

She strained her hearing, listening around the sound of her pulse knocking in her ears. There it was. A thin but steady dripping noise echoed dimly down the branch towards her.

“Found you.”

She quickened her pace, stopping only to hang a fresh flag as new branches popped up to show her path forward. As she hung the last of her purple flags, she made a mental note to pick up more when she checked back in at HQ later and forged ahead regardless, determined to find the source of the leak after coming so far.

Olive pulled up short as she came to a fifth branch, her head whipping around to stare down the narrow tunnel. Her headlamp showed nothing and yet she could have sworn… Taking a deep breath, she turned the light off.

But where she expected suffocating darkness, a dim glow greeted her at the end of the branch and the trickle of water sounded like laughter calling her name.

[valentines-diary-too]

“In every lifetime.” Aged fingers run the length of your soul, tracing the vow 'I do.' In every lifetime, he would find you—broken or whole, with the sky falling, the sea sinking, the world tumbling down. He will find you in every lifetime and love every mangled piece.

— valentines-diary, rewrite the ending in every lifetime.

[dollyllama108]

Cruciferous Chronicles Ch. 13 Excerpt

"First answer me this." The lich regarded Gale with its black eyes; at least he thought it did. Hard to tell. "What is the value of a single mortal life?" "What manner of question is this?" A few disjointed syllables escaped Gale's mouth in bursts as he struggled to gather his thoughts. "First of all, the risk associated with poorly defining a metric that granular and impactful cannot be understated. Second, am I, a mortal, the one making this judgment, or does the being responsible have access to information that I in my limited reach do not—and would you be willing to tell me what that is? Third—and I may have objections to the premise of the question as stated, if so—is it reasonable to make the assumption, as this wording seems to, that all mortal lives have the same value, or is this something that can be adjusted according to life expectancy, for example? Fourth, can you define 'value' in this context; is it the cost of killing them immediately, or does it depend on their potential contributions to society? Fifth, is there divination magic involved in procuring any of the information I've requested thus far, or does it depend on a predictive model, and in either case may I see it? Sixth—" "—Thine answer is recorded," the lich said.

Read The Cruciferous Chronicles

[dappledlight24601]

"There, in that bare room in the den of the wolves, Dominic looked majestic. Looming above Chaz, blocking his direct view of the lamp, the light framed his head almost like a halo, casting gold and copper highlights on his hair. The white button-down shirt he was wearing perfectly hugged his thin figure, almost as if it had been tailored specifically with him in mind. The way he stood, the way he spoke, the way he moved his hands, everything painted a picture of pride and confidence, in a way Chaz had never seen in him before. 

He had never looked more beautiful, and Chaz had never felt more terrified. 

Still, he couldn't tear his eyes away from that glorious display. 

Carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal, Dominic reached a hand down towards him. 

Bewitched, Chaz took it. "

[theaskew]

"Bring Me Your Love", a 1983 short story by Charles Bukowski, illustrated by Robert Crumb, pages 12 and 13.

[dollygirl808]

This is just a lil excerpt from the first chapter of a story I'm writing rn, called A Monster Ensemble. It's not out anywhere yet or anything, just wanted to share.

It's not anywhere near to being done yet, but. Yeah. I liked the kinda yandere vibes Bear (horror sans) was giving in this, so I wanted to share it. I may or may not have been influenced by a song I discovered recently that I love called the red means I love you, it's honestly so good and I love yandere vibe songs and yandere vibes in general.

(Lowkey wanna write a song fic but it's in the am's and I was supposed to go to sleep hours ago)

While the story isn't planned on being yandere, Bear will def have massive stalker/obsession vibes. But everyone else not as much, probably.

I adore yandere bois so much so it'll probably leak through more than I intend to. And Bear is super duper capable of killing ppl, and of course has, given his past.

And, do I have a size thing? Maybe.. he's only like. 10ft tall. And I only mention it like no less than 10,000 times.

Okie enjoy <3

Bear watched his tiny bunny from the other isle, his massive hulking frame easily seeing over the shelves even with his more hunched posture, his one good eyelight trained on her like, well, a predator.

That's what he was, wasn't he? A killer at his core, a vicious monster who could easily rip her flesh right from her bones, then break said bones with only two fingers. The tip of his lengthy bone tail twitched in aggravation at the thought, he didn't want to hurt anybody, especially not her.

His soulbond.

He was glad his brother wasn't here to chastise him for watching the girl from across the store like a creeper, because he really, really couldn't help it. She just looked so soft and fragile all the time.

Her little brown tail, a little heart-shaped fluff against the top of her ass, so small and cute. Above what was, of course, his favorite part of her squishy body; her rather round and thick thighs.

They squished together and against eachother as she adjusted her standing position, one leg barely lifting off the ground to tap her foot against the floor as she thought, the rapid motion making her plush thigh jiggle.

His slit-like pupil zeroed in on the movement for a moment, before his eyelight wandered the exposed length of her thighs and legs, racking over every curve of of flesh like he didn't see her in her work uniform often.

A light grey pair of denim overalls that hugged the curves of her ass and thighs perfectly, and was starting to fray in between her thick thighs.

Sometimes he wondered how her tiny fragile bones didn't collapse under her own weight.

Human bones just so small compared to his own, after all, and even though he was a twisted, corrupted version of his smaller self, even their bones were thicker and sturdier than humans.

Which of course, was an opinion he would never dare voice.

Eve was sensitive about her weight, after all. Which, he didn't really understand himself. What could be bad about having a lot to eat? It's a sentiment all of his clan had, a shared confusion at human's want to eat less and diet when they had access to all of the food.

Heh. Humans were weird like that.

One day, He thought, I'll be catching prey for you, my bonded. And Paps'll cook it, and she'll eat it, and he'll be the happiest monster on the earth, surface or otherwise.

He smiled lopsidedly, single hot-red eyelight going fuzzy and his cat-like slit of a pupil engorging until there was nothing but a ring of red on the outskirts of his love-strucken socket as he watched his little bunny fus over how many pots to buy for her future catnip plants.

Stars, she was so cute when she was trying to make a decision on something so impossibly mundane like it was the single-most important decision in her life, he could feel his cracked soul flutter happily, and call to her without meaning to.

And that's when she turned around, cute little eyebrows pinched in confusion at the tugging she felt in her chest (from her soul, but she didn't know that yet,) And her vibrant bubblegum pink eyes met his single eyelight, which immediately snapped back to its normal slit-like state.

He straightened his spine, head and shoulders rising above the top of the 7ft shelf, and her eyes followed, watching him dwarf the shelf with his massive 10ft frame with what could only be described as morbid fascinating.

She smiled warmly at him, welcomingly. And a twinkle of something more caught his attention in her expression. Something Bear easily recognized as lust.

Even if it was just a small amount of misplaced curiosity, whenever he displayed or did something to accentuate his overwhelming height and mass, she always got this look of want across her cute rounded features.

Like she was thinking about climbing him like a jungle gym, and that look pleased him greatly, so he made sure to stand tall and loom over her whenever possible.

So, maybe the bunny had a bit of a size kink? Little prey, lusting after a monster like him. It made him chuckle silently to himself.

Like a mouse watching a bear, the mouse couldn't possibly understand the danger she was in, and because a bear would never bother chasing after or catching prey as un-filling as a mouse, the mouse had no instincts to run. And the bear simply wouldn't be bothered by it just sitting there, as completely non-threatening and miniscule as it was.

Of course, this particular Bear had great interest in catching the little prey that was too caught up in his unsual and rare appearance to be fearful, and he would take great pleasure in playing a game of cat and mouse, chase her like prey, and when he caught her, he'd absolutely devour her without hesitation-

"Hey, Bear! Getting more plants for your garden of eden?" Eve asked with a teasing smile, and he blinked a few times as he processed her question.

"Yeah," Was all he managed to force out, but she didn't mind, and she just smiled bigger at him, her eyes nearly closing from the sheer intensity of it.

It made his soul flutter again, and also call out to her again, stronger this time. She made no outwardly acknowledgment of the feeling, aside from her left ear and her nose twitching at the same time.

Which, he found absolutely adorable and his pupil started to swell again with mirth, before shrinking back. "What.. ya doing?" Bear asked, as If he hadn't been stalking watching her for the past 30 minutes.

"Oh, I'm trying to decide how many pots will fit on my windowsill." She said, thumbing behind her to the brownish-tan pots on the top shelf.

Which were well out of her reach, and he thought about how he could offer to get them for her, and she'd be very thankful. His eyelight glowed momentarily with excitement at the thought.

So, he started walking to her isle, long, thick legs bent at impossibly inhuman angles making quick work to get rid of the distance.

Legs that were apparently 'digitigrade,' she had once told him when he asked if his appearance really didn't bother her.

"What? Of course not, Bear!" She had balked, tone offended, almost angrily so, as if she could ever thing something so horrible. "You look fine! I think having a super long, prehensile tail is pretty damn cool. And your legs are like, digitigrade! And your clawed feet remind me of a dragons, which are super duper cool, by the way."

That really wasn't the answer he had been expecting. "Pretty damn cool" was not an sentence he would have ever used to describe himself before that. But it made him so happy at the time.

"Heh... think so?" He had asked, tusks stretched wide in a pleased grin, eyelight trained on her so intensely it made her little bunny-heart race, and she had pouted at him and asked if he was just fishing for compliments.

He wasn't, but the angry stomp and huff she let out was too adorable to correct, so he agreed.

If he could still teleport at will, he probably wouldn't bother walking so he could be close to her sooner. But alas, he had lost that ability due to the incident, or more specifically, the massive hole in his skull.

Eve turned and contemplated the pots again, brown fluffy ears rotated fully forward in pure concentration.

Bear stopped next to her, body facing the isle, but eyelight watching her think. His tail came to wrap loosely around her boot-covered ankle, something he did often, and she didn't even spare him and ear twitch in his direction.

So, unafraid. A pleased smirk tugged at the sides of his tusked mouth, watching her be so comfortable next to him that she didn't even twitch at him wrapping her ankle up in his deceptively strong tail.

Stars, if he could be any happier his soul would probably leap from his chest and try to enter hers. He wondered if she would accept that.

"Three," Bear said simply, grufly, his deeper-than-normal voice a product of his harsh time underground. Just another corrupted deviation from the original Sans that made him so...

"You think?" Eve asked, looking up at him as her ears relaxed more to the side and her head tilted ever-so slightly to the side as well.

He only nodded, already reaching above her head to grab three of the pots and hand them off to his tail, gently curling into and around the small plant plots before setting them on the bottom shelf of her cart.

She huffed out an air of amusement from her nose, rolling her eyes, trying and failing to suppress her smile.

"Thank you, Bear," Eve said genuinely, setting a small hand on his radius, one of the two thick bones that made up his 'forearm.'

"No," He paused for longer than he ment, brain suddenly forgetting the word, but she didn't frown at him, or try to rush or finish his sentence for him, just waited and looked up at him with that gentle, patient smile is that nearly made him forget what he wanted to say.

"No, problem," Bear finished after a moment of staring at her face.

"Well, that's the last thing I needed. What are you shopping for? I could help you. Although, I dont know how helpful I could be given my apparent Black thumb," Eve rambled a little, and he couldn't help but find that adorable as well.

"Flowers," He told her, and she nodded.

"Something colorful for spring?" She offered, and he nodded, "Want me to walk with you?"

"Please," He said, and offered his arm, which she took without hesitation.

He smiled, and his tail let go of her to wave behind him happily as he grabbed the cart's handle with both of his massive hands, taking up all of the bar space.

So she was left to fiddle with the edges of her overalls pant leg while her other hand wrapped around Bear's blue jacket sleeve and they walked side-by-side, mostly silent.

Eve would occasionally make a comment about a particularly vibrant or pretty flower, and he would just nod along, or grab it and put it in his own cart, which he tugged behind him with his tail.

She tried to take her cart back a few times, but he just stood still while she tried to muscle her way, or pry his sharp claws off the bar, with zero luck.

She gave up after a few times and let him pull and push both carts, but made sure to express she could handle her own cart.

Bear bent down to grab the largest size of garden soil they had, a massive bag the size of Eve's chest. He picked it up with one hand, setting it in his cart without trouble.

The bunny tried not to gape at his strength too much, but she probably wouldn't even be able to pick up something that heavy, and he did it easily, single-handedly. It was hard not to be impressed.

"So, what kind of flowers are you looking for?" She asked, turning to face him as her free hand continued stroking the petals of a particularly soft plant.

"Looking for pretty," He said while staring down at her so intensely it made her look away.

He had to be doing that on purpose, right?! Neck bent completely so his skull was parallel to the top of her head, and he was looming over her, literally blocking out the bright lights above them and casting her face in a shadow as she tilted her own head fully back to look up at him.

It wasn't threatening in any way, but, fuck, it was really, stupidly hot. Did Bear even have the ability to think about doing something like that? Or was his habit of staring at her silently, so intensely her face flushed, because of his injury? He stared, seemingly expressionless to onlookers but she had gotten used to his subtle body language.

Most of it was with his eyelight and his tail, anyways. His tail would wave back and forth when he was happy, and sometimes even thump on the ground, bump into things or knock things onto the ground. The tip would twitch when he was mildly annoyed, and his entire tail would lash back and forth in a whip-like motion when he was pissed, which wasn't often.

His general cat-like slit in the center of his white-to-red gradient eyelight would grow rounded when he was particularly happy or content, or he saw something he really liked, like after a meal, or when she did something he found particularly cute. It would shrink to be skinnier and longer when he was angry, and it would become football shaped when he was concentrating, get shorter and rounder.

"A-are you looking for a particular color, Bear? Like blues, purples, pinks?" Eve asked, stuttering only a little at the beginning.

The monster stopped leaning over her, sitting back further and making himself a little smaller. "Pink. Pretty pink." He said simply.

"Pink is a great springtime color!" She squeaked out, and tried not to think about how he was grabbing lots of flowers with petals that matched the shade of pink in her eyes. It was just a coincidence, pink was a spring color, after all.