#tried to make them look cute but enough uncanny to gave you shivers

[glitterstarly]

I was thinking about how to design the new eggy and I was like, "we have already a lot of cute designs for all the children, why not make the new one a little bit uncanny since this is cucurucho's kid?" and a new gate was opened for me.

this is Nacho, the official assistant of cucurucho and the nightmare fuel of (almost) every islander! when the bunnies watched how happy and engaged where their guests with their interesting children, they also wanted to surprise the white bear with one made 100% by them after a few months of investigation and collecting samples! what? the bear didn't like them instantly? no problem! we can modify them as many times as possible until reach perfection! after all, they were made for each other! :]

[sonorous-cicada]

Breathe Part 3

Crickets chirped in the cool night’s air as Naruto stacked his final bundle of kindling neatly by the campfire. Sasuke leaned against a tree and threw a water canteen towards Naruto’s head. He gave him a grin before loudly chugging its contents. Sasuke rolled his eyes in response and looked towards the darkening forest. It would take them two more days to reach the Land of Waves where they could finally be rid of their obnoxious and drunken client.

Chizu scared him sometimes, she had an uncanny ability to predict the future and see through people. Although, he supposed, that was normal if you lived between life and death on a daily basis.

“Be careful, Sasu-chan. I have a bad feeling about this one,” she whispered to him as they walked to the gate together.

“Do you say that to Itachi-nii whenever he leaves too?” Sasuke snipped.

“Sometimes…” Chizu cleared her throat and handed over a bag of bento lunches neatly packaged in storage scrolls. “Please remember to share. I didn’t make all of this for one person.” She winked and walked over to Kakashi as they arrived at the gate.

“Hatake-san, this is the second brother whose life you’ve held in your hands. I expect him to arrive home whole, as well.”

“Maa, Uchiha-san, you needn’t worry about ninja business.”

“Kakashi. I am perfectly serious when I say if my brother is not returned whole to me, then I will find a way to end you. Hokage’s special protection or not.” A small shiver threatened to escape as her soft gaze hardened into cold obsidian.

“Aren’t you cute.” Kakashi’s eye crinkled as he moved away with his back towards the fence. Even though she was a civilian, she was still an Uchiha. Uchiha were never to be underestimated.

Itachi had checked the time twice before deciding to leave the small tea shop. It was unlike Chizu to be late, especially when seasonal green tea was on the line. Two years ago, with their father’s blessing, she had opened up a knitting store in the heart of the city. It was only a few blocks away from their meeting place.

As with most everything in their life, Chizu had ‘offered’ Itachi the opportunity to invest before opening. Which was to say that Chizu talked him into doing something foolish and he complied. This time, however, the gamble was paying off. In hindsight, it had been worth it to empty the vast majority of his life-savings. It almost made up for the fact that her ‘investment opportunities’ turned out to be a way to grift money from him. Occasionally, it made him laugh to himself that Itachi, Captain of ANBU team two and heir to the Uchiha clan, was the proud owner of forty-percent of ‘Twining Knits and Fine Yarns’.

Of course, Chizu owned sixty-percent. Eight years of ANBU salary did not match the generous dowry that Fugaku had set aside when Chizu was born. It had been expected, given her illness. It had also been expected that she would be married at the age of sixteen, as was common among civilian nobility. What had not been expected was for Chizu to be a lesbian. The elders detested the very idea and demanded that she be cast out of their clan. Fugaku laughed at their demands and instead granted her the dowry that had been set aside for a future marriage. Seed money for the business that she and their grandmother had dreamed about for years.

His feet stopped short of the dark green door inlaid with stained glass. It was slightly ajar and the warm smells of wool and vanilla wafted through. Another note hung darkly in the air. One that he was far too familiar with and one that he did not expect at the front door of his sister’s store. Blood. For a moment, he too could not breathe.

~~~

Beep. Beep. Whoosh. Beep. Beep.

Fugaku ran his hands through his hair as the plastic chair beneath him creaked slightly. The Inuzuka hound on the bed opened an eye and gave him a cursory glance. It had come as no surprise to him that Chizu was in a serious relationship with the Inuzuka heiress. They had been best friends in the academy before Hana became a genin and Chizu began her apprenticeship. The two were inseparable. Bitterness bubbled inside him. He wanted to blame Hana Inuzuka for Chizu’s kidnapping. He wanted it to be her fault, because if it wasn’t hers, it was his own. His own for not placing enough officers in the downtown region. His own for not figuring out that his eighteen year-old, terminally-ill, civilian daughter was practically an agent for the Hokage.

The stubble on his chin rasped his fingers as they found their way to a new bruise. The last thing he remembered was feeling the satisfying crunch of Minato’s nose underneath his fist. The fact that Minato let him go out of pity was the icing on top of a cake of bitterness and self-loathing. If only for a moment it were Hana’s fault it could be bearable.

Beep. Beep. Whoosh. Beep. Beep.

“How did this happen?” he whispered to the room. The dog huffed and rose from its post. It laid a heavy head on Fugaku’s lap and licked his knee in condolence. He threaded his fingers through the thick fur and bowed his head. There was a soft rap on the door before Hana walked in. She soundlessly checked the monitors and IV’s. When he looked up, the young woman bowed before him.

“Stay, Mu,” she said to the white dog. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t enough, Uchiha-sama. If you’d like, I can tell you what happened. ANBU and Hokage-sama have already debriefed me…” Her voice sounded detached and far away.

“No. I’ve heard enough of it. I… I know you tried to stop them, Hana-chan. They told me that when you regained consciousness from whatever that white-haired freak did to you, that you tracked them until you and your nin-ken dropped from chakra exhaustion. Itachi told me it’s because of you that he was able to find the deserter… I know all this. I do not want to know the details.” He took in a calming breath, grateful that he was able to fill his lungs with air. “Sit with me, musume. We’ll watch over her together.”

Beep. Beep. Whoosh. Beep. Beep..

Beep. Beep. Whoosh. Beep. Beep.

The proof of life clinging tenuously to its last thread resounded in the sterile room.

An: Musume means daughter.

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 93 - Campfire Stories Part 3

Okay, final chapter of Campfire stories, then we are back to our regularly scheduled shenanigans.

Chapter 93: Campfire Stories, Part 3

After Tyche’s story, we took a break to get stuff for s’mores - Charly, Conor, and Simon had teamed up on me, swearing a camping trip was incomplete without them. In lieu of the traditional fire, we were heating them with a short-term portable unit, only good for ten minutes, tops. While I wasn’t worried either way, not particularly liking marshmallows, Charly had taken it upon herself to do rather rigorous testing and assured everyone that the desserts would turn out right.

Once everyone who wanted it had sticky fingers, Conor politely swallowed his fourth sugary concoction. “These are too good, you know?”

“No such thing,” Simon argued. “Be as suspicious as you like, but I firmly believe in taking whatever joy we can get out of life and not pointing it out. Hoping God doesn’t notice, if you get my drift.”

I chuckled, while Arthur looked alarmed. “I did not expect that from you, lucky bastard.”

Simon shook his head furiously. “No. I know I wasn’t in the After, but life on its own was unfair and unjust enough before that. When you get those small moments of ecstatic delight - love, a good dinner, a happy dog, a chance to be kind - you just take it, and don’t let the universe know. Life never apologized for being harsh, I’m not going to apologize for any scrap of happiness I could find.”

“But some things can be far too good,” Conor insisted, picking his teeth thoughtfully. “My family always warned against things like that.  The things to be afraid of weren’t the… scarred or damaged ones, but the ones that are flawless. That’s how you spot them, right?”

“Spot whom?” Grey asked, trying to wipe chocolate from their fingers.

“Witches, at least the evil ones. Fae. That sort.” He scrunched his face thoughtfully and leaned back. Tyche arched a brow, and he lunged to point at her. “See? That. You and Sophie arch that brow so much that it’s permanently just a wee bit higher than the other. That makes your face your face. But a face that’s entirely symmetrical? It’s so wrong that even artificial intelligence makes a point to avoid it.”

“Uncanny valley,” I offered, nodding.

He nodded to me. “Exactly. It’s uncanny. Not just in people. I was warned away from perfect circles in nature as a boy. Stones, a patch of grass, any perfect circles.  Fairy circles, they called it.  My parents told me about a girl who lived near where they grew up, didn’t listen about the woods. Said there was a stand of trees in the woods with a clearing in the middle.”

“Conor -” Charly tried to interrupt.

He waved her off. “The clearing wasn’t a normal one, see? It was exactly perfect, ten feet across from tree to tree, even if they never got an accurate count of trees. Da said twelve, Ma said sixteen. Nan swore blue it was ten. But all agreed that clearing was ten feet across, tree to tree.”

“Con…” This time it was Maverick, glancing around furtively.

Still, he kept on. “What made this clearing so memorable, were the trees around it.  Like a snowflake, they were. Closer, but just as even between. Seven feet, precise, no matter who measured it.  Then five.”

“Conor, please,” Charly begged, scooting closer to her partner.  Even Coffee was giving the clearing a serious gaze at this point.

“The worst part, though,” he soldiered on, “was what told them it was clearly either a cursed place or a Mound: the trees themselves.  Any one of them gave a normal person shivers and turned them back if they looked.  The trees, you get, were just as bad as the woods themselves. Completely symmetrical, like a spoked wheel.  And each ring of trees was exactly the same height, taller ones around the clearing.” He huffed a bit before continuing. “And this girl… this girl, you see? She’d been warned out of those woods since she was knee high to her da. But she kept wandering off, after cats and butterflies and a pretty flower here and there…”

Simon and Maverick were scowling at the trees around us at this point, with Maverick scooting closer to me and periodically glancing at Tyche to make sure she’s still there.

“One day, when he was about sixteen, Da says he saw the girl - she was maybe ten - taking off down the path, pretty as you please. At this point, he knew about her: Doreen.  Dreamin’ Doreen. Ten years old, cute as a kitten, and prone to wanderin’ off. So he followed her, makin’ sure she didn’t get in trouble, right?  And at first, she’s just… toddling off, if that’s what you can call it for a ten-year old. Right down the trail, not a step off, dead center.  But then.  Then she just turns, takes a hard left off the trail, between the trees, like she’s following something.

Da was right behind her, only looking away for a second at a time to make sure nothing was coming up on them. After about a half hour of this, he barely registered that the trees were thinner and… odd. Something about the trees bothered him, but he swore he couldn’t figure it out at first. Then, he turned back, and Doreen was gone. No sound, nothing. Just… gone. He started looking for her, thinking she couldn’t have gotten far, but after about five more steps, he saw the clearing.

Even panicked, he knew not to set foot in that clearing.  He screamed and screamed for Doreen - they heard him all the way back in town, came running, and he was still hollering for her. When they started to drag him away, he fought ‘em off until Nan stopped him.

Nan grabbed his arm, pointed to a tree, right on the trunk. Those trees were so… perfect… that the damned bark looked like tile on a pillar, not like real bark. Every piece, just as pretty and even as you please.  The leaves were the same, could be folded in half and look like they were cut instead. Da swore blind that lookin’ up through those branches was like looking through a bike wheel, the branches were so even-spaced. ‘They din’t look like trees, son,’ he always told me. ‘They looked like trees were described to a sculptor who never seen one’.

To the day they died, they swore that place was a faerie ring, that Doreen got taken by the Sidhe. No one ever found any of her, not a hair, not a bone, not even a scrap of her clothes,” he ground out, frustration clear. “Worse, there was never any proof, ever, that a person had ever stepped foot in those woods. Not even DNA testing on something a person plucked and handed to a researcher, with video proving it happened. Never did figure out what happened in there, not to Doreen or anyone else.”

By this point, Tyche was looking suspiciously at the clearing, and that set of alarm bells in my head. “Conor,” she drawled slowly. “You do realize that the clearing we’re in is… really rather round, and ten, maybe eleven feet across?” He just grunted, staring into the light emitter like he had been since the end of his story. “Conor.” Her tone was firm and more emphatic. “You just told that story in a clearing of fourteen trees, ten feet across, with just enough space between the trees outside for tents. Maybe seven feet?”

When he didn’t respond, she scowled at him and stepped close to a tree.  Maverick tried to stop her, but she flung off the arm he reached out. “You shit, these trees… Grey. Can you and Charly come here?” Charly shook her head vigorously, while Grey cautiously stepped over. After a couple minutes, Tyche made a point to stare down Charly, firmly gesturing as politely as possible to stand right here please.

Eventually, all three were looking up at the branches over their heads. Far from her hesitation earlier, Charly marched over to Conor with what I could only describe as ‘intent to kill’.  While I looped an arm around her waist, she flailed with all four limbs at him. “You rat faced walnut! You did this on purpose! Lemme down! Let me at him!!!”

To his credit, he flinched away from the angry ball of woman I was keeping away from him. “Char! It was a joke, I swear!” Peeking around his hands, he still flinched a little. “It was just a prank.”

That last word seemed to deflate her entirely. Suddenly, instead of a brunette bundle of possessed weasel, I had a very calm woman gently patting my elbow. “You can let go now, I won’t hit him.”

Hesitantly, I set her back on her feet.  Glancing back at Coffee, he nodded, so I relinquished my grip on her entirely. She pushed her hair out of her face with both hands and spun to sit beside her partner. My face must have shown my confusion in brilliant technicolor. “It was just a prank,” she clarified. “I got fooled. I’ll figure out a way to get him back,” she waved nonchalantly.

“Without including me or Maverick?” I asked, arms crossed.

“Shoot.” She bit her thumb. “Yeah, I can do that. It’ll just be harder.”

“I doubt it would be harder than a prank three months in the making,” Arthur pointed out, still looking at the trees with suspicion. “Three, right?”

“Four,” Grey corrected, staring impassively at the bark on the tree. “How did you get the bark to grow in a tile pattern?”

Conor rubbed his neck and grinned abashedly. “A razor, when they were still young enough the bark hadn’t split naturally?  It was just a score, to make specific weak points where it would split better. And I stopped when I couldn’t reach anymore.”

With that comment, Coffee surged to his feet and stalked to the closest tree.  After a close inspection and a not-at-all-discrete rub of his hand over the tree bark, he nodded. “I can confirm the bark is much more random above seven feet. The detail is very well done, though.” He glanced back at Conor with an impressed expression. “Four months planning did not go to waste.”

“Thank fuck,” Conor chuckled. He looked over his shoulder at Simon, who was still running a careful hand over one of the trees.

“I didn’t know this was possible,” Simon admitted. “You did this with a razor?”

“Trees split into bark when the outer layer gets so dry and firm that it stops stretching,” Grey explained. Conor pointed at them, choosing to be silent. “Since any substance in nature splits along the weakest point, scoring the young bark with a razor, especially if done repeatedly, would cause the bark to split along the scores.”

A dawning look shot across Simon’s face, echoed by a matching expression on Charly’s. “Conor,” Simon ventured. “These trees were force-grown until they were planted. How often did you score them?”

“Two, three times a day?” he winced. “I didn’t want to damage them, so the cuts were really shallow until the bark started to establish. Just so I could tell where to keep scoring.”

“Do we have co - Oh! Thanks, Mr. Farro!” Charly grinned sunnily at Arthur.

“Just… just Arthur right now, okay?” He carefully capped the thermos of hot chocolate.

“Right, you bet, Mr. Farro.” He winced, but she continued blithely. “I have to admit, four months on a prank is a lot to invest, but it paid off.” A careful sip of her drink, followed by a marshmallow coming from nowhere and dropping in. “You literally cultivated a stand of trees to pull this off. Well done, sir. Very well done.”

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