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halfstack-smp · 2 years

Text

Please Take One

Oh. It wasn’t how Lynel was thinking at all.

Content: a baby(TM), The Time Knife, We've All Seen It, a two headed dog, children being rude, ungendered children and adults, the curse of family resemblance and also affection

TW: discussions of past child abandonment, illness and medication usage in children

Screen reader's note: Passages of Hokkien English.

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“What do you do while I’m gone?” Lynel asks one day.

Fadir frowns.

“How am I supposed t’ know what you get up to?” Lynel defensively continues. “I go out! I do-” They gesture vaguely. “Things!”

“I don’ do anythin’ too spec-ial, le,” Fadir dismisses. “Do some house chores. See if the other gods need somethin’ looked at. Check on the time knife. Meet up with the other diviners-”

“What was that last one?”

“Meet up with the other diviners,” Fadir repeats. “Very easy, le. I just go int’ my work room and activate the-”

“No, no,” Lynel interrupts. “The- the time knife thing. What’s a time knife?”

“Y’know. The time knife. It, ahh-” Fadir clicks its beak to itself a few times and curls its hands. “Imagine a blanket.”

Lynel blinks. “Al… right?”

“An’ the blanket is made up of all a bunch o’ threads and patterns. An’ y’ take a knife and sort of just-” One of Fadir’s talons pokes Lynel’s hand. “Just touch. Not enough t’ break it. But it changes the thread. Presses on a single point, le. An’ the harder you touch, the more thread y’ take along with you.”

“The thread is time, isn’t it?” Lynel asks. “That’s what you called it before. So then… a time knife is like something that pulls time?”

“Com-press,” Fadir corrects. “Be-cause the future, anything can happen, le. Lots of threads! But when there is a time knife, all those threads have to push up to the blade.”

“Is that bad?” Lynel wonders.

Fadir shrugs, its wings moving loudly across its back. “All it really means is that something is going to happen, that changes many things, an’ maybe you can’t stop it, ne? No matter what you do. An’ sometimes it is something very big. Like a flood that changes th’ future o’ all th’ people that live nearby- that is a time knife. But sometimes, it is very small. Very, very small. A right place at a right time. A wrong place at a wrong time. That is time knife, too.”

A pause, and then.

“Do you want to see the time knife?” It offers. “Y’ don’t have school t’day.”

“Alright.”

Now, of course Fadir already told Lynel that the time knife was not, in fact, an actual knife, but Lynel was still expecting something ominous. Maybe not dangerous, because Fadir doesn’t seem like the type to casually lead Lynel to danger, but still. At least something a little spooky.

As a treat.

But that’s not quite what happens. They hop the train line all the way to Aspenbone, the way they do when they want to reach the Nether market- except they cut off at an earlier stop, to a little old house with a blue butterfly on its door.

Lynel’s heard of butterfly houses before. Shelters protected by the Stargazer. Sometimes that means helping someone give birth safely, sometimes it’s a place to stay for the night, but a lot of times it means taking care of children who have nowhere else to go. There was one where Lynel used to live, but Mother was too proud to let any of them step inside. Looking back, it was probably more than pride- she was always afraid something would take her children away.

(Fat lot of good that ever did.)

It’s smaller than Lynel thought it would be. They expected a sprawling building of sad-faced orphans, not an actual house. It’s almost like a small inn with the amount of people (child or otherwise) just hanging around and talking. There’s even people in the kitchen when Fadir leads them in- a two headed wulver pup swinging their legs out of sync from the counter, a silk feathered sirin chopping up pears with a baby qilin slung across her chest. Or maybe an achlis? Achlis is the one with no scales, isn’t it?

“Hello again, Mx. Ravenslove!” the sirin sweetly chirps. “I’m just finishing up everyone’s snacks for the day. Any problems with the train today? You’re a little later than usual.”

“Some phantoms stuck on the tracks, le,” Fadir responds. “But will clear up in a few hours.”

The baby’s pearl green eyes open, cat-like dots peering out of spotted fawny hair. Their chubby body suddenly leans out of their sling, hands grabbing at the air in Fadir’s direction.

The sirin sighs. “Of course.” Her hands move away from the cutting board to heft the baby out of the sling. “Take them for a moment, will you?”

“Hao, le.” Fadir makes some kind of exaggerated noise at its arms wrap around the baby. “Aiyoo. Zui da!”

The baby happily slaps at their cheeks. “Ah-bi! Bibibibi.”

“Zhen de, ma?” Fadir indulgently asks. “Hao li hai!”

Lynel squints. “Is- is the baby the time knife?”

“Yes, le.”

“Time baby,” Lynel deadpans.

“Somethin’ like that,” Fadir allows. It resigns its hand to getting poked by the baby as it turns back to the sirin caretaker. “Any changes?”

“The doctor’s cleared Vis to start on heart medication, but you know how it is. They’re barely old enough to wrangle food, much less pills. I’ve been sneaking it into applesauce-”

“Pst.” The wulver pup(s?) wave their hands at Lynel. “Hey, why do you have freckles? I thought only the pale humans did that.”

“My dad was light skinned, I think.” Lynel stares up at the wulver. “Why do you got two heads?”

The left head sticks out their tongue. “More like why do we have to be stuck with the same body?”

“We were supposed to be twins,” the right head says. “I guess we just gave up halfway through.”

“Weird.” Lynel looks back and forth between the two heads. “Does one of you drive, or do you take turns?”

“Oh, it’s the worst,” the right head bemoans. “We each get a half.”

“How do you even walk?” Lynel sputters.

“Carefully,” the left head bluntly says. “We’re still working on it.”

Lynel hums to themself. “That’s kind of cool,” they admit. “I can’t imagine gettin’ along with one of my siblings like that.”

The two (probably three) children stare at each other in silence for a bit.

“We probably should have told each other our names at some point,” Lynel realizes. “I’ve just been callin’ you left head and right head. I think that’s mean.”

“I mean, we were just calling you freckle,” the left head admits. “Was that mean?”

Lynel thinks about it for a moment. Just lets the name sit there and marinate.

…Yeah, that sucks.

“Okay, no more of that,” they decide. “I’m, uh- Lynel.”

The wulver’s hand moves from the left head to the right. “Dotty and Lotty.”

Lynel looks back at the sirin lady still talking to Fadir. “So is she your mom or does she just work here?”

“She’s our mom,” Lotty clarifies. “She doesn’t really keep the other kids-”

“-unless they get too old,” Dotty finishes. “She does a lot of stuff with the Civics office trying to match babies up with new parents.”

“Huh. Any matches for…” What was the baby’s name again? “Vee? It’s easier for small ones, isn’t it?” Lynel scuffs their feat against the counter. “That’s what I heard when I was gettin’ moved around, anyways.”

Dotty and Lotty’s ears draw back a bit. “Well- sick babies are harder to take care of,” Dotty starts.

“And Mom’s not allowed to lie about any of that stuff-”

“-and Vis is really, really sick. Y’know?”

“Mom said they’re not gonna die or anything,” Lotty insists, “but. Y’know. Not really gonna get better, either.”

“That’s a bit like Fadir, then,” Lynel guesses. “That’s not too bad.”

Dotty and Lotty squint at the adults for a moment. “Is he-”

“It,” Lynel quietly corrects.

“Is it- is it very nice, do you think?” Lotty suddenly asks.

“It does look nice,” Dotty adds.

“What do you mean?” Lynel asks, voice getting smaller. “Why does that matter?”

“I think Mom wants to give Vis to Mx. Ravenslove.” Dotty’s shoulder shrugs. “I don’t know. It already visits so much. ”

Oh.

Oh, okay.

This is a thing now. Okay. Okay.

Lynel’s fingers dig into their palms until it quakes, shakes, hurts like rusty nails, and feels the sudden urge to deck Dotty and Lotty in their innocent puppy faces. But that would be mean, so Lynel doesn’t- doesn’t do that. Because that’s just wrong.

Fadir’s still just standing around with the baby, who seems to absolutely adore it with all their little heart, knocking their head into its chest as it solemnly places a fruit box sticker on their cheek.

“They do seem very attached to you,” the sirin mother points out. “Have you ever considered adoption before?”

“Eh? No,” Fadir distractedly answers. “I already did that.”

“Oh?” The sirin blinks, and looks between Fadir and Lynel. “Oh! Really? I couldn’t tell! You look so alike.”

Fadir and Lynel Ravenslove, with their shared freckles and tousled hair and free arms tucked at their chests like some sort of peeled flightless bird, both stare at her with equally blank smiles.

“Sounds fake, le,” Fadir decides, “but I’ll believe it.” It pats Lynel’s hair. “Already have one. Paisei.”

“...You can adopt more than once, Mx. Ravenslove.”

“Heh?” Fadir’s wings flare with surprise. “When did that happen?”

“That was always a thing,” the sirin patiently points out. “Literally always.”

Fadir’s face freezes as it stiffly tilts its head this way and that, clicking to itself.

“Sha ren you sha fu,” it finally says. “I may be stupid.”

Fadir’s eyes suddenly flick down to Lynel.

“I will… think about it,” it vaguely says. “Kamsia.”

The train ride home is a lot quieter this time. Lynel stares out the sides and watches shadows run along between the trees as they pass- formless quadrapedal freonds trying to ride the coattails of the train’s momentum.

“What do you see?” Lynel starts. “When you look at Vis.”

“No matter what I do, Vis is… there,” Fadir slowly answers. “For a long, long time. And then somethin’ terrible falls apart. It’s very strange. I’ve never seen a time knife with me in it.” It raises its hand, watching its allays dance along its fingertips. “I never feel my own thoughts, when I look at th’ thread o’ time. Not like that. But wherever Vis’ threads end, there is something- I don’t know. An’ then I see you.”

Lynel frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You an’ Vis, together,” Fadir clarifies. “Very very close. That’s why I kept comin’ back, le. Somethin’ in that child’s life tears through time, an’-” Its hand shakes slightly. “-an’ I don’t know what that means for you.”

Oh. It wasn’t how Lynel was thinking at all.

“But you felt upset earlier,” Fadir notes. “What happened, ne?”

“I-” Lynel hugs the backpack in their lap. “When you were holding Vis, it felt… bad.”

Fadir blinks. “Why?”

“I know it’s stupid! I know it is, I just-” Lynel feels their cheeks growing hot. “Mother was nice too, before the others were born.”

“..Ah.”

“She was still nice, after. At least at first.” Lynel picks at the threads of their pack. “But there was never enough to be nice to me and them. Mother and I weren’t allowed to be selfish anymore.”

Fadir’s expressions were odd to get used to at first, with that smile frozen on its face. But then Lynel thought of it like a mask slapped over its mouth, and things got easier. It was easier to understand, when everything was hidden in the eyes.

There’s something strained and hollow in that expression. Ice cracking on a frozen lake, screaming with the weight of it all.

“I did See after her, le,” it whispers. “To see if she would want you again. Or feel sorry for lettin’ me take you away.”

It pauses, as if wondering whether to hold its next words. It delicately folds its hands across its lap.

“She will use your absence well. She will always be enough for them, for the rest of their lives.” It sucks in a large breath, a rattling cage of lungs made to tear apart the sky. “An’ if I ever see her again, I will tear out her eyes for puttin’ you in my hands. Paisei.”

A pause, and then-

“You should make a doll of her and tear its guts out,” Lynel offers. “That’s what I did when people made me mad.”

“I should not do that, le,” Fadir drily refuses. “I am- I am a god. I think that would act-u-ally hurt someone.”

“Like a little rubber chew toy,” Lynel continues anyway. “An absolute wet rag.” They suddenly remember the sirin lady’s comment. “Can you believe the butterfly house said we look alike? That was so weird.”

Fadir snickers.

“It’s your fault,” Lynel jokes. “You’re infecting me with your- your bird thing.”

Fadir leans closer. “Ne?”

Lynel leans back. “No.”

Fadir leans its entire body onto Lynel’s side. “Neeeee?”

“Noooooooo.”

Fadir’s scaly, knobbled hand rests on the side of Lynel’s face, pulling them just close enough to rest its head on their own. “I am very sad for why you are here,” it admits. “But- I am happy that you are here. However long you stay.”

Lynel might have felt something like a kiss- stilted, gentle, kind.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” Lynel ducks into Fadir’s coat. “Okay.”

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