I've a very important petition I'm passing round, in honor of pride month. Please, take a moment and sign your name if you're the sort of person who cares for equal rights. Or I suppose you could not sign it, but it'd be a bit homophobic of you, wouldn't it?
[Two posts shared on the Wicked's Rest Fire Department's social media accounts.]
[The first, newest post, is a photo of User, sitting in a WRFD-issued t-shirt. He looks like shit, and he'd look like shit even if the lighting in the WRFD Administrative Building was halfway decent. Recent burns, arm in a sling, a grimace on his face. With his good arm, he gives a weak thumbs-up.]
“Our job, our calling, is never safe—even off shift. Firefighter Kelly Brooks knows that all too well. But East Station's temporary loss in the field is our team's gain. Firefighter Brooks will be appearing in a number of posts and PSAs in the month of June and into July as he recovers! Keep an eye out for helpful tips and tricks to keep yourselves safe. We know we will.”
[The second post in the feed features several images of what remains of an abandoned building in Netherville. It looks like a bomb went off. (It did.)]
“Members of West Station responded this weekend to possible seismic activity in Netherville. The photos show the scene as they arrived. The causes of this incident are being investigated jointly with the WRPD. However, at this stage, we're relieved to say that excavation crews found no evidence of any loss of human or animal life. If you have any information, please contact the WRPD non-emergency line.”
[pm] Oh, you do? So when I'm hiding from the sun, that's what you do all day? Go to the gym? I'd love to see you jogging past my house actually. Just let me now when you'll be coming by. Wear shorts.
[pm] Gotta make sure I look handsome for you, don't I? Maybe I will, yeah. Jog right by your window in my shortest shorts, no shirt, the works. Really give you a show. [user has never jogged before.]
[pm] Hah, yeah! So fun! I'm still trying to figure out what-- I didn't know tardigrades came that big, I thought they were like microscopic-- Definitely a story people aren't gonna believe, so... mmm, maybe not. Don't get your hopes up, Bazmatazz.
[pm] Well, who cares if they believe it? We know it's true, so why not say it? I, for on, think people ought to know about the work we did! We deserve some sort of recognition. This town would be dust if it weren't for us! [user has no idea if that's true or not.]
[pm] We should totally go see it! Oh, how could I forget, Simone Ashley is also like, so gorg as always. She was distracting. But yup, I get that people probably wanted to see the characters evolve, that's like fine or whatevs, but they took out so much of her fire. Maybe that's what happens when people get old, though. They lose their spark. :/ Not me though. I'll be a fierce 60yo. If I mak Ugh, that sounds so nice. Was it a huge change having to live in that small space?
Super sweet that you guys found one another <3 It's okay, I thought it was odd too. At first. You end up finding the appeal down the road. It's like, well... you don't have cats, but it's like a cat bringing you a dead animal. The thought behind it is what counts.
OH NO! Okay, so that's defo why you don't see the jurtleneck vision, babe! The denim's an issue for you. I get it, I'm the same with cargo pants. I see why we'll never see eye to eye on this. We can agree to disagree. LOL! There we go.
[pm] That would be lovely, actually. I like Simone Ashley. Always found her to be gorgeous, of course, but her acting's quite impressive as well. But that's Brits, yeah? Always incredible actors. I just don't know why evolving always needs to mean softening. But I suppose that's my opinion. Can't shove it off on everyone else. You'll be lovely at sixty, I'm sure. Still the same spitfire. We'll meet up for drinks. It was a big change, but I quite liked it.
I agree! I'm lucky I found him, really. He's a good person to know. You must not have thought it too odd if she was handing you carcasses at the first meeting and you were still open to a second. But I suppose it all worked out in the end, anyway. Now it'll be a bit like you're married to a cat.
Well, I don't particularly like turtlenecks in any fabric. People shouldn't be covering up their necks so much. Or their arms. Or their chests, for that matter.
[pm] That's so true, babe. But like, Miranda from the first one. Cause I feel like, she was way too nice in the sequel, have you seen it yet? I was defo vibing with it, I mean, pretty people in pretty clothes, Stanley Tucci, what's not to love? But some of the choices were a little meh! Why give everyone boyfriends you know? [...] Totes! It's weird you know? Having actual space for your stuff. Before Regan, I had like 3 other roommates and slept in a tiny room. Now I can just get things and there'll be space for them.
It's super cute how much he means to ya. Oh, no euphemism here. It was an actual dead squirrel. That she wanted to gift me, to impress me in that first meeting :) I was impressed, for the record, but not for those reasons.
Fashion changes all the time, there was defo a time when denim pants were like, the worst thing anyone could wear, and now look it! A staple. The jurtleneck time is now. LOOL! I guess they can come on land. They'd be like amphibious monsters. Is that still doing it for ya?
[pm] I've not seen the sequel yet. I suppose it's not much of a surprise that they dulled her down a bit. They're always doing that, aren't they? It's dreadful. I'll probably still enjoy it, though. Like you said, it's hard to go wrong with pretty clothes and Stanley Tucci. And Anne Hathaway is always something of a powerhouse. Shame about the boyfriends, though. [...] Suppose that part isn't as odd to me. I had plenty of space growing up, though I did live in a small shared flat for a year or so in London.
He's my best mate. My family, really. No one's ever been there for me the way he has, yeah? [...] Oh! How [...] romantic!
I'm not even particularly fond of denim pants, now that we're on the subject. I find them a bit boring. Everyone ought to move on from denim altogether, but especially in a turtleneck. [...] I could get behind amphibious. Or, rather, I could let amphibious get behind me.
[pm] Hmmm, like... like they're not gonna ask too many questions vibes. Because they're probably questions I can't fucking answer--
[new pm, a few hours later] I found our woman!! She led me straight to what I needed.... and I think the idea your friend had was a good place to start. This feels right. Gather him up and meet me at the library, baby, we're going on an adventure!
[User's boss insists that he should promote guided outdoors trips. There's some new competition in town, and his boss wants more locals and tourists signing up for services, so ...]
Because most of y'all ain't got any survival skills So with summer coming up and you people having a death wish With it getting a little warmer out here, thought y'all oughta know to be careful when exploring the great outdoors. If you want, you can hire a guide to keep you safe and help you enjoy your trip. I still do guided day hikes and overnight backpacking trips. But if that ain't your thing, I'm also doing kayaking trips. Get out on the Whye River, float around, look at some birds and fish and plants, maybe go fishing if that's your thing. All sorts of ways to safely enjoy the outdoors here.
TIMING: Current
LOCATION: Various (primarily the Null Impact Crater)
PARTIES: Colt (@californiacolt), Baz (@bazzledazzle), Diana (@diana-triformis), & Izzy
SUMMARY: Colt finally hits the nail on the head with what she's been looking for to fix this magic (ugh) problem, thanks to the help of Diana. She rounds up Baz and Izzy to take them to the impact crater and find whatever her gut has been telling her to find.
—
She gripped the steering wheel of her truck in both hands, staring at the long stretch of dirt road ahead of them. Her face was set in a serious expression, the ache to move forward not allowing much room for her usual levity. “Okay, gang,” she spoke to the group. “Let’s go find us an impact crater.”
The cast of characters on this particular mission was comprised of a bunch of people she didn’t really know: the museum tour guide she’d roped into her baseless need to steal and hoard purportedly magical artifacts, someone they had reached out to who had a sneaking suspicion that there was definitely something odd about the crater, and the woman in the college library who had confirmed this theory of strangeness surrounding the crater, pointing Colt in the direction of a few interesting passages in some books that referred to unexplainable phenomena.
Now, while Colt didn’t believe in magic in the slightest, she also could not ignore her impulse. Something larger than herself was guiding this motivation, and she had to see it through. For what purpose, she couldn’t say, though… Baz had mentioned something about a battery that needed to be charged. Colt didn’t know what the hell they meant by that, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting to this crater and seeing what was there that she needed so desperately to find.
—
The deepest parts of Isidore hated that he was doing this. He told himself that he didn’t care about the magic around him, what did it matter? Oliver was gone, so what was the fucking point? But the new part of Isidore, the part that listened to what Oliver would tell him, kept him from acting in those feelings. Oliver would want others like him to have a chance. So he’d let Baz talk him into it. Truth was, he’d lived in this town for long enough to know the rumors, the folk tales. He could be useful here.
Isidore wasn’t very talkative on the drive there, hood up to hide his pointed ears and opting to look out the window than interact with anyone in the car. The grief was still raw. Real. The fact that he wanted this for Oliver and knowing that Oliver wouldn’t see it hurt him. He couldn’t handle it, so he was opting for silence. The car jostled him, Baz was very close to him, and the window was cold against his cheek as he leaned against it. Hopefully they’d be there soon enough.
__
Baz didn’t do well with grief. Not their own, and not anyone else’s, either. They disliked anything they couldn’t brush away with a few well-placed yapping sessions. They’d always found it better to talk about nothing at all than to talk about something they desperately wanted to change and couldn’t. But… they didn’t think that was the move to make with Isidore. He struck Baz more as someone who’d like a task to complete rather than a session of yapping about nothing in particular. And maybe a task would help with the ache in Baz’s chest, too. Maybe focusing on making things a bit better for everyone would make them feel a bit better about themself. If nothing else, they’d like a guarantee that they’d remain able to hold their shape for extended periods of time. Dropping into other faces at random was both inconvenient and a bit… jarring, to say the least. They didn’t feel much like a person, these days.
Between their own knowledge, Isidore’s, and now Colt’s, Baz thought they had at least some idea of what they were looking for here. Something to charge a magical battery, something that could keep the town going indefinitely and save them all from having to do this again when the battery’s juice ran out. Baz had been excited upon first arrival, mostly because Baz was usually excited. The excitement had dulled a little at the sight of Izzy looking like something out of an early 2000s scene album and had dulled a little more with the arrival of another woman. Something curled in their gut as she got close, like milk souring in the bottle. Warden, their mind screamed, though they had no idea how they knew it. Their stomach ached, their skin itched. They didn’t like the feel of it, but they’d pushed it aside for now. If there was one thing Baz was good at, it was ignoring things that bothered them.
“I hear there’s all sorts of beasties out round these parts, sometimes,” they said, mostly because they found the truck a bit too quiet for their liking. “Oh! Does anyone have a cowboy hat handy? I’d love to be wearing a cowboy hat for this.”
—
Diana was pretty sure this ‘adventure’ she’d been commandeered for was actually a circle of hell.
Colt was nice— there was, at the very least, that. She had approached the warden at the university library and peppered her with questions about magic and craters— which would only be a weird research topic if you went to any university other than UMWR. Diana had helped find her a small mountain of books to comb through. A nice distraction from her own research and responsibilities… She had only meant to answer questions… but, somehow, she’d been voluntold into coming along.
The voluntolding had not included the bit where there were two additional people. Two additional people who she was about 90% certain were fae or some flavor of supernatural. Given the way the one called Izzy was keeping his hood up and his head down in a way that screamed ‘don’t look at me’, and the one named Baz had thus far done everything within their power to avoid her, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to reach that conclusion. Which brought her to the present: stuck in a cramped truck, bouncing along to an impact crater, with one nice if a bit strange lady and two people who probably wanted to kill her.
Fun.
“Sure, let me pull a whole ass cowboy hat out of my pocket…” She huffed as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Any idea on how long a ride this is gonna be, Colt?”
—
“Fifteen minutes, give or take,” Colt replied to Diana, looking at her for a moment and flashing a grin in spite of the general vibe in the truck. Okay, so everyone here was a little off, and she didn’t know why they were off but maybe she was going to have to stop being Miss Serious and actually do a little something to help the mood.
“And, actually Baz, I think I do have one in the bed box! We can pop it open once we get there and check. Gotta be looking your best, after all.” Her smile turned a bit more genuine, though she kept her eyes on the road this time: they could do this. And maybe everybody would lighten up once they weren’t all crammed into such a small space!
No one seemed too interested in small talk, so she turned the radio on to a low volume and just tried to enjoy driving on the open road, noting how even flat, wide open fields could be pretty if you had the right mindset.
After a while, she turned off the main dirt road and took a more winding path between some fields. Before long, the landscape changed. It became rocky, bouncing them around in the truck until Colt decided maybe they’d be better off on foot. So she stopped, threw it into park, and they all clambered out. Checking her GPS, she nodded. “Yeah, okay, so it should only be like another five minute walk thataway.” Circling around to her tailgate, she opened the door and climbed into the truck bed. First, she popped open the bed box, and wouldn’t you know it! A sassy little black cowboy hat sat waiting for Baz. She grinned and tossed it to them, then gathered the three shovels she’d brought along. (It would have been four, but she didn’t own four. Owning three was probably weird enough.) Passing them out, the woman locked the truck and started to lead the way to the crater, squeezing the handle of her shovel in both hands. “Won’t be long now!”
—
The ride, in short, was hell. Isidore could sense that Baz knew he was tense, which made Baz tense. And not to mention the other woman was probably a fucking hunter because of the way she kept fucking looking at them set the muse on edge. He just needed to survive this, do this for Oliver, then get the fuck out of here. In due time… Somewhere through the ride, Isidore snuck his hand out and gripped onto Baz’s arm. He needed to feel that Baz was real and solid. That this wasn’t a dream, as his mind wanted it so badly to be.
“Is that what’s up there instead of a stick?” Isidore remarked as he slowly dared to look over at Diana, expression daring her to try something as his eyes shifted color in the movement, exposing himself as a muse to someone who would know. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to fucking try. Better to get her staring at him instead of Baz. He could handle a warden. Baz deserved to be left alone.
Then, they were being shuffled out of the truck. Baz got his hat, and Isidore’s hood fell down as the shovel was thrust into his hands. Pointed ears to give himself away further to the woman who had a cowboy hat up her ass. He didn’t know what Colt knew, so he would play it off as an obsession with Lord of the Rings if it came to it. Anything for the humans, after all.
“You mean there’s manual labor required?” Isidore complained under his breath, staring at the shovel as if it was a piece of spoiled meat. “Let’s just get this over with,” he grumbled, not waiting for anyone as he started walking in the direction of the supposed source.
__
“Well, I wasn’t talking to you,” Baz retorted, their tone far less playful than their usual fare. They didn’t have much experience with wardens; in all honesty, they’d like to keep it that way. Better to let them remain the monster under the bed than to have an abundance of stories to tell about them, as far as Baz was concerned. They felt Izzy’s hand on their arm and leaned into him a little, a silent offer of support. The distraction they’d picked out might have been a touch nicer if there hadn’t been a warden (and, worse still, a warden that Baz could somehow sense was a warden — was that normal?) along for the ride, but it’d have to do, anyway. They flashed Colt a bright grin as she announced that she had a cowboy hat waiting for them. She was their second favorite person in this truck, no contest.
Finally, after what, to Baz’s short attention span, felt like at least seventy-two hours, the truck came to a stop. The doppelganger bounded out immediately, bouncing on their heels until Colt granted them the cowboy hat, which was immediately plopped onto their head. The shovel was something they quickly took a step away from, however. There only seemed to be three shovels, which Baz found a great excuse not to take one. “Oh, I’m more of a supervisor, actually,” they said, shaking their head. “I’ll make sure the hole’s all sorts of even and round. You’ll be happier for it, really. It’ll be the best hole out here. Well.” They paused. “Maybe second best.”
With the shovels dispensed, the group began moving towards the crater. Baz, with their borrowed (or stolen, maybe — they weren’t sure they’d be giving it back) cowboy hat proudly sitting atop their head, played the part of chatterbox. “How deep do you think we’ll need to dig, anyway? Oh! Is it going to be like that film with Shia LaBeouf, do you think?”
—
She was really beginning to wonder what use Colt saw in Tweedle Dreary and Tweedle Dickhead. Diana bit her tongue to keep a torrent of snarky, useless words locked up in her chest. What use was there? Two fae (if she’d doubted Isidore’s being one, the muse’s eyes exposed him) treated her with the disgust appropriate for a warden. And, as much as their acid-touched words and avoidant attitudes made her skin crawl, she couldn’t say she blamed them. What were wardens but a threat to their continued existence? Yes, she didn’t believe in the indiscriminate hunting some hunters subscribed to; but wasn’t that what she represented to them? Fear? Torment? Death? A warden was the monster that went bump in the night for the fae. And for once, they knew. For once, despite the discomfort of knowing, they probably felt safer. So she shut her mouth, offered Colt (friendly, oblivious Colt) a rather crooked smile, and simply pretended she had not heard Izzy or Baz.
It was a blessing when the truck finally lurched to a stop. Diana did not wait for the invitation of the engine turning off. Park was enough. She slid out, eager for the space.
Well, this was… the middle of fucking nowhere. She could count on one hand the amount of times her own investigations and research trails had led her to wilderness— none of them had been, exactly, pleasant. The middle of nowhere implied anything could happen, and (if well executed) no one would be the wiser. Colt did not know it, but she and her plan were probably the only things keeping Diana from becoming another name carved in the bar at The 3 Daggers.
Colt put a shovel in her hands— never had Diana felt so happy to have something to hold that wasn’t a pen or her bow. But then, the peanut gallery broke in. Complaining about the work as if it was utterly beneath them, or shirking it entirely. She tried to block it out and just follow Colt’s lead. She could do that, couldn’t she? Be nice to the fae who know and hate her. Don’t get yourself thrown into a pit or fed to a beast… But the whining… “If you wanted it to be like Holes and be like Shia LaBeouf, you would need a shovel. Which you don’t have. So that makes you… who, exactly?”
—
She saw the ears. Of course she saw them, how could she not? They were right there! And the weird-colored eyes… who was this guy? Someone who apparently knew the way to the crater once you had to start offroading, but… had they caught him while he was busy with something? Building a cosplay, perhaps? Maybe this was a test-run for the contacts and fake ears, to see how well they could handle a little dusting up in the great out of doors.
Yeah, that was probably it.
“Well, certainly not any of the kids in group D!” She turned to Baz as they all walked and let out a gasp for dramatic effect. “Surely you’re not a Warden type, or Mom, right?” She hadn’t thought about Holes in ages, which was likely for the best. It was a pretty fucked up story.
With Izzy, Tolkien superfan Izzy, leading the way, Colt tried to get herself to relax. But she just couldn’t, she was all wound up inside, and it only seemed to be getting worse the closer they (presumably) got to their destination. So instead of that, she tried to focus her attention on the weird dynamic happening between these people. “So! Thanks for all coming out for this… I thought, if there is something buried here, then I might need help reaching it. And Baz,” she added with a bright grin, “well you’re the one that kicked my attention in the right direction, so I figured you earned a spot on the team! Even if you don’t dig. But you still could, you know, we could take turns. Let people have breaks. I don’t know how far down this thing, whatever it is, is gonna be.”
—
Isidore kept his back to the group as he walked, his irritation and irrationality growing in tandem until he pulled out a small tin container and lighter, fiddling with the items until he decided against it and put it away. Fuck, this was all so annoying. He just wanted to go home. He didn’t want to help, let the world burn for all he cared. His only solace was that Colt was apparently smart enough not to ask questions. Isidore looked out of the corner of his eye to the figure he knew wasn’t there, then started fiddling with the container in his pocket again. He was fine, he just had to dig and then fuck off. Baz owed him so much for this.
He wanted to shout at Baz to get his head out of his ass, to tell him he was digging whether he wanted to or not, but quickly forced himself to relax his shoulders before he snapped at the only person here he considered a friend. Baz had been nothing but kind to him. He owed Baz kindness in return. “Please dig with us so we can get away from her as soon as possible,” he opted for saying instead, peering over his shoulder to shoot Diana a withering glare.
“This fucking place, my friends and I used to throw ragers in it. Been ages since I’ve been here. When you’ve lived here as long as I have, you do weird shit. Like daring each other to go out and lick the giant salt lick in the woods. Or eating one of the gummy worm creatures and watching them start behaving like a worm.” Isidore smiled to himself, shaking his head. “Good fucking times.”
__
“I’m Patricia Arquette,” Baz replied with a scoff, “obviously.” That was what the cowboy hat was for! Were they the only one in this group with any sort of culture? They were beginning to doubt this entire endeavor just a little. Well… not beginning. They’d been beginning to doubt this entire endeavor when Colt’s warden friend had shown up, but that was beside the point. They made eye contact with the warden, tilting their head a bit. “I’m certainly not the warden type, no. I find wardens a bit fucked, actually. Not the sort of thing I’d ever want to be!” A bit heavy handed, maybe, but what else were they meant to do? They weren’t digging, so they needed to supply colorful commentary instead. Izzy and Colt would enjoy it, at least.
They glanced to Izzy now, and then to Colt. Why did everyone want them to dig so badly, anyway? “There’s only three shovels,” they pointed out. “And I’ve not got a lot of upper arm strength, actually. I spend most of my time lounging. I’m a lounger, not a digger. We’re better off with me not digging, really. Much quicker for everyone if there’s no digging from me!” Though they did like the idea of getting far away from the warden. “Oh! Maybe the three of us,” they gestured between themself, Izzy, and Colt, “can get mimosas when we finish here!”
They studied the area as Izzy shared his memories, clicking their tongue thoughtfully. “None of you ever dared one another to dig very large holes and cover them with twigs we could move for a head start, did you?” Probably not. “Ah, no matter. Do you think we ought to start just anywhere? Or…” They trailed off, glancing between the group. “Does anyone have any strong feelings about where might be the best place to break ground?”
—
Annnnd 2/2 confirmed fae. Baz hitting the emphasis on the word warden, ensuring it was utterly dripping with loathing, was enough for Diana to check the second box. Okay, cool, great, fantastic. If she wasn’t cursed (trapped and broken were also appropriate and interchangeable adjectives for her situation) this might have been a perfectly normal operation. They had a single cause, and a single person that brought them together. But no. They knew what she was, and they would make every single second of this operation out to the crater a living hell for her.
Her kingdom for a wall to bang her head against…
She did her best to block out their continued conversation. Let her body focus on the act of moving forward while her thoughts removed themself from the two fae baiting her. In times when emotion wanted to yank her out of control like a wild thing on a leash, Diana could always fall back into her mind and tune the world out… or cover the noise a little. Conjugate a verb, recite an oration, replay a Bach invention— something to think other than to feel. Today’s choice: Catilinarian orations…
She only tuned back in when something of substance was posed— unfortunately by Baz, but no matter. They raised a valid point. Where to start? “… logistically? You want a dip. Somewhere the earth is already lower, maybe softer, that way we’re not out here digging for ages..” Diana let her eyes flick over the landscape, no, no, no… maybe. Possibly. East a few yards. “We could try over there—“ She said with a jerk of her head. “See if it feels right to Colt…”
—
Colt let out a nervous laugh, her eyes slightly widened. “Okay, okay, I get it… you three have beef.” She was speaking mostly to Izzy, who seemed content to spit vitriol out loud. Then her gaze slid to Baz, brows raised as if to say please keep him in check. “This is not the time for infighting, however, so let’s all just calm down a bit.” She sucked in a deep breath, considering Diana’s reasonable response. A dip. Sure.
Now leading the pack, Colt wandered in the direction Diana had indicated, but the feeling wasn’t getting all that much stronger. She let out a huff of breath, shaking her head. “Not here.” Considering the landscape for a moment, she pointed to a small hill that rose up not far from them. “Let’s go there. Get a bit of an elevated perspective.” The woman took off in a trot, scaling the rocky hillside with ease. As she crested it, her eyes took in one hell of a sight: the impact crater in question. It was huge, and deeper than she’d expected, but not like a quarry. They could easily climb down the gentle slope to the center, and that’s exactly where her brain was telling her to go. As the others came up behind her, she pointed into the crater. “There. Dead center. Come on.”
Skittering down into the crater, Colt was practically in a sprint by the time she reached the bottom, her blood thundering in her ears and a ringing in her head making her feel a bit frantic. “This is it! It’s gotta be here!” She slammed her shovel down into the earth, hissing in pain as the shockwave ran up the handle and into her arms. Fuck. The ground was really hard. She tried again, getting a bit of leverage and lifting away a chunk of dirt and pebbles, hucking it off to the side with wild abandon.
—
Isidore had long since blocked out all of the attempts at awkward conversation that were going on around him. Eventually, they came to the crater and Colt started following whatever instinct was guiding her towards the center of the crater, and who was Izzy to argue with the girl that just blindly followed instinct? But then she started fucking digging. And Izzy shot a side eye to Baz, who had already made it known that he wasn’t digging. Izzy didn’t want to dig either.
He fell behind to stand next to Baz, and kept the shovel between them as he blankly stared at the woman trying to dig through such hardened soil. “This is going to take forever, why are we using shovels?” He whispered to Baz before looking back to Colt. He had the upper body strength of a wet spaghetti noodle, this was going to be miserable. But if Baz wasn’t going to be a team player, he’d at least try to be.
So after a moment of making a face at the sight, Isidore finally forced himself to join Colt in digging through such hardened ground, it may as well have been concrete. “This is going to take a million years. Do we have something better?” He looked around, but knew there was nothing. They were just going to be digging forever. “Baz, you owe me so big for agreeing to this,” he told his friend before continuing to dig. Miserable, miserable digging.
__
“Don’t worry, love, I’m perfectly calm,” Baz assured Colt, and it was true enough. They didn’t love being in the presence of a warden, but they were reasonably certain that this woman wasn’t going to swing a knife at them with witnesses around. Maybe she’d have done it without hesitation if it had only been Baz and Isidore here, but there was Colt to consider as well. Plenty of hunters had qualms about killing fae where human eyes could see. It was why Baz’s go to tended to be to find a crowd. They’d rarely met a scrap that couldn’t be avoided by the simple presence of other people.
They didn’t think a scrap was in the cards here regardless, however. Whatever this warden was here for, it didn’t seem to be a hunt. This was one situation, Baz thought, where hunters and the supernatural probably all aligned. If magic wasn’t restored, everyone would suffer. And magic being restored meant they were going to have to… dig a hole in a crater. Naturally.
Baz watched the two women climb into the crater, responding to Izzy’s question with a shrug. “I haven’t got a bulldozer handy,” they responded. Izzy seemed to decide that he, too, ought to dig; Baz sat on the dirt, crossing their legs. “I’m not going to agree to owing you anything, Izzy dear,” they replied in a singsong, not willing to walk into a promise bind even if Isidore would be the one holding the reins to it. “Has anyone struck gold yet? I’m bored of this! Oh! Colt, do you have games on your phone?”
—
At the top of the crest, all the thoughts scuttling around in Diana’s mind stilled. All she could do was stare and whistle at the great gash that cut into the landscape. It looked as if some giant had come down and scooped up a fistful of earth, oblivious to all the little lives that existed below its feet like ants. The time to stare and absorb the enormity of the situation was cut short; Colt was practically sliding down into the crater, little clouds of dust being kicked up and rocks following her down into the bowl of the crater. No self preservation, no hesitation, just sprinting with a shovel and a dream… If there was anything out here waiting beneath the earth’s crust for a meal of idiots with shovels, it was certainly going to get it. “Fffffff– wait up-” The warden started after Colt, pausing only a moment to look back at the two fae at her back. “Just– careful…”
The whole scene was unravelling so ridiculously that (if Diana had the time or bandwidth) she might have doubled over laughing. Colt’s shovel kept cartoonishly bashing into the ice-hardened earth, wedging up nothing, then a little bit of dirt. Isidore looked like every move of shovel-to-earth was the most taxing, impossible task on earth. And Baz? Baz was true to their word, plonked down on the ground and sitting back to enjoy the show. But there was no time for laughter at the utterly bizarre circumstances that had been bestowed upon them.
What else was there to do but dig?
If it were warmer, if the ground were softer, this would have been fast work. But winter was not exactly willing to loosen its grip on the earth. It took leaning with her foot on the edge of the shovel with all her weight to do anything of substance. Baz was asking about gold and video games; Colt was digging; Izzy looked like the saddest wet cat in all the land. “No one has tea or hot water in a thermos, do they? Something we could warm up the ground with and get it looser quick?” Or maybe, Baz would be some sort of sun nymph or Izzy would have a small army of fire salamanders in his pocket…
—
After shoving her shovel (haha) into the ground and practically jumping up and down on it to get it just a few inches deep (hahaha), Colt let out a desperate wheeze. “Sadly, no! I don’t! To both the games and the thermos.” She stopped, thinking for a moment. “... oh, but I have something else, back in the truck! I’ll be back in a sec!” She dropped her shovel and sprinted up the side of the crater, disappearing out of view and leaving nothing behind but a small landslide of pebbles.
It was just over two minutes later when she came scampering back down into the crater, holding some kind of metal jug with a long nozzle in one hand, and a fire blanket tucked beneath the opposite arm. “Okay! Everyone back up a little.” She dropped the blanket near Baz and ignited the drip torch, dousing the area where they were digging in flammable liquid that caught fire as it dripped out past the flame. “This will warm it up a bit!” There wasn’t much foliage here for the flames to devour, so they only lasted as long as the liquid did, but Colt kept drenching the area as it started to go out. After several applications, she let it burn itself out and nodded at the others to try again with their shovels, setting the drip torch down to grab her own.
—
Isidore stopped smacking his shovel uselessly against the frozen earth as Colt ran to her truck, casually walking himself over to where Baz was sat, pulled out his phone, and opened the word game he had downloaded and handed it to Baz with a conspiratorial wink. “Let me know if you beat the level I’m stuck on, I’d be rather grateful.” He watched as Colt came sprinting back over with what he could only describe as a giant flamethrower.
“Who the fuck just has that in their truck?” Isidore questioned, voice incredulous. As the flames ignited, Isidore’s eyes went comically wide as he sank to sit beside Baz, unable to yank his gaze away. “Hot,” he muttered to Baz with an amused smirk, as if he’d made himself laugh at his own joke. After the torch ran out, Isidore patted Baz on the shoulder before forcing himself up onto his feet to resume his useless digging with the others.
The shovel dug into the hardened earth a bit easier this time. Still hardened from not being tilled by anything in decades, it was still a difficult dig. But he kept at it, despite wanting to be Baz, playing games on his phone.
—
Colt had no games on her phone, which Baz viewed as perhaps the worst tragedy to hit the world since the beginning of time. Luckily, Isidore was there with a word game capable of sufficiently distracting the doppelganger from the discomfort curling in their gut every moment they spent close enough to feel the warden’s presence. They disliked being so close to perceived danger, disliked that the most they could do about it was to make snide comments and be generally unhelpful.
The word game was a decent enough way to take their mind off it, though. They tapped at Izzy’s phone, glancing up with some interest as Colt fetched some sort of flamethrower from her truck and used it to warm the earth. Baz raised a brow, shrugging at Isidore’s comment. “Never been into fire,” they admitted. They were, of course, not ‘into’ anything that brought pain along as a side effect.
With the earth warmed, Baz settled back to supervise the digging a little more carefully. They cheered as Isidore’s shovel turned up dirt, clapping for Colt as well (and, notably, not clapping for the warden). “Think we’ll be out of here in no time at all,” they said as the three shovels made progress on the hole, digging in deeper and deeper. The bigger the hole got, the less Baz focused on the game on their borrowed phone. Curiosity spread through them like dye in water, and they leaned forward to wonder what might pop out once the hole was deep enough.
—
A flamethrower. Of course, Colt had a flamethrower. Just like Emilio somehow had one in addition to his homemade ones made from tiny hairspray cans and lighters. When you existed in a town that was, as some people deemed it, the strangest place on earth, perhaps it was a requirement that you have the implements with which to add to that strangeness on hand at all times. Not that Diana could complain… The damned thing did the trick. The earth warmed while the grass and weeds that remained shrivelled up into ash; carbon nothingness to blow away on a breeze. All she could do was lean on her shovel and whistle while the ground was blasted with flames.
It was easier after that. Colt’s fire had done the trick, and Diana could fully focus on a task again rather than getting derailed on her shitty digging and mental Cicero-robics by every little whisper or sideeye she received courtesy of the Tweedles. The warden dug, and dug, and dug, until her arms felt wobbly and ached, until fate intervened and the shovel hit awkwardly into the earth, disappearing deeper into the dirt than it should have. She pulled the shovel out and crouched down to investigate
“Uhh…” Dirt fell downward into a hole that grew a little wider by the second. “Think we’ve got something here…”
—
She’d expected such reactions, and smiled in the face of their disbelief, and dare she say it, judgement. “I’m a firefighter, for starters,” she laughed, swinging the tip of the drip torch over the ground. “And this is used for creating controlled burn lines when dealing with wildfires. Don’t worry, I’m authorized to use it and everything.”
Digging away at the softened ground with the other two (and with Baz cheering them on, the dear), Colt was bright and hopeful as they got deeper and deeper. That is until the ground fell away beneath Diana’s shovel, and Colt’s eyes went wide. “Shit,” she breathed, throwing her shovel aside and reaching a hand out toward Diana. “Back up, back up, get back to solid ground,” she barked in a no-nonsense tone of voice, likely one that only ever came out during dangerous situations. Which this was! “You too,” she said to Izzy while remaining planted firmly where she stood. Producing a small but powerful flashlight from her pocket, Colt clicked it on and slowly sank to her knees, leaning over the hole and sweeping the light down into it. It was a sizeable cavern, but she let out a sigh of relief when she realized it wasn’t so large that a fall from where she knelt now would be serious. It wouldn’t feel great and getting back out would be a challenge, but—
What the fuck was that?
“Um,” she said in a voice that wavered slightly, going still like a deer in headlights. “There’s… there’s something down here.” Obviously. They’d been hoping there would be, based on her hunch, right? But… “Something… alive.” But asleep. It looked like a huge grub or something, and it was snoozing peacefully in spite of the glare of her flashlight.
“... we have to get it out.” She gasped, whipping her head around to look for Baz. “This is it, Baz! This is what’s gonna work for the battery!”
—
The more they dug, the more Isidore began to dissociate. He wasn’t so much present with the world as he was simply going through the motions. Fae weren’t meant to shovel, this was ridiculous. After a while of nonstop mindless digging, they broke through to something. Colt was yelling for them to get back, and he wasted no time dropping his shovel and getting himself over to Baz with wide, fearful eyes. He wasn’t quite sure what was down there, but it couldn’t be good.
Colt was speaking again, and Isidore frowned and found himself inching back toward her before he could think better of it. He kept himself behind her, but peered over her shoulder to take a look. “Is that a giant bug?” He asked, having no idea what he could possibly be looking at. The town’s magic stores were going to be saved by a giant… magic… bug? Right. Of course it was. At least it wasn’t a worm this time.
“Well we’re not getting out on our own,” he grumbled as Colt whipped around to face Baz, and he backpedaled so he was standing off on his own on ground that wasn’t about to crumble from under his feet. “So… mission success?” He asked, looking between the two.
__
Baz peered over the edge of the hole as the others seemed to break through to… something. Colt ushered Isidore and the warden out (and Baz kept a wide berth from the latter) and shone a flashlight down, down, down, illuminating something beneath the earth. Baz leaned a little closer as she announced that this was what they needed to power the battery, squinting. A… caterpillar thing? They glanced to Colt uncertainly, but she hadn’t steered them wrong yet, had she? If she said this was what they needed, then Baz could agree that this was what they needed. They clapped their hands together, ecstatic.
“We’ve done it,” they announced with a cheer. “We saved the town! Great work, team!” Though Isidore made a good point. How were they going to get this thing out of the ground? “Does anyone know any strapping young lads who might be able to help us out with this? Preferably ones who might like to do it shirtless, and in very small shorts?”
—
The instinct to push forward and investigate was very quickly brought to a screeching halt. Colt was reaching out, barking at her to get back, and… well, it was her operation, and Diana highly doubted that Baz and Izzy would be very much help if she fell in and got eaten by something. A flashlight shone down into the cavern that had opened up beneath their feet. Something large, that was her first thought. Something huge, which was usually bad but… it was squishy looking. And snoring. She squinted hard, trying to take in the greater picture lost in the dark. She’d seen something like this before on the title page of what was supposed to be an argumentative essay, Why Tardigrades Are The Best… Only this thing was the size of a tank. No, a school bus.
She crept a little closer to the edge. Jesus this thing was big… “We’re gonna need a bigger truck…” Diana looked at Baz and Isidore each for a moment before settling on the least confrontational face: Colt. “Weird question: Do firefighters do extractions for giant tardigrades?”
—
A pressure was building in Colt’s chest and head, and she worked her jaw and set her expression in a firm scowl as she tried to ignore it. This happened sometimes, when she got a bright idea that didn’t feel like her own, necessarily. It was something like a heady excitement, except it felt too big for her to contain. She huffed out a breath, her expression relaxing as the sensation passed.
“Hm… I don’t know about the shorts, I might be able to convince him, but…” Her pouted lips sprang up into another grin. “I do know a guy who might know some guys that could help!” She fished her phone out of her pocket, backing carefully away from the edge of the hole and pulling up Kelly’s contact. He picked up after a couple rings, and she dove right into it.
“Hey baby Brooks! I have a crazy weird favor to ask, and I can totally owe you back if you just say yes and don’t ask too many questions.” She paused, listening. “Mm.. okay, so I need a hand getting a large… creature… out from underground. It’s in a hole that we dug. But like, it was in its own bigger hole.” Another pause. “Oh, me and some… folks who helped me find it! That doesn’t matter. We need help getting it to Netherville, after we get it out of the hole. There’s… there’s some people building something there, like some kind of battery, and they need this guy we found. Again, I know it sounds whacko, but I’m prepared to beg you, man. Don’t make me do that.” A final pause, and she glanced up from the ground, finding Baz’s gaze as another idea struck her.
“Say, Baz, you don’t happen to know anyone with a crane, do you?”
Do you happen to know where I might be able to find some shirtless young men wearing cowboy hats and shorts?
If you find them, you'll have to let me know. I've been looking everywhere for this sort of thing. Did you know I've not seen a single shirtless young man wearing a cowboy hat and shorts since coming here? I thought this was bloody America! You lot need to do something about your false advertising.
TIMING: Current
LOCATION: Slumberland Orchards
PARTIES: @bazzledazzle & @hotbearsawyer
SUMMARY: Sawyer tries to scare Baz, but unfortunately for her, they are known for being brave and fearless.
The Tulip Festival sounded like the most boring thing imaginable to Sawyer, but her interest was piqued as soon as she heard about the Haunted Tulip Walks. She cursed herself and Tobe for never thinking about using springtime for haunted entertainment! What were they thinking? Or, well, not thinking?! Sawyer should have known better. Should have thought way ahead of time about how horrifying the spring could be too. If she wasn’t so caught up in all of this stupid insurance bullshit just to pay her rent and bills, then maybe she would have thought about more seasonal scares for the Rhodes family. Perhaps something inspired by The Wicker Man or Midsommar would have been fun and thrilling for making a fun, haunted torture show on the family farm.
Instead she grumbled as she stood at the Slumberland Orchard as she was informed by Jessica (just another obnoxious bugbear who thought she was so good at scaring people) that the haunted walk was on Tuesdays only. Of course Sawyer showed up on the wrong day! She folded her arms over her chest as she turned away from the booth and glared at the bright colorful tulips that weren’t even being used to scare people.
Arms still across her chest, she stomped out to the rows of tulips to inspect them. If she was running this place, the haunted walks would be daily! Maybe next year when she finally took over the family business, she would do something similar but every single day of the week. Only Tuesdays was disrespectful to the bugbears who worked for these rude, greedy mares. Those mares didn’t understand how powerful she and her bugbear brethren were—they could elicit fear from people while they were wide awake, not fast asleep in their subconscious. Bugbears were obviously superior.
She kicked at some of the deep purple tulips. She glanced around and didn’t spot any of the employees, and if the mare owners wanted to come for her, she knew how to handle herself. Sawyer stomped her boot on the tulips and squished them under her shoe. A row of red tulips enticed her for more stomping and kicking, but a whiff of something else caught her attention too. A body. She tilted her head as she spotted someone standing not too far away from her. If she was here, she might as well get a treat out of it.
She eyed them up and down, peering her way into their mind to find a fear of theirs. The taste of dirt settled on her tongue, and she licked her lips and smiled. Vines with serrated thorns grew from the earth around the person’s feet and in the path ahead of them. The vines moved on their own, headed right towards the person as they inspected the tulips.
—
Baz liked the Spring. Everything always seemed brighter once the snow was fully melted and the flowers were blooming, and Baz liked bright things more than anything else. They liked the soft pastels of the clothing people wore as the months began to warm, liked the light that remained in the sky for longer and the sun that felt warmer on their skin. They liked the ways the town seemed to celebrate the changing of seasons, too. This latest bout of festivals and events had them in good spirits in spite of everything else going on. Baz had always been skilled in focusing on the positives, after all. And right now, the positives included a lovely tulip farm with plenty of beautiful flowers to gaze at.
They’d brought their sketchbook along with them, idly drawing the fields that stretched in front of them. They wished they’d brought a full easel and paints, but that sort of thing required a lot more forethought than Baz tended to possess. The sketching would do for now and perhaps the next time they were headed this direction, they could beg Joel into driving them so they could bring along more serious supplies. In the meantime, the doppelganger was happy enough just to wander.
They were so distracted by the lovely flowers that they were only marginally aware of a nearby stranger. Typically, Baz might have approached for conversation, but the woman seemed… a bit busy, at the moment. Best not to bother her while she was stomping about. And, anyway, they were happy enough looking at the… thorns?
The thorny vines grew at their feet, not unlike the vines that had once dragged Baz and Daniel under the earth. But there was something a bit different about these, wasn’t there? It reminded them of something else familiar, something that filled them with more warmth than fear. They glanced around, finding no one nearby but the woman. Stepping around the vines, they approached her. “Lovely day we’re having,” they greeted. “Are you a bugbear, by chance?”
—
Before Sawyer could even make the vines crawl up the person’s legs and turn them into a bloody mess—maybe if she was lucky and focused hard enough, she could’ve made them feel excruciating pain—the person ignored the vines and walked over towards her. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the person. She scoffed at the lovely because everything about this day was the complete opposite of lovely. And now this random person was speaking to her rather than letting her have at least one good thing in her life.
And somehow they knew about bugbears.
She narrowed her eyes at them. A hunter, maybe? Could they sense her and that’s why they ignored her fun little vines? “Maybe,” she answered, as she studied them more carefully, digging around in their mind for something else. Though if they knew about bugbears, she probably couldn’t scare them. “Great chat. Have fun with your flowers.” Sawyer turned on her heel to walk away from them. It wasn’t as though she cared if they were a hunter; she could handle herself just fine against them. She had never exactly done a great job at hiding her species from others—what did it matter if people since most everyone just thought she was insane? But she was almost curious about what they knew about bugbears. If they weren’t a hunter, then how did they jump right to that conclusion? She didn’t recognize them as a fellow shifter from The Chimera, but maybe they just weren’t in the know. Judging by their accent, they probably weren’t. She spun back around and tapped her finger against her chin. “And what exactly do you know about bugbears anyway?”
—
They’d never met another bugbear besides Joel. At least, they didn’t think they had. The idea of it was exciting, both for their own sake and for their housemate’s. Baz often worried that Joel didn’t get enough from their friendship, despite the older man’s tendency to remind them that friendship wasn’t designed as a transaction. Worry was a thing with teeth, the sharpness of them digging into Baz’s insides and shaking its head like a dog with a toy. It was easy, of course, to imagine a world in which Joel got bored of them and took off one night while they slept. Some days, most everything Baz did was in the interest of avoiding that. And wouldn’t it go a long way if they could introduce him to another bugbear? Wouldn’t he like that sort of thing?
She didn’t deny it, which Baz took as a confirmation. (If she hadn’t been a bugbear, she probably would’ve said something like ‘what are you talking about’ or ‘what is a bugbear’ or some equally silly question that Baz would walk away rather than answering.) They grinned, face lighting up but immediately dimming when she turned to walk away. “Oh, come on!” They moved to follow her, unwilling to let an opportunity like this pass them by. Joel deserved to have more people like him in his life, didn’t he? And Baz could set it up! He’d be grateful for it, and so would she. They were certain of that.
The woman turned around quickly, the abruptness of it nearly leading Baz to collide with her as they trailed behind her. They stumbled back a step, grin sliding back into place. She seemed to give them a once over; they didn’t shy away from the gaze. Baz liked it when people looked at them, after all; they preferred it that way. “I know loads about bugbears,” they replied, and it wasn’t a lie. Living with Joel had taught them plenty. “I happen to know one very well, actually. Do you know a lot of others?”
—
So, this person knew a lot about bugbears. They seemed a little too excited about meeting her, so they couldn’t possibly be a hunter. Maybe a very stupid hunter. Probably a shifter of some sort, though she couldn’t lay her finger on what type of shifter. That wasn’t exactly a skillset that she had, unlike that bugbear bouncer. She’d have to figure that out and maybe bring them along to The Chimera with her sometime. Could be a nice way for them to meet fellow shifters.
“Ayuh,” Sawyer replied, as if that was a ridiculous question. “Like, my family.” She glanced around the tulips, making sure that it was just the two of them standing there without any listening ears from nosy people—though, this shifter was nosy themself, just walking up to her and asking if she was a bugbear. She wasn’t going to get into all the intricacies and drama of the local bugbear community with this random British shifter who happened to know one bugbear. For all she knew, they were just a tourist visiting town because they heard about how fun this place was for shifters.
“So what are you then?” she asked, as she waved her hand towards them. Certainly not a bugbear, that much she knew. She knew enough about other shifters, but not all that much, so Sawyer struggled at making a guess at what they were. Maybe … a siren? With all of the bright patterned colors they wore, maybe that was their bird instinct taking over? But she didn’t know that much about birds anyhow. “I can’t pin you down, but I don’t know enough about other shifters.”
—
Right, her family. Baz forgot, sometimes, that most people were the same species as the people who raised them. Growing up in a house where no one was the same as they were, as a species whose reproductive habits were something they themself were completely unaware of, made it difficult to remember that other people experienced the world differently. This bugbear had been raised by bugbears; Joel probably had, too, though they didn’t often talk to him about his early life. Baz much preferred to live in the moment, to experience only the parts of the world that existed directly in front of them. Joel knew that.
“Right, right,” they agreed, as if they hadn’t forgotten that small tidbit of biology. “Of course there’s your family. But outside of them. Do you know any other bugbears?” There was an unspoken secondary question there, one twisted into the furrow of the doppelganger’s brow: Would you like to? It would be good, Baz was certain, for the both of them! Just… as long as Joel didn’t decide he liked this bugbear more than he liked Baz. Obviously.
The question was turned on them, and Baz clicked their tongue and shook their head. “Oh, I’m not any sort of shifter,” they replied. “Well, technically.” Sebastian had been a siren, and they could tap into some of those abilities, but they weren’t particularly good at it. Not enough practice, not enough interest in practicing more. “I can do some shifting, I suppose, but it’s a different kind. I don’t go round turning into an animal. Unfortunately, really, because I always did think that was a neat trick. My best mate’s bear is impressive, in its own way.” Small, sure, but Baz loved the bear because Baz loved Joel.
—
Why was this random shifter so interested in knowing if she knew other bugbears? Maybe they were a hunter after all … no, absolutely not. Nothing about them made Sawyer think they were a hunter. “Obviously I know other bugbears.” Ursa Major, what a bunch of stupid questions. But Sawyer didn’t really want to talk too much about other bugbears right then. Not when everything with Darcy and her family still felt so fresh. And it was fresh. She still felt that weird betrayal finding out that the cubs she used to hang out with weren’t even cubs, but hunters. And, just in case they were a hunter, she wasn’t going to go about telling them about all the other bugbears here.
But they weren’t a shifter. Weird. “What could you possibly mean by technically?” she asked. Was it some sort of similar technicality like the Kincaid cubs? She folded her arms over her chest and furrowed her brows at them. “Okay, I need you to explain exactly what you mean by that. You’re not a shifter but you can shift?” For the life of her, Sawyer couldn’t figure out what they meant by that. None of what they were saying made sense to her. She was ready to turn around again and march away from these tulips and go home. Back to her little apartment and a bottle of wine. “What’s your best … mate’s name?” she asked. Maybe she would know of that bugbear, if they were from around here.
As she stood there, she yawned out of nowhere. Sawyer covered her mouth and shook her head. It wasn’t them that was making her yawn. She glanced around the rows of tulips and tried to see if she could spot those annoying mares. As if they could even frighten her. Another yawn came over her, and for a moment she wondered if it had anything to do with her long nights out in the woods, now that winter had finally ended and she had more energy. “Sorry,” she said. “The tulips are, like, pretty or whatever, but I should probably get going.” If they were friends with a bugbear though … “You should probably head out too. This place can make you real sleepy.”
—
“Is it obvious?” Did other species spend time with those like themselves, even outside of their families? Baz’s father had never had much interest in spending time with other muses outside of what those muses might have been able to offer him personally, and their mother and brother had held little interest in other fauns. Their brother told them once, in fact, that other fauns often felt a bit like competition. There’s only so much good food in the world, he’d sighed, rolling his eyes. I’m not interested in settling for scraps. And that was among fae, who could sense one another when they got close! How did a bugbear even find another bugbear? How did they know the person they were with was like them? Was there some secret tell that Baz wasn’t aware of? Surely Joel would have told them, even if they weren’t a bugbear themself. He didn’t keep secrets.
She seemed a little on edge, and Baz raised their hands with the palms facing out in a calming gesture. “Nothing nefarious,” they assured her. “I’m happy enough to show you, really, but I’d rather not do it out in the open. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be a bear out in the open, either, would you?” That was one thing they liked about meeting other supernaturally inclined people — they didn’t have to explain their hesitation to anyone. It was different with someone like this woman than it had been with Daniel, or even Jenny in the beginning. She’d grown up in this world. She knew how dangerous it could be. It was why Baz had a tendency to trust those that he knew weren’t human right away. In their mind, they were all on the same team. “He’s called Joel,” he replied. “Dark hair, a beard, accent to go along with mine. I’m sure you’d remember him if you’d met him.” Joel was hard to forget, in Baz’s utterly unbiased opinion.
The woman yawned, and Baz’s brow furrowed. Were they boring her? It didn’t seem likely. Baz was many things, granted, but they weren’t sure they’d ever been called boring. Not by anyone! The woman stomped a foot, as if trying to keep herself awake, and the doppelganger squinted at her apology. “Make you sleepy? How’s that, love? It’s a bit tranquil, sure, but I’m not in the habit of dozing off mid-conversation. Are you all right?”
—
Sawyer raised her brow at them. Of course it was obvious. Whatever they were, perhaps they didn’t understand the significance of pack dynamics and the bond between shifters. Her parents raised her to believe that shifters were superior to all other supernatural creatures, though they didn’t know all that much in comparison to others. But it was still obvious—if this person was some sort of supernatural being and didn’t expect her to know other bugbears, then it only further proved the accuracy of her beliefs. “Yup, we, like, hang out and stuff. Always good to have, like, bonds or whatever.” Sad that whatever they were didn’t have that sort of connection.
“Fair enough,” she replied, eyeing them up and down again, not really concerned about what they were anymore. They were something shifter-ish. But she couldn’t hold back the laugh that escaped her lips at the insinuation she didn’t want to be a bear—of course she’d rather be a bear out in the open. Even right there in the field of tulips, she wanted to shift into her fur and roll around in the tulips. Sometimes she loved to just sit around as a bear and take in the beauty of the world around her, and though she just stomped on the tulips mere moments ago, she would have loved to be a bear looking at the tulips. “I could shift right here,” Sawyer teased. “What’s stopping me? The closest people are just …” she waved her hand where people were off in the distance, not paying attention to either of them. “I could shift and none of them would even realize that a human just turned into a bear.” She laughed again. “Maybe they’d even be scared of a bear just suddenly appearing.”
But now she wondered if some mares recognized her. She knew some bugbears and mares got along well enough, but her family didn’t really agree with that, instead viewing mares mostly in a negative light. Maybe for some reason they wanted to prove that they were scarier than her. As if. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Sawyer grumbled. She looked around trying to see if she could spot one of those mares trying to come near her and put her to sleep. Unless … She raised her brow at the stranger again. “So you feel fine?” she asked.
—
Truthfully, Baz didn’t know much about shifters. They knew about Joel, who might not have been the standard sort of shifter, but they didn’t know much beyond that. It was interesting to learn that shifters tended to have ‘bonds’ with one another. Baz thought of fae and their aos sí, thought of the immediate camaraderie many of their ilk felt with one another. Even Baz, who had been raised in an environment where the fae in their makeshift aos sí didn’t extend that ‘community’ aspect of faedom to Baz themself, felt a fondness for other fae by default. Maybe it was the same for shifters, then; maybe some bond existed there that Baz wasn’t privy to. (Were they denying Joel that, then, by taking up that place in his life? The thought ached a little; they pushed it down and away as quickly as they could manage.)
Their brows shot up at the idea of her shifting right here in the open, glancing towards the other people in the vicinity. They weren’t close, sure, but they were close enough that they’d certainly see a bear pop up out of nowhere. Maybe even close enough to recognize that said bear had been a woman moments before. “Bit of a risk, innit?” Baz prompted, tilting their head to the side. “We’ve no way of knowing if any of those people are rangers. Or… scientists who might see it fit to kidnap you and slap a tracker on you.” They soured a little at that thought, remembering when Joel had told them of his experience with that. He insisted it was no big deal, but it was to Baz. The idea of anyone hurting Joel was sickening. The idea of anyone hurting this woman — who was a stranger, but a stranger who was a bugbear like Joel — was only marginally easier to swallow. “There must be easier ways to get a meal.”
Baz hummed at her question, shaking their head. “I feel fine,” they confirmed. “Is it… It’s not cold enough to make you want to hibernate or anything, is it?” Joel always got a bit sleepier in the winter months, but it was Spring now! She ought to be much livelier than this! “Maybe we can get a coffee together, yeah? Something with a shot of espresso for you to perk you up a bit.”
—
Sawyer waved away the idea of rangers or scientists. Irrelevant to her. Maybe a ranger would be interested in her, but she firmly believed that they wouldn’t bother with a bugbear like her. It wasn’t like she was killing anyone. Just scaring people. She thought the scientists might be a bigger threat than some rangers—they might be interested in figuring out why a grizzly bear was so far away from its range out west. Though kidnapping her? That sounded a tad bit ridiculous to her. “Everything’s a risk,” she replied. “And not necessarily looking for a meal. Maybe a quick snack. A bite, you know?”
Whatever they were, they seemed to know plenty about bugbears. And she was feeling tired—and maybe it was just her getting out of the winter slog or long nights spent out in the woods, but she didn’t like how much they seemed to know about bugbears. Maybe their bugbear friend Joel was more of an employee of theirs or something of the like. “No, no, not gonna hibernate. I don’t … We don’t actually hibernate,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest. “But you should know that.”
She exhaled and uncrossed her arms. Maybe espresso wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. And if they were offering her something to keep her awake—which, again, had nothing to do with her actually being tired—maybe they weren’t some sort of threat towards her. They didn’t seem all that threatening anyway. “Fine,” Sawyer said flatly. “I think there’s, like, coffee at the farm shop.” She turned on her heel again, this time actually walking away from them without looking back as she headed towards the entrance where a small shop stood.
—
That much was probably true. To exist as a supernatural creature in the world was to exist with no small amount of risk clinging to every aspect of said existence. Baz knew that, of course, had experienced it plenty over the years. They’d had decent luck with wardens in that they’d only run into a few, but the risk was certainly there. And they’d come across plenty of other issues that wouldn’t have been a problem were they human, too. Creatures that found fae better tasting than other things, or their father’s thought process that they were a thing to be used rather than a person to care for. Risk was a part of life, but that didn’t mean you needed to invite it in unnecessarily. “Even stranger to take a big risk just for a quick snack,” they commented, though there was no real judgement to their tone. If she wanted to risk it all for a snack, who was Baz to stop her? They would prefer to worry about their own safety than that of a stranger.
They hummed, pleased that she wasn’t preparing to enter into hibernation. It would’ve been awkward if she were, and Baz certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed the idea of leaving her to snooze in a field alone. “Well, I know my mate doesn’t head off to hibernate through the winter,” they replied, “but he does get a bit sleepier than usual. Wasn’t sure if he was only keeping awake out of stubbornness or not.” They knew plenty about bugbears through Joel, but Joel was also the only bugbear they knew. There was every chance that some of his odd quirks were his and his alone, and not reflective of the bugbear species as a whole. Baz knew that.
In all honesty, they hadn’t expected the bugbear to accept their offer. She seemed more prone to going off on her own (was that a bugbear thing, too? Joel was also a bit of a loner), so it was rather nice that she seemed open to the idea of coffee. Baz perked up a bit, grinning as if they’d won some grand prize. She took off, and they faltered momentarily due to the unexpectedness of it before following along, rushing at first so that they could fall into step beside her. “Hope it’s good coffee,” they commented. “It’d be a shame if it were shite. I’m Baz, by the way. Are you from around here?”
—
She didn’t wait to see if they were following alongside her as she (practically) stomped up towards the front area. Sawyer truly believed that she could pop right into a bear and no one would be the wiser, but she wasn’t going to waste her time arguing that with some total stranger. A stranger, mind you, who knew a lot about bugbears but wasn’t a shifter. A stranger who didn’t at all seem like a hunter—she’d spotted enough of those hunting their prey while she fed off the fear of the victim’s final moments. Those always tasted otherworldly to her. She didn’t think she could ever do that—feast one someone right before she killed them. But to watch someone else do it? Like that first bite into a white-tailed deer after chasing it through the forest, tackling it onto the ground, and wrapping her paws around it as it squirms and kicks its hooves at her. That bite into its neck—
Right, so this person was not a hunter. That much she was certain of. A mare, perhaps? They tended to know about bugbears and sort of like them, as much as she disliked mares and this stupid orchard.
“It’s probably shit coffee,” Sawyer replied with a huff. “You can’t expect anything decent around here.” Like those tours?! Only on Tuesdays?! Ridiculous. She was still pissed off about that. “Sawyer,” she answered, with a quick glance at them. Then at the tulips. Then she wondered where the haunted tours happened because maybe she could sneak in and investigate what sort of props they had. Probably really bad ones. Not even remotely frightening to anyone. “Ayuh, born and raised here. I only left when I went to college.” She wished she lived somewhere else sometimes, but it was fine. It was where her family’s haunted farm was. “I love all the weird shit that happens around here. Like when all that fried shrimp fell out of the sky?! Ugh! So good.” She licked her lips at the memory but quickly moved on. “You and your Joe been here long?”
—
She was probably right — the coffee was bound to be a bit shite. Of course, Baz wasn’t much of a coffee drinker to begin with. They preferred tea, liked that people rolled their eyes when they said it and muttered about English stereotypes. It made them feel as though they were a part of something, as if liking tea meant they belonged someplace even if they knew they never really had. (Well, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. The nature of a doppelganger was that they could belong everywhere, after all. But what most people forgot was the inverse of that. You couldn’t belong everywhere without first belonging nowhere. You couldn’t slot into every space without being something that didn’t really fit into any of them. Baz was a blank puzzle piece. They’d always known that.)
“Not a fan of this place, then?” There was some curiosity coloring their tone, because there usually was. Baz liked to know about people, liked to understand what made them do the things they did. Why had she come to this orchard if she didn’t like it? Why was she stomping off to find coffee she thought would be shit? They filed her name away in the back of their mind, vowing not to forget it. “Where’d you go to college? Did you like it?” They wanted to know more about her, wanted to understand what made her the way she was the same way they wanted to understand what made everyone the way they were. “It does have a lovely bit of strangeness. The shrimp from the sky was quite the ordeal!” They wondered if she used that sort of thing in her scares, though it felt rude to ask. “Joel,” they corrected. “And we’ve been here about a year now. Liking it quite a bit, I’d say.”
—
“Ugh, no!” she complained, not skipping a beat at their question. She waved her hand around at the tulips. “I do not care for the owners. They’re so annoying!” Sawyer scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I came here today to check out the haunted tulip walks, but those only happen on Tuesdays. Which is so stupid, right? Why only Tuesdays?!” She grumbled to herself. “I wanted to see exactly what they’re doing on these haunted walks. Pick the brains of the …,” she almost said bugbears, “people running it.” Maybe get a snack while she was at it.
“University of Southern Maine,” she replied. “And then Maine Media for my MFA. Focused on film. Scriptwriting. Directing. That sort of thing.” She sighed. She wasn’t in the mood to get into the woes of her failed life as a filmmaker. (Even worse was that her brother Tobe was named after one of her heroes Tobe Hooper. Her life was some sort of sick, evil joke. In any other circumstance, she would have found that hilarious, but happening to her? Ugh!). “It was great. I love that sort of stuff. Wrote and directed a couple short horror films.”
Sawyer nodded her head, as she remembered all the delicious space shrimp. It was a shame that she’d never have those again. Ursa Major willing, the sky would bring her space shrimp again one day. Maybe a new planet. Oh, or space food of something else … she wouldn’t mind fried space chipmunks. “Ah, well, that’s good, I guess,” she said. She really didn’t care. “What do you like about it?”
They reached the little farm shop at the entrance. It was an old, wooden farm building, with wooden panels discolored from years of weathering. The wooden floorboards creaked as the two hopped up the steps and into the little shop. Inside the small interior, she noticed the shelves filled with canned goods—jams, jellies, and such (there was a lack of honey; she guessed that was due to the bugbear employees)---along with fresh produce and tulip bouquets. She made a beeline over to the counter and leaned against the counter. “Black coffee,” she ordered for herself. An apple flavored donut caught her eye. “Two of those,” she said, pointing at the donuts. She looked over at Baz. “What do you want?”
—
It made sense, Baz supposed, that a bugbear would be interested in the idea of the haunted walks advertised at the orchard. Maybe she could get a free meal out of going along on one, or get ideas for her own scare sessions. Baz could certainly see the appeal, recognize how one might be interested in that sort of thing. Being rewarded without necessarily putting in a substantial amount of work was something Baz had always been very interested in. “Suppose they need the rest of the days to draw in people who might not be interested in the scares,” like Baz themself. “Lots of people don’t care for this sort of thing outside October, you know. Always found that a bit odd. Why’s there a special month for being afraid?”
They perked up a little further as Sawyer spoke of her degree, immediately interested in the artistic aspect of things. Sure, filmmaking wasn’t Baz’s forte, but they recognized the creativity necessary to achieve it. “Really?” They weren’t much a fan of horror, but they did like supporting local artists, so… “Maybe we could bully them into playing one at the drive in sometime. I’ve found local businesses can be easily convinced to do things like that, if you’re bold enough to ask them. Get on them about supporting local artists, and they feel guilty turning you away!” That was how Baz had gotten one of their paintings hung up in Driftwood Diner. (They’d also gotten one hung in the laundromat, though that had been less about asking the owner and more about simply hanging one on the wall when they’d been waiting for the spin cycle to finish. No one had taken it down yet, so they figured no one took any issue with it.)
She asked what they liked about the town, and Baz took a moment to consider the question. “It’s got a lot of nice people,” they replied. “Everyone in London was so busy with their own lives, yeah? No one ever really stopped to talk to anyone else. I understood it, of course, but I prefer something like this, where you can stop and talk to someone. And there’s a nicely sized population of people like us, too.” They motioned between themself and Sawyer, indicating nonhuman.
Sawyer asked what they wanted when they entered the shop, and Baz perked up even more. She was a winner in their book, they decided. She could be friends with Joel if she wanted to. “I’ll try the apricot brandy black tea,” they said. “And the blueberry scone!”
—
“A special month for being afraid? Uh, because it’s fun! Duh!” Sawyer scoffed. In a sane world, it would be much longer than just one month—even more than a month and a half, which is how her family operated. Get the festivities started in mid-September to bring in the people who loved Halloween scares.
Sawyer tilted her head at Baz’s mention about putting on one of her short movies. She hadn’t really done anything in a while, not much since graduate school. She’d bothered a few people to help her with a short film just a year or so ago, but it hadn’t turned out as she hoped. It looked like one of those low budget horror movies she watched sometimes—one of those movies where the people had a hundred dollars and a dream. Not that she was any different from them. She had a hundred dollars and a dream. But hers should at least look better and have better actors. Maybe she should get more involved with the local theater in town, find some good actors. “Sure, maybe I could do something like that,” she replied.
“Nice people? More like a bunch of freaks,” Sawyer responded. “Everyone here is always talking about worms.” Oh Ursa Major, now she was talking about worms. She needed to steer the conversation away from the worms so she wouldn’t be just like all the other locals. “But yeah, it is good that there’s so many people like us. Kinda weird when I went elsewhere and it was a bit harder to, like, find that. Just always existed here for me.” She raised her brow at them. “Though I guess you and Joel have been figuring that out just fine. Hard to not find those like us.”
She wasn’t exactly sure what she thought of Baz—still trying to solve exactly what they were. Though she was from a supernatural hub, she still knew so little about everything outside of shifters. She barely understood how mares worked. Whatever this shifter-not-shifter-whatever was, she guessed she’d have no idea what they were talking about. And now they were ordering tea—so shocking, with that accent. Sawyer tapped her card to pay, took the donuts, and handed the scone to Baz. She walked off to the side while they waited on their drinks. “You know, I’m thinking about what you said earlier. About, like, showing off some of my short films.” She took a bite of her donut, humming as the sweet flavor hit her tastebuds. “I actually used to work at the drive-in. Back in high school. And I know someone who still works there.” Sawyer frowned though, as she remembered the who was that ranger bugbear. “Could be so easy to get them to show off my work.”
—
“Fun for you, maybe,” the doppelganger chuckled, shaking their head. “Bet it feels like a free buffet table!” Certainly handy that humans were so fond of scaring themselves in the fall. Baz never had to worry much about the idea of Joel going hungry as autumn gave way into winter, though they wouldn’t admit how much they worried about that the rest of the year. They didn’t want to bruise their friend’s pride, after all.
They didn’t want to bruise Sawyer’s, either. Their suggestion — getting her short films displayed on a big screen — was a genuine one, but it wasn’t one they pushed for, either. Baz knew how delicate art could be to an artist, knew first hand just how intimate showing your projects to the world was. If Sawyer wanted her work on display, they certainly thought it a doable venture. They’d learned that often times, all you really had to do in situations like that was to ask. If you were willing to accept exposure rather than compensation — something Baz didn’t mind, given how badly they wanted to be seen — plenty of businesses would be willing to show your work off. Sawyer could certainly get her short films out there, but only if she wanted to.
“It’s a bit funny sometimes, though,” they insisted with a grin, letting the subject of her films drop for now. “Listening to someone go on and on about the worms. It’s… quaint, I suppose. You don’t get that sort of thing anywhere else.” At least, Baz hadn’t. Maybe it was actually quite common and they’d just missed out on it. The thought soured them a bit, so they elected to shove it into the deep expanse of their chest where they put everything they didn’t want to look at for long. “I imagine it would be jarring to go from a place with so many people like you to a place with few or none at all,” they agreed. One might argue that Baz had done some version of that themself when they’d left their father’s house and moved into Sebastian’s, but they disliked thinking of their father as like them. He was something different, something worse. If they pretended they had nothing at all in common with him, they’d feel better. “Joel and I have been making it work for a while now, yeah. Suppose birds of a feather tend to find one another somehow, don’t they?”
They bounced on their heels as their tea was prepared, pleased that Sawyer was footing the bill. Taking the scone when it was offered, Baz trailed behind the bugbear to await the drinks. They were pleasantly surprised when she brought up the topic of her short films again, nodding as she spoke of her pre-existing connections at the drive-in. “That would certainly make things easier!” They agreed with a nod. “I bet if you worked with them, you could get them to shape a whole event around it, yeah? A presentation from a local filmmaker is the sort of thing that could really get some buzz, especially if you were present for the showings. Maybe do a Q&A after the fact, talk about the process a bit…” They trailed off thoughtfully, taking a bite of their scone. “I think something like that could do really well, in a town like this. Could be lucrative for you and the drive-in.”
—
“Sure, quaint, I guess. Just a really unique town. Never know what cult or gimmick you’re gonna run into on any given day.” She placed her hands on her hips as they walked. “Whole cult around Gobf now. This annoying girl I know is so obsessed with that planet.” She hummed to herself, only somewhat listening to what they had to say about them and Joel. It was good that there was another bugbear around town, and she decided she’d have to introduce herself to him. “That’s good,” she said, though she quickly sidetracked the conversation, “Maybe I should join the Gobf cult. For fun. You should join with me. Birds of a feather stick together, right?” Sawyer was so not joining the cult, but maybe … it could be fun to see what those adorable little humans got up to in their spare time. Maybe she’d get some free food at the cult meetings.
Sawyer listened along to Baz agreeing and encouraging her with this idea at the drive-in. She was surprised that she never thought of it. She spent so much of her time focused on other things in her life that sometimes she forgot about her passion for filmmaking. It was so easy … maybe she should keep this Baz around her. They seemed to have great ideas. “A whole event,” she hummed, licking the donut dust off her fingers. “Absolutely could do a whole event. Maybe sell, like, I don’t know, merch or something. Get some t-shirts, mugs, posters, the whole shebang.” She grinned wickedly. “And absolutely a Q&A afterwards. The audience needs to know all about my genius.” She was thoroughly liking this whole idea about an entire event around her work.
The employee called out their drinks order, and she swooped up her cup and turned on her heel to leave the little farm shop, fully expecting Baz to follow after her again. “So, tell me, Baz—I like your name, by the way—so, do you happen to have anything artistic going on for you? Or are you just, like, a passionate supporter of the arts?”
—
“Makes things exciting, at least.” It wasn’t as though Baz’s life in London hadn’t been exciting. It certainly had been, in its own sort of way. The issue was that it had been all the wrong sort of excitement. Baz didn’t want the kind of excitement that saw them covering up murders and hiding bodies, didn’t find themself entertained by violence enacted against them or anyone else. Baz wanted excitement that was harmless or, at the very least, excitement that only harmed people where they didn’t have to bear witness to it. Sure, the cults in Wicked’s Rest probably did hurt people, but they’d never hurt Baz and Baz had never had to witness it or be involved in the aftermath. That was the sort of thing that mattered to them. Which was why they really didn’t like the idea of joining a cult. “Oh, I don’t know about all that. Might be more fun to be outside observers, yeah? You know, some cults have restaurants where you can eat without committing to anything! That might be a happy medium.”
Sawyer seemed to like the idea of an event surrounding her films, and Baz was pleased with themself for having suggested it. People liking your ideas was more or less the same as people liking you, and there was little in the world that Baz wanted more than for people to like them. “I could help you design a few shirts, if you’d like,” they offered. “Maybe posters, too.” They liked the idea of putting their work out there, and having it associated with someone else’s might be fun. Baz often liked to feel as though they were part of a ‘team,’ and they thought they could do that with Sawyer easily enough. They wondered if they were destined to get on with bugbears, then. Were they predisposed to liking anyone who could turn into a bear? Maybe they ought to do a bit more research and find out.
Taking their tea from the counter, Baz fell into step beside Sawyer without checking to see if she actually wanted to continue their conversation. They’d always preferred the method of simply sticking round someone until they got so frustrated they screamed at them to leave. Sometimes it worked well. Other times… well, they were screamed at to leave. But that was worth the risk, wasn’t it? And Sawyer didn’t seem to mind it. Baz grinned as she complimented their name, pleased with themself for picking a good one. “Thank you. And I am an artist, yes. I dabble in all sorts of areas. Poetry, music, painting. Haven’t entirely figured out graphic design just yet, but I’d say I’m getting close.” Which meant they’d downloaded Photoshop last week. “I’m certainly a passionate supporter as well, though. I love art of all sorts.”
—
So they didn’t want to join a cult for some reason, but that didn’t matter much to Sawyer anyway. She’d mostly been joking. Maybe a Gobf cafe would open up downtown. Now that would be fun. She could drag Baz along with her to it if she bugged them enough. It’s not like they were ever going to be scared of her anyway. Might as well bring them along for the ride.
She grinned at their offer to help design some merch for her. Now that would be fantastic. Exactly what she needed. She knew she could do all of that herself, but why not have someone else helping out. “I love it. But we’re gonna need a movie night first. I’m thinking either your place or mine, and we watch some of my films. Just enough so you can get the vibe, yeah? Can’t help design stuff if you don’t know the source material.” She tapped her finger against her chin. She wasn’t about to admit that she had a lot of free time. Any evening or night worked for her. It’s not like she did anything besides be a bear and hate her job. “How about sometime this weekend? If you’ve got time, that is. We’ve got all sorts of planning to do.”
Sawyer was glad to see Baz following after her and joining her side as they walked back outside. Rows and rows of tulips covered the landscape in front of them. She liked that Baz seemed interested in her ideas and even supportive! That’s what she needed! Someone cheering her on! And someone who also had their own artistic endeavors? Even better. So many people in this town were so drab with their boring hobbies. “Ah, me too. Gotta support local artists—especially the weird ones. Have you seen those pieces by some unknown artist? They’re, like, putting creepy doll heads on taxidermy, and placing them in random spots around town. It’s amazing. Big fan of their work.” She paused. “I’d love to see some of yours sometime.” She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. “It is shit coffee, by the way.”
—
The idea of spending the weekend with Sawyer watching her films was one Baz enjoyed. They weren’t particularly fond of the horror genre, but they were fond of experiencing other people’s work alongside them. That would outweigh any distaste they might have carried for the macabre. “I’d love that,” they replied earnestly. “Maybe if we do it at mine, Joel can join in. I think the two of you would get on quite well.” They did, and not just because of the bugbear connection. Sawyer seemed the sort of person Joel would find interesting. And, importantly, Sawyer didn’t seem like the sort of person Joel would end up liking more than he liked Baz, so there was no danger in introducing them.
They hummed cheerfully at the mention of the unknown local artist with creepy doll heads on taxidermy, recalling their experience researching online. If there was one thing that intrigued Baz more than art, it was the mystery of an artist who didn’t want to be known. “I’d love to know who’s doing it,” they replied, “but maybe the anonymity is part of the piece. A bit of performance art mixed in.”
Naturally, they brightened even more at the idea of showing off their own art, nodding adamantly. “I’ve a few pieces that are certainly ready to be shown off,” they agreed. “I’m happy to let you see them. Maybe next time, we can get better coffee and tea. You’re right; this is shite.” But they didn’t sound particularly upset about it. The quality of the tea mattered very little. This, Baz thought, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
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