Lucy wakes to the soft tapping of rain against her window, and she is God’s favorite. She knows this in the absent sound of her alarm, and she knows this in the yawning rumbles of thunder, and she knows this before she touches her phone alight to the notification screen.
8:43 am. Far from the 4:30 am alarm she’d needed to heed to make it to her flight. Her screen is awash with airline notifications.
She scrambles from bed. Her urgency is an apology. Lucy skips the shower and skips the hair washing and paints on deodorant before stowing it back in her carryon and calling her uber.
“Crazy weather,” her driver with the big mustache remarks. His windshield wipers swish through a river of rain.
“Yeah,” Lucy answers. She glances at her rumbling phone. She glances at the rumbling clouds. The road is clear. It shouldn’t be, not this route and not at this hour. A gas main broke somewhere up the highway that feeds this street. A freak accident. 2 injuries. It’s kept this road clear for just the locals since it happened. Lucy encounters no traffic enroute to the airport.
There are pockets of planes grounded across the runways, barely visible behind the sheets of downpour. They look like herding animals, herbivores, standing stock-still in brace against the weather. Lucy stares at them only a moment while the driver pulls her carryon out of the trunk. She grabs her jacket closed against the wind, and grabs her carryon handle, and thanks her driver. The rain does not reach her here, though the wind does.
Inside Lucy drags her bag past the help desks swarming with the orderly filings of people in disarray. Parents leaning too hard on help counters with kids pulling on bag handles. Hurried conversations and requests and arguments. The electronic boards are awash with deeply red DELAYED and CANCELED. The airport is choking. Lucy, who God loves, glides through security unimpeded.
At gate-side, Lucy finally looks to the large red board of DELAYED and CANCELED etchings to confirm what she knew without even checking her phone notifications. Gate A14. Her carryon wheels pitter and patter across tile as she walks, striding quickly, with apology.
When Gate A14 comes into view it is smothered with the weight of two or possibly three flights worth of people. There are people asleep clutching backpacks and curled on the floor. There is a four-year-old girl with her face buried in an iPad and a mother having a phone call whose clipped urgency infects Lucy. There is a man leaning over the counter to talk to the gate agent, and his hands pulse with each tensing of his fingers. “…to the hospital before she…” Lucy makes out, or thinks she makes out. She doesn’t hear the gate agent’s response, but she can read the defeated shake of her head.
Lucy’s carryon wheels clunk where the smooth tile of the terminal shifts to carpeting. She doesn’t think to grab a seat because there are no open seats. So she positions herself in a way to unmistakably say she is at the gate, threading between stagnant suitcases and kids splayed on the floor. Lucy approaches the rain-splattered windows, and like a conversation shy upon being overheard, the thunder recedes from her advance. The rain draws to a polite close. The clouds split along a seam and pull away, as if they were only ever a wave that had transiently crashed to shore. The sky is beautifully blue.
There is a stirring hopefulness in the air. Other passengers have pushed past Lucy to stand closer to the window and peer outside, as if their confirmation of the changing weather can convince the airline of what to do next.
The gate agent puts down the phone receiver of a one-sided call. She pulls the microphone close and with grainy clarity she announces, “Boarding for Flight A1874 to Detroit will begin in 10 minutes.”
On the walkway, through the gap between the throughway and plane, Lucy sees the puddles rising with steam. They throw the iridescent spectrum of a rainbow up into the sky.
In a backlog of hundreds of flights, Lucy’s is the first out across the runway. This is because God loves her. She only wishes It loved her in a way to fix her broken phone alarm.
…
In childhood Lucy had heard “God loves you” and “Jesus loves you” in the placative ways that Sunday School teaches its children. With jingles and crayon-drawings of sheep and shepherds and a decorated ornament, crafted each Christmas Eve.
Lucy had long since fallen out of it and had thought very little of her parents’ tepid god for the last 10 or 15 years.
It was last spring, 27-years-old, that Lucy had found her way out into the marsh. Mud sucking her boots and gnats plicking in swarm against her skin. Where she sat her tailbone in the muck and folded her arms over her knees and buried her face in her legs to cry. And cry. And cry. And there with the mugginess sopping her skin and the humidity coiling her hair, God decided It loved her.
It loved her with a parting of canopy for the robin-blue sky. It loved her with the chirp of cicadas. It loved her in the way a dog circles its owner and nudges a wet snout to palm, because It was here, and It would make her feel better.
Lucy’s seat is the window seat beside the man with the tensing fingers. He fiddles with a phone in his clutch until he locks it in airplane mode and stows it, to look at no more. Lucy wonders who this man knows in the hospital, and she wonders why God doesn’t love him more than It loves her.
…
In March, Marco breaks up with her over a plate of fish that is too dry. In the moment, Lucy wonders if it’s her fault, because of the fish. But that’s not it. The signs were there, in all the subtle and stuttering moments Marco had pulled away. Each little moment like a slightly missed step, on a staircase growing ricketier each month.
Marco leaves and everything is so quiet, to the point that Lucy thinks her own sounds are pretty stupid, and pretty embarrassing while she’s coiled snail-like and snottily-sobbing into her pillowcase. She thinks absently of how she has to wash the pillowcase now, and that’s fine, because she was going to wash her linens this weekend anyway. She sobs so hard she’s almost screaming. Oh, and kitchen towels. She’ll wash the kitchen towels too.
She’s alive enough the next morning to throw all her linens and her kitchen towels on the floor of the laundry room. And maybe Marco breaking up with her is fine, because his birthday is December 25th and who wants a husband whose birthday is the same day as Christmas?
Her doorbell rings. And somehow it’s Marco again. She opens it to him, and he smells like a wildfire.
“Sorry, Lucy, this is awkward,” and Lucy believes he means it. He’s clutching a jacket around himself for what looks like security more than warmth. His apartment burned down last night. A resident fell asleep with a cigarette lit and dangling from her fingertips. Unit right below him. All his stuff burned, or filled with smoke, or is now logged up with water. He’s been sitting outside on the cobblestone for the last few hours, watching the blaze, on the phone with insurance. His landlord hasn’t responded to him yet. He’s cold, and he’s smokey, and can he shower here maybe? Can he stay for just a day or two, maybe? Sorry. This is awkward. He has no family on this coast. He really has nowhere else to go.
“Sure.” Lucy lets in Marco who smells like a wildfire. She adds the towels to her laundry list because they will smell like a wildfire too once Marco has used them. When he is clean, Lucy asks him nice questions. He asks her nice questions back. She helps him figure out something strange on the insurance form. He starts cooking dinner before Lucy realizes he’d entered the kitchen, because she was busy with the linens and the towels.
Marco takes the couch and clean linens. “Thanks, again, really. I can pay you a few days rent, when I get the insurance payout.” It’s no problem. Lucy goes to her room and shuts the door. It’s warmer here with Marco again. She wonders how long he’ll stay. She wonders if it will be for as long as she thinks the sound of him breathing in the other room is a comfort.
Something twists in Lucy’s chest. She wonders why God loves her more than It loves Marco. Lucy wonders why God didn’t love the woman with the lit cigarette who did not make it out of the building.
…
In June Lucy is desperately throwing together the haphazard makings of a financial report. She meant to stay up late to finish it, and get up early to make it beautiful, but she’s had a cold for a whole week now and the new bottle of decongestant she grabbed wasn’t “non-drowsy” like she thought.
Her heart is beating, and she nearly twists her ankle with a misstep in high heels, and she almost loses her grip on the shoddy makings of a too-light financial report still warm from the printer. She can spin it, maybe, that it’s intentionally light and she’d simply wanted the esteemed and respected input from the executives in the room before she produces the truly polished report this evening. And when the eyebrows are raised and she is told the report is due now, maybe they will refrain from firing her on the spot since she is still the only one who can produce the report they need.
She pulls open the meeting room door as if she is not out of breath, as if her nose isn’t red from a thousand tissues. She takes her seat so hastily that she does not notice, until she looks up properly, and sees the CEO’s seat is empty.
No one speaks. No one acknowledges her entrance. Lucy hugs the warm binder to her chest.
The door latch clicks open, but Lucy knows it will not be the CEO. She heard the click of heels before the doorknob turned.
It’s his assistant with the lovely auburn hair that curls around her shoulders. Her suit is red and her eyes are red and she stands just behind the CEO’s chair. Everyone notices her in the way they did not notice Lucy.
She speaks. The CEO’s wife and daughter were in a head-on collision with a drunk driver 42 minutes ago. They’re in critical condition, and the CEO has gone to be with them. He asks everyone’s forgiveness and grace in this time. The meeting is rescheduled for tomorrow, same time, and he humbly requests if everyone in attendance can adjust their calendar to accommodate this. This is a big ask, he knows. The board will have questions, he knows. But these are extenuating circumstances. The assistant will help with any necessary reworking of everyone’s calendars. And Lucy, can you please deliver the report tomorrow? The assistant has a sympathy card, which she lays on the table along with a black pen, and she asks if anyone would care to sign it.
Lucy signs it. The card paper is so cold, compared to the warmth of the half-finished report squeezed tight against her chest. The half-finished report should have cooled by now, but God must know she’s cold and ashen-faced, and God loves her so much.
…
In July, Lucy is a perfectionist. Her mother swears she wasn’t always like this. Her high school best friend is surprised, when in town for a weekend and meeting up for coffee, by the way Lucy triple-confirms the time, and the place, and the way she wears two watches. Why two watches? he asks. Because the alarm on one watch might fail. What about your phone? The watches are the backup, if the phone dies.
There’s something off-putting in the way she talks, and the way she asks questions of him, and the way she exclaims in joy at every piece of good news he shares. Josiah glances behind himself, more and more, and it’s because Lucy stares back there like she knows someone else at the next table.
It’s all weird, and Josiah can’t help but pull away. But Lucy pulls away first, retroactively. She can always pull away retroactively, and declare to her four walls of her room how much she didn’t need that friend, like she doesn’t need Marco, or anyone else who God may drop at her doorstep like the dead bird bounty of a cat, happy to share with the person It loves.
Lucy finishes her reports early. She wiles away the sun at her office even in the summer finishing reports far before anyone could need them. She double-checks, every time. She triple-checks. Her boss pulls her into a meeting room and with hands folded on the desk, he asks if maybe she needs to take some time off. And instantly she declares to the four walls that no-one at the company is doing this to her. “I wasn’t implying that…” but she’s not looking at him when he answers.
In July Lucy returns to the marsh. She returns with stones she’s horded up and gathered in the trunk of her car. She walks through the boot-suckling mud and she weighs stones in her arms while she hurls them, and throws, and screams, and hopes one of them might strike God in Its snout.
“I HATE YOU!” she screams. She throws all her weight into a stone whose sharp edge nicks bark. She hurls one through the bushes and another into the leafy canopy above. She is sopping wet and the cicadas chirp at her. “I HATE YOU!! GO AWAY!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!” She chucks a stone which lands in the sucking muck, capsizing like a ship beneath the algae.
She throws, and her gravity heaves forward, and her boots stay stuck in the mud. So she topples elbow-deep in the mud, spattered, soaking into her chin and her shirt and her jeans and her hair. She parts her lips and tastes the earthy wetness on her skin, coppery blood, split lip. The stones are all under her. She laughs. Lucy tilts her head to the sky screaming with laughter. Joyous to tears, with the wetness drawing rivulets down the mud on her cheeks. She laughs because sopping-in-mud-and-muck is NOT the state of something God loves. This wouldn’t happen to something God loves.
Lucy goes home. Lucy showers. Lucy does her laundry. And It crawls back into bed with her. Perhaps like a scolded animal, but perhaps It did not even know It was being scolded. Lucy cannot tell.
The wine stains came out of her linens today because God loves her.
Summary: Tom needs to look at the Downton cars and make sure that things are running the way they’re supposed to be. Matthew joins him and as they work together Tom is able to share some of his grief. Set after 3x8. One-shot. Canon compliant.
A/N: In this fic Tom grew up in Dublin.
Tom had decided to stay at Downton, at least while Sybbie was little. And since that decision he’d felt a sense of peace about the whole thing which made it seem like it really was the right choice. There was, however, one thing he had been itching to do ever since he’d arrived back here for Mary’s wedding in the spring.
He needed to look at the cars.
Not just because he loved cars and had missed having them in his life every day. But also to ensure the new chauffeur was keeping them up to scratch. He’d taken great pride in his work on maintaining the Downton cars. The oil was always kept changed, the spark plugs were always clean, the breaks and hoses were always in good repair, and the paint never bore a single scratch. No one had ever had cause to complain about the way the cars looked or rode while he worked in the garage. They’d always been in tip-top shape and he’d often received, or heard Lord Grantham receive, compliments on the shiny surface and smooth running engine.
So far, he’d resisted the urge to butt into another man’s work and double check it. Not only was it discourteous, it didn’t really matter that much if he was impressed if he wasn’t staying around anyway. But now that the Crawleys had thrown him into a job as the land agent and he was going to be sticking around, he needed to have a proper look. So, one fine morning when he was otherwise unoccupied, Tom took a little stroll down to the garage.
The new chauffeur, an older fellow named Sam Stewart, wasn’t there at the moment. Tom rather thought that Carson had specifically sought out an older man to replace him in hopes of averting any more love matches between the staff and the household. The man was a good enough driver, but seemed to be perpetually a bit grumpy. A personality feature Tom also thought had been hired for specifically. Tom was a bit relieved that Sewart wasn’t there when he stepped intp the garage. He didn’t want to insult the man, but he wanted to have a good and proper look at everything.
Taking off his coat as he entered, Tom hung it on the peg by the door where he’d always hung up his chauffeur’s uniform jacket when he used to work on the cars. Then, going over to the first car, he began. Of course, the very first thing to be done was to give it a visual check. Tom walked around the vehicle with a careful eye toward any dents, scratches, chips, frays or other damage. He was also inspecting for cleanliness. Even a short drive to Ripon and back could get the car caked in dust, mud, bugs and other debris. As he made his way around the car at a deliberate pace, a few minor flaws stood out to him. A small dent in the taillight housing on the right side. A scratch on the back bumper that looked like the car had been backed into something solid. A chip in the glass headlight cover. Bugs not cleaned off the front grille. Things he would have taken care of immediately when he was the chauffeur.
Finishing his circling of the car, Tom paused to roll up his sleeves. If the outside looked this bad, the inside was certainly worse. Releasing the latch to the hood, Tom opened up the engine and peered inside. Just as he feared, things were dirty and corroded and some bits were just downright grotesque. Glancing around to make sure he was unobserved, Tom raided the chauffeur’s toolbox and got to work.
He may not be good for much, he certainly wasn’t going to be much use as a land agent, and probably even less as a father, but he knew cars. He knew cars like the back of his hand. One of his joys as a boy in Dublin was to read the magazines that detailed the engines of the latest cars and how they all worked. He’d read those magazines like they were the Bible. He and Kieran fought over a lot of things growing up sharing a too small bed in a too small room in a too small tenement, but the thing they fought over most were the car magazines.
That had just been the beginning. His first job after finishing school was in a repair shop. He’d worked fixing up bikes his entire childhood and when he got a chance to work with cars he’d jumped on it. He loved the way they worked and how fast they could go. He loved figuring out their problems and getting them running again. He loved very much how beautiful they looked when they were cleaned and polished.
He’d known all his life that he’d never be able to afford a car of his own, which is why he’d spent so long in jobs where he could work around them. The worst thing about moving to Dublin last year had been leaving the Downton cars behind. And of course, there were no cars for him to work on in the city. While he’d liked the job as a journalist well enough, it never scratched the itch for him that cars did.
Sybil had been so proud of him being a journalist and had insisted he keep writing even when things were getting thin for the two of them. Not that being a mechanic necessarily paid much better, but there had been times he’d floated the idea, but she’d always resisted it. In her mind it was “going back” but Tom never saw it that way.
Tom worked on the engine, first unfastening this or loosening that and then methodically cleaning each piece, part or component before reassembling it all. He also checked everything for wear or damage and replaced anything he thought looked dicey. Here in the garage Tom could finally relax. Finally, he knew what he was doing and what he was supposed to do. It was the first time in months, maybe even a year, that he felt like he could handle what was happening.
It all went so smoothly too. The Downton garage was well stocked with everything needed for maintaining the cars. Stewart, it seemed, hadn’t added much to the stock, but there was still plenty from Tom’s time as chauffeur. He’d taken a lot of care to make sure every needed part was put aside on the shelves. It had been a challenge more than a few times during the war years when rationing made certain components more difficult to find and more expensive. But Tom had always found a way to get what he needed.
As he worked, he began to hum a little tune. It was like he could think clearly for the first time since… he wasn’t sure. Certainly since leaving Ireland. Maybe even a bit before that. Things had been stressful and dangerous in Dublin. He wasn’t afraid of the cost of revolution, but there were times the violence scared him.
Tom continue his little chore, each small task making him feel lighter than he had in a long time. He didn’t want any part of the life he found himself stuck in, any part of it except for Sybbie. But this, going through the car piece by piece and fixing anything that was broken, this managed to help him forget his discontent.
“Am I interrupting?”
Tom looked over his shoulder to see Matthew. He gave a somewhat embarrassed smile as he’d been caught stealing someone else’s work. “No, you’re not interrupting.”
“Is Stewart about?” Matthew glanced around the garage as if hoping the chauffeur would appear.
“I’m afraid not,” said Tom. He continued on with his little task. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, I was just going to order the car for Mary tomorrow. She wants to run into Ripon.” Matthew came over to see what Tom was doing. “Thinking about getting your old job back?”
Tom laughed. “There are days I wish I could. I like cars and I never hated working as a chauffeur.”
“You can’t hate being a land agent already,” said Matthew. “You’ve only just begun.”
“I wouldn’t say I hate it, I just don’t think I’m really cut out for it.” Tom looked over at Matthew. “I’m trying my best, but it’s a lot to take on.”
“That’s how I felt,” said Matthew. “Which is why I need your help, and even more, your alliance.”
“You have that in spades,” said Tom. “But when I look at all that’s involved with it,” Tom sighed, “I’m worried I’m going to fuck it up like I have everything else. And his lordship won’t thank me for re-bankrupting the place after you’ve just salvaged it.”
“It won’t come to that,” said Matthew, “because all of us are working together now.” Matthew clapped Tom on the shoulder then took off his own coat and rolled up his sleeves. “Why don’t you show me what you’re up to and I’ll help.”
Tom pointed to a selection of gaskets. “I was cleaning those up and replacing the worn ones. Once they have any roughness on them they need tossed.” Tom knew Matthew knew a fair bit about cars himself and Matthew went to work on the gaskets.
“Does Stewart know you’re out here doing this?” Matthew asked as he examined the gaskets for wear.
“No,” said Tom. “I expect he’ll be pretty pissed when he finds out. And I wouldn’t blame him I suppose. I’m not trying to check up on him or anything, I just had to see how the cars were doing.”
“And how are they doing?” Matthew began refitting the gaskets where they belonged.
Tom looked up and caught Matthew’s eye. The man seemed to be studying him. “A bit worse for the wear, I think.” Tom was pretty sure he was still talking about the car. “But nothing a little care won’t solve.”
Matthew nodded. “A little care can go a long way.” Finishing with the gaskets, Matthew moved on to the next thing. Tom showed him how he cleaned those parts in particular and Matthew set to the task. “Do you miss working with cars?”
Tom smiled ruefully. “Yes, though I suppose it’s not very proper of me to admit it. Working with cars seems to be the only thing I’m good at. I like being around them too. When something’s wrong with them there’s always a fix and things can go back together. That’s not how the world works, usually, and it’s nice.”
“Well said,” said Matthew. “But I think you’re selling yourself short. You’re good at plenty and you have both the ambition to learn and the humility to admit what you don’t know. It’s a rare enough combination.”
“You’re always trying to butter me up,” Tom couldn’t help but feel a little warmed by the compliments. “Are you afraid I’ll run out on you and leave you as the land agent if you don’t blow smoke up my ass?”
Matthew laughed. “My compliments are genuine, don’t you doubt that. And yes, I wouldn’t know what to do without you.” Matthew finished with his chore and put everything as it should be. “I also want you to know that as much as I depend on your alliance for the good of Downton, you can also depend on me as an ally. You may not be where you want to be, but you’re not alone by any means.”
Tom began wiping the engine block down. “I’m glad of it,” said Tom. “You and Mary, and Edith too, all of you have been very kind to me.”
Matthew was quiet a minute, watching Tom wipe the extra grease and dirt from the engine. “How are you doing, really?”
Tom was quiet even longer as he focused on scrubbing out every mark. Eventually he said, “I miss her every day more than I could have ever imagined. I can’t help but think it was all my fault and that she’d still be alive if I never went anywhere near her.” Tom stopped there, he wasn’t sure he could keep talking. If he’d never fallen in love with her, never pushed her to love him back, never taken her to Ireland where things were so stressful, never gotten mixed up with things he didn’t really understand, if he hadn’t fought with her family so much, if he’d taken better care of her, maybe she’d still be alive.
Matthew nodded and looked down at the car. “I felt very much the same after Lavinia died.” There was real emotion in his voice as he spoke. “You don’t get over it, not really. You just have to find a way to live with it.”
“There are days living seems impossible,” said Tom. “But I keep on going for Sybbie’s sake.”
“You’re a good man and a good father,” said Matthew. “She’s lucky to have you to take care of her.”
“I don’t know about that.” Tom worried constantly that he was making some mistake with Sybbie. He still didn’t know how it was all supposed to work as she got older – he wanted his daughter to be Irish, not an English lady – but he was leaving those problems for a later date. “Sybil would have been such a good mother, and it grieves me when I think of all the things she’s missing out on.” Every time Sybbie did something new, Tom would wish again that Sybil was there to see it.
“Sybil would be proud of you, I know she would.” Matthew picked up a spare cloth and started cleaning alongside Tom. “You haven’t had an easy time of it and you’ve tried hard to make the best of, frankly, several terrible situations. No one can fault you for that.”
“I have you and the rest of the family to thank mostly, all I did was fuck things up in the first place.” Tom wasn’t one to swear around people like Matthew, but there was no better word to describe it. He figured Matthew wouldn’t be too shocked though, having been a soldier.
“I’m not going to say you haven’t made any mistakes,” said Matthew, “but so have we all. I will say you’re being to hard on yourself and Sybbie’s daddy deserves to be treated better.”
Tom looked up and caught Matthew’s eye. The other man was right, of course. It didn’t do Sybbie any good to have one parent dead and the other in a constant state of misery. He had already made so many mistakes with Sybil, he didn’t need to keep down that path with Sybbie, too. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“Besides,” said Matthew, in attempt to lighten the mood, “if you’re too hard on yourself it takes all the fun out of it for Robert.”
This did get a small laugh out of Tom. Robert certainly loved nothing better than deriding someone at the dinner table. Sometimes Matthew was the target, but Tom was a well worn favorite. Tom was also aware of how much Sybil’s sisters jumped in to defend him on those days he was feeling particularly low. “I’ll keep that in mind too.”
Finishing with the first car, Tom carefully lowered the hood back into place. Waving Matthew over to the second car he said, “Do you want to have a look at this one too? We’d better be quick about it though, I wouldn’t want Stewart to find us.”
Matthew nodded. “I think between the two of us we can get it taken care of in no time.”
A queer retelling of The Lindworm, a Danish fairytale. (2.5k words)
On the day the prince was born, the king had been off on a crusade. In his absence, the kingdom rejoiced, for the queen, who had struggled for years and years to even fall pregnant, had given them a perfect little prince with hair as red as a fiery rose.
But while the people celebrated, another child screamed and cried, her wails heard by no one. Abandoned in the woods by the very midwife who delivered the prince, the lindworm cried for her mother the queen, her twin brother, even her crusading father, who she had never even seen.
Eventually, she grew so hungry that she could no longer cry. With her white scales gleaming in the moonlight, she moved forward, dragging herself forward in search of food. Lizards she could snap up in her maw, crickets she could catch in her claws, rats she could pounce upon, food most unfit for a princess. All the while her brother was given milk from the finest cows, the sweetest fruit, and the most tender meat.
As the prince grew from a babe to a royal, so too did the lindworm grow from a mere winged serpent into a dragon. While the prince learned of courtly etiquette and hunting for sport, the lindworm learned of scaring peasants away from her lair and hunting for her next meal. As the prince learned to ride horses, scraping his knee as he fell from gentle mares and was fretted over by royal nannies, the lindworm learned to fly, jumping from branch to branch with no one to tend to her bruised and scraped belly when she fell.
But the prince and the lindworm were similar in one regard. While the prince would turn his head to take a second look at lovely maidens who passed him by, so too would the lindworm. Washers getting water, milkmaids leading their cows, farm lasses separating wheat from chaff. Because she had never been told to think otherwise, she knew that what she felt when she saw these women was desire. And so, when she patrolled her woods, she often stopped to watch them pass by.
It just so happened that one day, while she was watching a merchant's daughter, she learned a most interesting thing. "The prince is going to set out to find a bride."
The lindworm, hearing this, listened closely, as the merchant told his daughter, "I heard he seeks a princess' hand. I would expect no less for our only prince.
To this, the lindworm snarled and flew away, setting off to meet with her brother, remembering his scent and his bright red hair. When she found him on the road, she landed straight in his path, the ground shaking as she landed, his horse spooking, and she spoke, "A bride for me before a bride for you."
The prince managed to calm his horse enough to ride back to the castle, the lindworm chasing after him, only stopping her pursuit at the city gates. Knights stood at the ready and people around her screamed in fright.
When the prince returned to the palace, short of breath and sweaty from the fright and flight, he asked his mother and father why a lindworm had accosted him in such a way. The very moment the question left his lips, the queen began to sob in shame and despair, and regaled the story of the prince's conception.
One day, while walking in the woods, lamenting her infertility, she happened upon a witch. This witch was not wicked, in fact, she had heard the queen's woes and offered her a solution. She was to place a silver pitcher upside down in the north corner of the palace garden. In the morning, she would find two roses under the pitcher, one white and one red. If she desired a son, she would eat the red one, the white one for a daughter. But she must not, under any circumstances, eat both.
"I did not believe her at first but saw no harm in it. So, I did as she commanded. In the morning, I saw two roses and thought long and hard on my choice, for it is not one I thought I would make. I became fearful that if I ate the red one, you would be called to war, and I would lose you. If I ate the white, my daughter may be married to a foreign king, and I would lose her company. In the end, I chose the white rose, preferring a living but distant daughter over a dead but glorious son. But the rose was so sweet and lovely that I forgot the witch's warning and ate the red as well. And months later, I gave birth to twins. First the lindworm, and then to you. She is your older sister; she must marry before you can."
The king, knowing she was right, said, "Then I shall find a knight brave and true to take her claw in marriage. She can't possibly expect a bride."
The prince objected, "Father, is it wise to risk angering a dragon?"
And though the king wanted to argue that such a thing would be no marriage at all, he knew his son was right. He sent a letter to the neighboring kingdom, telling them his child wished to marry, but he did not tell them which child. Thinking that their daughter would be marrying the handsome and noble prince, the kingdom sent the princess. Upon arriving and meeting the lindworm, the princess grew fearful, but she consented to the marriage, for who would ever marry the dreadful beast and free up the prince if not her?
So, the two married. When it was time to kiss the bride, the princess kissed the lindworm between the eyes, and they feasted. The lindworm tasted cake and wine and spiced meat for the first time. Would this be her life now? To live as decadently as her family?
In the marriage chamber, the lindworm settled into bed told her bride, "Princess, remove your shift." Thinking only that they would do as all married couples did.
The princess did this hastily and went up to the lindworm, sitting in front of her and kissing her scaly lips. However, upon tasting the fear on the princess' lips, the lindworm's dragon nature could not be stopped, and before she knew what had occurred, she had devoured her bride.
In the morning, when the king and queen went to wake the newlyweds, they found the lindworm with tears in her eyes, the chamber flooded. Upon seeing her parents, the lindworm only said, "Bride."
Thus, the king sent word to a faraway kingdom that his child wished to marry, though did not say which. Thinking of the handsome and noble prince, they sent their daughter. The princess grew disgusted when she met the lindworm upon arrival but consented to the marriage. For if anyone could tame such a beast, it was her.
So, they married. When it was time to kiss the bride, the princess kissed the lindworm on the snout, and they feasted. When they were alone in the marriage chamber, the lindworm said, "Princess, remove your shift."
The princess did this hastily and went to the lindworm, kissing her scaly lips. But upon tasting the disgust on her bride's lips, the lindworm could not stop her dragon's nature and devoured her bride before she knew what had happened. When the king and queen arrived to wake the newlyweds, they once again found the lindworm alone and the chamber flooded with her tears. Her eyes still wet, all the lindworm could say was, "Bride."
Knowing that to ask for yet another princess would bring war to his kingdom, the king went to see his shepherd and commanded him to give his daughter's hand in marriage to the lindworm instead. For the shepherd had been loyal for many years and would never think to disobey.
"Your majesty, please, reconsider. She is my only child!"
"I know this, good shepherd, and I assure you, should your daughter be devoured, I shall have the lindworm, my own flesh and blood, slain.
But the shepherd's daughter did not consent to the marriage when she was told, running off into the forest at the thought of being a bride to a creature who would eat her own lover.
When she was deep in the woods, the shepherdess had many thoughts of how to escape her fate. She could offer her services in shearing and herding to the neighboring kingdom. She could stay in these woods. She could even make a home up a tree if need be. Like the great gnarled tree she stopped to look at. Then suddenly, in front of that tree, there was a gnarled old woman. And she spoke, "You're a long way from your flock, and you look as if you've met death. What troubles you, dearie?"
Though she had been startled, the shepherdess sighed and confessed to the old woman, "I'm afraid I may meet death very soon indeed. You see, they want me to marry the lindworm, but she has already eaten two princesses. What is to stop her from devouring a simple shepherd's daughter?"
"Ah, the lindworm. Such a shame, she would have made such a pretty princess, and we would have none of this trouble, had Her Majesty heeded my warning. Worry not, dearie, I can help you save both yourself and the lindworm. All I ask is that you follow my word to the letter."
The shepherdess considered the witch's offer and because she had few options, agreed to it, "Alright. You need only tell me what to do."
And so, the shepherd's daughter went home and consented to the marriage. When she met the lindworm, she grew determined. Never again would anyone suffer from this beast's appetites, least of all the beast herself.
So, the two were wed. When it came time to kiss the bride, the shepherdess kissed the lindworm on her scaly lips. Upon tasting the determination on her bride's lips, the lindworm's dragon nature did absolutely nothing. Thus, they feasted, and while all were distracted, the shepherdess pulled a servant aside and told him to bring a tub of lye, a tub of milk, and a bullwhip to the marriage chamber.
When they came to the chamber, the lindworm saw the implements, but did not ask what they were for. She simply settled down, telling her newest bride, "Shepherdess, remove your shift."
The shepherdess, now nervous but still determined, in turn said, "Only if you shed your skin."
The lindworm was stunned, telling her bride, "I have not shed in years, and never on command."
"If you will not shed, then I will not shed."
The lindworm, seeing no point in refusing her wife, thus shed a skin. Her scales were now brighter in the candlelight. When she did this, the shepherdess removed her shift to reveal another underneath. The lindworm, puzzled by what she saw, blinked, and told the maiden, "Bride of mine, remove your shift."
"Only if you shed a skin."
And so, the lindworm shed another skin, her scales gleaming even brighter, but also making the lindworm feel weaker. And when the shepherdess removed her shift once more, she revealed yet another underneath.
They did this ten times, until the shepherdess was down to her last shift and the lindworm's skin was raw and weeping, the beast unable to move. Now that this was done, the maiden took up the bull whip and dipped it in the lye before striking the lindworm.
The lindworm screamed out in agony and the shepherdess stopped. It was one thing to watch the lindworm shed until she looked like a scab that had been peeled before its time, quite another to induce pain on her. But she also knew better than to disobey the witch, especially this far in, so she continued. She dipped the whip in the lye and struck the lindworm again. She did this five times before she took up the tub of milk and poured it over the lindworm, the creature moaning in relief the instant the liquid touched her skin.
The witch had said the shepherdess could do whatever she wished at that point, so long as she stayed in the chamber with the lindworm. And seeing the poor beast on the floor, surrounded by her skins, and slashed by the whip and bleeding, covered in milk, there was only one thing the shepherd's daughter could do. She got down, took the lindworm's great neck into her arms, and embraced her.
The lindworm, never having been held so gently, began to sniffle, and then began to weep. Using the very last of her strength, the lindworm leaned into the embrace and asked, "Why?"
The shepherdess told her, "Because if someone did to me what I just did to you, I would want to be held by someone who cared." The lindworm sniffled once more and stayed in her bride's arms. The both of them falling asleep in that embrace.
The next morning, the king and queen went to wake the newlyweds, the prince with them this time. But when they entered the chamber, they saw not the shepherdess devoured, but the lindworm gone. In the shepherdess' arms instead was a maiden, with hair as white as a snowy rose.
As the two woke, the prince threw a blanket over his sister to preserve her modesty, the king picked up the shepherdess in a grateful hug, and the queen tried to hug her still sitting daughter. The former lindworm, however, crawled away from her with wide eyes, as if the thought of her own mother touching her terrified her.
The queen backed off at this, the king instead letting the shepherdess go and asking the princess, "What will you do now, daughter mine? Join court? Seek a proper groom?"
The princess looked at the shepherdess, the shepherdess back at her, and there was an understanding. The princess could not lead the court like this. Not when she had been an unloved dragon such a short time ago. And the thought of a groom was distasteful to her.
"I shall teach her to be human, your majesty. We are wed, so I have a duty to care for her. When she is ready, I'm sure she'll return to the palace."
The queen spoke once more then, telling her, "We will be waiting. In the meantime, you are always welcome in the palace. The way you should have always been."
And so, the shepherdess and the princess went home, the princess needing to be carried, though she didn't mind. It allowed her to embrace the shepherdess. Thus, they lived happily, and the princess never did move back into the palace
Miss's study was very different from what Honey was expecting. It always imagined that when Sugar disappeared behind the door, it was in some arcane laboratory, conferring with Miss between beakers of strange magical liquid and scraps of rune-scribbled papyrus.
Instead, it was more like... a lounge. Of course, there was a crystal ball, but it was in a den surrounded by antique sofas. The tablecloth on the desk was adorned with ring-shaped stains, barely visible under the plant that had overtaken most of the desktop long ago. There were vintage softcore pin-ups hung on the walls wherever there was space between the trinket-filled bookshelves and the large window that oversaw the backyard.
Honey hesitated in the doorway, unsure of what to feel. All this time, Miss had been so... ephemeral. Sugar was always the one to confer with her directly, orders and schedules relayed secondhand, as she always seemed so busy. They had talked, of course, but mostly in the forms of reflexive praise for a job well done. This is the first time it's truly... conversed with her.
The cornerstone of its purpose, the centre of all its desires, the reason to be. The need to be a good doll.
The witch placed herself down on one of the couches in her expansive room, reclining in the corner as she beckoned Honey over. "Oh, would you be a darling and close the door before you sit?"
The doll acted without thinking, gently shutting the door. For some reason, 'you' didn't feel wrong. It didn't have the creeping sense of inappropriateness, that sense that things shouldn't have such a sense of individuality. It brushes it off as the witch's, no, as Miss's magic before moving on. Bad d-
"Thank you very much, Honey."
Its thoughts dissolved as Miss's words trickled down its skin, saturating its mind. Without further thought, it sat just next to Miss.
Honey has no idea how to behave. It understands curtsy, the politeness essential to its being, but... it's on a couch, with Miss's arm just a nudge away from resting on its shoulders. It stared forward, posture locked, not wanting to risk overstepping a boundary by leaning against her body and staring into her eyes. "Are you going to fix this one, Miss?"
"Oh, darling, do you mean changing you?" She takes on a sympathetic tone, clearly sensing the apprehension behind Honey's reserved disposition. "I love all my dolls just the way they are, I don't have the heart to make you something else..."
The doll tried to keep itself from reacting, but their was a clear drop in its posture as it tried its best not to sound like it was protesting. "Miss, this one is just an object, you have every right to treat it as you please, it can handle-"
"Shush." She said with a playful flirtation, Honey's lips instantly wrenching shut. "That means I can choose to make you change yourself, can't I?"
Her relaxation is tucked away, smoothly and elegantly, as she shifts her position. She's giving Honey her full attention. "I'd like to know how you've been feeling. Please tell me everything you're comfortable with."
Honey marvels for just a moment, at... her. Her totality. Her posture, the effortless way she holds herself to be so inviting and welcoming. Her words, like fine wine from a bottle, enveloping like a warm blanket, enough to make one melt. Even her clothes, a simplistic dress with a sheer cloak and the witch's hat framing her beautiful face...
The doll shakes from its momentary distraction.
"This one has been struggling, Miss." It relented with a banal seriousness. It wanted to resist, its instincts telling it to downplay and deny and tell Miss that everything was perfect thanks to her. But it couldn't lie. Not to her.
"This one wants to be a good doll. It really, really does. It's all this one wants." Honey finds its gaze naturally falling, pulling its limbs inward to try and console itself. "But it makes so many mistakes, and they all feel so serious. Every mistake fills it with so much guilt, and shame, and... it lingers on those mistakes until it can't take it anymore."
If Honey looked up, it would see Miss with nothing but positive regard. No pity, no hesitance, just.. a compassionate engagement, attentiveness, and just a little relief.
"That must be so awful..." Miss shook her head. "Nobody deserves to be haunted like that."
Seeing Miss upset, it spoke up, as it figured a good doll would. "It's okay! The thoughts can be intense, but they help this one-"
"No, they don't." Miss leans just a little forward, keeping her intensity low. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but... I promise they don't. Being without them wouldn't make you a bad doll, would it?"
Honey stammered for just a second. "Well... this one would do its best no matter what for you, Miss. But, it has to care about its mistakes, or else it'll be a much worse doll." The doll spoke matter-of-factly, but with an inquisitive undertone, ready for Miss to correct it.
"Can we cuddle, darling? That's a question, not a command."
The doll blinks in surprise. There's a longing in Miss's voice, and tenderness in her desires. It complies, as a good doll... no. It accepts her offer. She said it was just a question.
There's a hesitation as it leans into the witch, whose arms are outstretched and accepting. Gentle, with rapt caution, it places its head into the crook of her chest. Miss gladly accepts it, letting her arm lay on its shoulders and hold it tight.
The witch is sure to chose her words carefully. "The others are good dolls, aren't they? They don't need to be nearly so unkind to themselves."
Yes, but... there's a rebuttal, there has to be, or else all this anguish would be for nothing. What if it-
"There's nothing wrong with you, either." She places her head against the doll's, nuzzling closer. The doll feels its Miss sigh with relief at their proximity, and all urges to correct her fade. "You're not uniquely evil, or broken, or bad."
Honey... couldn't bring itself to respond. It didn't know what to say. Deep down, it knew all of this. That its thoughts were extreme. But when faced with its mistakes, the disappointment of others, they just flood in and demand attention. Why is she doing this? Why can't she just take out the part of its core that makes it this way?
Miss gives a wistful sigh, pulling away from the doll without releasing it. "Could you look at me, darling?"
The doll does as Miss says. Honey looks at the witch. Her eyes are so... big, and beautiful. Like a deep, sprawling cavern, filled with crystals and sparkling rivers. It feels itself being pulled in, like its very gaze is being enveloped.
Her name is Camellia. It didn't know that before.
"Could you try and think of somebody you don't like? Someone annoying or mean. It might help you to imagine your bad thoughts as coming from them."
Honey didn't dare. Good dolls "Have feelings. There's nothing wrong with reasonable distaste towards another. I trust you."
Honey blinks, taken aback. It... believes her. Honey starts to wonder how she knew what it was-
"Magic, darling."
The doll nods.
It starts to think of its past. Its time as a human. It never had much attention in school, positive or negative. The only time eyes seemed to be on it was when it made a mistake, the judgment lingering like a foul odour. It was not torture; their eyes would quickly move on.
There were some familial hardships, but no bad blood. It let its parents down as all offspring would, and they would be much too lenient. They would make their feelings known, never out loud, and they would never offer punishment. Every infraction would just be silently moved on from, as if it never happened.
It thought of its job, of its boss. He gave basic... if it could be so bold, insufficient direction. It would often have to rely on assistance from its coworkers when on assignment, making it feel ill-equipped and ashamed. They didn't say anything, but it was interrupting their cleaning duties, it simply had to be a bother.
"Oh, Honey..." Camellia couldn't help but pull her doll in for a hug. "You didn't deserve any of that. I'm so sorry, darling, I wish I had known sooner..."
Honey wanted to struggle against the embrace, but it couldn't bring itself to. A doll wouldn't dare fight against Miss... even if it wanted to. It simply had no choice but to melt into her, letting itself relax in her embrace.
"It's..." it struggled to summon the nerve to speak against Miss. "It's not a big deal, Miss, really. Please don't worry about it, it..." as it spoke, it found its arms fitting around Miss in turn, reciprocating the embrace. "It's not nearly as bad as it could've been."
"Yes darling, exactly. That's why it's so awful." The witch let her eyes close as she rested her head against the doll's. "You were never taught to have closure. Everyone let you fester in your own mistakes, so now all you can do is let them intensify. No wonder dollhood is so hard on you."
Honey was silent. It didn't know how to react to that. It had always just accepted that this is how its life was, never stopping to consider its effects. It was as if a new dimension opened up to it.
She was right. It didn't know emotional closure. Things left unsaid, fizzling out, ignored. Sugar's thoughts and Cinnamon's feelings and Ginger's past and Lemon's secrets. It would never know the true extent of its failures, their impact, the other's actions and reactions. No matter how much the pressure of failure after failure would build, there was never release. Of course it would start to break.
It's... welling up. It didn't know dolls could cry. It shouldn't be that awful, it never felt like in the moment that there was ever something to cry about. But now that it all lays in the past, built-up over the years as a person and the weeks as a doll, all it could do was desperately hold back from staining Miss's dress.
It buried its head into Camellia's chest, desperate to hide its face. It didn't know what to do to make it better. It couldn't apologize, or clean its mess. All it could do was hold off from crying, making itself useful. For just a moment, its emotions faltered, and it cursed Miss for being so cruel as to make it learn such an awful thing about itself.
Miss cradled it in her arms, and gently and compassionately as one could. She was silent, only at first. "It's okay, you're okay. I promise I'll never let such awful things happen again. You deserve to know."
It deserves to know.
It heaved as the tears started to fall. All it could do was bask in its feelings as everything finally released. It spent a very long time crying, just letting Miss hold it and caress its hair before it finally got it all out of its system. Finally, it could steady its sobs, its throat hoarse. Its face was wet, red, and relieved.
All the while, Camellia never let go. She never wanted to leave something unsaid again, making it perfectly clear how she felt with every second snuggled close. It wasn't long before the doll, now emptied, faded into stillness in her arms. The witch let it rest.
It was a long and loving embrace before the witch's thoughts drifted back to the matter at hand. With a single, soft "Excuse me, Honey?" the doll groggily lifted up its head. At some point, they seemed to have laid down together, with the doll using Miss as a bed.
"If you ever find yourself overwhelmed with your thoughts again, stressed out by the need to be a good doll... seek one of us out. Me or the dolls." Camellia let her hands rest on Honey's back, still holding the same embrace. "We'll tell you the honest truth about what you've done, and explain what reaction we would have. Would that help?"
Honey remembered moments where its thoughts were at their worst. When it ruined Miss's dinner, and wanted nothing more than to run away and apologize and accept some sort of punishment all at once. The pain, the guilt, the regret, all filtered through the lens of peer-review. It would be deeply vulnerable, but... it would know.
The doll let its head softly thump to the side, landing against Miss's chest. "Yes, Miss. Thank you, Miss."
. . . . .
The doll looked down into Miss's vintage water pitcher. One of the teabags left to seep overnight slipped from the rim, one of the many teabags partaking in the cold brew now floating without a lifeline.
Honey holds its newly-repaired thumb joint in its other hand, Miss's alternative to letting it near its teeth, as options rushed through its mind. It couldn't just reach in. It just washed its hands, and the others didn't deserve to taste soap in their tea. It could try to fish it out with something, uselessly dirtying a utensil due to its mistake. Bad doll.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Closure.
Honey peaked its head out, to where the others were gathered. It hadn't been long since Honey stepped away to grab the tea. "Excuse this one," it walked towards them with the tea, careful not to spill it. "but how extreme of a mistake is losing a teabag's string in the pitcher?"
The others were flippant, but not dismissively so. It was a reassurance. "Completely negligible." "Like, zero out of ten?" "Aren't they left in iced tea anyway?" and a soft shake of the head.
"...Thank you all." The doll felt its shoulders relax. Something completely unworthy of scorn. It stood at the table, beginning by pouring for Sugar. "Lapsang souchong tea. It's known for its polarizing smokey flavour, so don't be afraid to sweeten it."
"Isn't that a black tea? Is that one ...going to be okay?" Lemon tilted its head, moving its glass closer to the edge of the table for convenience's sake.
"Honey's adjusted rather well to its dollhood." Sugar kept a collected disposition as it patiently waited for the others to be served. "This one trusts that it'll handle itself much better."
Cinnamon flinches away from its straw, quickly swallowing the sip it had in its mouth. "Mmf, sorry, that... wow." It looked over to Ginger, who had just finished adding its fourth spoonful of sugar. It leans in close to the other doll with a smirk of endearment. "Yeah, this one hears it." It playfully begrudges as it begins adding the sugar to Cinnamon's tea instead.
Its duty finished, Honey places the pitcher in the middle of the table as it takes its seat. With a tentative curiosity, it leans in, bringing the straw to its mouth. It winces.
"It... may need some additives, to be to this one's tastes." Without meaning to, Honey starts to smile. It's not perfectly polite, with a self-satisfied flash of teeth to the others, but the sincerity is unmistakable. "But... this one did a very good job anyway. It's very proud of itself."
Her Dad was a firefighter, but no one ever taught her how to survive the burning.
This story means a lot to me, so thanks for reading if you choose to <3
Come Forth as Gold
“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:
On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him:
he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:
But he knoweth the way that I take:
when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
– Job 23:8-10
Jennifer drove her dad to get his chest x-rayed in her little Ford Fiesta after he spun out and collided with his Station Officer whilst go karting. Her Dad was fifty-three but may as well have been nineteen. As far as he was concerned it was still the Summer of 1992, where he’d spend afternoons loitering in a Sanity, when he’d seen Metallica play live at the MCG, and business was still booming for the milk bar on Campell Street, that her dad was yet to accept had gone under years ago.
She didn’t blame him though, for living in the past. Everything sounded better back then, even to her. Sometimes, she would walk past the town’s cemetery, and cut through to a bush trail hidden behind it, just to hear dried gum leaves crunching like kindling beneath her feet. Every time she passed through, she’d hurry past the grave-marker of a boy no one remembered the name of, but whose sun bleached headstone read ‘At home in the Lord’s open arms,’ though the text was beginning to fade like ash on wind. If her former best friend was to be believed, the boy had hung himself sometime in the 1970s, and the reason no one liked to think about him was because he was troubled. She wouldn’t admit it but sometimes Jennifer wondered if he was just tired, tired like her. She thought about the boy’s parents sometimes, imagined them standing alone by their son’s grave, long after the few people who had attended the service went home. She wondered if she would be like them, standing all alone by a gravesite, long after the rest of the world moved on. Although, maybe she was more akin to the boy, left hanging, as the world fell out from beneath her feet because two weeks later she finds the purple, yellow and white ‘Understanding Radiation Therapy: A Guide For Cancer Patients, their families and friends’ pamphlet buried like coal underneath a pile of electrical bills on the kitchen table, capable of igniting if handled to roughly, and wordlessly tucks it into her school bag as she heads out the sliding security door. She stashes it out of sight in her dad’s desk, slid in between two notebooks after memorising all its content during school that day.
It takes her yet another week to confront her dad about the pamphlet, which she only does when forced by circumstance. Callum and her mother were well and truly asleep by the time Jennifer wandered into the lounge room, stale carpet beneath her feet, Red bull in hand and stumbles across her father in his armchair, skimming the very same pamphlet by lamplight.
“Since when did you learn how to read?” She asked, looking at Raymond as if she was daring him to lie to her.
“Four or so weeks ago,” He replied easily, “Figured it was about time.”
He briefly glanced up at her, peering at her above the lenses of his glasses. Jennifer narrowed her eyes; she’d given him a chance to fess up and he hadn’t taken it. But if it’s the avoidance game he wanted to play, well so be it.
“Oh. You didn’t think that was something you might want to share with the rest of us?”
“Don’t see how it concerned you.”
“Bullshit.”
A quickly smothered lick of anger flared in her father’s eyes.
“Don’t you have homework you could be doing? Or a SAC to be studying for?”
Relegation via redirection. Textbook checkmate.
She didn’t even bother replying, just walked away.
The game, just like every other one they’d played, had rules.
Don’t say what you mean.
Keep your cards close.
Don’t flinch first.
And, if all else fails, deflect, deny, dismiss.
She let him have his victory.
It hadn’t always been like this, between them, they used to think of each other as being invincible. When her dad left for work the next morning, he gave her a wordless hug goodbye. Not an apology, never that, rather more akin to a victor shaking his opponent’s hand after a match as a show of good faith.
“Have a good day,” He muttered into her hair,
“You too,” She responded.
The interaction was robotic and lacked the warm affection one would tend to associate as commonplace between a father and his only daughter, who was often a bit too much like him in both appearances and manner for comfort, but it was how they functioned.
She had been seven when the fiery hell her school’s priest had preached about to a room of terrified four-year-olds swallowed the mountain ranges surrounding her town whole. He had always described hell and the devil as something that, when the rapture came, would rise from fissures in the drought-ridden earth. So, when instead perdition rained down on her from the heavens above, it seemed only logical to Jennifer that she should begin to question the man’s credibility as a reliable source on the natural order.
In fact, she had mused, if hell had arrived earlier than Father David expected, then it stood to reason that Jesus’s second coming must have too. And she didn’t have to look far from home to find him, either. After all, who else but the true Lord and Saviour would, without hesitation, charge headfirst into the inferno, haloed by smoke and flame, armed with nothing but a knapsack pump, the conviction of a saint and pull people from the grasps of death? Who else would hold her hand in his own, palms scarred from catching falling bits of roofing, or disappear for days on end and return smelling like smoke and eucalyptus? Although it had seemed obvious to her, when she proudly announced during morning prayer the next Monday, that her dad was actually Jesus, come to save them all, and that he was off fighting the devil in the hills, Father David was not impressed. He made her apologise to God during recess, for being arrogant and comparing his son to a mere mortal man. Jennifer had done as she was told, and prayed her penance, even though she secretly thought that God would be lucky to have a son as cool as her dad, and so he probably wouldn’t mind the confusion.
Whilst her dad continued saving people, Jennifer eventually grew out of the belief that he was Jesus, like one outgrows a favourite pair of shoes: loved to bits and worn every day until the soles fall apart, before one day, you slide them on and realise that your big toe has worn a hole through them, and so, with a heavy resignation, you discard the shoes in favour of a better fitting pair. Though her faith had faded over the years, Jennifer never forgot the heat that clung to them during the February she turned seven, when the sky turned red, and the clouds black from smog and ash. She remembered how they used to keep a brick in the toilet cistern, how the bubblers were turned off at school. She was raised on scarcity, not of food or money, but of water. Even now, nearly a decade later, she felt a quiet guilt every time she reached for the hose.
Now freshly eighteen, when the next bushfire season rolled around, Jennifer didn’t wave the convoy off like she previously had. She couldn’t bear to, not when her dad was returning to the very thing that was now slowly killing him, like a battered woman returns to her abuser, time after time. As she lay awake that night, her peripheral was stalked by leaf litter, consumed by fire before being reduced to ash, and her dad, standing amongst it all. To her, he’d always be a hero, of course he would be, he’s her dad, sometimes she just wished he’d stop being one to everyone else and just be hers. If Father David were there, he would have scolded Jennifer for being selfish, after all, generosity was a virtue. Father David wasn’t there though, because God had called him home years ago, via an unexpected heart attack at the age of forty-six. She was still here though, so Jennifer guessed she could be a little selfish for the moment.
The next time her dad was home for dinner was two and a half weeks later, all four members of her family sat around their wobbly dining table, separated by junk mail and newspapers with reports on the bushfires that painted the horizon, columns of smoke towering above lands for miles to come. Despite their best efforts, Callum had discovered their father's cancer in the worst possible way; by hearing it passed down the grapevine, where pitying whispers curled into crawling trellises and allowed fictitious details to grow from them like peas did on the veranda.
It had been Jennifer that he confronted. Demanded answers from, and it was Jennifer he lashed out at when she took a page from their father's book.
Deflect.
Deny.
Dismiss.
She recalled the conversation with haunting accuracy, as if she would never be deserving of forgiveness and had taken it upon herself to deliver divine punishment.
"Why are people at school saying the reason Dad's voice is hoarse is because he has cancer?" He'd demanded. Jennifer, startled by his directness, fell back on the only way of communicating she knew how.
"I don't know." She muttered, not looking up from her homework.
"Bullshit."
Frustration at being called out took root in her gut.
"Don't you have some bowling you could be practicing?"
He huffed and slammed the sliding door on his way out.
He spent the afternoon practicing his bowling against Jennifer's bedroom window. With increasing power and pace just to make sure she really understood how scorned he was.
Now, they all sat around the dinner table, not saying a word. The distinct absence of the usual jovial atmosphere was left unaddressed by both Jennifer and her Parents, Callum however, would never be able to let things lie, and in that moment, Jennifer hated him for it. She hated her baby brother, who was no longer a baby, for being protected when she was sacrificed. She despised his refusal to act his age, although admittedly, she didn't know what normal behaviour was for a fifteen year old boy, she'd never been one. Most of all, she hated him for breaking the rules.
"When were you going to tell me you had cancer?" He directed at their dad, who then looked at Jennifer, as if to say, 'are you going to handle this?' and so, she hated Raymond in that moment as well. Just a little bit. When Jennifer refused to fill the silence, her dad gave Callum his signature 'I'm not having this conversation with you' look in an attempt to force him to drop it.
Callum, however, had gotten his stubbornness from his dad, he and Jennifer both had.
"You weren't, were you?" He pressed, gripping his fork with increasing intensity, his knuckles going white from it. If Jennifer had thought the air was tense before, now it was scorched, still and hot like the inside of a hot car in the middle of February, the kind of heat that made you afraid to move, afraid to breath, lest something explode.
Finally, Raymond stepped up to the crease, "I didn't-"
"Didn't what?" The room flashed over, everything they'd been holding onto for the past eighteen years had finally reached its ignition point. Everything except her dad, who still sat at the head of the table, collected as if nothing were wrong.
“Callum,” He warned, “You’re upsetting your mother.”
A mother who sat opposite her husband and couldn’t make eye contact with her children. But it was the final blow, not the silence, or the illness but the quiet invocation of the universally accepted truth that no one was to upset mum. Even when they were all falling apart, it was the one line they would never cross. If her dad had been Jesus, then her mum was sacred. The holy Mary of their household. The divine mother who did not shed a tear when her family was tested by God, whose faith remained resolute throughout their trials, even when her daughter lost faith and renounced the heavenly father.
If her dad were Jesus, and her mother the Madonna, then Jennifer was Mary Magdalene, present for the crucifixion, full of doubt, yet the first to believe in the resurrection. Whose femininity was her damnation, whereas it was her mother’s salvation. Which would make Callum Peter, passionate and impulsive in his declarations to follow in his father’s footsteps, with such a desire to do good in the world but unable to follow through. And my, what a strange family they made, the sacrificial lamb, the virgin mother, the heretic desperate to believe and the faithful denier. It shouldn’t work, and most would argue it didn’t.
But maybe it had, once, before a cancerous Judas Iscariot, sent by Satan and permitted by God, to stain the cheek of his only son, the saviour of them all. Because later that night, Jennifer would sit in the garden with her dad, and he would tell her that the doctors were prescribing him another round of treatment. Her mother and Callum were well and truly asleep by then, so Jennifer would allow herself to lean into her father’s chest, drawn to his warmth like an ember to a flame, feeling for its rise and fall. Then her dad would rake his fingers through her hair, like he had when she was a little girl, and hum in tune with a mixtape he had made in the nineties, playing through an old boom box, music crackling gently like wood splitting in flame, stored on a nearly out of reach shelf in the garage, but that had been relocated to the deck for the evening. He would hum to her until the side ran out, and Jennifer would let her mind latch onto the vibrations of his throat, even as they grew weaker as he fell asleep. If Jennifer also fell asleep outside, no harm would come to her, not when she was enveloped in her father’s arms, and if he were gone by the time she woke up, having already returned to fight his holy crusade against the devil in the hills, then Jennifer would manage, she always had.
If you've made it this far, I'd love to hear what you think! This is my first time sharing my writing so any and all feedback is appreciated <3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Miles doesn't know what a songcord is.
Spider has an awkward time explaining.
Spider Socorro & Miles Quaritch fic! Dialogue heavy, emotional hurt, angst, banter, and hopefully a cute Spider... Miles is not having a great time in this conversation.
Summary: Nick never liked Skinny Malone's girls. The one with the baseball bat didn't like him either.
Malone leaned in and lowered his voice like he’d lower a rope.
“I like ‘em a little mean, Nicky,” he said. “Ya know that. You’ve always respected my girls, even when I know you didn’t like ‘em.”
“Mean? That broad’s a demon. Don’t have a church wedding, she won’t survive the walk up the— don’t grab so damn hard! Fine, so she ain’t kidnapped. I’ll go back and tell her parents what happened. Maybe tell ‘em to hang some garlic, too.”
Nick hit the ground head-first.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 魔道祖师 | Módào Zǔshī (Cartoon)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Niè Huáisāng, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén, Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo
Additional Tags: POV Niè Huáisāng, Niè Huáisāng-centric, both lxc and jgy are background as in they have 3 lines or something, jgy is kind of central though, mdzs time skip, Grief/Mourning, Niè Huáisāng Character Study, this was inspired by me writing a christmas card for a person who makes me want to quit my hobbies, Drinking
Summary:
Two years and three months after Da-ge dies Jin Guangyao turns twenty-six. Nie Huaisang... deals.
Or: Nie Huaisang has to celebrate Jin Guangyao's birthday for the first time since he discovered how his brother died.
