🎄 you spend your whole life dreaming and you wake up dead ← for reverie? ✨💛💜✨
Lion kisses her which is [fine] and he says, “I love you,” and Evie says [I love you too], and it’s [fine] because she loves him. That part he doesn’t need to change. She might not have said it right then but she’ll feel it forever and when he gives her mouth back she’ll tell him it’s all right. He might not believe her, but it’s all right.
She loved him when they first met. He was the first real good thing she ever knew. And now he’s [a glorious, fearless, beautiful knight that any woman would be lucky to have], but that’s okay, because she knows his heart. There’s a scared kid in there; somewhere.
She remembers being twelve on a pirate ship with him and him crying himself sick because the men were all calling him Squeak, because he was a little mouse with a little high voice, and she’d said, well, you’re Lion to me. Even in your name, isn’t it? The real one. The one that matters. Lionel. Lion. They can’t change that ever. And he’d looked at her like she was the moon and stars and he [still looks at her like that now, because he loves her.]
i realized i miss evie sooooo bad so i decided to write about her :)
set pre-canon. god only knows how this reads without any context but i am hoping that it's spookily fun. a cameo-ish from one bg3 character so we are yet again asking the question "is that enough to make it fic." who knows but i am tagging it as that ANYWAY.
Evie woke up because String was licking her face. Obviously his tiny little snake tongue was more like a little feathery brush than an actual slobbery kiss, but it was still enough to wake her if he did it enough, and he was doing it absolutely nonstop, which meant he wanted her to pay attention to something. She sat up on her elbows and blinked sleepily around the tent.
Lion was examining his face in the mirror. He had big, bruised circles around his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping. Evie felt a deep twinge in her chest and sat up all the way, and when she did, he whirled around like he thought something was going to come at him and hit him. He didn’t relax when he saw it was her. His jaw was tight.
Evie didn’t really know what to say in moments like this. Whatever was bothering Lion, he’d never really been one to talk about his feelings, and asking just made him get even more twitchy. She wiggled her fingers towards him instead: an invitation.
Lion said, all bitey, “Of course you’d think that would solve it,” and stalked out of the tent.
Evie exhaled softly. She whispered the words that made the whole world ready for talking-to, and then she asked String, “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
Not really, said String. He looks tired. Usually you can fix it, so I thought I’d let you know about it.
Evie swallowed. Sometimes it made her chest hurt when String looked at her with those beady, love-filled eyes, like she really was capable of fixing everything that was wrong with Lion. And she sort of had to be, didn’t he? He didn’t have anyone else.
Neither did she, really, unless you counted—
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
“Gemma!” said Evie.
Amara turned from where she was doing her hair up all funny for the trapeze. She said, “Vivi!” and pursed her lips up without moving until Evie came over and gave her a silly little kiss. They’d had to come up with a good way to kiss without smudging any of Amara’s makeup—Evie didn’t mind one way or the other—and they’d decided that Evie would come over and kiss Amara, which was fun, even if it wasn’t the deeper kind of kissing Evie liked to do to say hello.
When had she stopped kissing Lion like that in the mornings? Used to be they’d kiss like that forever.
Probably now wasn’t the time to think about that. You had to keep your head for the trapeze act, else you’d drop your partner, which, to Evie, was worse than losing your own balance. She called Amara Gemma because Amara sparkled and shone and was worth five times her weight in gold. Amara was beautiful and perfect and Evie had to make sure she didn’t get all scratched up.
“Is your boyfriend being a dick today again?” said Amara.
Amara didn’t like Lion. Lion didn’t like Amara either. It didn’t seem like they had the same reason for it, though. When Evie asked Amara, she said, “It’s because he doesn’t deserve you,” and when Evie asked Lion, his jaw flexed and he said, “Why do you care what I think?”
Evie considered the question. “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably. But he doesn’t make friends as easy as me.”
“Hm!” said Amara, infusing a whole lot into one little closed-mouth noise, and gestured Evie over towards the makeup table.
Amara did makeup for everyone in the circus. She’d learned from her mother, who had died about ten years before she’d met Evie, but she looked Evie’s age because she was an elf. She was almost twenty-four—an elf baby, basically, if Evie’s math was right—and she carried herself like a teenager trying to look older, and Evie was a teenager trying to look older, which meant they got along. Amara would have been Evie’s best friend if Lion hadn’t gotten there first.
Amara always did Evie up in red. She did herself up in grape-and-gold, usually, sumptuous, royal, magical mystery colors, but she said she wanted Evie to be the thing everyone was looking at, because Evie was the one who was actually aces on the trapeze. Evie thought that was silly; Amara was the one who had taught her. Trapezes were easy. Balancing was all about knowing in your bones you wouldn’t fall, and Evie had always had that certainty.
She was not a girl who fell. She was a girl who leapt. That was how it was.
String said, Tell Amara she’s doing a good job!
Amara said, “Vivi, whatever String has to say, it can wait until I’m done with your eyes.”
“String says—”
“Shush,” said Amara. She dusted String with a little bit of blush on the top of his head, and he sneezed, then made a noise that Evie knew was his kind of a laugh. “You and her!” she said reprovingly, but she was smiling.
Evie’s eyes were ringed with gold. Amara had done something with magic and jewels to stud the lashes with red, sparkling gems. She called it her special little flourish, because none of the audience would be close enough to see, usually, but if they went up to compliment Evie later, they’d be able to see how wonderful a thing she was up close, how sparkly and incredible. Evie couldn’t do makeup for shit, but she made Amara ugly lucky charms, and Amara wore them all even though they looked stupid next to her mother’s bangles.
That was part of why Evie never, never worried about falling. Amara caught her.
Amara did Evie’s lips. Evie pretended to try and eat the lipstick. Amara smacked her on the nose and said, “Were you raised in a barn?” and Evie held her smile on her face and didn’t think about Marigold. Then, finally, blessedly, Amara stood up and said, “Done,” and Evie examined herself in the mirror.
She’d been told she had a pretty face. She mostly just liked the places where other people touched it. Amara’s makeup meant everyone got to look at her and see Amara too, even if they didn’t know that was what they were seeing; it meant that when they said she was beautiful, they were talking about half an hour in front of the mirror with Amara putting rubies on her eyes. She wished there was something of Lion’s for people to compliment, but he…it was complicated with him, lately. She wasn’t sure why.
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
Entering the ring was always fun. Evie loved being surrounded by that roar of excitement. She loved knowing that a daring jump and twist high above the ground could make people feel like they were up there with her. She’d catch them all if they needed, but right now they wanted to watch her, so she held Amara’s hand high as old Charlie shouted about the great trapezists or however he was billing them to this crowd. Sometimes he got bored and changed it up.
There was a strange prickle at the back of her neck. She wondered what it was about. Nothing good, she thought, but it could wait for later. She had a show to put on.
Lion was standing outside the ring. All the soft parts of his face seemed eclipsed by those dark, dark circles. If they were the sort to talk about their feelings, Evie would have so many things she’d want to ask him. Tell him.
Amara saw where Evie was looking and said, “Vivi, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Evie didn’t think that mattered. When Lion was ten, she’d grabbed his hand and taken him onto a pirate ship. He’d hated the sea. He’d gone because she was there. He was here because she was here. To be loved like that…
Her feet left the ground. Amara was pulling her up.
The air-dance was always her favorite. She did a lot of things for the circus, mostly because she loved learning all the different things people did, but nothing compared to air-dancing with Amara. She dropped Amara’s hands, let herself fall, grabbed a rope extending down from the roof as the crowd screamed and gasped and laughed. She swung the circumference of the ring and felt the hands reaching out to try and touch her and would have reached back if she could. I see you, she wanted to tell them. I see you and I’m so glad you’re here.
She collided with Amara in midair, a laughing tangle of limbs. They didn’t ever kiss with eyes on them, because then it would look like a performance, and kissing Amara was never done for everyone else—it was for Evie and Amara. That was it. They bonked foreheads instead, and Amara whispered something to Evie.
She whispered something new every night, just so Evie could show off. She was always so proud of Evie for never losing her balance, no matter what she said. One week it was I want sweetbreads after this. Another week it was You’re the second-prettiest girl in this tent, which of course they both knew who the prettiest was, and Evie had had to hold back laughter as she’d swung from ribbons. Once she’d said he’s a dick, Evie, leave him before he hurts you: words that left Evie as soon as her feet were back on the ground. Lion had been hurt before. Whatever he did would never be as bad as what had been done to him.
This week, though. Something was different in Amara’s eyes. She looked a little uneasy.
“You’re in the stands,” she said.
And then she was gone, and Evie was there, motionless, suspended at the end of a rope. All the beautiful radiance had left the tent. The noise was dulled and dimming as she moved through the air, as if through molasses, circling the ring again. Looking more carefully, this time. Following that quiet prickle at the back of her neck.
There was a girl in the stands. She was pretty and long-haired and she had Evie’s face. She was sitting with a friend and she had Evie’s face. She was eating a toffee apple with Evie’s mouth, her long hair black as a raven’s wing, just like Evie, except Evie had kept it short forever, and Ella—
Ella had kept it long. Like the murderer. Ella had it long now. She looked like the murderer, just with darker skin. They both had the murderer’s face. That was how it worked.
Evie didn’t care about the trapeze anymore. She swung towards the girl in the stands, landing on the balcony, moving through shocked and laughing circus-goers who thought that this was part of the act. The girl in the stands put down her apple and looked up at Evie with empty, dark eyes.
Ella had been ten when they’d hidden in a hollow tree and prayed to every listening god that the murderer wouldn’t murder them too. Or at least that was what Evie had been praying. Ella had been dead silent the whole time, face nestled in Evie’s shoulder, holding her hand tight, tight, tight, even though they really hadn’t been sisters until Marigold was dead.
Ella had always been a still child. Poised. She had that to her now.
It wasn’t like looking in a mirror. That was what people always said about twins. They wouldn’t be right if they said it here.
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
Ella’s friend was quiet. Quieter than Ella, even. She hadn’t taken a single bite of her toffee apple. Neither of them seemed to be treating this like a glorious sisterly reunion, which was good, because Evie didn’t fucking want to treat it like that. The last time they’d spoken, they’d been ten, and Evie had said I need to find Marigold, and Ella had said Marigold is dead. Something dragged her off and ate her. Don’t be stupid. And then Evie had run away anyway. She’d have rather lived a thousand years alone than even one more standing next to a sister who would say that to her.
Ella hadn’t seemed to care when the murderer raised her murdering knife and sunk it, over and over, into Marigold, who was everything sunlight in the entire world. Ella had held Evie back. She’d never been strong enough to do that until that moment.
Ella didn’t say anything. Just looked.
Evie didn’t say anything either. What the hells was she supposed to say? Why was it on her to pretend to care?
“You look like me,” said Ella. She smiled. “Funny. I’d have thought there might be deviations.”
She spoke like the murderer. Precise, sweet, high-society, never mind that the deep black she was wearing wasn’t anything like the frou-frou colors that the murderer had always said they’d dress in as proper ladies. It was discomfiting.
“What do you want?” said Evie sharply.
“I want my sister,” said Ella.
Evie didn’t know what she was supposed to say to that, so she turned on her heel to go find Amara. She and Amara met by the river after a show that went sideways, where they could wash off all the makeup and kiss and cuddle and make it all feel better. This show hadn’t gone sideways, exactly, but Evie thought she’d rather be at that river than here.
Ella grabbed her elbow. Her hand was strong, nails sharp like claws. Nothing like a proper lady. She said, “I’m not talking about you, Reverie Northaven.”
“Reverie Riverborn,” Evie spat. She’d never take the murderer’s name.
“Oh, what a lovely segue!” said Ella. She smiled. Her smile was white and too sharp. “I want Marigold.”
Something is wrong, Evie thought. Something is so, so, so wrong. She looked for Ella’s friend and saw that Ella’s friend wasn’t anywhere.
“She’s alive, you know,” said Ella. “She’s living in a city. Dear little poppet to a harper and a hammer. Perfect little honey pastry. A spider and a rose and a butterfly and a little lieutenant—”
Now, Evie was one to talk with a bit of blunt obtuseness herself at times, but she’d never had trouble understanding people until whatever the fuck Ella was saying. It felt more like a mocking riddle than anything true. She’d stopped listening after the first part, anyway.
“She’s alive?” she breathed.
Ella opened her mouth to say something else—
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
The girl that descended on Amara was wearing Evie’s face. Amara knew that something was wrong immediately, because Evie didn’t smile like her face was splitting, like something was living under her skin. She was already pulling out her knife as the girl drew closer.
The girl said, “Oh, it’s a clever one!” Her arms lengthened and her smile grew. Her face gave way, shimmering in the moonlight like it was still deciding what to be. “What will its brains taste like on my knife, I wonder? Will they think clever thoughts?”
Amara’s mother hadn’t been a sorcerer—that was her dad’s terrain. He did illusion magic, mostly, and a lot of that was because the magic he’d tried to do had killed her mother in front of them. Of course he hadn’t meant to do it, but watching her come apart, knowing there was nothing they could do to stop it—that was scarier than any of this ever could be. She raised her knife higher and let it catch the moonlight.
“Went to the circus to have some fun,” hummed the girl with too-long legs and a too-sharp smile. “To make a friend or two. To take a friend or two apart. You’re friends with my sweet Elodie’s face, aren’t you? She’ll like your skin for the collection.”
“Fuck you,” Amara snarled.
The girl laughed. It sounded like a hyena call. She moved, quick as lightning, and her knife caught Amara’s shoulder, tearing the gauzy sleeve and digging—digging—
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
“Oh,” said Ella. She cocked her head—no, not quite cocked it, more tilted it increment by increment, like the second hand on a clock. “Orin’s drawn blood.”
“What?” said Evie, and ran.
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
Amara staggered back against the tree. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t. She was angry, sure, and the way her arm hung limply at her side didn’t say anything good, but it wasn’t anything a cleric couldn’t fix. “What the fuck are you doing, you fucking maniac?” she demanded. “I don’t even know you?! Back off!”
The girl was raising her knife again. “You spun so beautifully on those ribbons,” she breathed. “Will your flesh spill and spin like ribbons, pretty little trapezist that you are?”
Hands closed around Amara’s good arm. Evie yanked her out of the knife’s path, pressing worried hands to the blood in some clumsy attempt to stem it.
“It’s fine,” Amara briskly assured her. One of them had to be the grown-up, and Evie was never very good at it.
“Ella, what the FUCK?” Evie shouted.
The girl wearing Evie’s face furrowed her brow and said, “Dear, sweet Orin, you seem to have picked poorly.”
“A complication,” said the other girl. “What use do you have for another face like yours?” Her face melted like wax and formed again, light hair turning dark and long. “I have a face like yours. Easy as breathing. No need for this one’s still, simple face where we are going, if she turns her nose up at the blood of a friend.”
“She was always the sort,” said the first girl meditatively.
Evie and Amara held each other and stared. Evie said, shakily, “Ella. Elodie. Mari’s alive?”
“Mari,” said Elodie. Her lip curled. “Will you not respect our mother’s dying wish?”
“What,” snarled Evie, “to kill our older sister?”
Elodie tilted her head—a ticking-clock tilt, dark eyes glinting. It was unsettling to see Evie’s face, always so full of light and life, entirely still and empty. “Baldur’s Gate,” she said. “If you change your mind. I thought it right to ask you, at the very least. You’ll have a part to play either way.”
She stepped back, Orin’s hand in hers, and they disappeared into the shadows. Or maybe that was just—
“Oh, fuck,” Amara breathed, her vision blurring. Her legs went all wobbly as she slumped against Evie’s side.
· · ────── ꒰ঌ·✦·໒꒱ ────── · ·
Of course it wasn’t that serious. Evie got Amara set up with her over-worried dad and the on-hand cleric and headed back to her tent to find that Lion was standing outside with a tight jaw, String on his shoulder. She didn’t really know how to talk to him about—well, any of it—so she tried to walk past him, but he caught her arms and said, “Where were you?”
“Someone tried to kill Amara.”
Lion looked like he wanted to say something but knew Evie’d get mad at him for it. It was clear what he did say wasn’t that. “There was…a girl,” he said. “In the audience.”
“Elodie,” said Evie.
All that usual anger gave way to the boy underneath, the one Evie loved. He blinked at her with sympathetic confusion and asked, “What’s she doing here?”
And Evie remembered. “Marigold’s alive,” she burst out. “Not dead. Alive. I don’t know how Ella knows, I don’t know why she told me, but I—” She exhaled shakily. “Baldur’s Gate,” she said. “Ella said—I don’t know if she’s heading there, or Mari’s there, or what, but we have to go. Lion, we have to go. Ella’s friend can change faces and she almost killed Amara, she—”
That hardness had returned to Lion. Sharp. Pronounced. He didn’t respond to anything Evie said, but the way he was looking at her dropped a curtain over the rest of what she was about to say.
“Evie,” he said. “I’ve got a present for you.”
String hissed, No. No. No. No. Evie. No.
Evie thought about all those words she left in the air with Amara. She thought about the shadow over Lion’s face, the one that never left. She knew this moment mattered.
And then she thought about Ella’s hard mouth, her empty eyes. Marigold’s blood on their mother’s hands. She knew who she wanted to be.
“Course you do,” she said softly. “You’re my Lion. My love.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. “You’ll come to the Gate with me, sweet one?”
Lion stared at her with that hard, hard face and stalked into the tent. Evie followed him inside.
hi i would like to ask about evie because. i love her
i have a few questions
if they were in a high school au, would evie be like, a mean girl with a heart of gold? that's kind of the vibe i'm getting from her but i'm not sure if i'm right
is evie super protective of her sisters. she is right
would she get along with faith i feel like she would
sorry just. lots of assumptions & vibes i want to check. also. IS EVIE BISEXUAL. DOES SHE LIKE GIRLS
non-evie specific questions now. which of ur ocs r neurodivergent. do they autism. whom. whom autism. WHOMST AUTISM
:)
would sophie get along w art
WAIT IDEA. of the ocs in what you make. and your bakery ladies. what would their relationships be. which would be the favorite cervenak of every one of bakery girls
apparently jaheira has kids? who are they? are they also ocs
okay i love you and your girls. write more original fiction abt them please so i can read it even though i dont know bg3. okay thx
<3
HI OMG THIS IS SOOOO CUTE???? thank you SO MUCH for enabling me to talk about these guys! fair warning this WILL get long lol.
1. actually now i am legally obligated to write about all of them in high school situations. let’s go. as i write this i’m pretty sure in a high school au mari, ros, and norie would actually just be, like, friends, not actually adoptive sisters – ros has her very big and loving family, norie has a really tense situation as Adopted Chinese Daughter of Rich White Parents Who She Hates, marigold uhhhh god wouldn’t it be interesting and insane if she was still living with her bio mother and sisters? this is my narrative and in any narrative of mine high school is the worst case scenario, lol. evil evil place i will never go back to.
marigold is i am pretty sure in a world without magic hyperfixated on science/biology/nature, so she does really good when it’s anything related to that or cooking and really bad when it’s Literally Anything Else. she complains a lot about there not being some kind of home ec class until it’s explained to her that home ec would not JUST be cooking and she’s like oh well i don’t care about that then. she earned the position of student council vice president by bribing the general high school population with baked goods and only served half a term before realizing she hates talking to most people. REALLY tight with the cheer squad bc that’s roslin’s group, so she brings them a lot of snacks and hangs out on the bleachers with norie while ros cheers <3
evie has like 2 friends and one of them is a dead rat possibly and when marigold finds out about this she does her usual Marigold Response To Evie (edging awkwardly away so she doesn’t have to actually be an older sister about it). keeps on getting detention, mostly for small scale things like graffiti and skipping class, occasionally light arson. punched a kid in the mouth one time and maintains he was asking for it. she’s SUPER small though so she doesn’t do a lot of damage in fights but that does NOT stop her from trying SO HARD. (that girl is a teenage cryptid and the only reason she’s got friends in her twenties is because hot + confident gets you A LOT OF PLACES.)
roslin is a cheerleader yay hooray <333 the most #basic girly you will ever meet. has a not insignificant tiktok following that’s driving thea up the wall and they get into a lot of fights about internet safety (these fights are super limited by the fact that thea kind of doesn’t know what the internet is). despite being one of the most popular girls in school, she refuses to spend her lunch breaks with anyone NOT norie or marigold, and will blow off literally anyone and everyone to just sit on the roof with her girlies.
lenora is angling for the position of most weird goth girl of all time. full face of makeup, a whole bunch of piercings (all of them are fake bc she’s scared of needles), lots of very expensive black outfits that earn her absolutely no respect from the goth crowd at their school bc they see her as just a rich kid buying the look. she’s the only one among the three girls who actually gets good grades and they are constantly cheating off of all of her homework all the time. she’s apathetic acerbic and kinda bitey but she will go around the school holding roslin’s hand all the time and if anyone comments she will pull a knife on them. normal activities. (a lot of people assume ros and norie are dating and they are absolutely mutually outraged by the concept.)
thea teaches PE and has been momming the shit out of mari ros and norie ever since norie got into a screaming fight with thea in front of the entire class when thea was like “you don’t get to walk the mile giving each other piggy-back rides anymore” (reasonable request) and norie was like OH SORRY MOM I DIDN’T REALIZE WE LIVE IN A FASCIST SOCIETY!!!!!! then realized she’d called their gym teacher “mom” in front of the entire class and lost so much street cred in that moment, and the psychic damage she took was so adorable to thea that thea was like ok those are my kids now i think. she already SORTA knew roslin bc thea’s friends with roslin’s mom, but finding out about norie (terrible parents) and marigold (horrifying mother) ??? thea’s been sort of trying to semi-legally figure out a way to usurp parental rights for the last few years. also tried to put a hit out on marigold’s mom but was informed by one of the two (2) friends she has that that’s “a bad idea.” (she still thinks it’s a good one.)
lion is still in his teens too so he’s mostly just evie’s twitchy quiet friend who hangs out with her and the dead rat under the bleachers. they don’t talk a lot but they’re kind of inseparable. evie’s mom hates him. marigold said something derisive about lion once and evie tried to punch HER in the mouth, which marigold got blamed for, somehow, which evie then spent like half an hour hysterically monologuing to lion about on the phone. they are hopelessly in love with each other and mutually convinced it won’t work all without ever talking to each other. he writes “mr. lion northaven” on his notebooks sometimes
a bonus elodie! evie’s twin sister. blends perfectly into the background. gets the best grades in the family and is somehow in every extracurricular without anyone actually really knowing her. quiet, organized, neat, perfect. not a lot of people actually realize they’re twins because they carry themselves so differently and they’re never together at school. mom’s favorite.
2. evie’s biological sisters are marigold and elodie and she loves them with the force of a thousand suns and for a lot of complicated reasons this uncomplicated love of hers is not exactly returned in the same way that it is given. marigold’s adoptive sisters are roslin and lenora and she loves THEM with the force of a thousand suns and evie is the kind of girl who’s fine with it because her love does not change shape even when those who love her think maybe it should.
3. evie would come onto faith and faith would i think be immediately and cruelly dismissive specifically because evie would resonate with a lot of things about faith that faith violently hates about herself. (starved for love, loves hard and without her own permission, incredibly casual about sex to the point of detachment, absolutely no sense of self preservation or self worth).
4. oooh let’s make a sexuality list actually!!!
marigold is bisexual! enamored with people she can easily drag around on a leash, independently of gender.
evie is bisexual as well and i don’t think she has a type that is really established all that well beyond “people who want me.” evie has many problems
roslin is my single token heterosexual. absolutely impeccable taste in men, it’s just that all of her relationships always end in ways that are extremely amicable but Really, Really Weird. one guy left to join the circus. one guy left to man a lighthouse. one guy’s in witness protection. That kind of thing
lenora is a lesbian but it takes her a while to figure that out because she hates everyone indiscriminately, so for some time she just identifies as bisexual until experiencing attraction to a lady and going OH. OKAY. SURE
thea is a butch lesbian, and also nonbinary, though i don’t think she’d ever actually use the word to describe herself. her relationship to the concept of being a woman is less self-identification and more a label she likes to use and define as “being attracted to women.” she’s a woman because her love of women is coming from a female identified place, but other than that gender is of no use to her. she’s too old for the bullshit.
didn’t realize it until right this moment but lion (who i can include on this list even with his 900 psychological issues idc. that’s my son who was never gonna make it out) IS bisexual it’s just his Home Situation was such that the internalized homophobia’s keeping him closeted. not really something he’s likely to figure out, though; evie’s the only person who’s real to him and when he notices a man is hot he mostly just freaks out because what if evie leaves him for that objectively hotter guy. surely this will never cause any problems
5. man i honestly feel like all of them have some degree of neurodivergence simply because that’s where i’m coming from and that’s how i write them? i will say though that the places i feel like the qualities manifest the strongest are marigold (autism) my new girl beetle (autism) and evie (adhd) though i did recently get the feedback that norie reads super autistic :’) i will say if you see it it’s probably there lol.
6. :D
7. i had to really think about this one for a second ngl? sofie is for sure the most autism baby of all time actually so she’s really standoffish and awkward around children her own age, and i actually think art’s method of just running up to people and deciding they’re friends would melt her heart pretty immediately. she’s delighted by immediate acceptance and attention! they’d be inseparable and bella would go BALLISTIC.
8. i am running through all the girls in my head and i am actually 100 percent sure that almost all of them attach themselves to nora. mari has mommy issues x5000 + nora reminds her of thea, norie (lenora) and nora (eleanora) are literally deliberately cut from the same cloth and would get along like long lost sisters, and thea is genuinely obsessed with sharp-tongued moms who have emotional issues but love their kids tremendously (woman wants to homewreck so bad and will not succeed). roslin and evie are the outliers; roslin loves donovan’s warmth and positivity, and evie gets really really really attached to bella. so fast.
9. delighted to inform u that jaheira’s kids are canon, we meet them, they give her SUCH grief, and i love them, and so does she.
10. VERY LIKELY I WILL! idk when the muse will strike me next, but things are percolating :’) and thank you SO much for this, it was a delight to answer!!!
But it's too late to come on home / Can the city forgive? I hear its sad song ← as you like ✨💛💜✨
content warning for this one -- not entirely sure how to describe this dynamic but i think "implied mind control as a metaphor for abuse" would definitely do it. below the cut.
Lion puts his arm around Evie and says, "Gods, it's beautiful here. Been far too long since we've gone shopping, done a proper wander, isn't it, Evie?"
Evie is a hollow doll.
"Say yes," says Lion. He keeps the smile on his face.
Evie says, "Yes."
Lion squeezes Evie close. He says, "Might do you some good to be out and around people. Bring back that fire in you."
Evie is not allowed to ask whether he wants her to say what she's thinking right now. Evie is also not allowed to think if it's going to make her look so fucking miserable and make him look miserable too. Evie's mind twists, spirals, spins like a kaleidoscope, tries to make sense of the rules and never can. She stares at him and waits for what he'll say next. Never mind the contradictions. What matters is the rule he enshrines in the now.
"Say something, Evie," says Lion. "We're having a conversation."
There's a pleading note to his voice. He wants her to be better. Evie says, "Do you ever miss me?"
"Gods," says Lion. His voice breaks. "All the time. Why won't you come back?"
"It broke my mind," says Evie. "When will we stop talking like this? Like it's not--I'm sorry, " she says, because Lion's said she's not allowed to make him sad, and he looks sad now. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm--"
"Evie," says Lion. He's starting to cry.
"I can't. I'm sorry. I can't. If I did it, that's me, I'm sorry, please, please," Evie begs, magic running through her like spiderwebbing lightning and breaking breaking breaking. And maybe it's all the magic in her, but she raises her eyes to his and sobs, "Why would you do this?"
Lion's tears still. His jaw sets. He says, "Don't ever ask me that question again."
