Something… missing. Something wanting. Something gone. Something he had to search for. Something he had to find. Need. Needing hurt. Want. Wanting hurt worse.

Scent. Track. Find. Find baby. His baby. Taako crept closer. Baby sleeping. Quiet. Baby needs sleep. Sniff…

Baby sick!

Taako crept right up to his baby. Sniffing and carefully feeling. Much bad. Hot baby. Exhausted baby. Bad bed.

The thing people forget about the simplified form of the three classes of Luume - fight, fuck, or feed - is that ‘feed’ includes every form of nurture…

Taako lifted Angus - his baby - off the Humanman bed and, stripping most of the boy’s clothes off as he went, carried his baby (a young man, now, but that didn’t matter to Elven instincts) to a cote with a nice through-breeze in the summer.

Careful lips to his boy’s forehead. Still too hot. Need cold magic. Need good food baby will eat.

Ray of frost chilled off the ceiling and sent coolness drifting down on his baby, and Taako purred to hear the sigh of relief from his boy.

Not done yet. Good food. Soft food. Soup! Plenty good things. Ginger. Garlic. Chicken. Vegetables. Herbs. Lots and lots of herbs. Good food makes for better baby.

Poor baby.

Baby needed him.

Taako took a healthy portion into the cote, to a nook charmed to stay warm where at least one cat usually nested. Taako hissed at the one there to drive it off and make room for the soup. From there, smaller bowls of it would be used to tempt baby into eating.

“…sir, please, I’m not hungry.”

Taako didn’t have many words. Not at the moment. “Baby eat,” he cooed. “Strong baby. Good food. Strong food.”

“Sir?” Angus blearily peered into Taako’s eyes, then slumped back and sighed, “Oh no. Not this again…”

“Baby eat?” It was a very small bowl. No trouble for baby. Mostly liquid. Nothing too hard to chew.

Sigh. He accepted the cup and sipped. Carefully. He winced when he swallowed.

Taako pressed his lips to his baby’s brow. “Too hot,” he complained. He found water, found a cloth, and washed down his child. “Poor baby… Sick baby…”

“I just want to sleep, sir.”

Taako uged the contents of the bowl on his baby. Stayed close, but not close enough to crowd or overheat him. He purred a soothing rhythm as he watched and waited for his baby to stir on his own. From there, he would offer another bowl of soup.

In between times, he would wash his baby and purr and maintain the chilled ceiling. Once or twice on the half hour, Taako would press his lips to Angus’ brow to check on his fever.

A fever that broke sometime before Kravitz returned from his work.

Taako purred a little louder the instant he saw his chosen mate.

“Hello, Dove,” his mate murmured. “What’s happened?”

“Sick baby,” Taako cooed. “Won’t eat.”

“I’ll help. You rest, love.” Kravitz ran his chilly hands over Taako’s face, then rested one on Angus’ still-warm brow.

“Th’nk you sirs,” Angus mumbled.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 5]

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They were having a parents’ day in the park. Merle had custody of his kids for the weekend and La’ming… La’ming was learning to be a decent parent by studying others.

Most of the others here at the play park were nannies who didn’t speak the best of Common and used playtime as an excuse to gossip.

Merle… Merle wasn’t much better, but at least he knew something about parenting. Something - even a bad something - was better than nothing. FOr example - Merle sunbathed while Mookie threw himself around the climbing gym like a dervish and Mavis took turns on the swings or the monkeybars. His parenting involved occasional interjections involving the word "don’t”.

“Don’t wrassle kids below your weight class, Mookie…”

La’ming, using his example, kept an eye on the twins and was ready to bolt straight for them if there was the slightest hint of trouble. She also had all the approved snack foods so they’d have plenty to eat.

Food security was still a big thing for them.

Right now, though, the twins were building a sandcastle with one of the smaller, younger children. One would invariably defend the pile of sand from Mookie and other kids who liked to stomp on sandcastles.

That was when she’d need to step in and mediate. Get all involved parties to talk it out instead of fighting it out. Assuming they didn’t talk it out without prompting.

“First kids always make for an anxious parent,” said Merle, apparently from his coma. “You’re always worried about being a failure. Trust me. Kids aren’t that delicate.”

Yes they are, she thought. “I abandoned my first kid with my parents when I was Seventy-two. These are the first kids I’ve actively tried looking after. That I haven’t given up on.”

“Seventy-two? Isn’t that like… way too young to have a kid?”

“Yeah. Like a Humanman sixteen or something.”

“No blame on that one, then,” said Merle.

“Tell that to my daughter. My parents are assholes.”

There was an extended silence between the two of them. Not absolute silence, since they were seated by a playground, but they were quiet. The kids continued shrieking and yelling at each other as they expended all their energies in assorted games.

“Sorry about that,” said Merle. “I assumed…”

“Many do. I don’t talk about it a lot.”

“She doing okay, now?”

“Yeah. We’re almost on speaking terms.” She twitched as Lulu fell off a swing, but relaxed as she rolled and recovered her feet. She’d intended to do that, the little daredevil. “I know how bad it can get. What I need is… how to not get there. You know?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. I know that one. Their mom and I never got along, and… The last straw was Mookie crying because we were whispering at each other. Can’t wake the baby, y’know? So we fought in whispers so the kids…” he sighed. “Didn’t work. So after we got him settled again, I asked, Would you be happier if I left? And she said ‘yes’ and we tried to handle the divorce like grown-ass people. I send her what I can spare and I live in this little room in the loft to save money and… The kids are the most important part. You do what’s best for them.”

At Seventy-two, that had been leaving her baby with the only people she could rely upon to care for her. Now that she was two hundred and thirty… it meant doing everything in her power to make sure something like that never happened again.

“I can make sure they have what they need,” she said. “I got that covered.”

“See? You’re already doing better than like half of the other assholes out there.”

“I already love them to bits.”

“Now you’re up to seventy percent,” said Merle. “Most parents I get in the Bodega? They treat kids like a chore. Something they gotta do and something they gotta put up with like they’re obligated. Not a lot of love.”

Mookie took a tumble off the high bars, landing sort-of okay, but scraping his leg on something under the sand. He stood up and blood started snaking down his leg.

“Duty calls.” Merle got up and cheered Mookie for not breaking his fool neck, and ran a minor healing spell over the injury. “No battle scars for you, champ. But let’s find that sharp thing so nobody else gets hurt.”

Mookie started digging like a dog and making vroom noises while Merle was a little more sedate and cautious. It was a sharp rock, not a piece of glass or a needle, thank the gods.

La’ming toured over to where Koko was helping another kid with their sandcastle. She said, “There’s sometimes sharp things in the sand, so you make sure the littles use their tools so they can play safe.”

Koko said, “You can stop fussing, mom. We’re fine.”

She almost floated all the way back to the bench. Mom. He’d called her Mom.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 3]

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Elven reformation projects are a great deal more effective when there are actual, decent Elves involved. At minimum, survivors of worse reformation projects are vital.

Which was just one of the reasons why Lup and Taako were running a Teaching Kitchen just off from the Le’Vine Reformatory. The Elf in charge, named Schadoq, had said that it was an excellent training opportunity. He said a lot of things. Things like “protecting virtue” and “moral backbone”.

It put Taako’s hackles up, but, after an inspection of the facility, he hadn’t found anything untoward.

The inmates were quiet and reserved. Lup expected that. They had been quiet and reserved after they’d got out of Saint Vingo’s… for all of six months. The key was to be quiet and kind and gentle until the kids got bold enough for some lip. That was how you could tell they trusted you.

They each had a bracelet that -on an arcana check- was a health and welfare tracker that took note of all their biosigns and reported to some office somewhere.

It seemed above board. It seemed nice enough.

Until the day that one of the kids, Roshi, started panicking as his bracelet started beeping. “No, no, nonononono… It’s too soon! Don’t put me in the dark!”

“What the shit?” said the Twins together.

Taako put his work down, wiped his hands, and gathered the kid up. He was only seventy-five. “Hey, hey, homes. Take it easy. What’s the fuss?”

“That’s the Luume-alert,” said an older kid. Closer to Ninety. “They take us away to somewhere we can’t hurt ourselves. So we can stay pure. It’s hell.”

Taako fought to purr for this stranger-child. Reaching for the kid’s ‘Off Switch’. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he crooned. “We’re outside of the spells, here. You’re okay. I got’cha…”

Lup subtly got out her Orb of Recall and said, “So Kaar… this place they send you to when you’re in Luume. What’s it like?” she tried to stay casual, but memories of Citron and the horrors of Saint Vingo’s kept bubbling into the back of her mind. It was really hard not to let her anger out.

She wasn’t angry at these kids. She was angry at the situation they were in.

“It’s nothing,” said Kaar as Taako showed Syr how to use the massage points to soothe another Elf into a happy torpor during their Luume.

“It’s okay. We won’t narc,” said Taako.

“No. It’s literally nothing,” said Kaar. “There’s no light, no heat, no cold, no feeling. No sound, nothing. It’s pure nothing. And we stay in there until the Lull hits.”

They knew it immediately. Citron’s Malevolent Sensory Deprivation. She had used it in Saint Vingo’s to punish. Now it looked like Schadoq was using it to ‘save’ these kids from their own biological necessities.

Taako was on his Stone. “Hey, Luce, did you know that scumfuck Schadoq was using a Vingo’s spell on kids in Luume? No? Let’s send some teams down like the vengeance of the gods…”

“Koko?” said Lup. “How about we teach these kids some creative use of level-appropriate spells…?”

It had been quite some time since someone last trashed a place like Saint Vingo’s. It would be quite some more time before anyone else would get the opportunity.

Vengeance was a dish best served cold, that was true. It also went well with generous sides of flames and tentacles.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 4]

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[AN: As part of April Fools’ (which was yesterday here in Aus), @dualityandsuch and I swapped roles. She was the writer and I was the artist. None of y’all noticed so I guess that was a flop]

They called the Snocoun Ton from another reality Alter-Sno. It saved everyone the fuss and bother of saying “Sno from another reality” all the time. Alter-Sno had come from a vastly different Faerun, with vastly different technology, which she had in her possession.

The operative word, here, being ‘had’.

Because Taako had managed to filch her peculiar Stone of Farspeech and was now twiddling around with it and figuring out how it worked.

“Uuuh, Taako? Maybe you shouldn’t be messing around with that,” Magnus worried.

“Eh, if she wanted it kept away from us, she wouldn’t have kept it in her pocket like that,” murmured Taako. “Ha! What a loser passcode. Who the fuck uses 1-2-3-4?”

“I gotta change my luggage lock,” said Magnus.

“Don’t bother, I only take what I n–” The rest of his thought went unspoken. He had found something… interesting. Or, by the expression on his face, horrifying.

Magnus peeked. “Holy shit…”

On the screen was a six-year-old Taaquito showing off a gap in his teeth, next to someone who looked remarkably like La’ming Ton, over in the Dirty Tricks Department.

“Aaaw, you’re an adorable kid,” said Magnus.

Taako moved his finger across the Stone, showing an image of Merle being carried Fantasy Yoda-style across some finish line by a sweaty and triumphant La’ming. There was another swipe, and Avi with what looked like a six-year-old Magnus. Another, and there was a miniature Lucretia in a sailor-suit school uniform.

Another, and Merle was on a platform, clad in skin-tight exercise shorts, his hairy back to the camera and flirting over his shoulder at the person taking the shot. Kneeling beside him was La’ming, looking suitably proud of herself whilst presenting Merle to the viewer.

La’ming was in track pants and a loose shirt. Merle was wearing the aforementioned shorts and a criminally short sleeveless top.

“That is more hair than should be allowed on a humanoid,” noted Magnus, who had seen far too much of it on various occasions.

There was another. Little Taaquito photobombing Merle as Santa and La’ming as a Candlenights Elf. He was wearing a shirt with the legend, Where the Elf are my presents?

“Holy shit,” they said together, stopped in the middle of the quad and looking from the Stone to Merle, and back to the Stone again.

“Something horrible had to have happened to Mak’arune…” murmured Magnus.

“Fuck her, something horrible must’a happened to La’ming…” said Taako. “How the fuck else could she stand to be near such a horrible misshapen joke on the rest of the Universe?”

“Worse than that,” said Magnus. “He’s your dad, dude.”

Taako’s hair frizzed right up from stress shortly before the Elf himself fainted dead away.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 5]

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There were many differences between Snocoun Ton’s home dimension, and the one she found herself currently trapped in. The ages of her friends and family varied wildly, which had made for a very unusual Luume. 

This dimension also seemed to lack cell phones for some reason, which is why Sno was surrounded by a crowd of BOB employees who had seen her tapping at the small rectangle in her hands. THB followed Sno around trying to glance at the screen anytime she took it out of her pocket.

It didn’t take long for her to snap at them, “If I give you fifteen minutes to look through my phone, will you stop this?”

The boys nodded.

Sno sighed, “I’m watching you the entire time, no deleting my shit!”

The boys nodded and stuck their hands out, awaiting the small rectangle of mystery. Sno considered taking back the offer. What if they saw Lulu? She begrudgingly deleted all photos of both twins just in case, but like fuck would she delete all of Lulu.

On the other hand, they were bound to see all the happy photos. They might trust her more if they saw their baby-selves with her.

She handed them the phone.

Taako grabbed the phone first, going through the photos at a rapid pace with Magnus over his shoulder and Merle yanking his wrist down so he could see. Sno stepped behind them to watch. There was nothing risque or secret on her phone. Family photos, grocery lists, the occasional gourmet dinner to post on instagram.

It was a shock when Taako stopped scrolling at a picture of Merle and Ming. Ming was lifting Merle onto her shoulders, probably from the last family fun run.

“Fuck Merle, how did you end up with her?” Taako asked, disgusted, but intrigued.

Merle smiled, “I have a certain effect on women.”

Taako continued to scroll, finding a picture of Merle in a pair of juicy sweatpants, with Ming gesturing to his ass.

Oh right, Sno had saved that eyesore to show Avi that her mom literally bought the local bodega owner sweatpants to match hers.

“…Are we… married?” Merle asked.

“I didn’t know anyone could tolerate being that close to his ass,” Magnus added

“Just… how? Did, did you blackmail her?” Taako asked.

Sno tuned out their conversation while they continued to ogle pictures of Ming and Merle before stumbling onto a photo of Ming, Merle, and a baby Taako. 

Taako went wide eyed and dropped the phone.

“Whatch it! I don’t know if your Lucas can fix this!” Sno grabbed her phone. “No more phone time!”

Merle and Magnus groaned, but Taako stayed frozen. Sno waved her hand in front of his face, “Koko! Come on, wake up!”

Magnus began shaking his shoulder, Merle jabbed his knee, but his entire body remain rigid. Taako could only think one thing, was Merle his… dad?

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 6]

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Sno could usually set her calendar by her Luume. Every decade on the dot since she, like her mother, had been Seventy years old. Fortunately for her, she had pretty much locked herself indoors with close relatives for the entirety of that year, until her Luume passed in the company of decent adults.

This… was not the same circumstance. She should have had four more years to go. Unfortunately, the forces of fate had different ideas.

It hit in the middle of the day, as she was training with Team Sweet Flips. She went down fast and hard. Tumbling from a throw and planning to tackle as she rolled, to recovering on all fours and glaring in hurt confusion at two people who smelled like friends.

Need. A great and building need. A desperate want not easily slaked.

Dragonborn-friend halted, as did Orc-friend. They looked worried. Sno - what was left of Sno - scented the air. They were bonded with each other. Not wanting Sno.

“You okay?” said Dragonborn-friend.

She only had one word. “Want.”

“Aw shit,” said Orc-friend. “It’s Luume! Grab her!”

The part of Sno remaining understood ‘grab her’ and the fact that this would stop her getting what she wanted.

She succeeded her Dex saving throw.

*

Need. Want. Need what? Something. Somewhere. Run. Scent. Find.

Find babies! Scent! Little one! Lost little one. Follow-find. Make safe. Keep safe. Keep well. Keep fed.

Big edge! Long fall! Baby not safe! Runrunrunrun find!

“Baby!”

Baby grown up. Didn’t matter. Snatch-grab. Take away. Safe place. Soft place.

“What the shit? Sno! I am not a baby…”

All of that entirely missed the bit of Sno’s brain that was busy actually thinking.

*

Sno had built an Elf Nest out of the cushion and pillow storehouse in the moon. In it, she stowed: Lucretia, Magnus, Taako, and Angus.

She’d also dragged in a good amount of packaged food, so her current captives were okay. For limited definitions of ‘okay’.

Unfortunately, thanks to efforts of the Bureau staff, Sno was in aggressive guardian mode. Not letting anyone else in, and certainly not letting her ‘babies’ out. She also didn’t let anyone close enough to activate her “Off Switch”.

Not that Taako hadn’t been trying.

Sno wasn’t exactly rough with repelling her captives, but she was definitely firm. She’d bite ears enough to sting or, if ears weren’t available, the most convenient limb.

For Taako, two bites were plenty. He made himself comfortable and doled out packages, finding one that hadn’t been anywhere near peanuts.

“Aaannnd this is mine. Might as well settle down for the long fuckin’ haul.” He started munching. “Bathroom’s down that tunnel and no, there’s no avenue for escape.”

“Well, shit,” summarised Magnus.

Angus found one of his preferred treats. “Might as well make the most of it.”

Taako and Magnus tutted and rolled their eyes.

Lucretia voiced a very subtle groan.

Magnus raised a hand. “I’d like to talk about how we’re her babies all of a sudden. I mean. Three of us are grown-ass adults.”

“Didn’t she know us in her home dimension, sirs?” said Angus.

“Yeah. Baby versions of us,” Taako’s finger isolated himself, Magnus and Lucretia. “She must’ve picked on you ‘cause you’re a real baby.”

Civil conversation only devolved from there.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 5]

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Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZ - Chapter 77 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]

This chapter contains cuteness, fluff, baby twins in sailor suits, and a really predatory school choir program.

[AN: This is an AU of an AU that Duality and I are calling “Glass Canon”, mainly because Sno would fucking shatter the established canon with the least little twitch of causality.]

Lucas Miller warned, “Don’t touch tha–”

A flash of light. The sensation of falling.  A dizzying sensation like being inside-out without being inside out. Then something resembling reality restored itself with dizziness, disorientation, and debilitating nausea.

Snocoun Ton passed out without any realisation of what had gone wrong.

She would realise it as soon as she woke.

*

“I’ve called the four of you here today because of an unexpected event. Our arcane energy detectors found a spike in energy similar to a relic… here on the moon.” Lucretia watched their faces with a stab in her heart. Taako didn’t seem to care. Magnus was instantly alarmed. Merle was wearing his, This shit again, face. Angus was intensely shocked.

“But… every relic that comes to the moon is destroyed. Right?” said Magnus. “I mean, we’ve seen three go down.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes you have.” Better a plausible truth than a definite lie in front of the world’s greatest detective. “That’s why this arcane energy spike is so alarming. I’m afraid it only gets worse. The epicentre of the spike was in the Miller’s moon-base laboratory, which has been left vacant since the incident with the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Fuck,” summarised Taako, not even looking anywhere but his nails. “That’s some bad beans.”

“Indeed. I need the four of you to get your asses down there and find out what the shit is happening. If you can contain it, do so. I doubt it’s a relic, but… if it seems like it could be one, Mr McDonald, I want you to retreat the hell out of there at all possible speed.”

“Yes’m.”

“I want you to find out who’s responsible for this and, if you can, bring them back to me alive. If you can’t - at least find out what they were doing, why they were doing it, and how they got that idiot idea in the first place.”

*

Sno moaned as she sat up. The world was still spinning as she tried to make sense of what had happened. The globe she had picked up from Miller’s desk was on the floor beside her. Cracked. Dull. Dead.

The lab around her was covered in a fine layer of dust. Everything here had lain undisturbed for quite some time. Not quite as she last recalled. Someone had thrown a sheet over some things, but not all of them. Her body print and the print of the globe were the only signs of recent life.

What did this idiot thing fucking do, Miller? She was still recovering her wits when the door blasted open.

“MAGNUS RUSHES IN!”

She was used to hearing that from a six-year-old boy adopted by her partner, Avi. He used it whenever he raced into anywhere. This speaker, though, was a grown-ass Humanman of thirty-something. Behind him was a smaller, stouter figure of an older Dwarf, and a slighter figure of a Humanman boy.

He looked a hell of a lot like Angus McDonald… but he’d had a daughter, not a son.

Behind all of them was a puzzling figure. Elven… a Sun Elf. Golden hair, dappled skin. It was the prominent front teeth and the gap between them that made everything click for her.

“Koko?”

“How the fuck do you know my childhood eke name?” he demanded.

But… Elves picked their adult names at one hundred. If he was an adult, then Magnus couldn’t be alive and– “Who’s the kid?”

“Hello, ma’am, I’m Angus McDonald,” he said, and offered his hand.

That was the exact moment that she knew everything was fucked up. It only got worse when they dragged her and the globe back to their Director.

The last time she’d seen Lucretia Clark, she had been bade farewell on her latest day at school. Because she was six years old and still combatting her elective muteness. Sno had kissed her adopted daughter on the forehead and gone to work.

This Lucretia was fifty if she was a day. Regal and authoritative, dripping gravitas from every pore.

Sno couldn’t help but start weeping. “Something’s gone very wrong,” she said.

Old Lucretia cocked an eyebrow that stabbed Sno through the heart and said, “Indeed.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 6]

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Avi didn’t worry about waking up in Sno’s apartment. She usually dragged him to her spare bedroom when he’d overdone it the night before. She would even have a decent breakfast and some Gator-aid waiting for him by the time he was done having a shower.

World’s best partner.

He didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary with the extra body products in the shower stall. What got his attention was the extra toothbrush.

There was her toothbrush, the guest toothbrush (sterilised for guest protection), and now there was a third toothbrush. Labeled with ‘his’. Hers had a piece of paper tape with the sharpie’d word ‘hers’, now.

Avi was halfway through brushing his teeth when he noticed it.

Sno was busy doing the post-hangover fry-up to restore Avi’s health points, so he was able to sneak into her bedroom to search for clues. Lucretia was likely to wake up any time soon, so he made sure he put on his pants and at least threw on a shirt before wandering out of the bathroom.

Sno’s place was, as always, display room worthy. There were a few scattered toys on the vestiges of Lucretia’s room, and the fallout from making room for her surrounding a closet or two, but it was otherwise pristine.

Sno used hospital corners when she made her bed, and she made her bed every day. Sno kept everything neat. If there was any traces of anyone else there, he’d have to go looking in her closets and drawers.

That would be a definite breach of trust.

Lucretia was sitting neatly at the table when he joined it. She had laid out some picture cards as a breakfast request. A green apple, a pile of pancakes, a syrup bottle, and some whipped cream and berries.

Avi snagged his serving of fry-up and sat a safe distance away from the kid.

“Good morning,” he said.

Lucretia held up a smiling sun card.

“Looks like you picked a good breakfast,” he said. The eggs and sausage were really hitting the spot. The bacon, especially, was just what he needed. The Gator-aid definitely helped his stinging head. So did the painkillers.

Lucretia nodded.

“Still not liking the mouth-words, huh?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t give her grief about it,” warned Sno, still working on pancakes. Her cooking had improved since Lucretia had come to stay. The twins certainly helped with that, too.

“I wasn’t,” said Avi. “And I’m not going to. Words help, that’s all.”

Lucretia had a homemade card. It had Arya Stark on it and the words, Not today.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “Sure nothing new’s scaring you.”

She shook her head.

*

There had to be someone in Sno’s life. She smiled a little more, when she thought nobody was looking. She tended to hum. She was more than a little more amenable when people gave her crap.

It was a stakeout that gave him an opportunity to ask. “So. Any other changes in your life?”

“What brought this on, Burnsides?”

“I saw the extra toothbrush in your bathroom. You’ve been having sleepovers, Sno?”

“We have movie nights and he falls asleep on the couch. It’s still PG.”

“Okay. You got a plan when it gets deeper?”

“Nunya, Burnsides.”

Right. Nunya. Nun’ya business. Avi knew when to butt out. “Have I met him?”

“How do you know they’re a him?”

“His and hers labels on the toothbrushes.”

A moment of thought. “…fuck…”

Avi smirked.

*

Lucretia was talking, at last. She wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest chatterbox, but she hadn’t needed her flash cards in an entire year. That was an epic accomplishment, and therefore occasion for a party.

She was a little nerd, so the games were a little more cerebral than they should be for a six-year-old. The older kids attending didn’t mind, even though they were slightly more cerebral than the stuff they were used to.

Some aspects of it were slightly more cerebral than the adults could handle. Nevertheless, the kids adapted.

Avi was having a good enough time, and so was Magnus, who had no truck at all with the rules. “So I get three attacks, right?” the boy asks.

“Not after you double dash,” said Lucretia.

“Aw beans…”

There was one guy at the party that Avi couldn’t place. Tall dude. Looked vaguely familiar. Avi knew he’d seen him before. The only problem was that he couldn’t place the guy.

He was racking his noggin as Johaan attempted to schmooze. Bards made their money with connections.

“Having trouble, sir?” said Angus, who had once refused to find out who Sno’s mystery dude was.

“I know him. I know I know him… But where?”

“Purple tights, pirate shirt, and an 80′s glam wig,” said Angus. “Picture him wearing those.”

It clicked. The Convention Caper. Of fucking course. That Dark Elf had been cosplaying Jareth from Labyrinth. Sno had been wearing a TARDIS dress because she was undercover as a nerd. The fact that she owned a TARDIS dress had flown past Avi’s notice at the time. She and ‘Jareth’ had spent a lot of time talking…

The click as it all came together was almost audible. He immediately went to Sno. “You’re dating a nerd?”

“I have depths, Burnsides. Deal with it.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 7]

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[Short answer: Where do you think the twins Ambrose and Aloicious came from?]

Waking up half-clothed from an episode of Luume is nothing new to Elves or half-Elves. Waking up in a guardian position was something new to Angus. Agatha was fast asleep and purring and he knew Agnes was staying with Gram’pa Taako.

He still scanned the area for potential threats. He had to keep his mate safe. Even though his senses were currently addled from Luume, the wording of his back-brain caught his interest.

Angus threw on a robe and shuffled into the kitchen. They’d had quite the feast for their sync’d Luume, but their instincts always make them over-buy supplies in the week before. Which was great because he wanted to cook his lovely wife something nutritious and delicious as a post-Luume pick-her up.

Something good for the baby…

Wait. What?

Angus snorted and got on with cooking. He was probably thinking about Agnes. Luume hadn’t been necessary to make their firstborn. It didn’t always result in young when it did happen. Though… fertility increase was one of the things that occurred.

*

Five months later…

“It’s going to be twins,” crowed Gram’pa Taako. “They run in the family, you know.”

Papa groaned and rolled his eyes. “We’re not genetically related, Papa. Twins run in your bloodline. Both Agatha and I come from a long line of single births.”

“Never argue with an Elf’s schnoz,” countered Gram’pa.

Agnes giggled. Papa had just told her that she was going to have a baby sibling soon, and it was growing inside Mama. Gram’pa was being silly and insisting that there were two sibs coming up. Agnes loved it when Gram’pa was silly. He was so very good at it.

He was absolutely over the moon when there were twins. Two baby brothers looked so tiny in the big crib Agnes had outgrown. They slept a lot and cried real loud and were stinky sometimes, but they were fascinating.

She didn’t believe that she used to be that small.

She also couldn’t believe how Gram’pa never stopped talking about how right his instincts were.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]

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