See where this bit of commenting takes you…
“I feel like I am just footsteps away from either screaming in fury or breaking down into body-shaking tears… and I’m not sure which. But you’d never tell it by looking at me. I’m good at bottling things up and repressing my reactions. For a while anyway; every bottle breaks eventually, no matter how sturdy its glass. I don’t know when I began this habit, or why I keep doing it, but I do. Better than flying into raging or sobbing at the drop of a hat, I guess… isn’t it?” – Josh
(#00280)
Anything is better than being assumed to be unreasonable. Unstable. Unreliable. In brief, everything that people like me are expected to be.
I fought for everything I have. The way things are, those who are less in social standing have to do twice as much to get half as good. At the bare minimum.
To prevent dangerous cracks in the public eye, I have to vent in extreme private.
There’s a little cupboard well away from walls I share with my neighbours. I line the walls with as much fabric as I can squeeze into the space I don’t need to exist in there. Then, with the help of a pillow, I scream and cry until those cracks are -however temporarily- secure.
Every time I go out, I can feel the world’s eyes on me. Watching. Waiting. Wanting me to fail. It weighs heavily on the cracks in my bottle.
Every day is the same. Only little details change. The faces of the people who squeeze me out of my seat on the train. The sharpness of the elbows that find reasons to pummel me. The slurs dropped from lips with the pretense of innocence. The shoes on the feet that try to trip me. The coats on the backs of the people who cut me off in queues. The bluntness of the shoulders that collide with me when I try to get into doorways.
The voices that apologize and never mean it, when I am passed over for employment.
But then… I suppose it’s what I deserve. For the sins of my ancestors. For the sins of others exactly like me.
White men did so much to ruin the world.
It’s only fair that the world exacts its revenge.
[Muse food remaining: 4 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00274: Anomalous Behavior
21 years ago there was a container spilt at sea containing thousands of bright yellow rubber duckies as well as frogs and turtles. Scientists are still using the data from where they are found to make better charts of ocean currents and point out anomalies and there were notices posted on loads of beaches of a number to call and where to find the duck’s serial number to make sure it was from the spill.
Most have been recovered, but every year a few more wash up.
With that background out of the way, may we see more of the bird-alien from the “humans are scary” prompt? Either encountering a rubber ducky in the wild, or observing a child finding one on the beach. Squeakiness of rubber ducky optional.
[AN: I DID mention that this is happening on a freshly-colonized planet. This is going to be tricky]
T'reka settled herself in the underbrush. The humans came along this path to gather fish and pumice stones. How would they react to her own anomalous find on the beach?
It was a Water Chick. A toy from her culture, to encourage the little ones to bathe. Some had spilled from a supply drone after it crashed into the ocean, and they were turning up in unexpected places.
Like this island, where everything was toxic, poisonous, venomous, or merely capable of ripping a living body to pieces.
There some were. Fascinating creatures. Evidently, this was a family group. Two parents and three smaller children, the latter group spent all of their time running from point of interest to point of interest. Some were poking at things with sticks.
The littlest, fastest child ran over and picked up the toy. “Mamamamamamamama! It'sayellowrubberduckie! Looklooklooklook!”
‘Mama’ came over and took it from the child. Turned her back on T'reka’s hiding spot.
Adult humans had been turning their backs towards her a lot, lately.
*
“Don’t look now, our little friend is back.”
“Grey Chicken? Yeah, I spotted 'em.”
“This… isn’t a rubber duckie.”
It looked a lot like one, but some details were definitely off. Ducks, for example, did not have pointed beaks. Or blue crests. Or writing on the bottom unlike anything known to earth.
Dave gave it an experimental squeeze. It made a sad noise like a deflating balloon.
“Heylookthere'sanotherone!” Tim raced off and held a second one high. Jumping up and down and waving it in the air.
Bea took out her datacorder and started mapping co-ordinates. “With some data on water flows, we could track these back to their source.”
“Think Grey Chicken isn’t alone?”
“No-one goes down a one-way wormhole alone, Dave.”
“They’re obviously not out to get us. Maybe we can come to an arrangement.”
“Yeah, but they’re skittish. Two more steps her way and Grey Chicken is out of there.”
“We don’t even know where or how she lives.”
“Yeah, but we can work out where these rubber duckies are coming from.”
“They look more like rubber chickies, though.”
“Argue later. Let’s see if we can’t get some more data points.”
*
Journal, Toxic Island. Month seven, day 28.
The humans have taken to combing the beaches, finding all the Water Chick toys that they can. There is extreme interest in their camps surrounding their presence.
Some have taken to constructing a large vessel on the eastern side of the island. It is too big to be a proper boat, and the building materials will surely sink.
Nobody can build a boat out of metal!
*
Journal, Toxic island. Month eight, day fifteen.
It FLOATS!
Against the advice of the elders, I am concealing myself aboard to observe the humans’ behavior.
*
Journal, Metal boat. Month one, day thirty.
I keep finding food at convenient times. I think they know I’m here. Why do they provide for me?
The humans continue to track the Water Chicks. Collecting and cataloguing them.
I think they’re learning where the Water Chicks are coming from. Something we were never able to find out, on our own. They are relentless in pursuit of prey. Even when that prey is inanimate.
*
Journal, Metal boat. Month two, day twelve.
One saw me. They were waiting by the convenient food. In a place I would not initially see them.
It was a young female. Not yet mature enough to be an adult, but no longer completely a child.
It had some of my favourite fruit in one hand.
*
“Here, chick chick?”
T'reka froze. Seen! Humans killed anything they saw as the Other, and none was more Other than herself.
Every instinct told her to flee and hide. But T'reka had been trained to overcome her instincts. To analyze the situation and make new choices.
She rose from her huddle, slowly, and tapped her collarbone. “T'reka.”
A many-toothed smile. “Wila.” A copy of the gesture T'reka had made.
They learned fast, these humans.
T'reka showed her empty hands. The human did the same, but still offered the fruit with one.
Step by step, T'rek approached the most dangerous being known to all cogniscents. And took food from its hand.
The human gently stroked her wing-feathers. “So soft…”
*
Journal, Metal boat. Month two, day thirteen.
The humans are friendly.
Who knew?
[Muse food remaining: 4 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00272: So sharp…
Realising that Wolverine rarely, if ever, actually washes his claws
or
Wolverine getting a hand cleaning the claws, because it’s fiddly when both sets are out and he can’t put them away until all the bits of zombie/dirt/stuff are gone
[AN: Since it’s my birthday, today, you get both.]
“Whaddaya mean, don’t ‘perform field surgery’?”
“What is up with you?” demanded Scott.
Sara looked around at their stunned faces. “None of you noticed?”
“Noticed what?” asked Kitty.
“Logan’s claws can cut anything, but they’ve never gone through soap and water?” Sara prompted.
More blank stares.
“He never washes them!”
One by one, the collective pennies dropped. All stared in horror at a man cutting steak with knives he put away inside his body.
“What? said Logan. ”I never got sick.“
====
The instant the fighting was down to an easily-mopped-up few, Sara started running towards Logan. He was in the thick of the fight, or the thick of what was left of the fight. Enjoying himself.
"Logan!”
“Yeh?”
“It’s vitally important that you do NOT retract your claws after you down the last one.”
“Yeh?”
“Yes. Blood-borne pathogens. They’ll get into you via your claws and the cuts they make.”
The look of horror as he smashed the last one’s brains was almost poetic.
His adamantium talons were coated in assorted ichors from tip to root.
“That’s why you passed out these helmets.”
“Spatter plus orifii equals infection,” said Sara. She got on her team comm. “Kurt? I need you to bamf back to the X-jet and fetch the big blue bag with Zombie Preparedness on it.”
“The TARDIS bag?”
“That’s the one.”
“Seriously?” interjected Kitty. “You prepared for zombies?”
“Where do you think all the helmets and machetes came from?”
“Like, I do not know if you’re crazy-prepared or just plain crazy…”
“Well, I could have just thought of myself and made it a much smaller bag,” said Sara.
“Shuttingup.”
“OOF!” Teutonic cursing came through the comms. “What do you have in here? A portable forensics lab?”
“Amongst other things, yes.”
“Unglaublich…” Static as he teleported. From the sound of things, it was a series of shorter hops than his initial trip to the Blackbird. When he arrived, he was out of breath and perspiring.
Sara immediately dug out the ration bars. “Here. Max calories in minimum packaging.”
Kurt almost inhaled three before he noticed that the taste was not that great. “Gott! These are those awful fruity oat bars you got me to test…”
“You’re welcome,” snarked Sara. She cleared a level space and set up the lab. Took several swabs of ichor from Logan’s claws. Inserted them in test tubes with fluid from numbered bottles.
Kurt had been going through the rest of it. “Since when do you need laminated instructions?”
“In case I get infected, dear. So someone else knows how to use it.” She absent-mindedly set up a small macroscope and began flicking tube contents under the analyzer whilst staring at the screen. “Mmm. Lysol. Clorox… And good old Dettol.”
A wicked grin spread across Sara’s face.
“Tallwater…” warned Logan.
“Wire brush and Dettol!” Sara cackled in Billy Connolly’s voice. A notepad and paper. “Right. Kurt, dear? Here’s your looting list. Try to be quick and careful?”
“Ja.” {BAMF!}
Sara, meanwhile, emptied half the contents of three bottles into a bowl and swished them around with what turned out to be a vacuum-packed sponge. “Let’s do what we can…”
There were no wire brushes, so the team had to resort to steel wool and chemical-soaked paper towels. Two worked on each hand - carefully, of course - to ensure that every last nanometer of adamantium talon was spotless.
Logan grimaced and winced at the steel wool.
“It shouldn’t hurt,” noted Sara.
“No,” squeaked Logan. “It tickles.”
“And done,” said Jean.
Sara took out a very small flamethrower. “Not quite.”
They also burned the sponges and steel wool.
“I didn’t know you could burn metal,” said Kurt.
“With enough heat, you can burn anything,” said Sara. She waved vaguely at the sun. “QED.”
Logan was staring at his claws like a man seeing them for the first time. They were no longer cherry-red from the heat, but they were still too hot to retract properly. “You win,” he said. “You figure out a way for me to wash 'em, and I’ll wash 'em. Regularly.”
“You do care!” Sara chirped. “All we really need to do is install lever-controls on all the taps. That way, you can operate them with your elbow.”
“You like, totally think of everything.”
“Thank you,” said Sara.
[Muse food remaining: 2 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00271: Rule 9 for Life
The mundane uses of adamantium claws
[AN: For those unfamiliar with Gibbs and his rules, rule 9 is “Never go anywhere without a knife”]
There is a saying that goes, ‘for a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’. For Logan, he always had a knife.
He used them to snag apples from the fruit bowl. To open tricky parcels. To open mail. To shave with. To deal with that horrible shrink wrap that industries put on everything.
And, much to Sara’s disgust, to cut his steaks.
“Something wrong with meat, Tallwater?”
“Something wrong with a clean steak knife?” she countered.
“Don’t need 'em,” smirked Logan. “These are better.”
Sara shuddered. “Do me a favour and never perform field surgery with them?”
[Muse food remaining: 2 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00270: Heroic
Bigger brother usually has the spotlight, he’s always the one they call when there’s trouble, and he’s good at what he does. But sometimes, the younger sibling saves the day.
He called himself Pax, an ancient word for peace. Of course, the first time he was noticed as a hero, the headline read, PAX A PUNCH! in typical headliner absence of humor.
He was tall, strong, could fly, very little could harm him and, when he sang, he had an orpheatic influence on everyone around him. He once stopped a riot with a megaphone by singing “Goodnight” by the Beatles.
There was a very obvious reason they didn’t have Karaoke Night any more. Not since he got his powers.
Lila had been his first fan. He could do everything she was just learning to do with such ease. Five years his junior, she knew without a doubt that just about everything Ben got, she would eventually get, too.
Hand-me-downs were a state of being until he got the hero gig.
Lila had been happy to be the ‘detective’ side of things, analyzing, researching, and in some cases, hacking out the truth from the internet of lies. Part of her believed that it was only a matter of time before the hero gene hit her hard.
So she helped out, out of habit. And waited, out of optimism. And hoped, out of insanity.
For five years.
Six.
Eight.
Lila gave up. Mentally relegated herself to the role of sidekick and took time off when Ben/Pax was beating up some big fugly super villain after, of course, luring them away from the city centre so collateral damage was minimized.
Some supers could be so inconsiderate about that.
But it wasn’t a super who blew up a building down the street from her favourite coffee shop. It was just regular, run-of-the-mill white male asshole terrorists who wanted to skew the balance 'properly’ back into their favour.
She knew because they hacked the nearest telebillboard to spread their message of hate and intolerance.
Prioritize.
First, call emergency services. Her fingers had practically done that on automatic. Ben regularly got her to call in lesser emergencies while he was on his way to bigger disasters on the theory that every little bit helped.
“What has your friend seen now?” said the operator. Shanice.
“No, I’m on site for this one. Bunch of assholes calling themselves the Brotherhood for Equality just blew a fuck-off sized hole in the Principality building. You could run a trace on…” she squinted. “Telebillboard rego number #T349Y84209435H. That aughta help catch the bastards.”
“Ma'am, I have you on the corner of fifth and twenty-second. That’s five blocks from from Principality and seven from that billboard. You’d have to be on it to read it.”
“Uh. The zoom function on my tablet’s pretty awesome,” Lila invented. “I can see smoke coming out of Principality. You’re going to have to send fire teams.”
It was a real pity that folks like Time Twister had gone private, keeping wealthy people young and healthy. Someone like that could have easily just run the explosion, deaths and destruction backwards and then defused the bomb.
Everyone chose their own path.
Lila put her phone in her pocket and started running towards the wreckage. She concentrated on moving the wounded to a clear, safe area before looking for survivors inside the building.
Tunnels she made in the smoke told her that she was going faster than she thought she was, so she took extra care at acceleration and deceleration. Didn’t want to kill anyone while trying to save them.
Onwards.
If she moved fast, she could clear tunnels in the smoke and debris. Explore which passageways lead to safety and highlight them for those able to rescue themselves.
Flame could be put out by jogging past it. Her own wind-wake just blew them out.
Ha. She was officially a fast woman. Haha.
She was not as strong as her brother, but speed could be used in multiple ways to solve the same problem. Girder trapping someone? Use one of her hairs to saw it into manageable pieces. Heavy rubble? Tap it into gravel.
When it was over, when everyone was out, that’s when Lila noticed the caveats.
He clothes had burned away from her body - a problem solved by one of the arriving EMT’s with a space blanket - and she was starving-hungry - a problem at least partially solved by the street-vendors-turned-volunteer-helpers.
She rescued her phone and got back inside the space blanket before it had a chance to fall. Heat had melted some of its exterior, but it was still functional enough to make a very important call.
“I’m a little busy…”
“Yeah, I know. Guess who probably set a new land speed record? Aaaaaannnd needs a full change of clothes ASAP…”
Silence. Well. Relative silence. She could hear the villain of the week monologuing in the background.
“Ben?”
“Gimmie a sec, I’ll be right there.” BOOM! “Gotta get 'em when they’re monologuing, remember that.”
“Right,” smiled Lila. “Oh. And it looks like I don’t need my glasses any more.” She peeled a fragment of what had once been a frame off her face. Damn. Friction did a lot of bad things.
“And you just paid for your next years’ subscription, too.”
And then the media swooped. They just got word that she was the hero of the day.
“How long have you been a Super?”
“Uh,” Lila checked the time. “Fifteen minutes?”
“What are you going to call yourself?”
Her smart mouth and otherwise sharp wit got her named, The Streak, that day. Much to her eternal regret.
[Muse food remaining: 3 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
No, bad dog!
A couple years back, in a fan-driven interview with Evo’s character-designer Steven E. Gordon, one of the more jokey questions was “Does Rahne shed?" His reply, equally jokey, was "Yeah… that’s why they don’t let her sit on the good furniture." I ran across this interview and question, and instantly thought of your work. Make of it whatever your muse spurs you into doing with it, either the question, answer, or both.
(#00268)
Come Springtime, Kurt Wagner carried a small, blue cloth with him and spread it on the furniture before he sat.
Rahne, who was still battling her own theology, got curious enough to ask him about it.
"Springtime,” he said as if in explanation. At her confused look, he added, “Shedding season?”
Light dawned like a nuke going off. In her most secret of hearts, she was glad. Angels sang.
Because she shed, too. Though more between wolf and human forms than anything else. She had been keeping her lycanthropy restrained, but there were times when it was unavoidable.
And “that time of the month” - not the full moon - was one of them.
Discreetly dust-busting the hair out of her bedding had not been fun. Nor, for that matter, was doing so with her pajamas.
“Can I ask a rude question?”
“One,” allowed the blue fuzzy demon-boy.
“How d'ye keep it out o’ yer bedding?”
Which was her introduction to what Kurt called a Snoodle. It was, basically, a light, cotton sleeping bag that could be covertly tucked inside the rest of the bedding. Then, every morning, it could be bought wholesale out to the nearest window, turned inside out, and flapped mostly-clean.
Kurt used it when traveling with the circus, along with his famous “Opa’s brushes”, to keep errant fur under control.
Rahne had purchased a variety of Love Gloves for when she was stuck in-between and left it at that.
She’d never given a thought to living with a fur coat full-time.
[Muse food remaining: 4 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00267: Learning the Ropes
“We also also learned that anyone ordering in excess of three tons of tapioca, six conifers, and a goldfish should be arrested immediately, and please, please, please do not ask why.”
Every last Ensign asked, “Why?”
This one asked, “What can you possibly do with tapioca, conifers, and a goldfish?”
Lyr turned on hir. “Have you heard of an area called the Glunk?”
“Uh. No?”
“I’ll send you the map co-ordinates,” she reached into the cache-spot she’d prepared without knowing why, that morning. It had a heavy-duty filter breath-mask and an all-purpose polyvinyl bodysuit. “You’ll need these.”
The Ensign took them with increasing trepidation.
“And yes, before you ask, we were able to rescue the goldfish.”
“Did you use your pre-cog abilities?”
“No. Everyone asks about the goldfish. Oh, and don’t disturb the Cleaners in there. They’re very territorial.”
Ze was going to look, if only to satisfy hir own curiosity. Lyr didn’t need to forsee it. Sooner or later, everyone who heard about the Glunk went to look.
It was, after all, one of the few areas of the station that had it’s own, understandably isolated, ecology. And if things went well, it might even be habitable in another eighty years.
[Muse food remaining: 5 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00264: Getting (Gender)Bent
A (relatively speaking, since we’re dealing with mutant hero teens here) typical day in the life of the Evo!X-Men. The twist? Everyone’s the opposite sex. Cue guest cameos by Magneto and the Acolytes and/or Mystique and the Bro– er, Sisterhood. –Josh
Kit Pryde learned to keep his head down around certain times of the month. He, and the other boys in the mansion - Oro, Gene and Rogue - kept on their best behaviour.
Because a houseful of cranky ladies was one thing, but a house full of cranky mutant ladies was a whole ‘nother basket of fish.
He and Rogue put together the sacrificial offering - a virtual mountain of chocolate-chip chocolate muffins - while Oro did the desperate and obsessive tidying up.
At least being a weather warlock had its perks.
{BAMF!}
Mari[1] Wagner was the first down, grabbing a muffin in each hand, one tail, and one foot. “Gruss Gott, I needed these. Danke…”
Rogue got that stunned look that came from telepathic possession and put together a nice tray - with tea - for the Professor. Being a telepath in a house full of PMS-ing mutants was not fun.
It was one of the reasons Gene went camping in the West Wood once a month.
Scotia Summers stumbled into the kitchen, wearing a long shirt and not much else. “Choc'lit 'n’ coffee…”
Rogue dived for the coffee maker. Kit offered the muffin.
“Nmmmf. 'ank 'oo.” Thin spots on the back of her nightshirt betrayed the fact that something had leaked in the night. Which meant that she had had a rough one.
Which meant that her roomie was none too pleased, either. Kit readied another muffin.
Just in time. Eva Daniels in her frumpy flanno’s and some serious crabbiness. “Girl. Just use some damn Diva cups. For the love of sanity.”
“They’re icky,” said Scotia around a mouthful.
“Yeah and leaking every night isn’t?”
Kit, the vegetarian, gagged behind his hand. Such open discussion of monthly bleeding habits and other girl-related TMI was not the sort of thing he was used to. Or wanted. At all.
And, true to form, Ms. Logan marched in with arms bloody and full of fresh meat. She fired up the grille and started things sizzling. “Regain what'cha lost, girls. Ain’t nothin’ better than fresh, rare steak.”
O God, somebody make it stop…
The earth shook. Wait. No. She didn’t mean it like that.
The Sisterhood was attacking. Vivian Tolenski. Pietra Maximova. Frieda Dukes. And Gabrielle Alvers. His sometime girlfriend.
And -yes- they had also bought their psychotic leader Mystique along.
Fabulous.
Just what he needed to top off the morning.
“Give us the chocolate and nobody gets hurt,” hollered Gabrielle.
Those were fighting words.
[1] Mari Wagner being the German equivalent of Jane Smith.
[Muse food remaining: 5 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00263: Moebius Repair
“We already fixed that”
“Wait, we fixed it too”
“We did it last night”
“How many times has it been fixed?”
*someone tallies the numbers*
“11 times, in the last 2 months”
Job #2984QEW8: Rattle in the air duct at Left Topsy-Turvy Town.
Rael’s Finder app had flagged it because it included a box of chocolates as a bonus payment. Nobody else had tagged it as theirs, so he leaped on the opportunity.
Not that he needed chocolate, strictly speaking, but tiny parcels of calories never really went amiss. That, and he appreciated the finer things in life.
He took his Everywhere toolkit with him, as rattles could have any cause, up to and including deceased rodents tangled in cables.
The Cleaners, efficient though they were, didn’t get everything. It was a little factlet to which he owed his existence. Literally.
“Heading to East Topsy-Turvy Town?” said a fellow JOAT on the same platform. Of course they were a human. They were love with rhetorical questions.
“Rattle in the vents. Time plus chocolate.”
“Ugh,” said the human. “Do yourself a favour and run away now.”
Wait. What?
Rael deliberately got on a different carriage on the tram. After that, it was tourist-dodging until he got to the right address.
Loose cable. Easily fixed with a bit of ductape.
Less than a minute, including the time it took to remove and replace the vent cover.
The chocolates were the good kind. Naturally sourced, not printed from chemical simulations. Experts said that no-one should be able to tell the difference, but experts were wrong on that one.
People took their indulgences seriously.
*
Job #2984RBZ9: Slow fan at Left Jarbingville. Time plus 1 doz. doughnuts. Repairer picks doughnuts.
Hm. Two stops further down the tramline and a short trip relative-up by Veet. Worth a dozen iced and cream-filled. Ooo, or maybe with custard.
There was the same human JOAT at the tram station. “Slow fan at Left Jarbingville?”
“…yes?”
“Hah. Then it’s a hum at Lower Erkins, then a buzz at Upper Elemeno, and finally a glonk in Windy Passage. Then it’s back to the rattle in Left Topsy-Turvy Town. On the upside, you’re paid for life. On the downside, your rep takes a sucker-punch and you’re doing the same thing forever. It’s a Moebius repair. Run. Now.”
Rael took note, but he also kept his distance. Human insanity could easily catch. And he’d never heard of any job being flagged as a Moebius repair.
The slow fan needed a little boost to its engine. Just a little tweak and he was done. And enjoying the wickedest doughnuts ever produced by the caring hands of a Gyiik.
*
Job #2983SZC0: Annoying hum at Lower Erkins. Time plus home-cooked meal.
It was the first job he’d seen with a menu choice. But, sadly, the crazy human had called it.
This warranted some deep investigation…
*
The cable that caused the rattle powered a moving part. Directly. Stilling the cable stilled the part. Which slowed the fan. Amping the fan created the hum. Muting the hum created the buzz. Stilling the buzz created the glonk and, finally, eliminating the glonk freed the cable and started off the rattle again.
Rael undid all of the incremental repairs and wrapped some soft foam around the cable.
Moebius repair, he noted on the JOATnet, is code for “look deeper”.
It was the best flakking home-cooked meal of his life.
[Muse food remaining: 6 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
“Well, Sweetie…”
“Mommy, how did you meet Daddy?”
(#00259)
He blushed. “Uh…” He glanced over at Edi. Edi nodded.
“Well… I was naked at the time…”
“Da-a-a-ad….”
“No, he’s telling the truth. Daddy wasn’t wearing so much as one red stitch.”
“There was the band-aid. That was technically cloth.”
“It was on your left shoulder. It doesn’t count as clothes.”
Tril rolled her eyes. She’d been hearing these kinds of arguments since before she could talk. “Mo-om…”
“Do I have to explain why I was naked?”
“One word. College.”
“Right. So I was running for my life and risking charges of indecent exposure. You can’t run fast when you’re hiding your junk. Trust me on this one.”
“Euw,” said Til.
“And he barreled straight into me. Knocked me over,” said Edi. “And this was in the middle of a cold snap, so I was the opposite. Two layers of pants, four layers of tops, a cloak.”
Til grinned. She loved that cloak.
“Me, buck naked on top of her. Pretty much a compromising position,” he laughed at the image, “And then I said:”
“Sorry about that. Hey. If I survive, can I buy you a coffee? I promise I’ll have clothes on.” Edi chorussed with him.
“An encounter like that, you remember,” said Edi. “It was morbid fascination at first sight.”
“Still working for me,” he chirped.
[Muse food remaining: 9 (fic war prompts, 0). Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]