To Be So Normal

To Be So Normal

Lynel listens to Fadir’s heart beat in the cage of its barreled chest, alive, alive, alive.

Content: adopted kids i guess, mushroom internet, IS THAT THE GRIM REAPER?, service animals, disabled characters (with accomodations!), nonbinary adults and children, fictional disabilities in a fantasy setting

TW: open discussion of chronic physical and mental disability, terminal illness jumpscare (it was not, in fact, a terminal illness), child distress, brief depictions of memory gaps/dissociation, local zombie thinks dead bodies are a perfectly fine discussion subject for children

Screen reader’s note: Contains passages in Hokkien english, Spanish. Use of gender neutral it/they pronouns.

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“Fadir!”

Lynel grumbles and turns over in their sheets, cracking open an eye to look out the window. It’s barely even twilight. Who goes out this early?

Another insistent knock rattles from outside the door.

“I know you’re home!” the voice insists. “And I know you don’t sleep!”

Lynel curls their hand into the blanket, only to meet the sudden resistance of solid muscle. There was never a blanket at all- just Fadir’s arm loosely cradling Lynel’s head with a sleeve colored like autumn leaves, and a dark wing spread across their back.

“Fadir, please,” the voice begs. “It’s almost sunrise. I’ll be stuck under your porch all day at this rate.”

Lynel frowns and looks up at the raventhing. Its eyes darting under its lids, yellow brows all furrowed as it whispers under its breath. Should they try and wake it up?

Something rattles out of the boxes by the hearth wall. A glowing blue creature with beady white eyes, papery wings flitting about, jostling the red ribbon of a bell collar. One of those freonds that always follow Fadir around- an allay, wasn’t it? As it floats closer, a thin blue frond peaks out from under a golden shawl and starts carelessly batting at Fadir’s face like a spoiled pet cat.

“It breached th’ Ore walls,” Fadir whispers, “we need t’ raise th’ bridge,  someone tell Queen-”

The allay roughly shoves Fadir’s head, practically bullying it back to its feet before dragging it towards the kitchen. Another allay, now disturbed enough to emerge from its own box, shuffles its tiny appendages over its mouth before going to pull the ribbon on the door, forcing the knob open.

“Ah. Muninn’s runnin’ the show today, then?” Heavy footsteps scuff against the welcome mat. “Can’t be helped, I suppose. I can wait.”

Lynel peeks over the back of the chair they’d accidentally napped in. There’s a tall human figure with puffy strawberry blond hair tied back into a scruffy ponytail, body swallowed up by a large green coat. Or maybe not quite human. Their nails are dark and thick, and their ears have a pointed, dog-like shape, swiveling as they turn around to lock eyes with Lynel’s scrutinizing gaze. Lynel stares back at a bearded face with white hairs, the milky pupils of green eyes squinting past a patchwork of raking scars.

…So that’s a dead guy! That’s- that’s definitely a dead guy!

“Are you… supposed to be here?” Lynel hesitantly asks, shrinking back ever so slightly.

“Ah, I’m just from up the road,” the (dead?) man dismissively says. They appraise Lynel for a moment before approaching to lean their body against the head of the chair, arm slung out the other side as if offering an awkward handshake. “Carlisle Carmilla. Cryptkeeper of Slovenguard. Someone’s gotta keep track of all those bodies they chuck int’ Pando’s guts.”

“They put bodies in there?” Lynel horrifiedly asks.

“Oh, loads!” Carlisle cheerfully answers. “Most times it’s just dead gods an’ players, but you get the odd lads ‘n the like who just walk in there ‘cus they ain’t keen to be buried the normal way.”

“Dead people in the backyard,” Lynel gravely repeats.

“Not the backyard,” Carlisle corrects. “More of th’ side yard, really. Or the front yard! I’d much rather trust a dead man to my front than my back, to be honest.” Their eyes flick to Fadir- Fadir in the kitchen, unfocused eyes staring down at a pocket watch while its allays hover nervously around its head. “Speakin’ of the dead. How long’s that whole show been goin’ on for?”

“Um- I don’t- I don’t know,” Lynel haltingly reveals. “Should… we call someone?”

Carlisle shakes their head. “It’s fine. Those episodes never last that long anyways.”

“Yi, jiu, qi, ling, yi, er, san-” A talon loudly clicks the pocket watch shut, and Fadir’s cloudy expression snaps into focus like a photograph. “Carlisle. You forgetting again your keys.”

“I did not forget my keys!” A pause. “This time.” A chubby black and white cat pops its face out of Carlisle’s bag, the white mustache pattern on its face giving its icy blue eyes a smug look. Carlisle gives it a consoling scratch on the chin. “One of your raven children walked off with the crypt keys when I went back in for my umbrella. Just snatched them right out the gate!”

“An’ you didn’t get your um-brel-la,” Fadir guesses.

“And I didn’t even get my umbrella,” Carlisle confirms.

Fadir sighs. “My children are better than that. Prob-ably one of the grandchild, le.” It roughly cracks its neck. “You stay here. Have phan-tom candy le. I steal your keys back.”

It swipes its hand at the air in front of itself, and a bamboo cane falls into its palm. It grabs at its jacket as it goes back out the door, tasseled hat left on its rack.

Carlisle snorts as they rifle through the cabinets, hand emerging with a paper bag. “Jokes on that guy, I’m takin’ its whole stash.” They offer the open bag to Lynel. “Daylight just takin’ the absolute piss outta me. Grab yourself a few before I eat you out of house an’ home.”

Lynel had never had phantom meat before staying with Fadir. Apparently avian origins eat it alot. The white wing flesh was all fatty and chewy like bacon, and when Fadir cooked it up, always pleasantly crunchy. Even drowning the stuff in sugar for storage did little to take away its filling taste.

“So you’re the new kid ‘round these parts, right?” Carlisle starts. “Lynel or summat.”

Lynel’s full cheeks puff with embarrassment. “I’m not anybody’s kid. I just live here.”

Carlisle’s teasing squint pulls at a scar tearing into one of their eyes. “If you say so.”

Lynel fidgets with their hands as Carlisle goes back to tearing into the snacks. “Um- do you, uh- do you know-”

“Don’t you dare assume I know anything on Ortet’s accursed earth,” Carlisle interrupts. “You wouldn’t believe how stupid I am.”

“That thing that happened to Fadir just now, I mean,” Lynel clarifies. “You knew what that was. What was that?”

Carlisle’s mouth flattens. “You don’t go askin’ me about that sort of thing. Mans is right there.”

Lynel sticks their tongue out. “Pbbt.”

“Think about it.” Carlisle leans towards Lynel’s seat. “You wouldn’t want me askin’ Fadir about your damage-”

“I don’t have damage-”

“You’re adopted,” Carlisle bluntly points out, “that’s damage enough. And I wouldn’t go askin’ around you for all the sordid details, now would I? Goes both ways. If you want to ask about Fadir, you’d best be gettin’ it from the old bird itself. Talkin’ around it is just mean.”

The door swings open again, and Fadir re-emerges with several ravens on its arm. “Ai, Carlisle, are you scarin’ children again?”

“Absolutely not,” Carlisle immediately answers, like they were some kind of liar who does, in fact, scare children on a regular basis.

“Mm.” Fadir jangles around a large metal keyring in one of its knobbly hands. “They were trying to play swords with it again.”

“You’d think they’d learn by now,” Carlisle flatly notes.

“Ah, but they do,” Fadir corrects as it tosses the keys into Carlisle’s waiting hands. “And then the new ones next year start it all over, le.” It waggles its now free hand at the bin by the door. “You take one of the um-brel-la to do your things. I take back later, hao ma?”

“Fair enough.”

Carlisle slaps the bag of phantom candy back onto the counter and stretches out their arms with a horrifying full-body bone crunch.

“I’ll be off, then.” Carlisle gives Lynel an awkward pat on the head. “Don’t be a stranger! You’re always welcome at the crypt, alive or dead.”

The cat in Carlisle’s bag stares at Lynel as they leave.

Fadir sighs. “They didn’t say anything bad, ne? Carlisle is not too bad, but- ehhhh- a little bad to talk to people. Death scares people away.”

You’d best be gettin’ it from the old bird itself. Talkin’ around it is just mean.

“Just, uh, dead people in the backyard,” Lynel decides to say. “It wasn’t anything bad.”

=[]=

So anyways, it was a little bad.

It wasn’t like Carlisle said anything bad. Carlisle was nice (kind of) (sort of) (in their strange, “what’s up I’m a dead guy” way), but they did accidentally point out a thing Lynel noticed was more than just, well, Lynel being Lynel again.

Something’s a little wrong with Fadir Ravenslove.

And it’s not the way it talks, or some of the odd expressions in its smile, or the way it laughs. Pretty much all of that can be chalked up to having a shakier grasp on Anglos and a face that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself- it was a raven once, or so it insists.

But its sentences will halt and stutter, interrupted with frozen smiles and lost expressions. Its eye will catch on the most random objects and linger, hypnotized, until its allays steer it away. It hardly ever sleeps, but when it does, it wakes up with foreign sentences crawling out of its mouth like spiders, the haunted syllables of some ancient ghost asserting itself for a moment before Fadir remembers what it is again.

It doesn’t happen a lot- never for long, never enough for other people to really notice- but it happens. And it keeps happening.

And then Fadir got that package in the mail.

The houses in Slovenguard are too far apart to bother putting up a mailman to ride to all of them, so they’ve got this sort of neighborhood box by the town entrance, close to the station. Fadir’s been having Lynel take the mail on the way back from school, just to get familiar with how things work around here.

烏鴉愛, Drakon Alchemical. That first bit is Fadir’s name in Quanhua, and then… Drakon. Like that crazy drug company? 

PATIENT: 烏鴉愛 (C-PTS) JD circuit-32 (x16) SSRI antipsychotic/neuropathic (x64)

Lynel understood some of those letters individually, but none of them can be good. There’s only one course of action left.

Stealing Mr. Carmilla’s computer.

…Okay, maybe not steal it. That would be mean. But they do have the motem box they use for putting in the death records, and Lynel’s been learning how to look things up at school, and somewhere over the course of thinking this Lynel realized they could literally just look this up at school instead of crafting a weird dead people motem heist.

(They may be stupid.)

After finagling with the school machine for a bit that yes, Lynel meant C-PTS, not C-PTSD, whatever that means, they found it some directory of mental illnesses.

Prophetic Tangent Syndrome (PTS) is a disruptive set of symptoms caused by overexposure to divination magic, creating an unending “tangent” state where any external stimuli can trigger dissociative space-time perceptions (prophetic tangents). This state worsens common divination side effects like anxiety, hypervigilance, and paranoia. PTS and prophetic tangent episodes are an accepted work hazard for diviners and usually don’t last for longer than two weeks. PTS is treatable with assisted care and removing prophetic stimuli.

PTS that lasts longer than one month, or keeps coming back without exposure, is classified as Complex Prophetic Tangent Syndrome (C-PTS). It is no longer a temporary sickness, but a chronic disability that can permanently damage a person’s memory, responsiveness, and awareness of their surroundings. Without assistance or treatment, a person can lose hours or days at a time to prophetic stimuli, or unexpectedly lose consciousness to sudden violent visions. Many diagnosed persons need the assistance of service animals, and some may be unable to live on their own.

Truly understanding this condition beyond legend and hearsay did not occur until around the 1940s, but early studies suggest that C-PTS may have had a 30% indirect mortality rate per year among its numbers-

Lynel didn’t read much after that. The words kind of melted together.

30%. That’s- that’s more than one in four. A one in four chance, every day of every year, to fall down and never get back up again.

That’s not fair.

That’s- that’s not fair.

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair IT’S NOT FAIR-

=[]=

Most of the time, Fadir doesn’t get concrete visions. That’s not really how it works, not anymore. It’s like… a thought. A sudden strong sense to be somewhere, to do a certain thing, buy a specific piece of food at a stall. Shards of arbitrary nonsense, sauntering vaguely downwards towards a better future.

Like how Fadir walks out of its work room after lunch, closes its eyes by one of the window seats for a bit, and wakes up with its foot halfway out the door holding a very pointed train map to Lynel’s school in its hand. Because apparently fate is deciding to be unsubtle today.

It learns to trust these sort of things. The same way it trusts to take note of the yakimochi stand by the station as it exits, as if neither it or Lynel might be back in time for dinner at home. The way it trusts to perch on top of the call box in time for someone to consider using the thing- a teacher with nervous eyes, tense body startled by a raven’s long shadow.

“You were going t’ call me,” Fadir says.

The teacher opens their beak. “Mr. Ravenslove-” (Wrong.) Don’t press it. “-we were just about to call you.” Only you. The other wanted to send Lynel home on their own. “There’s- well, nothing’s wrong, honestly,” Liar. Polite. Doesn’t want you to panic. (So don’t.) “-just-”

The teacher- tengu- tiangou- it’s the tiangou who have those dog-like ears, who wear hanfu instead of kimono- Stalling. Talk.

“Where’s Ah-lai?” Fadir softly interrupts. “Where’s Lynel?”

The teacher said something about Lynel crying during the motem class, and Fadir felt its hand tense around its cane-

-and then it was staring at the clicking mechanism of its own pocket watch in a doctor’s office. School. Not a hospital. Lynel is sitting behind the divider doing the classwork they’re about to miss. (Their lunch box still has the chips left in it.)

Fadir doesn’t search for Lynel’s distress in the past or future. It maneuvers itself around the divider, knees protesting as it kneels in front of the child of the present, and opens its arms, just a bit.

Lynel shuffles off their seat and just- just walks into Fadir’s chest. And things make a little more sense.

=[]=

“It’s a slow day,” the school doctor says. “I can give you the room for a bit if you need to talk.”

Fadir might have nodded. Or not. Lynel can’t really tell. The door closes anyway, and the office goes empty.

Neither of them seem like they’re in a hurry to talk.

“The book said you were gonna die,” Lynel finally whispers.

“Not for a long time, le,” Fadir amends. “Cer-tain-ly not me, ne? Too old.”

Lynel whimpers and shakes their head, burying into Fadir’s shirt.

“It’s not so bad,” Fadir says. “Everythin’ dies. You an’ me, too.”

“But you’re not supposed to die.” Lynel’s voice has a cracking sort of shake to it now. “It’s not fair.”

Fadir stills for a moment. Pauses. “You saw something,” it haltingly surmises. “What did you see?”

“I picked up your meds in the post office,” Lynel admits. “And I couldn’t read it right, so I looked it up and-” Fadir’s body tenses, and their words get faster and faster. “-an’ I didn’t mean anything bad, I jus’ wanted to understand, and I-” 

Their voice cracks, splinters, shatters.

“Is it true, what happens to diviners?” Lynel softly asks. “You look too far one day and then- and then you never see anything again?”

This is the part where Lynel expects Fadir to lie- lie, the way everyone else does when things go wrong and little kids aren’t meant to know about it. There’s going to be enough firewood, winter will be over soon, and Fadir Ravenslove doesn’t have a 1 in 3 chance of dying every time it closes its eyes.

But that's not what happens.

“Time is a thread,” Fadir starts. “A line that keeps things movin’. Di-vin-ation is just lettin’ go of the line a bit so y’ can see all the yarns. And if y’ too it too much, too long… your hand starts t’ slip.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Lynel dares to wonder. “Your hand slipped off the thread?”

Past the frozen smile on Fadir’s face, its brows furrow at odd angles. “I never held the thread at all, le. I-” Its pupils shrink down to almost comically small black dots in its golden eyes, and the breath it takes could have been a despairing laugh. “I barely have the hands for it.”

Its hand shakes a little when it pushes its down out of its eyes.

“When th’ uni-verse gave me this body, it gave me time that could never run out,” Fadir explains. “An’ back then, it was death. Good as dead. Ain’t denyin’ that.” Fadir tilts its head, and its smile widens coyly. “But I am a little stupid. I don’t know I should be dead. So I talk to everyone like me, collect all their words an’ I walk up to a doctor like liho, problem for you, kamsia! That’s why I have all that medicine.”

Fadir takes Lynel’s hand and brings them toward the jade disk tied to its neck with red thread. “Makes everything less loud. And when there is too much at once-” It waggles the jade handle of its pipe. “Just turns to magic smoke! It is made that way.”

“I kind of just thought you did drugs,” Lynel bluntly confesses.

“Ay! Ni shi gin na!” Fadir presses down on Lynel’s head. “I can-not do that around you. Bad for you.”

“You still take those other pills, though,” Lynel mutters.

“Ach. Even I use things like these, still leftovers. Gets me scared outta my head for no reason. The pills take care o’ that.”

Lynel’s mouth flattens. “But not all the way.”

Fadir sighs. Lynel realizes, for the first time, that the feathered ears on Fadir’s head are all crooked. The one on the right always hangs a little limp, like a puppy that’s still too soft in the bones.

It’s always the right side. The right leg’s bones that click, the right foot that has that twitch, the right tail feathers that puff out, the right hand that shakes a little more than the other when there’s nothing to hold.

“Aye,” Fadir admits. “Not all the way, le.” It clacks its cane against the ground. “I need this so I don’t walk into things.” It gestures to the allays trying to get into the doctor’s candy box. “I still need those two t’ drag me out when my head lets go.” Its eyes shift with a gentle squint as its voice softens. “So I am very, very lucky. I am very lucky that so many things work so hard to put the thread back into my hands.”

It pulls Lynel close with a stilted, hesitant hug.

“I lived with this for a very long time,” it whispers. “Okay? I would not- I could not let you into my house if I thought I would not be here after you were gone.”

Lynel listens to Fadir’s heart beat in the cage of its barreled chest, alive, alive, alive.

(You, you, you are alive.)

“I wanna go home,” Lynel decides. “Can we get something to eat on the way?”

“Hao le,” Fadir easily allows. It braces its hands on its knees as it stands, back stiff as it carries through the motion. “Oish. Brisk.” It holds out its arm a bit, and Lynel takes its hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

=[]=

“Oi, Ki-bo!”

“HEWWO?”

“Ki-bo, wo men zai yi ge boba naicha, ni yao ma?”

“Fuckin’ uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-”

“We are having food right now. We can wait, le.”

“Is Lynel with you? At the boba?”

“Yes, le.”

“HEY! NIÑO! DID YOU KNOW-”

“Don’t-”

“DID YOU KNOW THAT BOBA MEANS-”

(烏鴉愛 has left VC.)

The Recipe For Strength

It couldn’t possibly be as simple as asking. No. That would make too much sense.

Content: Chatlogs, baking shenanigans, wondering what a tablespoon is, eternal grandmas

TW: referenced past child abandonment

Screen reader's note: Contains Lithuanian and Hokkien English text.

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hatmanReal: Liho I have receptas

hatmanReal: virimas

hatmanReal: maistas le

OS-xander: you need some help there, buddy?

hatmanReal: RESIPPY

OS-xander: what’s in the recipe hatmanReal

hatmanReal: I read cannot le! Only i know it use the lietuviu keyboard

OS-xander: Lietuvių?

hatmanReal: Perhaps. does no help the handwriting is very uh

OS-xander: old?

hatmanReal: yes

OS-xander: have you considered- a recipe you can actually read

hatmanReal: not for me. i need to 阿阿阿阿 divine to see the person who left the book.

OS-xander: fair enough

OS-xander: imma little rusted but you’re blind as hel, send me a picture and i’ll try to crank it out

[hatmanReal sent attachment: ressipy.png]

OS-xander: “I am celebrating the last few Kūčios not at home, so Clash Season dinner table remains just my responsibility. And I can not imagine Hunter’s Moon table without the kūčiukai, herring, beetroot salad and cranberry kissiel. It doesn’t matter in which corner of the world I would be – I always need to be sure to have necessary products, that on my Kūčios table would be served mentioned dishes.”

OS-xander: “3 ½ cups all purpose flour, half pack dry yeast, 2 ½ tablespoon poppy seeds, ¾ cup water, 7 tablespoon granulated sugar.”

hatmanReal: DIAO BAO LE

hatmanReal: how do you table the spoon. can i just use the number as like a proportion

OS-xander: i mean you can’t really eyeball baking. that’s applied chemistry with a side of gastronomy

hatmanReal: that explains to me nothing

hatmanReal: don’t worry i call expert

[hatmanReal has left the chat.]

OS-xander: I’m gonna look at the news in an hour and i’m gonna see “Kitchen Arson Burns Down Hundreds In Chain Explosion, Perpetrator Not Found”

OS-xander: not arrested. hatman sounds like they could get away with murder

OS-xander: wait

[OS-xander set ChatRule ShowPronouns to True.]

OS-xander (he/him)(stag): hatman sounds like it could get away with murder

=[]=

Fadir Ravenslove, Sunraven, god of legacy, omen, and prophecy, was risen from one of Pando’s golden-browed ravens. But it did not sprout out of the earth knowing everything. The Sunraven was brought before the divine host by the hands of the Stargazer- safeguard of Ortet’s greatest treasures and one of the oldest gods.

Lynel doesn’t know what they expected out of an introduction like that. A starry haired figure with golden eyes and a vibrant blue shawl like butterfly wings, sure. Which they certainly got. But it’s probably on Lynel that they got surprised by the sight of a tiny fairy that barely comes up to Fadir’s hip, hands instantly reaching out to grab at Fadir’s face.

Most of those feathered types are real sensitive about getting touched- a teacher tried to explain it once, saying it was like grabbing someone’s hair. Don’t grab a person’s hair, don’t shove your hand into someone’s feathers. That’s not allowed.

But Laelia North the Stargazer is just built different, apparently. They thumb small circles on the down of Fadir’s cheeks and drum on the curtain of its wings like the belly of a fat cat.

“Yaya, your feathers are crooked,” they scold. “Did you walk into a wall again?”

“Not this time,” Fadir responds, as if walking into walls was, in fact, a very valid concern. “I just pick fruits, le.”

Lynel’s eyes catch the cane on the wall. The one Fadir swings around in front of itself every time it has to walk around outside Slovenguard, because something in its brain is really uncalibrated about how far away things are on the ground.

...Okay, maybe walking into walls is a valid concern. Maybe.

“Is the good time o’ year for shibing,” Fadir insists, voice turning soft as it leans closer to Laelia. “Can use fresh lemon juice an’ the cold dries them out good.”

Laelia gets to be built different and give Fadir a pat on the head. Lynel wants to be built different and give Fadir a pat on the head! Please. It is so soft and round. How does Lynel unlock this feature?

It couldn’t possibly be as simple as asking. No. That would make too much sense.

“Why is Laelia here?” Lynel asks instead.

“Lae-li-a is my ahchi,” Fadir says, as if Lynel knows what that means. “Which makes them your ahyi. It was going t’ happen event-u-ally, le.”

“They’ve never been here before,” Lynel points out. “And it’s been months since I got here.” They turn to Laelia. “I’ve been here since spring, sort of. Or summer. One of those. Probably summer. Deathdays rolled around, definitely.” A pause. “I’m not very good with calendars.”

Laelia swishes their wing cloak around. “Oh, nothing! My wife and I were opening up the cabin for the overwinter tenants again-”

“Is that like that place down the road that started having fairies in it one day for no reason?” Lynel wonders.

“That’s not no reason,” Fadir corrects. “You met Mahin and the others. They live there! During winter.”

Lynel probably remembers this happening. Maybe. There was that pink haired fairy with the knife who gave Fadir chips, stole half of them out of Fadir’s own hands, and stabbed their coin purse to the wall with a hooked rapier the size of a bread knife.

That might have been Mahin. Lynel wasn’t really paying attention. Mostly on account of the bread knife sword.

“It’s a little like that,” Laelia allows. “Besides, I’m just so busy all the time with-” They flop their hands. “You know how it is with the baobae.”

Fadir nods. “Ai. The baobae keeps every-one very busy. So busy.”

(Both of them refused to elaborate.)

“Anyways!” Laelia claps their hands together. “I am here to bake!”

Fadir climbs the notches built into the kitchen wall and knocks at the ceiling with a wooden spoon. “Ki-bo! Zuo fan!”

“No,” Kibble answers from behind the wood.

“Ki-booo.” Fadir’s lip curls around the jagged black curl of its beak, mouth distorting like some kind of angry, snarling clown with every passing word. “Ki-bo, it is time to do lunch and we are making BISCUITS!”

It would almost be horrifying. Almost. If not for the wooden spoon, and the pastel kitty cat apron, and the red eyeliner getting superimposed over a face that, at the moment, kind of looks like a template for those BEWARE OF DOG signs people put up in their yard to lie to children.

A dusty panel opens from the ceiling and deposits Kibble directly onto Fadir’s face, prompting a synchronized sneeze from both of them.

Lynel bursts into laughter.

The three (alleged) adults slowly migrate further into the kitchen, hemming and hawing over compiled ingredients. Laelia grabs a smaller matching kitty cat apron for themself. A few eggs might have been produced from Kibble’s hat.

Lynel flops into Corvo’s armchair. It’s so huge it’s practically a bed for everyone else, and Lynel suspects that Fadir does, in fact, use it as such when no one is home. Lynel flops around the cushions until their head vaguely faces the hearth fire. The fire salamander stares back.

It’s like a lizard, sort of. With big googly eyes and the wonderfully inviting texture of a fat smooth rock that happens to be on fire. It scratches at its bed of ash and embers with its stubby claws, tail swishing back and forth to aerate the space around itself. The backbone of the Ravenslove Tower heating system, everyone. Look upon its works, ye mighty, and despair.

(Its name is Ping-guo Pai. Apple pie.)

“Come to smother me with a broom again, stupid?” Pai crackles.

“I only did it the one time,” Lynel defends. “How was I supposed to know you were on fire on purpose?”

“Battin’ at me with a broom, doin’ your stupid human screams.”

“You’re stupid,” Lynel retorts. “You just sit in your stupid fireplace all day. You don’t even know how to read!”

“Stupid. Stupid and baby.” Pai spits an ember out of its mouth. “Just like the Fadir said. Baby, baby, baby!”

“You stop that. I’m gonna tell Fadir you’re telling lies.” Lynel picks up the fire poker and shoves at Pai’s belly. “And then you won’t get to eat any of the spare eggshells or extra phantom membrane.”

Pai burrows its face in the ash, letting out a weird tea-kettle sounding scream. It burrows and burrows and burrows until a mote of dust climbs up its nose- it sneezes, the motion reverberating down its body like a slapped spoonful of jelly.

“You have so much more ash than you used to,” Lynel notes. “But the cold started a long while ago. Did Fadir and Kibble forget to clean you out?”

Lynel would offer to do it themself, but much like the work room, the hearth was something they weren’t allowed to touch in terms of cleaning. Something about not risking ash in their lungs at their age- doctor’s orders or whatever. (What a strange idea, being too young to ruin. Must be one of those things Fadir cares about because it’s so old.)

“It won’t stop cooking food when no one is home!” Pai complains. “Ever since it got that weird book its gotten all sorts of new ideas in its head.”

“What for?” Lynel asks.

“For you!” Pai whines. “Who else? It never had so many lunchboxes to fill before you came along.” It scratches its mouth. “Hmm! But it’s not so bad. New kinds of scrap to eat, I suppose. Even if all those ground spices make me sneeze.”

Lynel remembers all the new lunches Fadir’s been making. Rices and pastas and dumplings and cut fruits, a hundred little things shaped like flowers and small animals, tenderly put into a box every day with napkins and candies. They should be used to it by now, but they’re not. Every time, a surprise.

“What’s a tablespoon?” Laelia says from the kitchen.

Lynel turns around just in time to see Fadir’s wings startle in place, a loudly puffing rattle of feathers. “Ne? I thought you would know, le.”

“Maybe it’s a spoon as big as a table,” Kibble reasonably suggests. “A draconis table!”

Lynel finally dares to brave the long arduous journey that is taking twelve steps to get to the kitchen. Fadir is holding up a handwritten book for Laelia’s confused eyes, the foreign scrawl of a stranger’s handwriting drowned by little annotated translations.

“I thought you guys were just making biscuits,” Lynel confusedly points out, squinting at the tiny words. “What’s all the fuss?”

“Why must there be so many different measurements?” Laelia despairs. “Please, my hands are too small.”

“How do none of you know what a tablespoon is?” Lynel stresses.

“Gin na,” Fadir deadpans with a knowing look on its face. “Do you know what a tablespoon is?”

“Yes!” A pause. “I think. Maybe.” Lynel’s hands wave in the air. “I mean, the last time I used a furnace I burnt out the insides for a week, but I could probably get it right.”

Fadir stares at Lynel for a few seconds, and then looks back at the book.

“We call Nana,” it decides.

“Please call Nana,” Laelia begs.

Whomst.

=[]=

Nana is one of the earliest things Fadir remembers from this body. Out of everything new, out of everything that was not echoes of the raven.

Captain Harper is a terrible thing to behold, or so it’s heard. Guide of selkies, ships, and sailors, she is not without her rage. Fadir has seen- from its own eyes and a thousand others across time- that no god’s love is unconditional. Not even its own.

But family is a different monster altogether, is it not?

Nana, removed of her endless names and terrifying titles, is just a towering woman, though maybe not so much as Corvo, and as much as she embraces all stages of life, Fadir has never known her young. Age whittles her stout selkie frame down to hard muscles and knobbled bones drowned in three layers of seal coat, sharp cheeks jutting around her dark eyes and thin ears, wiry gray hair spilling down her face like stormy waves.

The first time they met, Fadir told her it lived through sixteen generations of grandchildren. She’d laughed, pinched its cheek as if it were a boastful child, and teasingly called it a handsome young man in front of the entire horrified divine host. So even though they’re both weathered old folks- and Laelia is older than them all- Harper is Nana, and you call Nana when no one else is smart enough to figure out what baking is, among other things. She shows up at the door of Ravenslove Tower like she’d been waiting there all along, carrying fresh fish on a string in one hand and a set of silver measuring spoons in another.

Fadir’s never really had to bake before. Anything it couldn’t take care of inside a wok got put through the bamboo steamer, and between the two of those, things tended to work out. That’s the kind of way it learned from Laelia, the delicate art of just chucking things into a fire with vaguely culinary intent. Recipes had never factored into the equation, much less precision measurements that could ruin a pastry in minutes.

A precision process and a misstep that ruins everything. So much like the fickle art of prophecy itself. Maybe that’s why Fadir fixates on this recipe book.

Among other things. Fadir was a raven first. Even after decades of trying to acclimate to the black box of society, certain things still escape its understanding entirely.

It’s hard to grasp how someone can let go of their own child.

As much as- as much as it tried to comfort Lynel in those first weeks. As much as it tried to swallow even the most charitable of explanations. The paper dropped at the HMFR office had been well-kept. The recipes, with 17 different distinct handwritings, speaking to a large family network. Silver spoons of the highest quality, wooden carvings of the most intricate craft. Nothing that spoke to the lack of parents, people, or resources that could have made this make sense.

At least Lynel had been old enough to understand, or at least long enough to choose to walk away. But the baby this book has been willed to isn’t even old enough to stand.

Things like this always devour the time in Fadir’s mind. As much as the constant throng of prophecy quiets in this house, the silence leaves time to… ponder things. Like how it was supposed to take the BISCUITS OUT OF THE OVEN-

-wait, no, Laelia already did that. It was supposed to frost the biscuits. Froze. Put the- put the sweet thing on them. On the grybukai. It’s supposed to look like a round little mushroom when the frosted caps and stems are put together.

Unfortunately, Fadir’s ulterior motive of using the recipes until a vision kicked in doesn’t seem to be working. It got traces of the pencils used on the paper, of spices and oils spilled into the pages in decades old stains, and a few people who died at least thirty years ago, but nothing about the person who actually gave the book away. Maybe they warded themselves against being seen. Maybe they just didn’t want to be found. Either way- finding nothing, not even a death, over something left so recently, means they didn’t plan to vanish into the night altogether. As frustrating as it is, this is a good sign. There is no dead or missing person to find. Fadir will call up the civic office later, tell them to close the case and-

-dark long hands turn away from their work and sigh. “Rami,” a man’s voice calls out, “are you eating all the frosting again?”

A doe-faced achlis looks up from her spoon, wide eyes the perfect picture of innocence. “Noooooo?”

“Rami. Rami, love, I measured them perfectly. Now I’ll be short for enough to finish the grybukai.”

“I made extra, Rion. The butterfly house already told me I’d be getting cravings around this time, anyways.” Rami lets out a defiant hum. “I think the baby’s gonna have a sweet tooth at this rate.”

“And the meats,” Rion reminds her.

Rami sticks her tongue out. “It tastes so weird! And tėtis gets all huffy about it, too. I keep telling him the doctor said that normal achlis pregnancies can get like that already, but you know how it is.” Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “He blames it on genetics.”

Rion rolls his eyes. “Like we all didn’t see your mum down an entire steak while she was carryin’ your sister. I barely eat meat in the first place.”

Rami pauses a bit. “We’ll- we’ll have to go back to your family for a bit when the baby’s ready, right?”

“We’ll be fine, love.”

“But they just started loosening up the lockdown here, they still don’t have doctors here for-”

“-what’s that on the bottom of the cookies?”

Fadir’s hand spasms in place, dropping the grybukai back onto the tray. The other hand clenches around the pocket watch tucked into its sash, and the forward march of time tick-tick-ticks on. Late December, 1973. Ravenslove Tower of Slovenguard in the Halfstack mountains. Lynel asked a question.

“Is, ah-” Fadir looks back down at the little mushroom shaped pastries. “Yingsu.”

“Poppies,” Laelia amends.

Fadir nods. “The seeds. To look like mushroom roots, le.”

“Oh.” Lynel considers the tray for a moment. “Can I try one?”

A wasteful question, perhaps- the food was made to be shared, and children should eat first. But it used to be rare that Lynel would dare to ask anything for themselves. It is not a waste to ask. It is not a waste to be answered.

(It is not a waste, to be one who answers.)

And Fadir’s face was always a little stiff, the movement of its mouth out of sync with its words, and it knew it, but the smile feels a little more real when it turns around and says,

Yes.  Always.

most childhood friendships dont last to adulthood, but ones that do are stronger for it. @halfstack-smp

Reblog to put one of these in your mutuals’ pocket when they’re not looking

I love her so much i cannot put it into words <3<3<3<3 @halfstack-smp

this was a project and a half to make, i took a lot of breaks for a reason @halfstack-smp

EDIT:  fixed some missing colours and changed her last name to match current one