Chico immediately left my side as soon as we came on the scene and he caught sight of his big-boned lovebug over yonder. Which...I mean, I could get mad but fuck it at this point. I knew what to expect and besides, he didn’t need to glue himself to my shadow every second of every day anyway. I was glad he didn’t. Bastard smelled. (Bitch) (Asshole)

Most of the Edge was there and I guess that should’ve been important; there were others there too, people I knew, people I loved, people I’d laughed with or yelled at on one occasion. And I could’ve gone to any of them, touched them, laughed at them some more or put some teeth in my touch for whatever bone I had to pick with them. But there was someone there I didn’t know, someone who I’ve never said a word to in my life, someone who was so much more important than any of these other assholes in attendance.

It was absurd how much like her Ma and Pa she resembled--like, fucking Shapes couldn’t help himself when he molded the babe, and he had to smear my Ma’s face with those same weird horns with the shapes on them, too. Shapes Jr. But everything else was Ma through and through, from the pale body to the mismatched eyes, even down to the dragon-thing flitting around her, a spitting image, a Ma in miniature.

It was a painful to watch her but it wasn’t a pain that hurt. Just...I don’t even know how to explain it cuz I never do, but it was weird and wonderful all at the same time to see something so small be so familiar, so achingly right and devastatingly wrong at the same time, cuz Shapes’ stain on her face was never gonna be washed off--but I had to be okay with that, I had to find a way to reconcile myself with that, because the girl was fucking perfect and there was no other way she could’ve been.

I sighed and walked up to her--how could I not? There was a moment where I was at a loss of what to say to her, how to introduce myself as a big sis--but then she was sneering at some other dude (cousin?) and it was such a familiar feeling that I latched onto it. “Boys are dumb,” I said consolingly with a sword-heavy shrug, “you can do better on your own anyway.”

Because passing jank wisdom down to your tiny siblings is what the season was all about, right?


"talk"