[closed]

[catpiper]

Who: Lup, Ren, Taako
What: Family talk and other shenans
When: Backdated to 12/20-post memory share event
Where: Elf camp
Warnings: N/A-will add as needed

The reality of the situation doesn't hit her, not fully, until she wakes the next morning. Dreams had a weird bubble of protection around them that made her actions feel meaningless-she could sit by a monster, play soccer with a dog, talk about flowers and friends and family without having to worry about what it meant the next day.

And so when she stirs awake, she's almost grateful to be the first one that appears to be up. It gives her a chance to ignore Taako's well intentioned comment about not worrying about breakfast because, no, she can do that for them. That's something within her raccoon abilities-no problem. It'll be fine. Maybe on her hunt, she'll find some pretty treasures they can hold onto. Because she isn't sure how to express gratitude to her new aunt and uncle any other way.

But she should wait, she thinks, if only because Taako had said he would feel better if they were both there when he woke up. A comment that still makes her think she must have misheard him. Both. She stares at his face, waiting to see if his eyes crack open, and then turns to Lup, checking out her new aunt's face in turn. No dice.It's hard to tiptoe around the tent without hitting any arms or legs, but gosh she's doing her best. She even makes up for any accidental toetaps by pulling any blankets went askew in the night over their bodies. There, elf beans. It's nice and cozy now. 

Comments

[ohshitsweetflips]

Taako, for all his love of sleep and his perpetual exhaustion from being on the island grind, is still not a particularly deep sleeper. It's good that Lup is back, but there's a core of wariness, memories of trying to rest unsafe and alone, that will probably stick with him for awhile yet. So it's not that Taako is dragging his heels when it comes to waking up, and he's definitely sensing some goblin disturbances--he's just still processing, with his eyes closed.

There's a lot to process. Weird dreams with other peoples' memories, his own memories relived against his will, and woven through it all, wrong memories. Balls to that, actually, he's ready to face the day. It's a shame to ruin Ren's hard work, but he shoves all his limbs out from the blankets anyway, assuming his Final Form of a dead starfish. Woe betide anyone in the way of this yawning mess. Finally he sits up, only to immediately put most of his weight on Lup, horrible elbow first. It's only fair. "Shouldn't humans sleep longer than elves?" he asks, through another tooth-clashing yawn.

[hellawrath]

Lup usually has a pretty good ear for disturbances as well, goblin or otherwise. It had been so easy to fall back into rough living habits once they had to make camp in this dumb jungle, like they hadn't spent a hundred years on board a relatively safe starboat with their own cabins at all. But this morning, the aftermath of those weird dreams still has a hold on her, the emotional exhaustion of two souls weighing heavily on her unconscious mind.

She sure wouldn't have hated getting a moment to process too, but unfortunately, Taako. Startled awake by an arm shoved across her chest, she doesn't even get a chance to protest before she's brutally murdered in her own bed. What the fuck is what she would say if there wasn't a fucking elbow crushing her ribs, so instead you're getting some sort of horrible screeching noise.

Her first instinct is to slap and shove him off, god, he's the worst brother in the world!! But he's her brother and she's missed him after that last dream, so she opts instead for a gross tentacle hug, reaches up with all her long limbs to wrap around him and pull him down into an inescapable vortex of blankets and affection. She can't really breathe under the avalanche of his wild hair, but that's fine. She'll just squeeze him so hard he can't breathe either, then they're even.

[catpiper]

It's always a wild ride watching them and there's a looming sense of danger once he uses his sister as an elbowrest, almost comments on that feeling in between 'Cats sleep longer than both', like Taako was trying to get some incredible trivia info out of her. She's full of these bad boys. You want to know about heffalumps? She's got it all.

But it doesn't take long for Lup to exact her revenge and Ren watches, unhelpfully stepping back once she sees her rise up, and, well-they seem okay. They're both awake and holding eachother, which was the #goal before she ambled off to find breakfast. Ren was going to make them hold hands, but this is way better.

And now that Taako knows she's here and Lup's awake to hold him, she takes whatever cat hair covered blanket she had used during the night to cover up their heads. Thought you were suffocating before? Enjoy hiding peasants. Stay there and be good until Ren gets back. She even kneels down to tuck in the blankets around their body, thankfully leaving the one over their heads loose enough to breathe through.

"You have to hide here with-" They're so tall this is actually turning into a process-what a cardio routine. And as she works her way down to their toebeans, she tries to process the rest of her thoughts, which somehow became 1000x times easier with them no longer looking at her. It's weird. It's difficult? But felt so warm and nice when she repeated it to Lup, she knows it'll feel equally as nice when she says it now. "With Aunt-With Uncle Taako. You should hold his warm hand until I find breakfast."

[ohshitsweetflips]

Taako is contained, but not without a good loud squawk of protest. Unfortunately, he's laughing too much to have the air for making a sustained effort of it. And that's even without a new challenger entering the fray. Betrayal. Mutiny. He expects this unseemly behavior from Lup, honestly this is on him for not having a defense already prepared, but et tu, Ren? Please don't smother your elves? They're doing fine with that on their own.

Most of the impending struggle goes out of Taako at Ren's helpful instructions for Lup, though. Sorry, it uh, it definitely sounded like she just decided to call him Uncle Taako, which can't be right. He gives Lup a wide-eyed look of shock, see if she can maybe confirm that, and if so what the hell. He had kind of hoped to sidestep any lingering dream-stuff emotions via shenanigans, give them all a nice breather, but this is some kind of emotions-hydra, it turns out? Please, someone fetch the containers.

That cognitive dissonance almost obscures the mention of breakfast, but not quite, and Taako is filled with considerable trepidation of a different kind. He struggles to freedom like if he's not fast enough maybe she'll already be back with a nice hearty shoe full of fish water to offer them or something.

"Whoa, hold on. That's not-- Maybe we don't need to hide, and we can just, collaborate on the breakfast instead of making it a solo project." The fear is instinctual, a background process. His actual upper-level brainpower is still on the other thing and no progress is being made. He's this close to not even questioning it, to be honest-- Ren's always kind of an unstoppable juggernaut of weirdness, who is he to stand in the way? Kinda late to start. The laughter he's trying to keep a handle on is both fond and nervous. "Did you uh, did you maybe learn a new word, Ren?"

[hellawrath]

Tackling her brother into submission, there's a small panicky voice in her mind, scrabbling at the edges like a mouse in the walls, like, this is too much, too close, a visceral sense of danger, of wanting to get away, and it's off and wrong but she knows this voice, now. That's, nope, she refuses to get hung up about literally any of that right now, Chara, they're-- waking up in their own bed somewhere, separate people with their separate lives again, and that's good, for now. Lup buries her face deeper in Taako's hair, drinks in his comfortably heavy weight on her, his laughter, the best sound in the world dissolving her anxieties. All this stuff she couldn't reach in the umbrella, she's got it all back and bad memories can kiss her ass.

The sudden blanket prison is a bit much though and she lets up on her assault on Taako just enough so he can maybe get them some air for breathing. It's a valiant effort to increase their coziness but Ren maybe needs to learn some moderation here? The attached instructions almost don't even register as odd, hiding and breakfast, two of Ren's most high-ranking interests, that tracks, except-- Right. That's happening now, is it. She meets Taako's look of totally understandable shock with something vaguely sympathetic, is that what she looked like the first time she heard her new title? Probably. Welcome to the club, bro.

"Ren kinda, she uh, saw our Auntie?" Lup blows hair out of her face and sort of shrugs, as much as is even possible in this current twin tangle, looking almost sheepish. This isn't on her, except it kind of is? And it's not a bad thing, really the opposite actually, but it is a lot to take in. "She figured out aunts teach you how to cook and, and play with you and smile at you a lot." Recalling all that, the memory and Ren's wild associations that are kind of indisputable when you think about it, Lup can't help but smile for real at Taako while she waits for him to get it. She knows he will, he knows what it means to have an aunt, or uncle. "Aunts and uncles, they're-- we're warm."

Sticking a hand out from the mess for Ren to hold onto instead of running off on unpredictable breakfast business, she adds helpfully, "Also, aunts and uncles help with breakfast? That's another thing they do."

[catpiper]

Moderation is for scrubs and shoe fish water is a delicacy in some parts of the universe, don't be a food snob. Thankfully the offered hand summons her like dog hearing its owner's whistle and all attempts to suffocate and/or poison her new family is temporarily forgotten. Lup's taking care of everything right now? She doesn't even have to explain where this nice, new word came from and while she expected to have to supplement her own meaning, Lup's kind enough to use her language. They're warm. He's warm. Ergo, he's an uncle now. Congratulations. This is what happens when you steal a kid in the woods-it escalates.

"Okay. We'll play together. I can hold cumin for you." There's a tension building in her body though. Because while Lup had explained it, said it was okay, said it didn't matter even if she made her sad one day, Taako hadn't been privy to any of that. It's definitely a verbal contract he hadn't signed yet and she watches him with the expression of a person waiting to hear bad news. There's sinking feeling forming in gut as she tries to decipher what that laughter means and tries to take it at face value. Laughter's good. Learning a new word made him happy, maybe, so-

All she can really do is hold Lup's hand with her own and watch the expression on his face, to see if it twists into something negative. Upset. Unhappy. "It's a scary and good word. That's what I learned. Saying that kind of thing is supposed to make your heart feel good, but it's okay if it doesn't. You can say 'it hurts' and I won't say it again."

Which is the nice little out she offers from this situation. It had been a source of contention for her in Lup's memory anyway, saying this, because she knows it's going to backfire. That they're going to be upset with her one day-mad that she ever thought it was okay to say these special words that give her comfort. Nice words, meant just for them, since they've become such a intrinsic part of her life she doesn't want to let go of.

[ohshitsweetflips]

Well, that's certainly more of a choice than he's ever been given about the concept of 'family' before. There's not even like, an apocalypse involved or anything. It's kind of amazing, really, the care Ren takes about such things. Amazi-tragic, let's say. Granted, she approaches the concept a little differently than the vast majority of people, for reasons that are outside her control and that he still barely has any grasp on. But it's to her credit, probably, that she has these considerations at all. To her credit but still bad, maybe? She probably shouldn't have any inkling that someone might feel unsure in their kinship to her, he thinks. It would almost certainly be easier for her if she didn't. Emotional math sure is hard. They don't teach this shit at fantasy NASA.

But that is a dilemma for never, how being gracefully skilled at that kind of emotional equation is both good and not-good, and what that means for him, a stupid elf who should probably at least try to handle this with a tenth of the un-looked-for aplomb Ren would. It's not like there's a real decision here anyway, even if the stakes have gotten weirdly high? He didn't, at any point, think this through, so what else is new. He's just a little surprised, is all.

So he scoffs at her hedging, theatrical but deliberately sincere. "Of course you can say it, to me, your uncle and favorite celebrity." The confidence is only a little belied by a brief, panicked flutter of his ears. He's only yelling internally, it's fine. He doesn't really know what to do with the concept of hurt in this context, but he thinks he understands scary. You can't lose something you don't have, that's just common sense. Ren has elves now, ergo, she's fundamentally in danger. But they're pretty hard to get rid of, like historically speaking, and he mentally cracks his knuckles, determined to keep at it. He beams at her, no less sunny for the premeditation of it. "It's chill. Doesn't hurt a bit."

That said, he sits up purposefully, freeing himself and undoing most of Ren's hard work. Not being an unseemly mound of elves and blankets, that's the official step two for making breakfast, because that's...let's be real, that's gonna be his contribution to the reassurance here, Lup's got a handle on the hand-holding, literally, leaving him with his tried and true strategies: food, and saying some dumb words, and giving people space. Look, they're both emotionally adroit in their own ways, okay. "You learned a lot for someone not even awake yet. Maybe we should all just take the day off."