papertown | Once upon a time, in a strange, far away land....

Once upon a time, in a strange, far away land....

In the Unknown, strange things happened all the time.

And as a resident of the Unknown, Beatrice usually didn't question them (hence why she took it so relatively well when she and her family became bluebirds). So when her little brother and sister came running in, telling her that the dog had gotten loose chasing rabbits, she didn't think anything of it when it turned into her running for her life away from what looked like a stag with horns even bigger than she was. The dog had gotten away, disappearing through the bushes and out of sight, but the human girl was a much slower and bigger target, apparently.

So she went barreling through the trees, mud staining the hem of her dress and wayward branches scratching against her skin, her mind not really focusing on where but simply away. Not too far ahead of her was a wall, the brick overgrown with ivy but the rocks uneven enough for her to get her feet wedged into the cracks and climb. There was probably a house, or a farm, or maybe even a church on the other side, and she was willing to gamble on the fact that the stag couldn't climb or jump high enough to chase her over.

But there wasn't a building on the other side of the wall, and when her foot caught a patch of damp moss that sent her tumbling over, it was a lot further down than she was expecting. With a thump, she hit the ground, rolling several times before she hit something hard, like a rock, knocking the air out of her and probably bruising her back something fierce. Sore, scratched, and completely out of breath, she just lay there motionless for a moment, panting and waiting for her ears to stop ringing before she opened her eyes.

The sound of loud laughter jolted her into a seating position, because this far out in the forrest, she should have been alone. And it was then that she took a good look at what she'd rolled into; a...gravestone? This was a graveyard?

Getting shakily to her feet, she brushed the dirt and leaves from her dress, making her way over the uneven terrain towards the arched gate that seemed to have torches or candles of some sort brightening the way. Once there, she saw strange, metal contraptions sitting on the blackened roadways, and clusters of small, strangely-dressed people running about with bright orange pumpkins hanging from their arms. This...was not anywhere like her home! Where the heck was this?!

Approaching one of the clusters of children, she cleared her throat awkwardly to get their attention. "Where is this?" she asked, squinting suspiciously at the way they were dressed (one of them had a sheet draped over them, one of them looked...metallic? and one of them looked like a big green lizard). "And what on earth are you wearing?"

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His hands went to his head, to try and keep the hat in one place, but Beatrice was too fast for him, and had it stuck under her arm before he could even try to get it back from her. So instead, his efforts went to desperately smoothing his unruly hat-hair. Or trying to, anyway. It wasn't going as well as he wanted it to. "Wh--hey, I like that hat." He shoved his hands into his pockets and sulked a little. It was a little silly, sure, but it was warm and made him feel unique.

...Okay, so maybe she had a point, but still.

With over exaggerated reluctance--and it was exaggerated. The joy of seeing her again overrode any irritation he felt--Wirt glanced back in her direction. She seemed annoyed with him, but then again, it could be a general kind of aggravation, one that had no real target. Or she could be mad at him. Girls were hard to read, especially when they were from other worlds and used to be snarky bluebirds.

He looked away again, and at the decorated houses around them. Glowing pumpkins lit their way, illuminating the leaves stuck around the trunks of trees and in the corners at the side of the road. It was strange, walking with Beatrice. It felt surreal. Everything was so normal. There were no beasts to fight or pastures to visit, no people wearing pumpkins or singing frogs. It was just a street near his own on a rather unassuming evening, and yet here she was, right next to him.

Finally, he looked back at her, and nudged her with his elbow. "If you're going to take it, you should at least put it on. Might help with the whole keeping warm thing."

"Yeah, you liked your red hat too, and it made you look like a gnome," Beatrice answered, grinning at him and nudging at him.. "My parents always refer to you as that "nice gnome boy who ended up in our tree" when we talk about you, and I am absolutely not even close to making that up." There was something nostalgic about that hat, though, so maybe that was why she disliked this new one so much; it was the wrong color, and the wrong shape. The hat hair was much preferable to any of that.

It was a little weird, to be talking to Wirt again, she had to admit. Things had felt so...final, when they'd parted ways. So in a way, the whole thing felt surreal, like a dream, since it felt like such a lack of closure. Until now, she'd had no idea if they'd even managed to successfully make it home, or if Greg was even okay. Confronted with the reality of it now, she felt like she was the one who wasn't real, since time had just kept ticking on for them without her.

Looking at the strange decorations that seemed to be the only thing setting some of the houses apart from one another, she was startled when he nudged her back, looking at the hat under her arm. Beatrice held it out and considered it, feeling for the bun at the top of her head self-consciously. "Do you think it'll even fit over my hair?" she asked.

Edited 2014-11-30 07:32 (UTC)

"Hmmmh." He stopped and turned to face her fully, one hand going to his chin in thought as he looked from the hat to her hair.He focused solely on that, to recover more fully from his previous embarrassment. He could do this, he could. He just had to keep in mind that Beatrice was still Beatrice, no matter what form she took or place she was in. "I don't know, probably not. I mean, the hat his pretty big, but you've got a lot of hair. It'll probably just wreck it."

Which would be unfortunate, her hair looked nice, if a bit disheveled from the stag's chase, and she obviously put some time into it. At least, he assumed she did. He couldn't be sure, but his hair took long enough to smooth down in the morning. He could only imagine how long styling would take with that much more. He smiled a little, let the dig at his hat slide, and then turned away again to start back down the street. He would have continued on at a brisk pace, so he could get Beatrice inside where it was warm, but he slowed after a moment.

"Wait. You guys--you still talk about me?" He had figured he and Greg would just fade from memory, and it made him feel a little bad. He had written it off as nothing but a dream, after a while, and he had stopped talking to Greg about it. And outside his nightmares, he never really thought about the unknown as much as he probably should have. Beatrice had been a friend. Their adventure had been important, and he'd just shrugged it off and pushed it from his thoughts.

Beatrice made a contemplative sound in the back of her throat, taking the hat and kind of gingerly setting it on top of her bun. She had enough hair, and it was curly enough, that the bun was fairly sizable; big enough to keep the hat from setting completely on top of her head. Instead, it just kind of rested against her hair, and if it looked ridiculous, it couldn't be any worse than the vest. And he did have a point, it was warm. "There, happy now?" she asked, making a face at him.

And this way, it would keep her hair mostly in tact. A win-win situation.

When Wirt slowed down, she matched his pace, arching an eyebrow in a kind of puzzled way. "I mean, sometimes," she said with a bashful shrug. "Not like, all the time. But you basically met my whole family when you were in the tree, and you're the reason we're human again, so. That kind of makes an impression on people, you know?"

Also, her younger siblings liked to tease her and say that the reason she hadn't gotten married yet was because she was waiting for Wiiiiiiiirt to come back and sweep her off her feet.

"Why yes. Yes I am." He said with some smugness. She looked incredibly silly with the hat just sitting there like it was, half on her head, but it was okay. She had seen him look ridiculous a number of times, it was about time she was afflicted with some weird outfit or another. And even with the ridiculous fuzzy vest and hat, she managed to pull it off. Girls in his school liked weird vests and fur coats anyway, so it wasn't like he hadn't seen similar fashion around before.

Not that he paid attention to such things, most of the time. He just made a mental note of it and moved on.

What she said seemed pretty spot on, though, so he just kind of shrugged uncomfortably and shoved his hands back into his pockets. "Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense. I didn't talk to them much, so I figured. I mean, I just thought--I don't know. Life moves on, you know?" He had no idea what point he was trying to make, he was just stringing sentences together in the hopes that they spoke to some kind of truth.

"Life for us can be pretty boring most of the time," Beatrice said, shrugging her shoulders and feeling the vest for pockets to slip her hands into, which she did promptly once she found them. "I'm sure that's weird to hear, considering what you went through while you were there, but not a lot happens out in the countryside where we live. So getting turned into bluebirds and having a gnome boy save your family and your oldest daughter leaves a lot to talk about."

It made her feel kind of self-conscious about mentioning it, since he seemed so taken aback. They didn't talk about him incessantly or anything, but her siblings did tease her on occasion, and her parents would make mention of him on occasion, and the littlest ones would wear kettles on their heads when the dishes were being done and they were bored. Wirt and Greg, for as short of a time as they had been there, were novel and different and had impacted their lives significantly by giving them the golden scissors, and she hadn't thought there was anything odd about that.

And it sounded like Wirt and Greg probably didn't talk about her, or any of the things that had happened, much at all.

"Are we almost there?" she asked, wrapping the vest tighter around her. "All these houses look the same, so I have no idea how you can remember which one is yours."

"Yeah. It's just--" Wirt sighed and looked at his feet, his shoulders hunching a little. "Me and Greg, we used to talk about you and-and the unknown a lot. But. I don't know, he got older, and--." He got older and forgot a lot of things, and Wirt would always hear their parents talking in hushed tones about near death experiences. It had been discouraging, and he had just...accepted that that's all it had been. A near death experience. A dream. Nothing being on the other side of the cemetery wall had only seemed to further that idea.

It had all been so vivid, sure, and he had wanted it to be something more. He'd learned about himself in the unknown, and come to look at Greg as his little brother and not a nuisance because of it. Maybe he should have actually accepted everything that happened, instead of giving it up. Not that it mattered much now.

Her question snapped him out of his reverie. "Huh? Oh, yeah, it's that house right there. Uh--Let's go." He went to grab her hand and lead her but hesitated and just let his arm fall back to the side as he started moving towards the house with a skeleton taped to the door. "And they're not exactly the same. The architecture is styled similarly, but there are little differences, like window placement and--and color. Plus, there are numbers on all the doors." It seemed a little weird, sure, given the houses really were pretty similar, but he knew how to tell them all apart and had since he'd been a kid.

When they reached his house, Wirt started up the walkway but stopped before he reached the porch, watching the shadows of his parents move around the living room through the curtains. His parents would ask questions, about Beatrice. And there was no way he would be able to explain her or why she needed to stay with them. At least, not in a way that would make him or Beatrice look sane.

"Maybe, maybe we should use the back door. C'mon."

Because of where she was born and raised, unusual occurances like boys coming over the wall or being turned into bluebirds weren't exactly things they needed to question. It was just part of living in a place like the Unknown. But given how the first instincts of the children were to assume that she was crazy...it stood to reason that people would think Wirt and Greg were crazy too, and encourage them to write things off as a dream or something similar.

"I'm sorry," Beatrice said, resting her hand on his shoulder for a moment before letting it fall away. "I didn't realize how different this place was. I guess by the time I met the two of you, you'd kind of gotten used to it, so I assumed that home couldn't be that different."

But at least it looked like they had finally arrived at Wirt's house, and when he mentioned the numbers on the houses being one of the things that helped tell them apart, she took note of them in case she needed to get back here somehow. There was a moment where it looked like Wirt was going to grab her hand, to lead her towards the house, but he seemed to stop himself before their skin could brush, opting to just lead the way around towards the back of the house.

She suddenly remembered the girl he'd talked about, Sarah. Maybe that was why he stopped himself.

"I guess if you can't talk about the Unknown, it'd be pretty hard to explain me to your parents, huh," she said, looking at the shadows through the window before they turned around the side of the house and they fell from sight.

"It's okay." He gave her a sad smile before they moved on. He just wished he had had proof, so he could have known that Beatrice was, in fact, out there somewhere. So he could have held hope that they would meet again.

He moved from the cement pathway and started around the house. The backyard was closed off by a fence, but Wirt opened it quietly and waved for Beatrice to follow him. He let out an amused breath at the mention of what his parents would think, his spirits lifting a little. "Yeah, you could say that. I don't think they would understand. They would think we were playing pretend or--crazy, or something."

From the fence, it wasn't far at all to the back door. Wirt opened it more carefully than he had the gate, making sure it didn't make a sound. His parents were in the living room, but if they heard him come in, then he had no doubt his mom would come say to say hello and grill him about the party he hadn't even gone to. And then, well, avoiding the front door would be for nothing.

The kitchen was orange and white and obnoxious, as were most things in the 1980's. But aside from the color scheme, it was a pretty normal kitchen. Just with appliances Beatrice would know nothing about. Wirt waved pointed to the stairs as he crept towards them, hoping she would follow. Once they were up there, they would be home free. The carpets would muffle any sound they made.

"Aren't we a little old to be playing pretend like that?" Beatrice asked, smiling playfully as they made their way to the fence and through the gate. Now that she was closer to the building, she could see that the architecture style wasn't completely foreign, and it looked nice enough. A decent size for four people to live in, making it smaller than her family's large farmhouse, but that wasn't inherently a bad thing.

Any familiarity she felt at the exterior of the house was promptly lost when they walked inside, however.

It was so...orange! There didn't seem to be a natural color in the entire kitchen. And the appliances inside were so...foreign, to her. Coming from as large a family as she did, they had a huge kitchen, with any kind of contraption they could get their hands on to make feeding so many children even a little easier. But almost everything in here was nonsensical, glinting silver or displaying strange, glowing numbers or lights. It was weird, but intriguing, and had Wirt not motioned rather insistently for her to follow him, she probably would have wandered over to investigate any number of these strange appliances.

Climbing the stairs, she made sure to walk as silently as possible, testing each step tentatively before putting her full weight on it. Once they were both safely upstairs, she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Why is your kitchen so orange?" she whispered incredulously. "What were all those things?"

"Yeah, but I think parents forget that sometimes." He returned the playful look but fell silent until the two of them were safely upstairs and as far away from his parents as they were going to get. He had been a little worried she wouldn't follow him, she had seemed so taken aback by the contents of his kitchen. Which made sense, when he thought about it. He hadn't really seen anything technological in the Unknown. It was like the place had been stuck in the far past or...something.

"I don't know, it's always been orange, and--" He shrugged. "all those things you saw were kitchen appliances. To, like, help make food really fast. They're everywhere around here, but I suppose the Unknown wouldn't really have microwaves and such, huh?" He moved down the hallway as he whispered back to her, stopping only once they were in front of his bedroom door. He reached to open it, but stopped and looked a little worried. Had he cleaned his room earlier, or were there clothes and mix tapes everywhere? What about his clarinet? She already knew he played, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing.

"Uhh."

He looked around quickly and then back to his door. They couldn't really hang around in the hallway forever, and while they could sit around in Greg's room until he got back, well, she would still need to head to Wirt's room eventually. Yeah, he...was just going to stand there for a little while longer.

"b-but, I can show you all that stuff later, you know? Whenever you're hungry." And his parents were asleep.

It figured that they were kitchen appliances, but it still didn't look like anything she'd ever seen before. And the words certainly didn't sound like anything she'd ever heard. "Microwave"? That didn't even sound like it was a real thing! No wonder Wirt and Greg had seemed relatively nonplussed with the Unknown. This place was so weird, and who knew how long she would be stuck here!

They stopped in front of a room in the hallway, and for a moment she froze, thinking that someone was coming, or that Wirt had heard movement from somewhere else within the house. But he kept talking, whispering, in front of this one door, making her frown in response.

"Yeah, but I'm not hungry right now," she whispered, making a sweeping motion towards the door. "So can we...maybe move the Wirt and Beatrice parade along? So I can stop freaking out about getting caught?"

"Right. Right, just give me a second, okay?" And with that he opened the door just enough so he could slip in and quietly closed it behind him. Not wanting to leave Beatrice in the hall for long, Wirt moved fast. He scooped up any stray clothes and threw them in his hamper, shoved his clarinet under his bed, and shoved all his cassettes in a semi-decent pile.

Satisfied it wasn't a complete disaster, he threw open his door and stepped aside to let Beatrice in. "Come on in and--make yourself at home."

Once they were both inside, Wirt closed the door and then just. Stood awkwardly next to it a second before moving to busy himself with properly organizing his cassette's. Wow, there were some really old one's in here. He forgot he made half of these.

Beatrice was sad that he turned away when he did, because it meant that he couldn't see the truly impressive eye-roll that she just did. And really, it was quite impressive; much more impressive than her tiny bird eyes had been capable of. What could he even have in there that he would want to hide from her? Maybe he was really messy, and had all his dirty underwear and gross socks all over the room. Ew. Boys were so gross.

(Wirt didn't strike her as the type to be that gross, but still. Boys.)

So she tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to open the door for her. When he did, she gave a little curtsey like any proper young lady would before making her way inside.

The first thing she noticed was that it was warm-colored. The walls were a warm, almost creamy brown color to go with the red carpet, and it felt...kind of like home. It also smelled like Wirt, which was kind of a difficult thing to quantify, because she didn't think he wore any kind of fancy cologne, and it wasn't like he smelled bad. She just remembered it, from all the time she'd spent on his shoulder and in his hair as a bird.

There were posters and notes on the walls, and it had the look of a space that usually wasn't so clean, but everything had been moved rather hurriedly to make it presentable. Smiling a little to herself, she took the vest and hat off, setting them on the bed before moving to investigate what he was doing. "Your room is nice. I like how cozy it feels," she said, picking up one of the cassettes and looking at it curiously. "What's this?"

"Oh, uh, thanks." He tried not to let the comment embarrass him. He liked his room, too, even though the walls were cluttered with various posters and pieces of paper, and there was usually a bunch of stuff lying around without any real purpose. It was never super messy, it just looked and felt lived it, which was how he liked it.

"Oh, these are cassettes. You can record, like, music and stuff on them." The one she picked up was one of the older ones. The sticker on the front was yellow and faded with age. It said "The Unknown." on it. It was one he had made after they had gotten back and before he'd moved on, when he had still been figuring everything out.

If she were to look through any more, she would find a bunch titled similarly. "For Sara" was the oldest in the pile, but there were others. One was written in the handwriting of someone obviously younger and said "Greg's really cool song mix, Yeah!". Next to that one was a tape with Christmas songs, and one labeled "For Beatrice." that was also old and yellowed, and finally one called "Wirt's poetry mix." There were plenty of other one's scattered on the table, but it was pretty clear that either Wirt or Greg had made all of them over the course of a few years.

"I like recording them. It's fun." He shrugged and thought nothing of it, really. When he was partly done stacking them in little piles, he realized it looked weird, having all of them on his desk. They weren't usually there, Greg had just dug through them earlier, looking for one he had made a few weeks before. So Wirt bent down to look for the box he usually kept them in, so that he could make the mess of tapes a little less messy.

"I think I remember you mentioning cassettes," Beatrice said, turning the plastic over in her hand, studying how light it felt and the strange shiny black stuff she could see on the inside. There were little wheels, too, but they were too small for her fingers to turn. Maybe that was how they played them. "Do any of them have your clarinet playing on them?" she asked, half teasing and half sincere. His bassoon playing had been better than she was expecting, and she had to admit that she was curious to hear him on an instrument that he had actually learned to play.

All she could do was play a little bit of piano; mostly simple stuff, just because it was proper. (She could also sew and embroider, but they were so boring it made her want to poke her eyes out with the needle.)

What she really liked doing was sketching, and helping with her siblings, and cooking. Her family thought her art made her eccentric, but she didn't think Wirt would laugh at her for it. Maybe she could cajole a pencil and some paper out of him to keep her occupied, since it probably would take a while to figure out how to get her home.

Setting the tape down, an older looking tape caught her eye, one that had her name written on it in Wirt's careful handwriting. "This one has my name on it," she said, picking it up and looking at it more curiously than the previous one. What kind of machine would be used to play this thing? There was something small on the desk, black with a clear window on it that had small little prongs inside that looked like they would fit perfectly inside the tape.

"Well, yeah. Most of them do." He smiled a little in nostalgia. He had made so many tapes over the years. Most of them were awful, but it was a fun hobby to have. He never really felt his clarinet--or his poetry--skills were good enough to warrant careers in either field, but they were comfortable spaces for him, and were things he enjoyed being able to do reasonably well. "Well, except the one's Greg had me make. Those mostly have him singing, and me playing really badly." As per Greg's request, of course.

Thinking about his own hobbies, he wondered what Beatrice did for fun, and was a little disappointed in himself for not knowing or asking her when he had had the chance. He considered her a friend, but friends usually asked those kinds of things, didn't they? Did that mean they weren't really friends, or...Okay, okay he was probably over thinking things again, but it was a little troubling to think about.

"Huh?" He set down the tape he was holding and leaned across the table to get a good look at the one in her hands. "Oh, it does."

It wasn't one Greg made, his own writing gave it away, but he didn't really remember making it. He had made so many tapes that year, they were all mostly a blur. The only one he could picture clearly was the one he had made for Sara. Not out of any lingering emotional attachment--they were still friends, but they hadn't really worked as a couple--but because sharing it with her had been one of the most embarrassing moments of his life.

"Can I see it?" Part of him was tempted to set it in the tape player and see what was on it, but mostly he wanted to get it and toss it somewhere it could never be listened to again. Because lets be real, it was probably filled with something completely mortifying.

Beatrice eyed him suspiciously, holding the cassette a bit closer with a bit of a defensive hunch, like she was prepared to grapple it out with him if he tried to forcibly take it from her. "I'll only give it to you if you give it back," she said. "It says it's for me, and I want to hear what's on it. So the last thing I want is to hand it over and have you break it, or hide it, or something."

Honestly, she didn't know what she was expecting to be on the tape. She'd seen the "For Sara" tape, and from their conversation at the fire, she knew that it had all sorts of personal stuff, like poetry and clarinet and other romantic crap. Certainly she wasn't jealous, not even a little bit; the pang she felt was just her being grossed out at the prospect of romance. She didn't care who Wirt made tapes for.

(Okay, maybe she did. Just a tiny bit. But there was one for her, and she was desperate to see what it held.)

"You should play it for me," she said, in a tone of voice that made it sound less like a suggestion and more like an expectation. "Or else I'll get Greg to show me how to make the weird black box work so I can listen to it anyways."

Wirt dropped his hands to his side in defeat, and frowned down at the carpet. He couldn't very well tell her was going to give it back, when really he was probably going to just toss it out the window. Well, he could, but it would be a lie, and she was clutching it defensively, like it was important, so he let her keep it. For now, anyway.

He glanced at the tape player on the table, and then back to Beatrice. "Oh, no, I'm not--you can't listen to it. There could be really embarrassing stuff on there, and then--" And then he would have to live with the fact she'd heard that embarrassing stuff, and he would remember every time he looked at her, and then he would want to just curl up in a corner of his room and wallow in misery.

"Just--just give it to me, and we can forget it even exists."

Edited 2014-12-02 18:44 (UTC)

"If it's embarrassing, why did you make it for me?" Beatrice asked, her frown deepening (although she was glad that he didn't seem to want to fight her for the tape).

It was probably because he'd never expected to see her again. Already, he'd told her that he and Greg didn't talk about their time in the Unknown anymore, and by extension, that meant that they didn't talk about her either. But the tape was older-looking than some of the others, which made her suspect that it had been made not long after his return. That only made her want to hear it even more. Like it might give her some insight into what he'd been thinking of her in the time they'd spent apart.

"No, nope, this is mine now," she said resolutely, taking the tape with her as she sat on the edge of the bed. "Deal with it."

"I don't know! I just did." Wirt sighed very dramatically, and sat on the floor near the bed, giving up for the time being. He would enlist Greg's help later, and see if he could get him to get the tape. It wasn't like she would be able to listen to it before then, she didn't know how the tape player worked.

Not that she wouldn't be able to figure it out. It wasn't too complex a device, all she would have to do is stick the tape in there and press a few buttons.

Hmmmh. He squinted at the tape player, deep in thought. Maybe he should remove it entirely? He could go shove it up in the attic for a while, until she forgot about the tape or got home. He would be golden, then, and wouldn't have to worry about it any more. Though honestly, he kind of wanted it back from her. He was curious, too. He just didn't want to listen to it while she was there listening in, for fear of judgement.

"It's probably nothing interesting, you know. Just--poetry or whatever."

Beatrice scowled down at him, giving his knee a nudge with her foot. "I've never heard or even ready any of your poetry before. So now you've just made me more curious."

If anything, the mention of poetry solidified her resolve. If Wirt had written poetry for her, she was going to listen to it.

She wondered if it sounded anything like the stuff in one of her mother'so books. The pretty, flowery words usually held no interest to her, but thinking of Wirt reading them in his even tone made her care about ten times more.

But it would be stupid to keep bickering about it, since it had been made abundantly clear that she would have to take matters into her own hands if she wanted to figure out the secrets held within. "What do we do now?" she asked, her voice sounding smaller, more unsure than it had when they'd been talking about the tape (which she tucked into the folds of her dress for safe keeping).

Edited 2014-12-02 20:18 (UTC)

He just made a disgruntled noise and sighed. Whatever, he could deal! He'll figure out a solution to this really, really dumb problem. (Really, he had more important things to worry about right now. Mix tapes shouldn't be very high up there. Why was he worried, anyway? Beatrice would heckle him either way. Urgh. )

He looked up at her and shrugged, looking a little lost. He hadn't thought this plan through very well. What were they supposed to do? They couldn't exactly go wander around in the graveyard right now, it was too cold and too late. And sitting here in silence seemed like it would just end up being awkward. "Do you need anything?"

He looked away again, to scan his room for things to do, but ended up staring at the hem of her dress, where it was stained with mud. Wirt stood up quickly. "Oh! I know, you--you probably need something to wear, right? I mean, your dress is kind of muddy, and not exactly warm, so--" He gestured vaguely, and started edging back towards the door.

"Mom has some stuff in the attic that would probably fit you. I mean, unless you're more comfortable in that, I guess."

Beatrice was sure she needed lots of things, like a bath and something to untagle the mess that had been made of her hair. And a change of clothes, but it looked like Wirt was on top of that. "It's usuall a pretty comfortable dress, but it's wet and muddy, so I think a wardrobe change would be nice. Thanks, for offering."

It seemed like he was paying better attention to what she might need than she was, oops. It wasn't her fault if she was still a little shell shocked! But warm, dry clothes and unpinning her hair would probably do wonders for her comfort, so she made a shooing motion towards the door.

"I'll stay right here and not run off to explore, I promise," she said.

"A-alright, I'll be back soon, then." With each word, he edged towards the door, and with an awkward smile and wave, he disappeared beyond it, letting it shut quietly behind him. He was gone a while after that, moving down the hall to where the ladder to the attic could be pulled down.

Once up there, he had his work cut out for him, and it took time to shuffle through the boxes up there. Baby clothes, old toys, decorations...aha! He grabbed an armful of things he thought Beatrice might like; long sleeved turtle necks and dresses, pants, and pajamas. Satisfied, he crawled back down and pushed the attic's ladder back up into the ceiling. Good, this would be plenty of clothes, and should last her a while. Now, then, what else did he need?

Blankets were on the top of his list, since he was probably going to end up sleeping on the floor of his room. He tried not to think about a girl sleeping in his room, and wandered off to gather sheets from the cupboard at the end of the hall.

"Alright, guess this is good." Time to head back.

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you're a TREASURE

NO YOU

NO YOOOOOOOUUUUUUUU

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