Chapter Text
In the moonlight, the boat looks like a great big serpent, sliding quietly over the water.
Twinkle is quiet as she watches it approach, too, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other and trying to warm up a bit. She’s standing at the dock with her hand in Megga the kitchen maid’s, and though it’s supposed to be spring already, the night air is too crisp and chilly for her thin, threadbare cloak, and her feet are bare besides – she can’t quite stop herself from shivering, even if she knows she should be still and silent as a mouse, because they can’t be heard nor seen by anyone just yet.
She’s still trembling when Sylvester takes her hand to help her step onto the boat, and he must realize it’s not fear that makes her shake so, for as soon as she’s settled he goes to fetch a blanket and wraps it around her shoulders, tucking the corners neatly in as to stop the breeze from filtering in.
“There you go, sweetling,” he says, and he pats her on the back too, awkwardly but not unkindly. “Nice and warm.”
Twinkle watches him without uttering a word, unsure of what she should think. Sylvester’s always using pet names for the serving women when he comes round the house – he calls the older ones madame, in that pompous way of his that makes them scoff and wave him off in amusement, and the girls are dear or dearest, depending on his mood – but sweetling is a new one, to her knowledge. It makes her feel strange, somewhat. Singled out, though not in a bad way. Special.
Master Petter says she’s a special little girl, too, sometimes, but he rarely ever makes it sound like a good thing, and Tanya the cook told her that it really isn’t, so Twinkle always does her best not to be alone with him when he’s in such high spirits. Or she did, up until now; if everything goes well, she won’t have to be alone with him ever again, or see him at all, really.
The thought makes her stomach twist in unease. She’ll be glad to be gone, even if she’ll miss the town and all the women that sang her to sleep and taught her how to pluck a chicken, but she doesn’t know what will be of her, now. She’s been gone from home for so long that she’s not sure she’d even recognize her family anymore: all that she has left of her mother is the memory of her goodbye kiss on Twinkle’s forehead, and of coin exchanging hands. And there’s really not anyone else who’d have her, even traded for some coppers, because she’s very small still and there are a great many chores she can’t be trusted to do just yet.
Papa had said they’d been lucky, that Master Petter would take her so young. She doubts it could happen twice - she’s not a very lucky little girl, when it comes down to useful things.
Well. She supposes it will be for Sylvester and Igor to decide. It must cost them a lot to spirit her away like this, since they were always taking paying jobs from Master Petter before: the least she could do is sit back and mind that she doesn’t get in the way. Even now Sylvester’s standing on the pier, trying to hand Megga some money, though she pushes his hand away almost immediately, crossing her arms and shaking her head when he makes to insist.
Twinkle strains to listen to their hushed conversation, but she can barely catch a couple words before Igor’s sidling up to sit beside her, thoroughly distracting her from her task.
He gives her a summarily once-over, but doesn’t say a word. Igor doesn’t speak much, as a rule: he usually lets Sylvester do the talking, even when they come to get their due and Master Petter is in a foul mood, and only ever seems to confide in his partner, speaking in sharp, nervous whispers in Sylvester’s ear. Tonight is no exception – he’s so silent even his movements feel subdued, but he regales her with a bright, wide smile, and rummages in his pocket for a moment, finally producing a tiny bundle tightly wrapped in wax paper. It turns out to be a small piece of candy, once the outer layer is peeled off, and Igor holds it out to Twinkle, looking expectantly at her.
She only stares back, dumbfounded, unsure of what she should do. His smile dims down a bit at the sight, and he moves to take her hand, careful not to tug the rest of the blanket away. Both men have much darker skin than her, but where Sylvester’s is such a deep brown it seems almost black in the faint night light, Igor’s has a fainter, olive tone to it, and her hand looks ghostly pale when laid into his own – he presses the sweet onto her palm and wraps her small fingers around it, his longer and thinner ones squeezing tight for a second before letting go.
Oh. So it is for her: they must have stolen it along with the rest, then, or found it somewhere for cheap. She doubts they would go out of their way to feed her treats, even if until now they’ve mistreated her far less than many others have.
She puts it in her mouth nevertheless, savoring the sugary flavor – it tastes amazing, and she hasn’t had anything sweet in ages besides, since the baker gave one of the maids some cake as a gift and she was allowed to have a slice. She smiles back at Igor when she’s finally done chewing, because it’s the polite thing to do, and he nods, looking especially pleased with himself before he moves back towards the helm of the boat to speak with Sylvester, who has since climbed aboard as well.
They depart as silently as they came, and Twinkle waves at Megga, who watches them go with her hands fisted at her sides, before settling back against the wooden planks, cocooned in her blanket. Belatedly, she realizes she should perhaps have said thank you to the woman, who lost precious hours of sleep just to walk her down to the riverbank, or at the very least thanked Igor properly, since he was just trying to be kind to her. She should tell him later in the night, when she stops feeling so tongue-tied and her hands and face aren’t sticky with sugar any longer.
She doesn’t get a chance to. The lull of the water gently rocks her to sleep, and despite the tension she dozes off before her hometown has even vanished from sight, Megga’s silhouette still standing tall at the very edge of the dock.
The official story is that her parents are dead.
Twinkle supposes they could be. She hasn’t seen them in a long time, and it’s not like anyone would have told her if they were. What coin they’d gotten for giving her up was meant to feed them through the winter, but she’s not sure if it was enough, or if they had any new babes since she left. Babes need a lot of food to thrive, she knows. That’s why she was the one to leave. She was getting too costly to feed, and Mama couldn’t nurse her any longer after she’d had her little brother.
But she doesn’t know they’re dead for certain, so the story’s still a lie, and Sylvester doesn’t want her to get it wrong until they’ve stepped far enough from Master Petter’s house, so he has her practice it a few times before they begin to move inland. She’s an orphan and they’re her relatives, and if she can remember it from start to finish then soon enough they’ll be as good as vanished among all the people they meet on the daily, and she’ll have a new home where she can be safe.
She repeats it all dutifully to the keeper of the inn they stop at on one of the first nights, when the woman asks her, all hushed whispers and looks of concern, who these men leading her around are. She only has to give the beginning of the story before Sylvester swoops in and takes the woman aside, murmuring the rest to her – Twinkle’s not supposed to be eavesdropping, but Sylvester’s very loud even when he tries not to be, so his explanation carries over to where the girl is diligently finishing her bowl of stew. They’re Twinkle’s uncles, Sylvester tells her with a nod in Igor’s direction, and they’re taking her to her grandmother’s house in the wake of her father’s death, and I’m sorry if my niece’s been behaving poorly, ma’am, it’s been a lot to take in for her.
Twinkle’s been on her best behavior ever since she clambered onto the boat, actually, but that seems to sell the story even better. The innkeeper takes pity on her, and before they leave she even gives Twinkle an old doll that used to belong to her daughter, now grown and married and with a babe of her own on the way. It’s worn and battered, and it’s been stitched back up more than once from the looks of it, but Twinkle hasn’t had a real doll in a while now, so she doesn’t mind a wink, and thanks the woman profusely before Igor ushers her out.
Her last doll had been a gift from Master Petter, but she hadn’t liked the smile he’d given her along with it, and then Tanya had warned her that all of Master Petter’s gifts were poisoned, so she’d scrambled away from the toy like a startled bird. She’d feared the poison would spread all over her if she kept holding onto it – she’s not sure this is what Tanya meant, now, but then again she’s always been very slow with things like that. Stupid little girls should mind what their elders say, though, and so off the doll had gone, and she’d only cried a little bit when she’d gotten nightmares about it, of waking up clinging to an ugly snake wearing her doll’s dress.
Still, she minds not to lose this new one, and she totes it about as they continue their journey, off the queen’s roads and onto the paths cutting through the woods, following the riverbed upstream and setting foot into town only when strictly necessary. She has little else to carry, anyway: her baggage is very light compared to Sylvester’s and Igor’s, but they won’t add anything to her pack no matter how often she tells them she wants to help, though sometimes Igor will relinquish part of his to Sylvester and give her a ride on his shoulders, if she’s tired and they have to press forward after the sun has set. They often do, because no one will travel then and they can be sure to go unnoticed, even when the moon is high and bright and lights the path before them, but Igor never complains when he has to pick her up, though she can’t be that light an additional weight – he’s strong, Igor, more than it would appear at first glance, with his short stature and skinny arms and legs.
They make an unlikely pair, he and Sylvester, one small and nervous, the other tall and boisterous and with a belly to match, but they seem to get along just fine despite all that, aside some occasional bickering. Igor is very free when it comes to touching Sylvester, always throwing an arm around the other’s shoulders and grabbing at his arm to catch the man’s attention, and sometimes Sylvester doesn’t even need Igor to finish his sentences before he understands what his partner means – they must have known each other for a long time, for sure, to be this close to each other. Neither of them is ever that overtly familiar with Twinkle, but perhaps it’s for the best, since it means they listen very intently when she speaks, as though what she’s saying were of the utmost importance.
It's strange, though not upsettingly so. She doesn’t think anyone has ever paid her that much attention at once before, except Master Petter, and even he wouldn’t care to remember what she’d done with her day past some disinterested questions.
“What are you going to name it, then?” Sylvester asks one day, nodding to the doll as she tucks it under her arm, allowing him to help her through a patch of wet mud.
That gives her pause, and she worries at her lower lip for a moment, ruminating on what he’s said. She hadn’t thought to give it a name – she’s not sure she would pick a good one, actually, or that she wouldn’t forget overnight and thus be forced to choose another.
She doesn’t even remember her own name, after all. Twinkle’s the one Master Petter gave her when he took her away, and it’s a nice one, it truly is – it reminds her of the stars, and of candles right before they’re snuffed out – but she used to have another, and it bothers her, sometimes, that she was too little to commit it to memory before it was changed. She’d pick a new one, but that wouldn’t satisfy her curiosity, either, and by now she’s grown used to the name she has. She’s Twinkle. At this point, she can’t be anyone but Twinkle.
“Nothing,” she says finally, tugging at the frayed threads on the doll’s head, where once there must have been proper hair. “She doesn’t have a name.”
She thinks she must have said something wrong, or that her face must have looked weird for a second, for the two men exchange a quick glance she can’t quite explain, but then Sylvester shrugs, as though he hadn’t expected any less. “Heh, that’s alright. Not everything needs to have a proper name for it. You’ll find one in the future if need be.”
Twinkle hesitates, searching his face to see if he’s just trying not to make her feel bad, but he looks as open and welcoming as ever. She beams at them both, then, and scampers off to inspect an anthill up ahead on the side of the road, and doesn’t notice the second, even more worried look Sylvester throws in Igor’s direction, or the way they hurry after her, picking up her pace so they won’t lose sight of the little girl bounding off through the woods.
Twinkle thinks they must have grown fond of her, after a while.
She’s not sure they liked her from the start – they had no reason to, she’s not their blood for real, whatever the story they’ve made her repeat is. They could have left her a long time ago, once they’d gotten tired of her like her parents had. They could have never embarked on this journey to begin with, and no one would have been angry at them for it, because she wasn’t anyone important and she certainly wouldn’t have been brave enough to ask for help.
But they didn’t. They didn’t and by now she’s spent so much time with them she knows she’ll miss them, once they inevitably drop her off somewhere, and she thinks they’ll miss her, too, for a little while at least. They’ve never said it aloud, but they don’t seem too annoyed by her presence either, and they ask her question and crack jokes to make her laugh, and take turns sitting with her when she has nightmares - and there are those discussions they have, as well, when they believe her to be asleep and the fire’s died out almost entirely.
She startles awake one night to find them near whisper-shouting at each other, and burrows even deeper into her blankets, her eyes screwed shut and her ears straining to listen. She’d like to go relieve herself, in truth, but she’s supposed to go wake one of them up if she needs to go, because they don’t want her to stray away from the camp alone at night, and right now they’ll probably get mad if she interrupts them while they’re talking. She’s never seen them properly angry, not at her at least, but she doubts it’d be a pretty sight, if Master Petter’s shouting and pounding on tables was anything to go by.
“She’s can’t stay, Sylvester.”
“Well, what’d you suppose we do? Look at her. She’s a child. We can’t just leave her on the side of the road, can we? She trusts us.”
“You’re twisting my words around.” Igor’s heavily accented voice is so low it’s almost unintelligible, but it’s clear he’s upset, even from a distance. “I didn’t say we should leave her now. I said she can’t stay with us forever. It’s not safe. And that wasn’t the plan.”
“The plan was to get her away from him. We never really talked about what to do after. And besides, we’ve never been ones for sticking to a plan.” A pause. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right.”
“There are places where she could be safe. Safer. Some of the gods’ temples- they take girls like her, younger, even. She’d have friends.”
“Yeah, and when he goes searching for his little pet, where do you think he’ll go looking first? And if they even take her, and they might not, they’d look down on her. They’d look down on us. They’d think that we’ve- Pah. No, it’s best we keep moving. Wait until the dust settles. Then we can think about the rest.”
“We can’t keep moving for long, is what I’m saying. It’s not good for her. We’re not good for her.”
Sylvester scoffs. “Don’t try and tell me you don’t care about her, you old fool-“
“I care about her. As do you. But men like us, we can’t take care of a child well. We can barely feed ourselves with the cards and the magic tricks. Our way of life isn’t good for her.”
“Then might be it’s time we find a new one.”
There is a lull of silence, then, and Twinkle takes the chance to untangle herself from her blankets, because she just can’t hold it in any longer. She pads over to where they’re sitting side by side before the fire, and they turn to her as one when they hear her coming, matching guilty looks on her faces.
“Ah, sorry, sweetling,” Sylvester says with a sheepish smile, standing up and dusting off his trousers. “We didn’t think we were being so loud.”
She shakes her head, because it was hardly their noise that was keeping her awake, and tugs at his hand until he takes the hint and leads her to the bushes nearest to where they made camp, but she keeps looking over her shoulder as she goes, watching Igor instead of minding where she steps. The other man’s eyes follow their every move, as if he didn’t trust them not to vanish into the forest the moment he turns around, and he’s still staring when Sylvester tucks Twinkle back into her makeshift cot and goes to cover the fire with ashes for the night.
It’s hard to go back to sleep, afterwards, even once both men have retired as well, curled up next to each other a couple feet away from her. It’s not that she thinks they would break camp and leave her behind if she were to fall asleep – they wouldn’t, Sylvester said so himself, and she has no reason to think he was lying. He never lies to Igor, he told her once, because Igor has known him for a long time now and would notice right away, and then run him ragged from here to Camelot in penitence.
Still, there are many thoughts running through her head, and none of them will do her the favor of shutting up and let her doze off. True, she’d known they’d been meaning to leave her somewhere already, but she doesn’t like being reminded of it, and though they insist it’ll only be after they’ve made sure she’s safe and happy, Twinkle doesn’t think she’ll take well to the change.
She’ll miss them, that much she can prove. Igor was wrong – they’ve been taking good care of her, up until now. Better than she’s used to, at least, though sometimes the nights get colder than they were at Master Petter’s house, and the food is scarcer. They listen to her, and she thinks they look happier than they used to before, when they were always tucking tail and running off to finish a job. And even if she were to end up someplace warmer, where the man who bought her would never find her, she would still be surrounded by strangers, people who don’t know the songs she hums to herself and won’t point out odd-looking trees along the road when she’s growing restless.
At least she knew Sylvester and Igor, even before they came to spirit her away. At least she’s seen them be nice to each other and to others, and hold the door open for Megga when she was coming through with her arms laden with firewood, though Sylvester made a joke out of that too, sketching a bow and taking off his hat as though she’d been a high lady. Perhaps there’ll be men and women who hold the door open for one another in one of those temples they mentioned, or some willing to open the window at night to show her the stars, but Twinkle can’t be certain, and if she can’t be certain then it doesn’t really count, in her mind.
She holds her breath for all the days that follow, then, waiting for her escort to make their choice. If they are to drop her off, then they’ll probably do it soon, since now they likely suspect she might have been eavesdropping. Good servants are not to be seen nor heard, one of the younger girls had told her, because that’s the only way they can listen in to their masters’ conversations, but she’s gone and made a mess of it already, and they might not like any of that one bit. She keeps expecting them to bundle her doll in her arms and leave her on someone’s doorstep without so much as a goodbye, and chews at her lower lip until it bleeds whenever they get close to any settlement.
But the next temple they walk past goes by without any acknowledgment from either of the men, and so does the one after, and the one after that, and slowly Twinkle can feel herself relax, and soon she’s letting Igor take her by the hand again, in the middle of busy towns and crowded marketplaces. He fears she will get lost or trampled if she doesn’t hold on tight, and she nods and complies eagerly every time he says so, allowing him to tug her along this way and that.
After all, if he doesn’t want her to let go, it stands to reason that he won’t be the one to let go first, and that’s a good enough motive for her to trust him, in Twinkle’s opinion.
Sylvester leaves her and Igor to make camp alone, one day.
He tells Twinkle that he’ll be going to the nearest village to trade some trinkets for coin, and hopefully, food – he’s done it a few times already, and has always been successful, though she knows he might come back with the trinkets still in his pocket and just enough to last them the next two days of travel. It’ll mean he’s stolen it all, then, or begged it off someone, but she’s not supposed to make mention of that, or of the fact that Sylvester looks more upset every time he has to resort to either of those options, so she merely nods and goes to help Igor build a fire. She’s a good girl. She can do what she’s asked to, especially because neither of them is ever rude when he asks, or looks as though he’s owed that much from her.
Afterwards, she takes advantage of the last of the sunlight to play, and gathers sticks and pebbles and blades of grass to build a little house, singing snippets of songs under her breath and skipping along in tune with the music. She likes dancing, likes bouncing and twisting around on her bare feet, and she gets to do it more often as of late, since there’s no more need for her to make herself as small and quiet as possible – Sylvester and Igor seem more entertained by her antics than anything else, and have never even suggested that she stops, so she doesn’t see why she should just yet.
As predicted, Igor only laughs when she hops closer to give him a particularly interesting stone she’s found, and gently squeezes her hand in thanks.
“You’ve got pine needles in your hair,” he says, amused, when she makes to leave. “Come, I’ll take them out for you.”
He reaches out to do just so, but Twinkle rears back instinctively, her good mood vanishing to leave space for a sudden, blinding flash of utter terror. She mentally scolds herself right after – he didn’t meant anything by it, was just trying to be nice to her, the girls would say she’s such a priss – but there are tears in her eyes already, and her heart is beating way too fast, and she can’t think straight, even about something as stupid as this.
It’s just- she’s just- she doesn’t want people to touch her hair. The house women would, all the time, and she would endure the discomfort day in and day out because they said that it’d be a shame if hair as pretty as hers wasn’t braided or tended to, or if she went running around looking like a bird’s nest, but she hated it all the while. It reminded her, it reminds her still, of other hands petting her head and running their fingers through her golden hair, and of another voice calling her pretty, and she knows Igor will be upset by her reacting so badly but she just can’t think, so she stands there, with her trembling chin and runny nose like the stupid little girl she is, and waits for his rebuff.
But Igor doesn’t seem angry. Shocked, yes, and terribly confused, but he doesn’t snap at her or ask her what’s wrong, nor does he stomp away in outrage. He just sits on his haunches, a troubled look on his face, and doesn’t reach out to her again, not to her hair nor anything else. She’s grateful for it, but her heart won’t stop hammering in her throat, cutting off her breath.
He looks at her for a good long while, then gets up, deliberately slowly, and steps a little away from the fire. “You know, when I was your age, I thought I could run away to join the circus,” he says, casually, as if he were talking to himself. “They had better people, and then I met that fool of a man, but I did learn a little bit of tumbling, before they kicked me out.”
Twinkle stares at him, uncomprehending, then gasps when he rolls back his shoulders and launches into a handstand, which he holds for a couple seconds before returning to his feet. He gets through another without incident, and then on the third one he wobbles and falls on his backside, and that startles a wet little laugh out of her, because he must have done it on purpose just to amuse her. He smiles back at her, but doesn’t draw much attention to it, instead returning to what ends up being quite the little show, cartwheels and somersaults and all manners of things she’s only ever seen travelling troupes do from afar.
She’s clapping and laughing out loud by the end of it, her tears all but dried up, and doesn’t flinch when he asks if she’d like to learn some of it. She doesn’t cringe away from his touch, either – his hands are gentle as they guide her through the unfamiliar movements, and he’s always close when she tries for herself, ready to catch her before she gets hurt too much. He insists he’s not a good teacher, but what little words he speaks are soft and patient, and she does much better than she would have done otherwise, if he’d gone around yelling and berating her.
She can manage a passable handstand by the time Sylvester returns, and there are even more pine needles in her hair, raked up from the forest floor. She picks most of them off on her own that night, sitting before the fire, and in the following days Igor allows her to wear his hat when they’re travelling – to keep her ears from freezing off, he says dismissively, but it’s high summer now, and she knows the truth, even if he won’t admit it out loud. She doesn’t say thank you, either, and instead wraps her arms around his middle and squeezes tight, burying her face in his old shirt.
He doesn’t hug her back, awkwardly patting her back until she’s let go, but Twinkle can feel the fondness in it all the same, so it’s really just as good, for what concerns her.
And then, their travels come to an abrupt end, seemingly out of nowhere.
She doesn’t know what has made her rescuers change their mind – they don’t see fit to tell her, just like they don’t tell her a great many things, to ensure that she’s not too worried about things she can’t change. What she knows is that one night they have some sort of row that isn’t over by the time she dozes off, and the next day, when Igor’s teaching her how to skip stones on the river surface, Sylvester comes to tell them they’ll be stopping for a while, and she’s much too surprised to ask why. Far too delighted to complain, either; she’d liked being on the road, but the weather has started to get nippy again, and there’s only so much good kindling for the fire they can find in a place they don’t know.
It’s a shame, really, that the Dark Curse hits right when they’ve found a spot to call their own. If she were a little older, Twinkle would see the cruel irony in it, and she does, afterwards, once a few other curses have washed over her new hometown and the novelty of it has faded a tad. But when the first one comes she is six-and-a-half and none the wiser, and she’s nowhere near the eye of the storm besides, where she would have known what is going on and could have tried hiding behind castle walls.
The abandoned house they claim is the furthest thing from a castle – it’s all but falling apart, in fact, and mustn’t have been occupied in a while, if the traces left by wild animals are of any indication. It’s supposed to be a temporary solution, somewhere to weather autumn and winter before they get on the move again, but soon enough the two men start poking around looking for things to fix, as if it were meant to last them longer than a few months. Sylvester waves off the damage as though it were no big deal, but it’s Igor who does most of the work, cleaning the chimney and climbing onto the roof to patch the biggest holes.
He lets out a string of curses in a language Twinkle doesn’t know when something goes wrong, too, and a few in one she knows very well, and only belatedly seems to realize she’s down below and within earshot, sorting out his tools and sweeping grime off the floor. He looks terribly apologetic when he peers over the edge to check on her, which makes her giggle, and then without missing a beat he goes back to berating his partner, telling him to get of his arse and do something useful for once in his life.
It’s funny, in a way. Sometimes it feels like they’re the ones who have to adjust to something new, and not her, which makes sense, if she thinks about it some. She was living in a proper house only a few months ago, even if she only ever slept in the servants quarters and always had to share her cot with someone, but neither man ever talks about anything similar, or at least not when she can hear them. The only stories she can plead out of them are about their lives when they were younger – Sylvester was born in the Enchanted Forest, but Igor comes from a land far far away, like her, and distracts her with tales of deserts and sultans whenever she gets curious. And she has never thought to ask whether they left behind a place like this one, besides, or why they were so good at making do without a roof over their heads.
But now the roof is there, if holding a bit precariously onto the beams that were already in place, so perhaps they can forget about all that. It’s not like it matters, anyway. They have food on the table – and a table to put it on, no less, left behind by the previous inhabitants of the house. There is a well they can draw fresh water from, and Twinkle’s not to do it alone the way she would at Master Petter’s house, because the others think the bucket’s too heavy and she might fall down and break her neck. Sylvester barters a damaged barrel organ off a peddler and brings it home as an apology gift one day, and then spins Twinkle around the room as Igor turns the crank and coaxes off-key tunes out of that battered old thing, over and over until it’s dark outside, because there’s no neighbor close enough to complain about the ruckus.
Her feet hurt when she goes to sleep that night, in what passes for the sturdiest bed in the house, but she can’t find it in herself to care much about it, her chest all filled with warmth and content. She’s happy, she realizes. There are drafts and squirrels trying to get through the roof repairs and her doll’s lost most of its stuffing in an accident at the marketplace, but she trusts Sylvester and Igor when they say she’ll be safe inside these walls, and she’s happy. She doesn’t think she’s ever been happier in her entire life.
And then, suddenly, it’s all gone.
Stella sits down at the kitchen table every night to do her homework.
It never occurs to her that it might be always the same night, and the same stack of homework as well, though sometimes she tackles them in a different order. There’s no reason why she might suspect otherwise, after all, and even if someone were to tell her she wouldn’t believe it, because it would make no sense at all. Doing the same things every day, for years and years? That’d be silly indeed. Everyone would have died of boredom ages ago.
Sometimes she goes through math first, long lists of numbers she has to memorize. Sometimes it’s English instead, and she copies the words her teacher has printed for them over and over until she’s not making mistakes anymore. She still misses some letters every now and then, even though everyone says her penmanship is impeccable, and she would be upset if they said anything else, in truth. She puts a lot of effort in it, especially when she’s writing her name at the top of the page, so the teacher won’t mistake her homework for someone else’s – there are a lot of Ss and Ls in Stella Scalawag, and she traces them all down carefully, like loopy little snakes.
Scalawag is only one of her fathers’ last name, because they can’t get married just yet, and maybe will never be able to. There’s only one name on her adoption certificate as well, they told her at some point, which she thinks it’s ridiculous, because it makes it look as though Nadeem didn’t exist, and she can see him around the house just fine. When she has bad dreams at night and she hears their bed creak in the next room over, she never knows which one of them might be getting up to check on her, because they both care about her the same, and she calls them both dad when it suits her, even if it hasn’t been long since they took her in and their first names come to her much more easily. The paperwork may say that she only has one father, but the paperwork is stupid, and when she’s older she’ll find it and tear it to shreds, and then no one will have the gall to insist that she’s in the wrong.
She tells as much to Sylvester whenever the matter arises, and it always makes him laugh, but he says she should think about finishing school before she goes looking for trouble, because it’s the most important thing. He’s also the one who sits with her every night, every night for twenty-eight years, and there’s a strange look on his face when he checks on her schoolwork over her shoulder, as though it pained him to think about it for too long.
“There’s a clever girl,” he says, and it’s clear from his voice that he’s upset about something, even if he’s trying to be cheerful around her. “Keep at it, sweetling. I never had the head for this kind of stuff, and look at how I ended up.”
Sylvester has lost his job, recently. Stella’s not supposed to know about it, but their house walls are thin and her teachers say she’s too curious for her own good, especially when it comes to things she shouldn’t be hearing. Sylvester’s lost his job and he isn’t sure he’ll be able to find a new one before things get bad, and he and Nadeem are scared someone’ll come take her away again, if they can’t prove they’re able to provide for her.
Stella doesn’t want to think about getting taken away. There’s an orphanage in town, but the kids there all look sad - or at least, the ones that don’t act like bullies do. She doesn’t want to end up there; actually, she barely wants to believe her parents would allow it to happen. They’re her dads. They’ve got lots of tricks up their sleeves. Surely they wouldn’t let her slip from their fingers without trying out one of them, even if it means stealing her away and picking up running until they’ve crossed the town line.
Sometimes, when Nadeem is in the mood for sweet talking, he says he’ll put her on a plane and take her to the country of his birth, and that she’ll find tons of aunties and uncles who’ll love her very much there, but it only comes up when they’ve heard someone whisper ugly words in their direction at the shops, not because he wants to reassure her that they’ll stick together no matter what. He doesn’t know she knows, yet, and there’s always nasty people around anyway, ready to comment on what a disgrace her family is and how those men will ruin that innocent little girl – and those are the decent ones still, the ones who keep most of their thoughts to themselves. She’s heard worse names be thrown around about them, by grown-ups as well as by her classmates, but she’s forbidden from repeating those, and they scare her the most besides, so she does her best to banish them from her mind.
Nevertheless, she clings onto Nadeem’s words like a lifeline, because it’s the best chance she has of sleeping peacefully at night, and she doesn’t want her parents to worry about her any more than they already do. They’re laden with problems as it is, there’s no need to make it worse. It’s like playing pretend: if she closes her eyes, the monster will be gone, and the space under her bed will be empty. It doesn’t matter that sometimes it feels as though there were a thick, damp fog filling their entire house – the best Stella can do is go about her day as if it didn’t exist, as if her entire family weren’t waiting for something terrible to happen to them all.
Even if it gets really hard to finish her work sometimes, when she’s struggling to breathe through it.
She’s giving the final touches to her burrow when she hears footsteps drawing closer.
Twinkle doesn’t freeze in shock, exactly – she’d known someone else might come to the playground right from the start, even if she’d rather they didn’t. If she’d wanted to be alone for real, she’d have better stayed home, but her house is cramped even on the best of days, and the weather was too nice to remain cooped up inside. Building herself a hideout under one of the climbing towers might seem silly, but it was supposed to give her peace and quiet while she laid out her plan, something she couldn’t have hoped for in a place where Igor is currently dismantling the hull of a rotting old boat.
Still, now she’s not alone anymore, so she has to give up any chance for quiet. And she knows she was singing to herself while she was playing, too – she always does, and she heard some lines from a song she really likes from a car radio on the way there, which left it stuck in his head for the past half hour or so – so there’s no chance for her presence to have gone unnoticed.
As predicted, she feels the footsteps grow louder and louder, and then draw to a halt a couple feet away from her. There is a beat of silence, and then a boy’s face pops into view at the entrance of the structure, followed swiftly by a dog’s snout.
The boy looks appalled, and he and Twinkle stare at each other for a good few seconds, as though one of them had overturned a rock to find a rather interesting bug lurking underneath. On the contrary, the dog seems pretty much unfazed by her presence, but then again, she is no dog expert. She might be getting it all wrong.
“Hi,” he says, uncertainly, after a moment.
“Hi.” She doesn’t think they’ve met before, though he looks familiar somehow, with those red-brown hair and a smattering of freckles over his nose. Might be she’s seen him at one of those playdates people used to plan right after the curse was broken, before Sylvester got them kicked out for being too untowardly when addressing a princess, but she can’t be sure.
“What are you doing here?”
Well, now that’s just plain rude. “That’s my business,” she replies, then gets up from where she’d been huddling on the ground, dusting off her dress. “And anyway, I got here first. What are you doing here?”
He shrugs, raising his left hand - the dog’s leash is still coiled around his fingers, and he tugs half-heartedly at it when the dalmatian tries to sniff at her shoes. It’s a nice gesture, even if it’s a bit useless, since she’s not scared of dogs, or anything else that can be found in Storybrooke, really. “Just walking.”
“You’re lying.” She ignores the way he recoils at her words, and instead points an accusatory finger at the both of them. “That’s not your dog. It’s Dr. Hopper’s. I see them all the time at the park.” It’s easy to recognize Dr. Hopper’s dog, because it’s the only one of its kind around their parts, and the man always seems to be out and about for some reason. Twinkle sees him at every hour of the day when she’s in the town center, and Sylvester has started suggesting that she might want to go see him properly as of late, and that it might do her some good, but so far no one has taken her to the doctor’s office yet, so she supposes it’ll have to wait.
“I know, but he’s friends with my dad, so he lets me take Pongo for a walk sometimes. I can’t go very far, though.”
Oh. That sounds sensible. She scrutinizes the boy for a moment, trying to determine whether he might be making the story up to trick her, but he looks like he’s telling the truth, and her glare seems to be making him uncomfortable, so she looks down instead, offering Pongo her hand to smell. “That’s alright, then. Can I pet him?”
“Yeah, go on. He’s friendly. Just don’t be too rough.”
She scoffs at that – as if! – and crouches down eagerly, scratching Pongo under the chin and over his spotted head. The dalmatian seems to appreciate it, and even licks at her fingers; it startles a bright grin out of her, and she’s in high enough spirits that she doesn’t stop smiling when she looks up to address the boy again. “I’m Twinkle, by the way.”
“Pinocchio. Nice to meet you.”
“Wait.” She stands up abruptly, wiping her hand over her skirt. Pongo noses at the hem of it, probably upset at being ignored so suddenly, but this is much more important. “Really?”
He blinks, somewhat surprised. “Yes. Why?”
“Nothing. It’s just…Everyone knows you.”
It’s not an exaggeration. Twinkle’s not anyone important, and her name was nowhere in the stories they would read in school before everyone remembered who they were, but others weren’t so lucky. It was mostly princes and princesses and other nobles, faces that would be recognizable anywhere, but Pinocchio’s not a name that would easily be mistaken for something else, even if his is hardly a role she and the other girls would pick for their games at recess, when they play make-believe with the tales from their homeland.
Twinkle always chooses to be a mermaid, when she can. She likes the idea of swimming like a fish and singing for an underwater audience, and it’s easier than quarreling over the chance to get an actual princess anyway – all her friends want to be Snow White, and have been fighting viciously about it since the beginning of the school year, though they always play Snow White the bandit, the one they heard legends about. Nobody wants to play Snow White as she is now, since she’s so old, even though she’s still a hero.
But Pinocchio doesn’t appear thrilled by her comment, or by the fact that she’s recognized him. Rather, he looks as if he’d very much like to be somewhere else, and he buries his hands in his pockets, turning away from her and staring intently at the slide a little further off from them. “I guess.”
Twinkle opens her mouth to reply, then closes it almost instantly, chewing at the inside of her cheek. She almost wants to say sorry, because she didn’t mean to upset him, but she’s not really sure what she should be sorry for, and she doesn’t want to look like a fool by apologizing for the wrong thing. Still, she can hardly say nothing at all and go back to her games, because that would be even ruder, and she might be many things, but rude she is not.
So, after a moment of careful deliberation, she gestures vaguely towards the tower, waiting until she’s caught his attention again before speaking. “Listen, do you want to stay and play too? It’s okay if you don’t want to, but it gets boring when I’m alone.”
He furrows his brow in confusion, though he seems glad for the change of subject. “I don’t know. What are you doing?”
“I’m playing spies.”
“Like James Bond?”
“Like Kim Possible.” She motions for him to follow her into the hideout, bowing down as not to hit her head. “Come on in. This is my secret lair.”
Pinocchio hesitates for a second, then pokes his head in, looking around with some trepidation. There’s not much to look at, in truth – only her notepad and pen, and a pair of binoculars she found buried in her parents’ closet, and a handful of gravel she collected to mark the place when she finds clues, or to scare off enemies. Or pigeons. She’s seen more pigeons than enemies, if she’s honest with herself, but then again it’s only early afternoon still. She’s got time.
Thankfully, he doesn’t comment on her scarce equipment, and instead only says: “If it’s a secret, why are you showing it to me?”
Twinkle sighs dramatically. Really, she’d hoped she wouldn’t have to explain just about everything. “Because how else are you supposed to help me if you can’t get in? Duh.”
“But how d’you know I’m not a rival spy or something? I could be here to steal your secrets. It’s always like that in the movies.”
That takes her aback a bit, and she quickly corrects her previous statement, fighting off a giddy grin. So he does know how to play properly. “Right. Of course. Prove to me that you’re not an enemy, then.”
“Uh.” Pinocchio scratches at his nose, looking around in search of inspiration. Finally, his eyes land on Pongo, and he points uncertainly at the dog, who seems eager just at the prospect of getting involved. “I wouldn’t have let you pet Pongo? If we were enemies?”
She ponders on it a moment, then nods sagely. “That sounds about right. Well, welcome to the team, then. We’ve got to work together now.”
He still seems unsure, and hovers hesitantly at the entrance instead of stepping in. “I’ve got to keep an eye on him, though. Jiminy’ll be mad if I let him wander off.”
“He can be part of the team, too. He can help us in our missions. Like those tracker dogs you see on TV.”
“I thought that stuff was for the police?”
“Well, there’s no rule that says spies can’t have it too. And I think Pongo’d make a good tracker dog. He looks smart.”
“He is. He’s very smart.” Pinocchio lingers a second more, then finally gives in and crawls into the lair, still holding tight onto the leash. “Alright, then. Let’s do it.”
Twinkle regales him with a blinding grin and scoots over to give him the space to sit, but then it dawns on her that she’s forgotten something important, and the smile falls off her face. She’s leaning closer to Pinocchio before he can even begin to make himself comfortable, and she’s waving her notepad menacingly not two inches from his nose, too, for good measure. “I’ve got two dads. Is that going to be a problem?”
He rears back in shock, watching her warily. “What?” He stammers. “Are you- Is this still about the spy thing?”
“No.” She wishes she didn’t have to do this, because she’s starting to like this Pinocchio boy, and she’d have been better off keeping her mouth shut, but she’s tired of having to wait to find out whether other kids actually want to be friends with her or not. She can count on the fingers of both hands the times she’s tried to have some girls over, only to learn that they think her house is weird, all small and cramped and filled to the brim with oddities, or that their parents have something to say about her parents, or that you shouldn’t hang out with that girl anymore, sweetie. You don’t know where she’s been. You don’t know what she’s done.
Better to get it over and done with as soon as possible, then. It’ll hurt her quite a lot, if he actually up and leaves at the discovery, but at least she’ll know right from start that she shouldn’t have trusted him to join her games. “No, it’s about me. I’ve got two dads and I don’t have a mom, and you need to know first thing, so if you think that’s gross or- or weird, you can get lost before we start. I won’t be mad. Swear.”
His eyes widen, and he cocks his head to the side, clearly puzzled. “I- No,” he says, slowly. “I don’t think that’s gross. And I don’t have a mom either. It’s just me and my father.”
“Oh.” Right. She should have remembered. He was a puppet. Puppets don’t have moms to begin with. “You’re alright with that, then?”
“Uh-hu. Yeah.” Pinocchio shrugs, smiling tentatively at her. “’Sides, it would be really stupid if I called you weird, because then I’d be weird too. That wouldn’t make any sense. Right?”
Twinkle blinks, because she hadn’t expected that for sure, then smiles back, hesitantly, but warmer and wider than ever before.
“Right,” she replies, settling back against the burrow’s wall. “So, I think we should start by spying on Granny- I’m telling you, that woman’s suspicious. We’ve got to find out what she’s hiding.”
Her fathers approve of the fact that she has a boyfriend already.
Or rather, they don’t disapprove, which is nearly as good, if you ask most of Twinkle’s girl friends. Some of them have been straight out forbidden from taking a boy home for a good long while, because twelve is too young and their parents think they should wait some more. At least Sylvester’s grumbling is mostly good natured, and Igor hasn’t made any outright threats where he could be overheard.
Yet.
She thinks she’d be getting an entirely different reaction, in truth, if the boy in question were pretty much anyone but Pinocchio. Her parents are…well, calling them overprotective would be a stretch – they have never enforced that many rules on her, and she abides by them all without putting up much of a fuss, so they’ve never had any reason to get stricter. And they trust her to know how to keep herself out of trouble, besides, and to know they’ll drop everything to come get her if she falls into it anyway as well. That doesn’t sound that unreasonable to her, especially compared to what she’s heard about some of her friends’ families.
Still, while Sylvester and Igor might be of milder opinions that many would expect from men like them, they have never entirely got over their fear that she’ll be snatched from under their nose the moment they turn away. And boys her age can be quite the nuisance when they want to, so Twinkle can sort of understand why they would be afraid she might get hurt, even if privately she thinks it a very stupid belief – it’ll take far worse than a bunch of dumb schoolchildren to send her running, if that. Twenty-eight years of curse life and a few more in a place as confusing as Storybrooke have taught her that not only most people are far less frightening than they think themselves to be, but also that she’ll have somewhere to land back on her feet if one of her plans goes wrong. She’s not a scared little girl anymore. Some of her most bothersome classmates still have the bite marks to prove it.
She’s never had any need to bite Pinocchio, though, or to chase him off in any other way. Pinocchio is…He’s sweet, there’s no other word for it. He drew her a very pretty picture when they got together, though he looked all flustered when he was giving it to her, and he always holds doors open for her, which makes her flush in turn. He’s fun to be around, and far more clever than a lot of people think when they only speak with him for a short time, but mostly he’s just nice, and she can’t believe he’d ever be able to hurt anyone on purpose, unless they’ve hurt him first – in which case she’d gladly take up the task herself, provided Lampwick hasn’t beaten her to it already.
Her parents agree with her on that, at least, though they seem far less enthused by it than she is. “That boy’s too damn good,” Sylvester grumbles one night, as they’re doing the washing up after dinner. “How’s a poor father to scare him off when he’s so well-behaved, I say. Is nothing sacred anymore?”
Twinkle rolls her eyes, unimpressed by his antics. “He was raised well, dad. Dr. Hopper and his father would chew him up before you could leave the house, if he treated me wrong.”
“Ah, yes. A good fellow, that Geppetto. D’you think he’ll tell his son to come ask me for your hand first, one of these days?”
She groans, flicking some soapy water at him in retaliation, but she has to admit it is a funny joke, mostly because they both know how ridiculous it sounds – she’s twelve, and Pinocchio’s thirteen. They’re both too young to be thinking about something as adult as marriage, or anything in the vicinity, no matter how careless about the matter their homeland was. She was too young to have any of that knowledge at six, for goodness’ sake, even if she wasn’t shielded properly from it by the people around her. She’ll have to amend that mistake herself, she suspects, since no one seems to be rushing to do it for her.
She’d thought Pinocchio might react with disgust at some of what she’s gone through, and set to spreading a few choice tales about it, but that would be utterly unlike him, and over time she’s come to realize his life wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either. As such, they fit together quite nicely – she puts up with his strange little habits, and he puts up with hers, and thus far it’s worked out almost perfectly, if she says so herself. He waits until she’s pushed strands of hair off her face herself before he kisses her on the cheek, and she tugs him away by the hand whenever she spots the Mother Superior coming their way, because no way she’ll let her proper, very grown up dates be ruined by a fairy. She won’t suffer it. Her parents have taught her better than that.
They’ve taught her not to mind what other people say about her, too, but Twinkle’s still working on that part. It was easier when it was just vicious insinuations about what her life must be like, because she knew those things to be false, but she’s not a small child anymore, and it’s no longer just her parents she hears whispers about. She doubts that most of the adults taking note of how beautiful her hair looks, or what a pretty young girl she’s grown into, intend it to sound malicious, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it, or that it doesn’t make her shudder and shudder as if she were stuck on a windswept road. And she can’t make a habit out of running away, nor can she always get her feet to move, when she’s in that kind of state. It’s a far safer choice to let her bangs fall to cover her eyes and remove herself to a quieter spot, where she can steady herself in peace before she goes home – by now Pinocchio has learned to notice the signs without her having to tell him, and will usually take her to his house, where they can play his father’s old records until she’s calm enough to enjoy the music, or to the library, where no one’s supposed to talk, so she won’t have to hear anything that upsetting for a while.
The only thing Pinocchio won’t do is dance with her, which is a shame, because she loves dancing so, but it’s nothing that can’t be easily fixed, as are the very few other issues they’ve had together. She has Grace and Ava and the other girls, and he’s introduced her to enough of his friends that she only has to pick which one will be more likely to indulge her whenever the need arises. She likes Pierrot the most, because for all that he’s a fiend his cheeky attitude still reminds her too much of Sylvester to be annoying, and he will go dancing with her besides, even though most of the songs he knows are the bawdy ones you could only hear in taverns back in the Enchanted Forest. And Lampwick might be skittish as an alley cat when you approach him the wrong way, but it takes her very minimal prodding to get him to peel off the coarse façade, and then he’ll begrudgingly go along with any of her schemes – they spent a memorable afternoon digging into the bottomless pit that is her parents’ garage, once, pulling out everything from old wigs to broken rabbit cages, and she doesn’t think he’s ever seen look so carefree, nor did he make a single nasty comment about her house.
So yeah, she think she’ll manage just fine. A scalawag she is, through and through, and not just because Igor insists she’s inherited all of Sylvester’s taste for mischief along with his name – she can survive almost anything, like a cockroach, except she’s likely to bite off any foot that threatens to stomp on her. And she doubts her parents would mind, even if some wagging tongues were to comment about her running around with boys all the time.
They’ve had far worse rumors spread about them, anyway.
“Is there supposed to be a car parked in front of our house?” Sylvester asks, poking his head inside Twinkle’s bedroom.
Or at least, she supposes he must be leaning in to talk to her, since at present time she’s too busy trying to fish out her left shoe from under her bed to look up. Honestly, if she didn’t have reliable sources keeping her posted on any new magical arrivals, she’d think some kind of mischievous little goblin or imp might have taken up residence in her house – she could swear her stuff doesn’t get strewn around so much, usually. “It’s just Eugene,” she says, as she finally manages to make a grab her prize. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Eugene’s a car now?”
“That’s his dad’s car.” She puts the shoe on and jumps to her feet, darting past her father on the way out. “He’s borrowing it for the night. He’ll give me a ride to the party.”
Honestly, she’d suspect it to be some kind of plot to impress her, or an attempt to woo her, even, but then again, it’s Eugene they’re talking about. Perhaps he just doesn’t want them to get all muddied up – it’s been raining on and off all week, though right now it’s slowed down to a drizzle, and he’s got a practical enough mind to think about that sort of thing.
Sylvester follows her at a much more sedate pace, though he still looks unconvinced. “Is he now?” He asks, in what she’s learned to recognize as mock-dismay by now. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I trust him to deliver you all in one piece. Do his feet even reach the pedals?”
“Don’t let the boy hear you talk about him like that,” Igor’s voice warns him from the next room over. “A vicious kid, that one is. I don’t want to find out what his payback would be.”
Twinkle opens her mouth to retort, but she must admit he’s right – vicious is an apt description for Eugene when he’s in a foul mood, which he almost always is. And anyway, she’s running late. She’ll have to avenge her friend’s honor at a later date, when she has no party to get to.
She’s elated at the prospect of getting a chance to do something so…so normal, for a change. Witches and fire dragons and entire lands being lifted up to sit on the mountainside are all fine and dandy, but sometimes she’d like their lives to resemble more the morning TV shows ones rather than Prince Valiant, a sentiment she knows would be echoed by many if she voiced it aloud. A simple gathering at Ava and Nicholas’ house while their father is away might not look like much, but in truth it’s just what they all need, right now.
And besides, she can’t wait to see what the reactions to Pinocchio and Lampwick’s recent tryst will be. She was one of the very first to know, along with Pierrot, and she’d been suspecting something was afoot ever since eight grade anyway, but not everyone’s been brought up to speed yet, though neither of them has ever been that good at keeping things a secret. She likes being leagues ahead of the general public when it comes to things like that. It’s a very satisfying feeling, and one she doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to, even now that she’s honed her information-gathering abilities to perfection.
The sound of a blaring car horn filters in as she’s collecting her jacket and bag, and Sylvester scoffs, shaking his head when he walks past on his way to the couch. “He could have come knock on the door, at least. A shame, is what it is.”
Twinkle rolls her eyes, and then wrenches open the nearest window and stands on her tiptoes to lean over the windowsill, as to holler all the more loudly. “What the hell, Eugene, you could just have knocked.”
“Chivalry’s for people who come out on time,” Eugene yells back. He’s rolled down his window as well, mindless of the raindrops falling on his hair as he pokes his head out – he must have leapt at the chance to harangue her some, as usual. “Hurry up, or I’m leaving you behind.”
She throws him a rude gesture, and then closes the window back up, her lips curling into a small smile. There’s no mirror anywhere close to the front door, so she only has the faint reflection on the glass to check as she fusses at her hair for the last time. She hasn’t done much about it, only tied a bandana around her head so it won’t fall in her eyes as she dances, but there’s no reason why it should look like a frizzy mess now, is there-
And then, abruptly, she stops.
“Everything alright?” Igor asks, frowning, coming up to her with a bowl of popcorn in his hands – they’re supposed to have a movie night while she’s out, but she doubts it’ll be long before they’re both fast asleep on the couch, old coots that they are. She’s not sure they’ve even picked a movie they actually like, or if they’ve already resigned to their fate and found another MacGyver rerun to doze off to.
Twinkle should be cracking a joke about it, and steal a couple popcorns before heading out, but instead she remains frozen in place, still fidgeting with a long strand of hair. It goes past her buttocks now – she doesn’t so much as trim it, usually, and the last time she got it cut properly it was in a Misthaven kitchen with a sullen maid manning the scissors. It’s beautiful, that much she’s heard plenty enough of, and she knows it frames her face well, and that without it she’d look odd, so different from the golden-headed terror that’s been infesting the streets of Storybrooke these past few years. It’s her trademark, almost, everyone would agree.
And yet…
“Do you think I could chop it all off?” She hears herself asking, distantly, before she’s even aware of the words leaving her mouth.
That clearly catches him off-guard. “What?”
“The hair. Cut it short. Do you think I could?”
“By yourself?”
“No, I- I was thinking of trying out the hairdresser, actually.”
She poses the question lightly, offhandedly, as though it were a matter of trivial importance, but there is a lump in her throat that would beg to differ, forcing her to hold her breath. For his part, Igor is staring at her quizzically enough, but she knows he’s reading between the lines as much as she’s silently begging him to, and that he’s not seeing his coltish, mischievous teenage daughter anymore, but a terrified little girl forgetting her woes and doing some tumbling by the waterfront.
Then he sets the bowl down on the windowsill, takes her face in his hands and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You can do whatever you want,” he says, grinning broadly, once he’s looking at her again. “Only, nothing that’ll get you arrested just yet. Your father said you have to graduate first.”
“That’s right,” Sylvester calls out, blissfully unaware of what has just transpired between the two of them. “Being a scoundrel is a time-honored family tradition, but you’ll be a scoundrel with a diploma, mark my words.”
Twinkle laughs out loud at that, and then the spell is broken, as easily as it gets. She gives Igor a quick hug, which he returns without a word, and then goes to press a kiss to Sylvester’s cheek as well, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll be home by twelve thirty. Promise.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he huffs, but she can tell he’s pleased. “Call if you need anything. And don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down that much,” she objects, but she’s still smiling when she goes to leave, so wide her cheeks very nearly hurt.
And then she’s off, a skip to her step as she shuts the door behind her back and hurries down to the car, blind and deaf to Eugene’s complaints.