golden hearted

“Ohh, yeah the park sounds like a good idea.  I haven’t been in a minute.”  As he contemplated if they should pack a lunch for a trip to the park, Goldie gave him an unexpected kiss that made him blush.  Whit squeezed her hand as she snuggled up next to him.  It felt like a very anti-climatic end when Goldie seemed immediately be over the unexpected letter from her mother.  He had a feeling she had been quite dog-like before the werewolf attack even happened.

“Hm, I feel like we’ve watched so many movies recently.  We should do something else.  Maybe we could start a new series together instead…”  Whit trailed off; he wasn’t really an ideas man if he were honest with himself.  “Oh!”  A lightbulb turned on in his brain as he gently nudged Goldie to the side so that he could reach into his back pocket.

“I picked up a pack of cards the other day.  Have you ever played a game called Egyptian Rat Screw?  Sylvia is very competitive so she’s scared everyone else off from the game, but it would be nice to not be the only one losing every single game.”  He winced.  “It doesn’t take too long to learn.  Also I’m sure you’d be interested to see the less cool and collected side of Sylvia.”  Whit gave her a sly look.  “She might even hex me if I make sure you’re good at the game before we play with her; that would be loads of fun.”

“I’ll be honest, I think it’s a half-demon thing.  Or a demon thing in general.  Immortality and all, you better have a pretty decent memory, I guess.”  Whit shrugged.  He was quite honored that the only other number Goldie kept memorized was his own, but he decided not to be embarrassing and say anything about it out loud.

“The post office closes soon, but we can go first thing in the morning.”  Whit looked at the letter on the table and let out a snerk.  “Wow, flashbulb memory.  My maman doesn’t trust the postal system, so she would never put outgoing mail in our mailbox.  She made me walk to the post office to drop off any mail we needed to send out.  They didn’t have stamps that you could peel the back off of until the early 90s, so they used to have this gummy stuff on the back that you had to lick to get it to stick to the envelope.  Well for some reason when I was about 8 or 9 I was super obsessed with the taste, so I’d hang out at the post office and offer to lick people’s stamps for them so that they wouldn’t have to do it.”

His mouth felt dry as the memory resurfaced.  “Bleh, I can still taste the sticky stuff.  It’s sort of like when you have to lick an envelope, but much worse.  You needed to keep it on your tongue for 10 seconds to get it wet enough that it would stick.”  Whit shuddered.  “Thank god for the revolution that is self adhesive.  Anyway, we’ll take it to the post office tomorrow.  I’ll throw in some money and we can pay for the faster shipping so that she’ll hopefully get the letter faster than a week from now.”

“It’s funny how many small things like that have changed over time. I’ve never even considered how mail was handled before modern stamps were invented.” Goldie had that spark of wonder in her eyes again, even with such a small detail it felt like she was looking through a tiny window to the past. Whit was full of interesting stories like that -- at least, she was always interested in them, even if they sometimes seemed mundane. “You’ll go with me? Maybe we can spend some time at the park after, if the weather’s nice.”

Scooching a bit closer, and lifting herself up slightly on her knees so that she could reach a bit better, Goldie wrapped her arms around Whit’s neck. “Thanks for the help, Whit.” She pecked his cheek and then plopped back down on the couch beside him and interlaced her fingers with his.

“Camping in Central Park is feels more like being homeless rather than having a fun adventure in the woods.  But there’s some great camp grounds about 30 minutes from here that we can check out sometime.”  Whit was going to get his hands on the credit card if it killed him.  Slumming it in Central Parks was one of the worst parts of that trip, and he got eviscerated by hag with giant scissors at one point.

He was contemplating the excuse to give Sylvia when Goldie asked him about his first phone.  For a moment he truly didn’t want to answer the question, but he knew she wasn’t going to bully him like Silas would.  He tapped his chin pensively.  “Hmm, well I’m 64 now…”  The years tended to blend together, but he could picture his first phone quite well.

“I had a Razr phone when it first came out in 2005, so I guess I was 48.  But the guy wouldn’t sell it to me at first even though my ID says 22.  Although I technically stopped aging at 19; regardless, he was all ‘oh no kid, you gotta have an adult to purchase this phone’ and I was like ‘man what are you on, I’m not underaged’ and it just went on like that until I called my mom to have her give the dude permission to sell me the phone.”  Whit huffed and folded his arms.

“I totally forgot about that interaction, but it burns me up every time the memory resurfaces.  Anyway, I still remember all my friends home numbers back when we were teenagers.  504-306-3767 was Andy’s.  504-774-9832 was Mitch’s.  504-246-8956 was Angelo’s.  I probably have like 50 phone numbers locked down in my brain.  I still memorize everyone’s phone numbers in case my phone dies and I need to call someone.”  Whit nodded, quite proud of this useless skill.

With her head tilted slightly to one side, Goldie was quietly contemplating the fact that Whit had had trouble buying a phone even though he had technically been nearly half a century old. The realization that she was physically stuck at the age that she had become a werewolf was still fresh, so she hadn’t really considered that it might be a problem for her sometimes. Before she could get too deep into that thought, Whit amazed her with his amazing memory.

“Ah, you still remember those after all this time? That’s impressive. The only number I know, other than mine, is yours.” She grinned at him, then tapped her chin in contemplation. “Yeah, I had lots if home phone numbers when I was a kid. I guess I just forgot each one whenever I had to memorize a new one.”

“Been to New York City…?”  Whit shifted in his seat uncomfortably.  He had indeed been to New York City, but it wasn’t exactly something he wanted to recount to Goldie just yet.  He and Chidi had spent half a night getting absolutely wasted in a club on – Sylvia’s orders – where he nearly got bit by a stripper vampire.  “Yeah, I’ve been.  It’s okay, but I didn’t get a chance to check out Broadway.  Sylvia made us camp in Central Park because she didn’t want to pay for a hotel.  Which was dumb, because we literally had the M.O.N.S.T.E.R. credit card…”

He forced his mood to clear before Goldie questioned him.  “I can make up a reason to go and get the card again, though.  Er– well, I can ask Sylvia to make up a reason.  For some unknown reason they don’t trust me with the card unless I’m on official business, have no clue why.”  Whit scratched his cheek sheepishly as he took her letter to look over.  He wasn’t much of an editor when it came to grammar, but nothing stood out to him as particularly egregious.

“I think that looks good.”  He handed it back to her and smiled.  “I think she’ll be happy to get a letter back at all, in all honesty.”  Whit was still firmly in the corner that this was probably a bad idea, but he wasn’t going to burst Goldie’s bubble if he could help it.  It would do him no good to spend the rest of his life assuming other absent parents are as shitty as his own father.  He just couldn’t shake the feeling that this Eugenia lady was only doing this for herself.

“Wish she would’ve like, left an e-mail or something instead.  It’s gonna take almost a week for the letter to get to her, and then almost another week to get a letter back.  Maybe put in your e-mail or cell number or something at the end.”

Goldie lifted her hands to her face as a laugh bubbled out of her. The thought of Sylvia and Whit camping out in Central Park was way too funny to hold it in.

“It’s okay if you can’t get the credit card. We can just stay at Central Park. I’ve never been camping before.” She was half-joking, but camping really did sound like a fun idea to her. “Unless you count waking up in the middle of the woods... without any clothes on. I guess that’s happened a couple of times before.” Goldie sighed. Luckily, since Whit had introduced her to M.O.N.S.T.E.R she had been getting better at controlling her transformations, so she hadn’t had any recent incidents.

Whit beamed as Bea complimented him.  She must really mean it if she was going to throw him a bone.  “Perfect, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t lame.  Silas would’ve told me it was very lame, so I needed a woman’s opinion on the matter.  But yeah, I guess you’re good to return to Sylvia’s dungeon.”  He was perhaps a little sad that their adventure ended so quickly, but at the same time he knew their truce would be short lived.

“You should buy a necklace to go with that charm.  I doubt Sylvia has anything to put it on.”  Whit wandered over towards the opposite wall that had a large selection of basic necklaces.  “Yeah, I’d get her this.”  He took a long black cord off the wall and handed it to Bea.  “She’ll wear necklaces if she can tuck it under her shirt so that it doesn’t get in the way when she’s, like, leaning over dead bodies and gross stuff.  This one is long enough that she won’t have to worry about it.”

He gave her a genuine smile as he stepped towards the counter and pulled out money to pay for his items.  “She got in a fight with her mom the other day and she’s been in a bit of a foul mood when she’s not working, so that’ll probably cheer her up.”  Whit took the small bag from the woman cashiering and stuck out his hand for Bea to shake.

“Thank you for helping.  Although it was unwillingly, it was nice to have a second opinion so that I wouldn’t spend the next two weeks praying she wouldn’t hate my gift.”

A disgusted noise immediately escaped her as Silas’ name was mentioned. She tended to avoid him as much as possible, which proved difficult sometimes since he and her older sister were entangled in some strange on-and-off toxic non-relationship that Bea couldn’t possibly begin to understand.

“Yeah, you definitely can’t trust any advice that guy gives you.” She nodded in agreement. As Whit’s items were being checked out and he mentioned the fight Sylvia had with her parents, Bea fell into a puzzled silence. She hadn’t heard anything about it, or even really noticed any change in Sylvia’s demeanor. Bea was still processing the information when Whit reached out to her.

“Sure. I admit this wasn’t as big of a waste of time as I thought it would be.”  Bea sighed as she looked down at the charm and necklace in her hands, then placed them on the counter and begrudgingly reached out to shake Whit’s hand. She supposed she could attempt to be nicer to him in the future. “I guess I’ll see you the next time you decide to barge into the lab unannounced to cry to Sylvia about something or another.”

Whit carefully took the charm from Bea and let out a relieved sigh.  “Thank god; I was really hoping I was gonna luck out today.  Perhaps god is real.”  He said this as if he wasn’t a half demon and one of his friends wasn’t an angel.  When Bea asked what he was putting it on he gave her a sly look.

“Ho ho, you see my dear friend, I’m going to put them on two bracelets.  Let’s go see if they have any on the wall over there.”  Whit marched with purpose over to the wall of basic bracelets in hopes that they’d have the type he had in mind.  50% of the reason he’d picked this place was because he knew they’d have a lot more charms, the other 50% was because he knew he wasn’t going to find the type of bracelet he wanted anywhere else in-store.

“Aha!  Perfection.”  He snatched two basic bracelets out of a bin and triumphantly held them in Bea’s face.  “You see, when you hold hands the magnets snap together.”  Whit demonstrated it by raising the two bracelets next to one another; once they were close enough the magnets connected with a satisfying click.  “See, it’s cute right?”  His face fell.

“It’s cute right?”  He might cry if Bea told him otherwise, but he was going to be a big boy and hold it in until he got home if that was the case.

Bea was careful to bring her own charm along with her as she followed Whit. She decided that she may as well get it for Sylvia. That wasn’t weird, right? Sylvia was technically her boss, maybe this could equate to a more personalized “best boss ever” sort of gift? Bea was overthinking again when Whit dangled a pair of bracelets in front of her face, snapping her out of it.

As he demonstrated the magnetic qualities of the bracelets she gasped; suddenly she felt her teeth aching from the sweetness of it. It was too cute, and the sick feeling of jealousy formed in her stomach like a stone. Whit asked for her opinion on the idea, and the pitiful look on his face made it impossible for her to tease him, as much as she wanted to.

Whit’s shoulder shook as he held back a laugh at her retort.  He couldn’t argue with her though; he was certainly the least busy person he knew.  Before he was dating Goldie he was spending most days – and nights – eating cat treats in his pajama’s while watching Forensic Files reruns.  Bea was definitely busy comparatively, especially since Sylvia doesn’t understand what a break is.

“I’m looking for a cat and a dog.  Preferably a golden retriever, but a wolf would also work I guess.”  He pushed all the charms to one side of one of the bins to use the cleared side as his reject pile.  One handful after another got dumped in the reject pile.  Frankly it was insulting that it was taking so long to find a dumb cat charm; people should want thousands of cat charms in his not so humble opinion.

“Here, buy this one for Sylvia.  Maybe she’ll be so happy she’ll remember to give you a lunch break for once.”  Whit jerked his arm towards Bea to hand her a charm of a tiny coffin.  He hoped it was good enough as a peace offering.  After ages he finally found a tiny silver charm of a sleeping cat; Whit did the sign of the cross as he carefully put it on the ledge of the display before turning to address Bea again.

“Finally found a cat; have you found any cute dogs or wolves?”

Bea breathed a quiet sigh of relief as Whit stated exactly what he was looking for; at least she wouldn’t be stuck with him for the next three hours deciding which charms he should pick. She had to admit, though, the idea was pretty cute.

“Alright, I’ll search these ones over here.” Scooping a bit of the pile and bringing it closer for her to pick through, Bea got to work. Now that she had a clear mission she fell into a bit of a comfortable silence, and as Whit held his hand out she reached out and took the charm without a second thought. Once Bea saw the tiny coffin in her palm, she cast Whit a wary sideways glance as she placed the charm aside; she supposed she could consider a truce for the time being.

“Just a second.” Bea’s search pile was dwindling, and so far the only canine-resembling charm she had found was a fox head. She was beginning to lose hope, when she spotted exactly what Whit had requested: a fluffy-tailed golden retriever. “Ah!” With perhaps a bit too much excitement, she picked up the little dog charm and held it up in triumph. “Seek and you shall find, right? What are the odds of them actually having this? I’m glad it worked out.”

“Mmhm, mmhm.”  Whit nodded along as Bea explained what she was doing back at the lab.  “That sounds like busy work to me, but I’m sure it’s vital in the most lax sense of the word.”  He then quickly sidestepped out of her way before she could throw a punch or shove him.  “Well I’ll make this as painless as possible so that you can go back to your gross tissue samples.”

They finally made it to the end of the hall to the jewelry store he had in mind.  Bea seemed vaguely interested as she looked at all the various gemstones they had on display.  He wasn’t here for a gemstone; however, and meandered to the back corner where they had a large display with various charms.  Bea tagged along behind him before making a disparaging remark.  Whit bristled in response and huffed.  

“Some people find me charming thank you very much.  Sylvia thinks I’m charming, ask her.”  He really hoped Sylvia thought he was charming, because he was sure Bea would actually ask her.  He tilted his head as he contemplated her question.  “Well, I dunno really.”  Now that he thought about it, it frankly didn’t make sense in his mind.  “I guess it was because I was nice to her and she wasn’t super used to that.”  He shrugged.

“Also I saved her from some witches that were about to kill her, so that probably helped.”  Whit puffed out his chest.  “I’m sorta like her knight in shining armor, you see.”  He turned around to dig through the charms which didn’t seem to have any semblance of organization.  “The real question is why isn’t an adorable catch like yourself dating anyone.”  The sentence was dripping with sarcasm, but she started it.

“Charming?” Bea brought her hands up to her mouth and pretended to stifle and exaggerated laugh. “I really doubt that Sylvia finds you charming. I’ll ask her, though. Maybe I’ll learn something new.”  She definitely felt that she was being a bit harsh on Whit, but now she was in too deep and there was no going back. Bea was pondering how the knight in shining armor idea was a much more likely theory, when Whit suddenly gave her a taste of her own medicine.

“I could totally date someone if I wanted to!” She had the sudden and strong urge to wring Whit’s neck. “Some people are just too busy for relationships, have you ever thought of that, you uncooked poptart?”

Whit gave Bea’s outfit an appraising look as she mentioned she’d personally prefer clothes.  That made sense for her, but Goldie did already have a lot of clothes.  The toy idea was pretty brilliant, but jewelry was always nice…dammit, Bea really wasn’t being any help.  Finally she seemed to make her decision and shoved him towards the area of the mall that had most of the jewelry stores.

“Okay, okay, so now we need to put our thinking caps on.”  Whit tugged at an imaginary goatee as he looked around at their many choices.  “What I’ve decided on isn’t overly fancy, so we don’t need to go to one of the diamond stores or anything.  Hmm, I think there’s that weird hippie jewelry store somewhere towards the end of the hall; they’ll probably have exactly what I need.”

He marched off again, although did pause long enough to make sure Bea could keep up with his long strides.  “So what were you doing before Sylvia sent you off to run this errand?  You said it was ‘important’ –” he did air quotes to prove his incredulousness “– but Sylvia works at her own weird pace so I can’t imagine you’re on a time crunch.”

“She’s not making you sort brains again is she?”

As Whit seemed to go along with her suggestion without any trouble, Bea breathed a mental sigh of relief as they made their way further into the mall. She nodded in agreement on his points.

“No, I’m not sorting brains.” Bea narrowed her eyes at Whit as he insinuated that what she was doing wasn’t important. She didn’t really want to talk about what Sylvia had her doing, since just the thought alone made her nauseous, but she decided to just get it over with quickly, like ripping off a band-aid. Lowering her voice, she continued. “If you really want to know, I’ve been sorting and labeling tissue samples at varying labels of decomposition. This experiment is vital to Sylvia’s research, you know. It is important.”

They arrived at the store that Whit mentioned before in no time, thanks to Bea having to keep pace with his enormous strides. “This is the place, right?” She asked as she walked in with him, taking a look at some of the merchandise on display behind the counter. There were necklaces, bracelets, and rings made with stones of any color you could imagine, polished or smooth, with gold or silver accents... It was a bit overwhelming, really, and she supposed that Whit would have to consider what he knew about Goldie to make the best choice. The fact that Whit had a real-ilfe, non-imaginary girlfriend was still a shock.

Whit huffed.  “Yeah, yeah, she’s always busy.  I don’t think she’s ever taken a vacation in her life.  If she’s not working then you’d have to check for a pulse cause she’s probably dead.”  He waved his hand dismissively.  He wasn’t actually all that upset, but it would’ve been nice to know Sylvia’s Number One Fan was going to be showing up instead.

He quirked an eyebrow and looked down at Bea as she caught up to him.  “That sounds like you’re more concerned about what Sylvia would think than what I would think.”  For a moment his heart raced at the mere thought of him somehow destroying his relationship over a poorly picked gift.  It would be just his luck; he would somehow offend Goldie by picking an insensitive gift.  “Well at least you ended up in the right mindset at the end there.”

Whit stopped in his tracks and held out an arm to block Bea from walking any further.  “Okay so first things first.  Do I go the jewelry, the clothing, or the toy route?”  The mall forked at the point they were at, he didn’t want to bother walking over the entire mall when they could cut their visit in half by picking a type of gift ahead of time.

“I have idea for all of them, but…not entirely confident they’re good ideas.  Which would you want the most on your birthday?”

Bea didn’t bother denying that she was really mainly interested in helping Whit because she wanted to impress Sylvia with her amazing gift-buying-support skills. Helping to find a gift that would make Goldie happy on her birthday wasn’t a bad perk, though.

As Whit stopped and abruptly held his arm out to signal her to stop, Bea didn’t slow down quite in time and ran into him instead. Huffing a quiet sigh, she cast an exasperated look at him as she considered the question.

“Me, personally? I think I’d prefer clothes over anything else.” She glanced down at her outfit, which was a slightly baggy hand-me-down dress and sweater combination, which previously belonged to her sister. “But any girl would enjoy getting jewelry from her boyfriend, right? And a cute toy is something she can place in her room and look at every day...”

Whit had nervously texted Sylvia to ask for her help with finding a present for Goldie; he was honestly surprised she decided to humor him.  He was mostly sure he knew what to get her – mostly – but he was still horrified at the thought that she would hate what he picked out.  He needed a girl’s advice – he decided this after Silas suggested it, likely to get him to change the subject – so Sylvia was the obvious choice.

He was only a minute or two late when he was suddenly accosted by Sylvia’s tiny assistant.  Well she wasn’t that tiny, but comparatively…her temper also happened to be short, at least when it came to him.  He blinked twice and tilted his head.  It took a beat longer for him to realize what was going on.

“What?!  Sylvia sent you to help me?!  This is cruel even for her, she should’ve just said no.”  He dramatically placed a hand to his chest and shook his head.  “Beggars can’t be choosers I suppose.  And you’re not ‘holding my hand’; I just need a second opinion, sheesh.”  Whit rolled his eyes at her dramatics.

“Why did Sylvia send you anyway?  I thought she was done with her weird ‘checking decomposition rate in various soils’ project or whatever it was.”  He barely gave her a backwards glance as he immediately ventured further into the mall.

Bea was honestly not expecting Whit’s reaction. What did he have to be so disappointed about, anyway? Bea was totally qualified for this task. Before she had a chance to say anything in response, Whit had changed the subject and began walking off without her. Bea had to jog a few steps to catch up.

“Well, Sylvia’s a busy woman. She has more important things to do than to go shopping on a whim. There’s so much stuff for her to do, I don’t know when she finds time to breathe.” Her expression had softened a bit as she thought about how hard-working her mentor was (Sylvia absolutely was Bea’s mentor, whether she knew it or not), although she tried not to think about the yucky experiment itself too much.

“Ugh, this bites!” Bea hissed under her breath as she sat on one of the many benches lining the large walkway of the mall. Her arms were crossed and her expression was quite grumpy as she eyed the faces of the passersby, looking for her friend, who was supposed to meet her about five minutes ago. The thought crossed her mind to simply leave and go back to work; she made a solid attempt, after all. She could tell Sylvia that Whit had stood her up--

There wasn’t even time to finish the thought as a tall, pale, frankly impossible-to-miss figure entered her peripherals, and Bea stood up quickly. So much for getting out of this unfortunate assignment the easy way.

“Whit! You’re late!” She marched over to him. “You realize I had important work planned today that I had to put on hold, all because you’re too dense to buy your girlfriend a gift without someone holding your hand! I hope you know, you’re going to owe me big time after this.”

Whit’s heart skipped a beat as Goldie stated she wanted Whit with her.  It was a silly reaction, but she was so sincere with her request that it filled him with borderline giddy glee.  “No, it’s fine with me.  Anything to make the process easier for you.”  He glanced over her shoulder to see what she had written so far.  She was certainly putting more effort into this than Whit would have; it was worded quite precisely but still contained the Goldie certified warmth he would expect from a letter written by her.

“You know, something really strange must have happened for her to give you up for adoption.  Like maybe she got pregnant as a teenager.  It would normally be in pretty bad taste for a rich family like hers to just give up a child.”  Whit chewed the inside of his cheek as he contemplated the situation.  “If that happened, then maybe she didn’t really want to give you up in the first place.”  That thought alone made him feel a little better.

“Let me go find a good piece of paper for you to write the final copy on.”  Whit stood up again and drifted back into the kitchen.  There was a beat up notebook that Goldie appeared to be using to write down homemade baking recipes.  He flipped through until he found a clean page and carefully ripped it along the perforated edge.  He returned and carefully laid it next to Goldie’s drafted letter before sinking into the seat next to her again.

“So when are you going to try to set up a time to meet?”  Whit thought about how both of them lacked a true 9-5 job; it was probably not going to look great to this Eugenia lady, but it certainly made it easy to just plan trips.  “I suppose she’ll probably come here.  Technically we could make it to her using M.O.N.S.T.E.R.S facilities, but she doesn’t need to know that.”

Her smile widened as Whit agreed to her request, then she returned her attention to her rough draft, which was nearly complete. In all honesty it wasn’t often that Whit denied anything she asked for, but she still felt appreciative each time he chose to oblige her.

Settling into a thoughtful silence once again, Goldie read and re-read her own written words. She didn’t want the letter to become too lengthy and tried to keep everything short and simple. As Whit spoke again she looked up at him.

“Maybe that’s what happened. In the pictures we saw online she doesn’t look very old.” She nodded to herself. It was a valid theory, and one that she had wondered about many times as she had speculated about the circumstances that had led her parents to the decision of giving her up. “I’m sure she had a good reason, whatever it was. We’ll find out soon, hopefully.”

The letter was nearly complete as Whit entered the kitchen again and returned with another sheet of paper. Goldie thanked him and carefully began to write the  final draft.

Whit clenched his jaw as Goldie took his hand; it didn’t upset him to talk about his dad anymore, but he could tell that Goldie was hurt on his behalf.  It was part of the reason he didn’t plan on telling her unless she asked, but it was going to happen sooner or later.  She seemed contemplative as she considered whether or not meeting this woman was a good idea.

“I guess you’re right.”  Whit closed his eyes and nodded.  Yes, it was very unlikely that Eugenia would treat Goldie even half as poorly as his father treated him.  If there was one thing rich people cared about, it was appearances.  If Goldie wasn’t living up to her standards, he was sure she would simply leave her a stack of cash as a peace offering and jet back home.  “No, you are right.  I’ll be honest, even though my dad treated me poorly I always looked forward to him coming back.  I craved learning more.  I wanted to understand what I was– no, who I am.  It wasn’t until he finally showed me how to travel to Hell that I was satisfied.  You deserve your own ‘travel to Hell’ moment with your mom, er– well, I hope you don’t have to actually travel to Hell to do it, but you get what I mean.”

He had a forced smile on his face.  Whit wasn’t completely onboard with the idea, but Goldie deserved a chance to meet her parents.  He at least had his maman to help him out; Goldie had grown up with no one like that in her own life.  “Alright, I guess we should come up with a response.  Or, uh– you should come up with a response.  I don’t want to intrude.  It’s a very personal thing, facing your family members.  If you want me here then I’ll be right by your side, but I dunno.  It might be better to meet her alone.”  He chewed the inside of his cheek.  “Up to you I guess.”

Whit stood up and legged it to the kitchen to find a piece of scrap paper and a pen that still had ink.  He carefully handed it to Goldie as he returned and shrugged.  “Probably best to make a draft before writing something official.  Gotta practice your nicest handwriting too.”

Goldie tilted her head slightly as Whit mentioned traveling to Hell, a subdued spark of curiosity lighting up her eyes, but ultimately decided that it was probably better to ask him about it some other time. As he stood up to look for some paper and a pen Goldie couldn’t help but smile to herself. Even though Whit didn’t agree with her decision he was still being so supportive.

It occurred to her for a moment that she had never really had a person like him to lean on in the past. Even the vast majority of the adults that had been in charge of her wellbeing only did the bare minimum of keeping her clothed and fed, but not much else. Having Whit beside her during such times, even when it wasn’t always convenient for him, gave Goldie a warm feeling.

Before she could dwell on her thoughts for too long Whit returned with a pen and some scrap paper he’d managed to find in the kitchen. Sliding down from the couch to sit on the floor, she placed the paper on the coffee table in front of her and tapped her chin thoughtfully with the end of the pen.

“You’re right, I guess technically this is going to be the first impression of me she’ll have.” Goldie mused, although in true Goldie fashion she didn’t seem too perturbed by the thought, and seemed to be taking the situation as a whole in stride. Touching the pen to the paper, she began to jot down a few preliminary sentences in her looping handwriting, crossing out a few words here and there and circling or underlining what she wanted to keep. After a minute or two she paused to look over at Whit.

She could tell Goldie was perhaps a bit disconcerted by Sylvia’s blasé attitude towards her own death, but she would get used to it soon enough.  You can’t be friends with a necromancer and except them to not spend half their time having morbid thoughts.

Sylvia smiled back at Goldie at her suggestion.  “This will be the only way I manage to leave my lab, so I’d be happy to do this more often.  You give me the date and time; I’ll clear my schedule for you whenever you want me to!”  Whit will be simultaneously delighted and terrified to hear that she and Goldie will be spending more time together.  She could picture his face in her head right now, but she’d let Goldie be the bearer of that good-bad news.

“I’ll probably have to put a pause on digging up bodies when I’m that old…but I’d appreciate if you’d help me with groceries.  I just know Whit would complain about it all the time.  He’d say something like ‘well when I was 70 you didn’t hear me crying about needing help carrying boxes in from the car’.”  She rolled her eyes at the thought.  “If you haven’t been forced to listen to his old man jokes by now, count yourself lucky.”  Sylvia laughed.