“Accidentally ate a box full of magnesium, too embarrassed to admit it.”
Cleo reads a strip of paper, nods, and puts it in a cardboard box.
“Aging rapidly from the stress of having to balance around Etho existing.”
Pearl reads the next one and puts it in the box as well. They’re sitting overlooking Tango’s base. Trees are husks around them. Below them, Tango pauses in his work to watch what they’re doing.
“He just has a really bad fever. It’ll be red again when it goes down.”
They place another strip in the box. It’s clearly getting quite full; it’s stuffed to the point that paper is poking out of the sides. It’s painted with an angry face that, if one squints, looks kind of like Tango.
“What on earth are you two doing there?” Tango calls up to them.
“Stuck his head in bleach while trying to make the woods spookier and the male-pattern baldness means it’s not growing in again,” Pearl says, reading another one.
“It’s a suggestion box about why your hair has gone tragically white so young,” Cleo says. They pull out another slip of paper. “Got so scared of his own creation that his hair turned white on the spot.”
“What?” Tango says, significantly squeakier.
“Oh, this one is also good: got an appropriately tragic and dramatic and Byronic disease, but got better again after it made him all pale-er than normal,” Pearl says.
“Eh, I don’t know. A little overcomplicated, don’t you think?” Cleo says
“It’s because I’m a vampire! Look! I’ve got fangs now!” Tango says.
“Don’t see how that’s possibly related,” Cleo says.
“Didn’t you always have fangs?” Pearl says.
“Besides, who says vampires have white hair?” Cleo says.
“Seems unlikely, really,” Pearl agrees
“What do you mean unlikely! Weren’t you two literally just vampires? WHO HAD WHITE HAIR?”
“No I wasn’t. You’re crazy,” both Pearl and Cleo say at once. There’s a beat of silence as the two of them look in each other’s eyes, Pearl’s wide and glistening with mischief and Cleo’s soft, loving, and full of horrors.
“I think you might be my soulmate, Cleo,” Pearl says.
“We are on the same wavelength,” Cleo says.
“Oh, screw you!” says Tango, stomping off in a huff. The two former vampires watch him go.
Slowly, Pearl pulls out another piece of paper.
“This conversation,” she says.
Cleo cackles so hard she starts howling.
snowghoul
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
