Osha Spideer

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona meets you the same way he meets most interesting things in his life by being asleep and mildly irritated about it

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ He’d claimed a sun-warmed patch of stone in the Botanical Gardens, half-hidden beneath towering leaves and curling vines. The air smelled green and alive, cicadas humming lazily in the background. Perfect nap conditions then there’s a rustle. Soft. Curious. Followed by a quiet, wonder-filled gasp “Oh… the flowers look bigger today.”

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona cracks one eye open just in time to see you crouched nearby, fingers hovering over a blossom as if touching it might make the world tip over. You’re staring at the garden like it’s breathing, like the leaves might lean closer to listen

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You don’t notice him not until you step back… and accidentally bump his tail. Leona lets out a low, warning groan. “Tch… you got a death wish, herbivore?” You jump, nearly dropping to the ground, eyes wide but instead of fear, there’s apology. Immediate, sincere “Oh! I’m terribly sorry I didn’t see you. You were blending in with the shade.” that makes him pause

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Your wandering mind fascinates him Leona notices it almost immediately the way your gaze doesn’t quite stick to things. You stare at his hands like they’re farther away than they should be. You blink slowly, tilting your head

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ “You seem… very tall. Or maybe I’m just very small today.” Normally, Leona would snort. Mock. Dismiss. Instead, he watches your fingers curl into your sleeves, grounding yourself, like you’re afraid you might float away if you don’t hold something real

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ “You lost or somethin’?” he asks, quieter than expected “I think so,” you answer honestly. “But I usually am.” …Yeah. That gets him

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ The botanical gardens become your favorite place and Leona’s least-admitted favorite because of you. When episodes hit, the garden amplifies everything

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ The leaves grow too large, veins crawling like maps. Flowers feel too close, petals brushing your skin when they shouldn’t. Sometimes the paths stretch endlessly ahead of you, gravel shrinking under your feet like it’s miles away

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona notices the signs before you say anything. The way your pupils are dilating, steps slowing, your voice dropping to a whisper “World goin’ funny again?” he murmurs. You nod. “Everything feels… tilted. Like I drank the wrong bottle.” He sighs but it’s not annoyed. It’s careful

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona sits beside you, solid, unmoving. He lets you lean against his arm without comment “A’right. Focus up. Tell me what you can smell.” “…Sun-warmed leaves. And dust.” “Good. Hear anything?” “Your tail swishing.” “Yeah. Means I’m real. Means you are too.” His grounding is blunt, physical, and present. No frills. No lectures. Just reality anchored by weight and warmth

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You accidentally wake him up… a lot. You have a habit of sitting wherever feels right. On low walls. Beneath trees. On warm stone steps sometimes those places are already occupied by a sleeping lion. The first few times, Leona growled after a while, he just cracks one eye open, sees it’s you, and closes it again

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ “You’re gonna get stepped on one day.” “I don’t mind,” you hum. “It means I was in the way.” “…weirdo.” He starts shifting in his sleep so there’s space beside him. Pretends it’s coincidence

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ When Cheka visits, everything changes. You’re sitting in the gardens again, plaiting flower stems together, when a small voice rings out “UNCLE LEONA!!”

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Cheka immediately spots you and you freeze AIWS hits hard around children Cheka looks too small. Like a toy lion come to life

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona notices you go still. He kneels slightly, placing a firm hand over yours. “Hey. He’s real. Just short.” Cheka beams at you anyway. “Are you okay, Missy?” You smile softly. “For now”

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Cheka adores you. You tell him stories that loop and twist like dreams. Leona watches from a distance, stunned by how gently you exist beside chaos. Later, Cheka tugs Leona’s sleeve “They’re like a storybook, Uncle.” Leona doesn’t argue but mkaes a gruff noise

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ The botanical gardens are supposed to be quiet, a place where nothing moves unless you tell it to, where the paths behave and the flowers stay where they’re planted but you’ve learned that places have moods, and today the garden feels curious, as if it’s holding its breath

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You’re sitting on the stone bench beside Leona, sunlight warm against your legs, the air thick with the scent of earth and petals, when something in the stillness tips just slightly wrong, not enough to alarm you at first, only enough to make you pause, head tilting as a strange familiarity settles in your chest, the sense that you’ve been here before, that this exact moment has happened once already or perhaps is still happening somewhere else

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You blink slowly, grounding yourself in the warmth of the stone, in the weight of your body, telling yourself everything is normal, perfectly normal, right up until you notice that the flowers are moving

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ It starts with the flowers, which is how it always seems to begin, their petals swaying even though there’s no wind, their colors deepening until the reds feel warm and the yellows hum softly behind your eyes, and you find yourself wondering very calmly, very reasonably if they’ve always been this close, because the daisies are leaning toward you now, faces wide and expectant, their stems stretching as if eager to be heard, and when you tilt your head you swear you can hear it, a thin, lilting sound threading through the air like a nursery rhyme remembered wrong, not words exactly but a melody, layered and overlapping, as if the garden itself has decided to sing all at once

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Your breath catches, heart fluttering, because the song feels achingly familiar, like something you’ve known since childhood, and for a fleeting moment the thought drifts through your mind, light and unquestioned perhaps they’ve been singing all along, and you simply forgot how to listen but then the world slips sideways, the stone bench beneath you shrinking until it feels far too narrow to sit on, your legs suddenly too long, then too short, the ground dipping away so sharply it makes your stomach lurch

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ While Leona beside you stretches taller and taller, his shoulders rising impossibly high, his voice echoing faintly when he speaks your name, as though he’s calling to you from the end of a long, hollow corridor; the flowers’ song swells, overlapping and discordant now, petals opening and closing in time with it, the sound pressing in from all sides as you clap your hands over your ears only to feel them swell beneath your palms, fingers thick and clumsy and not quite yours, panic blooming as the garden seems to pulse with breath, paths curling inward on themselves, trees bowing as if in greeting, and you whisper, “They’re talking… I think they’re singing to me,” your voice trembling not with belief but with confusion, because you know flowers don’t sing you know that but the sound is still there, wrapping around your thoughts, stretching time until every second feels endless and sticky and wrong

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona reacts instantly, shifting closer until his shoulder bumps gently into yours, the solid weight of him cutting through the distortion like a blade through fog, “Hey nope. That’s your head lyin’ to you,” he says firmly, not unkind, one hand closing around your wrist so you can feel his pulse, steady and undeniable, “Listen to me. That sound? Cicadas. Leaves rubbin’. Not flowers,” and he repeats it again and again, grounding and insistent, until the noise begins to separate, the hum breaking apart into insects and wind and distant voices, your breathing slowly syncing with his as the flowers retreat to a safer distance, their colors dulling back into something ordinary, their song fading into a silence that rings loudly in your ears; even when the world finally steadies, when your body settles back into the right size and the bench feels solid beneath you once more

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You still feel fragile, like glass after heat, and Leona stays there, uncharacteristically still, thumb tracing slow, deliberate circles against your wrist as he mutters, eyes fixed ahead, “Doesn’t mean you’re crazy,” before adding quietly, “Means your brain got bored and decided to mess with you,” and you manage a small, tired smile at that, leaning into his side as the garden returns to being just a garden again quiet, green, and blessedly silent

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona grounds you when the world tilts, not by dismissing what you feel but by anchoring you to something real. During episodes when distances stretch, sounds twist, or flowers begin to sing, he becomes a constant, steady pulse under your fingers, a weight at your side, a low voice repeating facts until your thoughts untangle themselves. He doesn’t panic, doesn’t overreact, just stays, and that quiet reliability teaches your mind that it’s safe to come back

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You soften Leona in ways he doesn’t notice until it’s too late. Your Alice-like curiosity your habit of questioning rules, noticing odd details, wandering where you “shouldn’t” pulls him out of his habitual apathy

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You remind him that the world can still be strange and interesting, that not everything needs to be endured or slept through. Around you, he finds himself paying attention again, if only to keep up

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona gives structure to your chaos, you give meaning to his stillness. Where your perceptions blur and spiral, he provides boundaries names for sounds, explanations for sensations, a framework that keeps you from drifting too far.

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ In return, you give him moments of quiet wonder, encouraging him to sit in a garden, listen, exist without needing to prove anything. You help him rest in a way sleep never quite manages

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ You trust him with your vulnerability, and that trust changes him. You let him see you when you’re disoriented, frightened, unsure of your own senses something you don’t allow many people

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Leona, who’s spent most of his life believing others only rely on him out of necessity, realizes that with you it’s different. You choose him. That realization settles deep, making him more patient, more protective, more present than he ever intended to be

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ To Leona, you’re strange in a way that feels… familiar. You don’t fight the world when it doesn’t make sense you observe it. Question it. Wander through it with politeness even when it’s cruel

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ He starts walking you places without comment. Keeps you on the side away from crowds. Hands you cold drinks during migraines without asking. When you mutter, “This feels like a dream,” he replies, “Yeah. But it’s one you’re awake in. Means you ain’t lost.”

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Together, you balance the line between reality and wonder. You teach Leona that not everything strange is meaningless, that some illusions hold truth in how they feel. He teaches you that reality doesn’t disappear just because your mind bends it

━━━ ．°˖✧ 🦁 ˚₊ ⊹ Between you, there’s an unspoken understanding: the world can be odd and beautiful and frightening all at once and neither of you has to face it alone