bark bark bark

“If it’s that easy,” Hikaru starts, and as second-nature as breathing, Kaoru continues his thought,

“You’d be able to tell which is which while blindfolded. If we both kissed you.” Haruhi’s eyes narrow. Caught between their devious (obvious) plan and her winning streak in a game only she’s ever been successful at.

“Fine,” she agrees, “but you’ll pay up when I still get it right.”

Which she does. Every time. Kaoru kisses firmer, she says. Hikaru uses too much tongue, she explains.

They test her with many rounds. It’s nothing to do with how cute being thoroughly kissed makes her.

Sometimes, Noelle has this dream.

It feels nothing like a dream. It always starts with her waking up in her bedroom. A hand in her hair. A dip in her mattress. A shadow that leans over her.

Her first thought, always, is that it’s her mom. That she’s doing what she used to do every night after Dess went away, when she thought Noelle was asleep and wouldn’t know. Sitting there beside her on the bed and stroking Noelle’s hair like she was a baby again, silently watching, to make sure no one took her away, not even herself. She stopped doing that at some point. Noelle doesn’t remember when.

It isn’t her mom. It leans closer. Noelle’s heart starts to race, and her teeth chatter. She tries to pull the covers up over her face to protect herself. It reaches forward and stops her.

“Hey,” says her sister, “Hey, ‘Ellie.”

It’s Dess’s voice as she remembers it, low and sort of rough—Mom blamed her smoking, said it’d ruin her singing the longer she did it, and whenever Dess brought it up, she’d laugh and take another drag. Noelle never could stand the smell, but she couldn’t stand to be apart from Dess more. 

It’s Dess’s voice, and it curls around her nickname the same way it has, a singsong sway between the syllables. Noelle doesn’t know why it sounds so wrong.

“Dess?” Noelle whispers. 

She should know it’s a dream from the fact that Dess smiles so easily in it. From the way she can see her sister’s teeth in the dark.

But she never knows.

Noelle pushes herself up and into her sister. Hugging comes after; first she just wants to shove her face, her hands, her body into Dess like she can make her more real by tackling her. “Watch the antlers!” Dess says. “You’ve gotten big!” Noelle can smell her like resurfacing memories—sweet smoke and her hairspray and a whiff of sweat because Dess could never sit still, always on her feet, always up to bat. 

It settles over her senses like stale air. Noelle drinks it too greedily to notice.

“You’re back,” Noelle says. “You’re back.” The words fill up her mouth until she could choke on them. Her eyes sting. She holds onto her sister tighter and tighter, until her fingers burn from how they’re curled in Dess’s jacket. She never wants to leave the spot she’s thrown herself into, face pressed into Dess’s collarbone. 

Dess’s fur feels cold where her shirt’s loose collar.has slipped, where her chest is bared until it brushes Noelle’s snout.

“Of course I came back,” Dess says, like she isn’t lying. She cups Noelle’s face in her hands and reluctantly, Noelle draws back to look up into her eyes. Dess’s eyes have always been so brown they could be black, and Noelle would drown in them if she could. She leans in, as if to fall, as if to let her sister’s gaze swallow her whole.

Or maybe Noelle is the one who wants to take all of her, wide-eyed until Dess is safe as a glimmer in her pupil. Anything to keep her from vanishing again.

“How could I leave my little sis behind?” Dess says, stroking Noelle’s face in her hands. Caring so much that it almost feels like the question is one Dess really would have asked herself. 

Noelle puts her hands over Dess’s. She presses her touch harder into her cheeks; they squish and her mouth parts to show her teeth. She wants Dess to hold her like she tried to, until it hurts. 

“I’m gonna take you with me this time,” Dess promises, and her low voice gets lower, and Noelle’s belly feels tingly and strange. “You want that, right? You want to come with me, ‘Ellie?” Again, Noelle strains to hear why a simple word sets her fur on end when it sounds exactly like what Dess would say. Her bedroom is too dark to see anything but Dess, and Dess is a shadow, a grin with a Dess-silhouette around it, eyes that eat her up. The door out might as well not exist. The rest of the world might not exist. If Dess isn’t in it, there’s not much point.

“Where?” Noelle says. She can almost remember this can’t be happening when she asks it—when her mind stirs enough to ask her sister the most important question no one could ever ask her, the one that would fix everything—but she needs Dess’s answer to be real. Enough so that she tumbles back down into the dream to hear every word, and she forgets, forgets, and Dess is in her bed, not missing.

Dess just laughs. “Somewhere scary.” Noelle shivers. Dess’s fingers trace her features, like she can’t see Noelle either and can’t remember—what shape her ears are, how she whimpers when her antlers are bumped, where her mouth is.

Noelle sucks in a breath. Dess smiles, and Noelle wonders why she doesn’t look much like Dess at all whenever she does that.

“Mom needs to know you’re back,” Noelle says because it feels like the right thing she should say and do. 

She doesn’t want to.

“Mom doesn’t have to know everything about you,” Dess says, like she knows. “Does she?”

She teases her fingers along the underside of Noelle’s chin. She marks an easy path to follow. In the dark. Dess’s smile eclipses her vision, but Noelle barely knows where her own mouth is. Her hands are lost somewhere in Dess’s jacket, sinking into her sister and pulling Noelle closer. For all of Dess’s promises, that part doesn’t seem scary. If Noelle closed her eyes, it feels like she wouldn’t be able to tell where she ends and Dess becomes.

She never does shut her eyes. That would mean not looking at her sister.

Dess always waits for her to admit it. 

“Take me with you,” Noelle says, and for a moment, can’t care about the people who’ll get left behind. 

She wants to feel like Dess did. 

Dess shadow leans in over her. Noelle feels her mouth against her own. Everything that was wrong is right here in the other world of Noelle’s dark bedroom. There are no rules. There have never been rules when Dess is involved. Noelle relaxes into the kiss that Dess steals her away with. 

“You’ll like it there with me, ‘Ellie,” Dess says, and it rings in Noelle’s ears a third time—wrong though it sounds right. Dess leaves kisses on her mouth, kisses on her nose, a soft exhale over one ear until it twitches. “You’ll like it so much you’ll never want to leave.” Noelle puts a hand on her lower belly, where every feeling is welling in her, strange and scary and squirming. These things that make her dizzy; these things that feel so good that she doesn’t know what to do with them. Dess would know what to do.

“Let’s go,” Noelle says hurriedly. Her legs feel too weak to escape. “Let’s go right now before anyone wakes up.” 

Dess puts her mouth to Noelle’s ear. It twitches back again.

“You already are,” she whispers as soft as the wind.

Noelle sits up in her bed and wants to scream. Her heart is beating so fast that it hurts. Her whole body shakes out of her control. She hears a tap-tap-scrape from behind her, at the window. She scrambles up to reach onto her shelf and finds the tiny flashlight she keeps there for emergencies. She shines it into every corner of the room until nothing could hide there and then back, bouncing off the windowpane, to illuminate an outstretched tree branch that taunts her. Noelle swallows.

Her mouth is still cold, and no one is here. Noelle worries her blanket in her hands. She can’t help feeling like someone knows. About Dess. About- Noelle touches her cheeks where Dess was holding them. She wishes they ached like bruises did. 

She crawls from her bed and sneaks out. No one else in the house is awake to hear the door creak slightly. Maybe no one else is in the house at all; did Mom ever come home tonight? Noelle doesn’t think about that, about anything else but finding her way to her sister. She slips into Dess’s bedroom like an fugitive.

Her sheets have long since stopped smelling like Dess. The room barely even has a hint of smoke left to its wallpaper. Mom keeps everything right where it was, all the mess that Dess left behind. 

Dess never made her bed, which is why no one notices the mornings after, if Mom can even bring herself to come in here anymore.

Noelle gets into her sister’s bed. She pulls the covers up over her head until she’s safe in complete darkness. She stretches out her legs and lays her cheek where Dess used to. Her eyes shut. She puts her hands on her cheeks again. She shivers again, even though she’s used to this cold.

She touches her mouth again and again with soft fingers until everything feels numb.

She won’t tell Mom she’s dreaming about Dess again. It’ll only upset her.

(Noelle should get to keep Dess for herself.)

The ice cream machine gives a clunk when it finishes up your frozen treats. You perk up immediately, even if your excitement has to be a little dampened by the unbearable grin of that skeleton. Not too much, though. Ice cream is ice cream, whoever is serving it. You can’t be too picky.

“Here you go,” says Sans. (Mr. Sans, you remember, and you suppress a snicker. Noelle’s a screwball sometimes, even when she’s a little out of it like she has been. You don’t blame her. These past few days, things have taken an even weirder turn than usual. You know everything will turn out okay, so long as you and Kris are working together to make sure it does. You know this as certainly as the sun always setting or ice cream causing brain freezes.)

“Thanks,” you say. He doesn’t ask you for payment this time. He slips a cone into one hand, then the other, and as he’s reaching for the cone, he starts speaking. You narrow your eyes warily.

“Maybe that’ll make your friend feel better. Their mom is real worried about them,” he says, as casually as anything else, but you feel his gaze rattle over to you and stay there as he tops the cone with a scoop. You hold your frown out in front of you like a shield. Since when’s he got the right to talk about Kris like he cares?

“Yeah, sure,” you say. And then, lamely, “Thanks,” you mumble a little quieter this time. 

“Anytime,” he says. You huff.

One big cone for Kris. One big cone for Noelle. One big- Damn, you’re out of hands. You take a few seconds to ponder this dilemma. You’ll get back to them whenever you get back; you’re sure they aren’t going to miss you if you take a minute longer. You feel that thought start curling up tight around your brain, so you say, “Hey, just toss it in!” and open your mouth wide.

Whatever else you can say about this guy, he’s got good aim. Down your gullet it goes, ice cream and cone and all, deliciously sweet and with a tasty crunch to finish it off. Freezes your brain right up, and all your thoughts along with it, too. You hiss so hard you can almost imagine a blizzard coming from your nostrils. 

Now, you’re on a mission. Get these cones to Kris and Noelle pronto, before they melt or before they mysteriously go missing and leave incriminating ice cream stains on your face. You’ve never failed Noelle yet, and Kris, well, you definitely haven’t failed them since you started trying not to. You’re not breaking your winning streak.

You glance down the road towards Noelle’s house. The sound of the rest of the crowd is so far away, like the hum of TV static. You look down at your shoes instead as you walk, kicking aside streamers and broken-stemmed flowers and litter. Who cares what they’re all doing over there anyway or who is getting crowned King and Queen? Kings are assholes, and Queens can be a little overbearing, anyway. With everyone gone, no one is stopping you from getting back to your friends as soon as possible, though not too soon. You wouldn’t want to walk in on their secret chat and figure out what’s so important that they need to hide it from you. If that happened, it’d be a complete accident.

Sounds believable, right? Right.

The ice cream smells really, really good. 

You pause. Peek around. Still no one in sight. There’s probably no one anywhere near the lake at all, actually. 

Very subtly, you lick Kris’s ice cream. 

Susie-shaped tongue smear. You glare at it. Maybe if you give it to Kris facing away from them, they won’t notice. 

You kick up dust making your way down to the lake. Maybe the festival didn’t go as planned today, but you still got to spend it with Noelle and Kris, albeit apart. You’ll make plans when you get back to Castle Town tonight. Tomorrow will be better.

Geez, when did you become the kind of monster to start believing in that kind of nonsense? You’re turning into a huge soft sap. Next thing you know, you’ll have white fluffy ears sprouting out of your head.

Your boots clomp tracks into the soft dirt near the lake, right next to Noelle’s and Kris’s from when you walked them over earlier. You squint into the light of the setting sun. Kind of romantic. Huh. Not that that’s- You squint around some more; romantic or not, the sun reflecting off the lake is really getting in your eyes. 

“Hey, Kris!” you call. The ice creams are starting to melt onto your hands, and the delicious temptation to taste them again is growing stronger. You resist. What else are best friends for? “Kris!” you call again. “Hey, if you try to sneak up and scare me, I’m going to drop both of your cones in the mud!” You look around for the two of them. More importantly, you listen. Noelle would definitely laugh if she knew you were onto the two of them trying to prank you, but-

“Noelle?” you say, as the shadows grow deeper. You glance back towards the town. “I didn’t take that long. Did you guys go back without me?” A terrible little lump tries to get into your throat. You swallow it back down and wish you had an ice cream that wasn’t someone else’s to help keep it there. 

You glance down at the dirt. There’s… There’s your boots, in and out and in and out, bringing Noelle here, bringing Kris here, bringing back the treats turning to mush in your sweaty hands. 

And Kris’s footprints. And Noelle’s. They don’t go anywhere but towards the lake. They pool darkly across the ground as the light from the sun abandons them. 

“Kris!” you shout. “Noelle!” This is so stupid. What do they think they’re doing? Why haven’t they jumped out at you yet? 

Where are they hiding?

Ice cream splatter on your boots. You glance down to mourn the fallen dollop of goodness and notice that Kris and Noelle’s tracks keep going. 

Oh, duh. That’ll make them easy to find. You’re an idiot, Susie. 

You follow those tracks. Past the metal picnic benches. Past the trees. To the water.

Into the water. You stare for too long at the waves swallowing up the last marks they left behind.

“What?” you whisper to yourself. The silence is more unbearable because it isn’t silent enough—you still hear the lake lapping at the shore, and mosquitos starting to buzz to life and drift towards you, and your own heartbeat in your ear holes.

“Kris?” you call back behind you, like you don’t believe the proof you’re standing close enough to stick your own feet in. 

“Noelle?” you say. You feel very small beside the water. Your hands are cold and hot at the same time, slippery with melting ice cream and sweat. 

You don’t know what pulls your gaze out far enough to see them. 

You know it’s them, though. They’re just dark, terrible shapes lost in the water, but you know. 

You drop their ice creams. Both cones. 

The water is freezing. It floods through your clothes and stings your skin as you force yourself through as fast as you can. Your legs churn up mud and harsh waves. You think you can hear yourself calling Kris’s name, Noelle’s name, but it feels far away, like you left your voice back on shore and all that can reach your ears is splashing and panting for breath. The lake gets deeper and deeper, but you’re taller than Kris, taller than Noelle. Even then, your feet eventually can’t find the bottom, and they’re still out there, out of reach; you shove yourself hands first through the water with ungraceful lunges to reach them. 

You don’t know which one you grab first. What you latch onto tightly enough to realize this is real. Noelle’s sweater. Kris’s hair. Something. Anything. You kick and kick and kick and drag them back. Heavy, weighed down with soaked clothes and lungs full of- You grunt and pull and refuse to leave them bobbing in the cold, dark water. 

One foot under you, then the next, and the water is still too high, but if you can walk, you can hoist Kris up onto your shoulders and pick Noelle up with one arm under her keeping her head up, using the water to half-float her to safety as you grip Kris’s wrists tightly in one hand so they stay around your neck to force Kris’s unconscious body to hang onto you. You hobble forward. One step at a time. Kris’s head lolls onto your shoulder, water dripping from their hair. Noelle’s mouth is slack, and her hair is made of chaos and wet tangles, like a briar patch made of golden light. 

If you get them to shore, they have to be alright. They have to. 

This isn’t right. This can’t be right. There’s a prophecy. And you- You hate how that prophecy ends, but it doesn’t end like this. When you said you’d do anything to make sure it doesn’t happen, you didn’t mean this! 

You take it back. You won’t break the glass. You’ll be the hero, not the dragon. Just make Kris okay. Make Noelle okay. Someone. 

You heave yourself onto the lake’s shore, and Kris tumbles from your back into the wet sand. They don’t move. You lay Noelle down and wish you could drive the water back or carry them further, but you can’t. You’re stuck here in-between the land and the water, as it laps up at your knees where you’ve fallen to the ground, and around Noelle’s soaked sock-covered hooves—shoes lost to the hungry waters—and Kris’s sprawled arm that seems to reach back towards the lake. 

If you were Berdly, you would run for help from an adult. If you were Noelle, you would scream so high and loud that someone would come running. If you were Ralsei, you would know what to do. But you are Susie, and Susie can only do Susie things.

“Wake up,” you tell Kris. You give their cheek a slap. “Wake up, jerk!” You hit them a little harder and leave a fast-fading mark on their face. You snatch your hand back. They don’t move. 

Noelle isn’t moving. 

What are you supposed to do now? You blink rapidly as your eyes sting, and you’re still dripping wet and freezing from the lake. They aren’t breathing, so- There’s ways to fix that, right? To save someone? But you only had one gym class about that, years ago, and you weren’t paying attention because you never paid attention when gym was meant for the running around until your lungs burned that most classes kept you from doing all day.

It’s- It has to be. Hands on chest. You can do that. Kris’s chest is small, but you still need both your hands. You try to apologize to Noelle that you don’t have more, but you can’t make sense of what you’re saying. Something crunches under your knee as you shuffle closer to Kris. 

Ice cream cone shards shatter into the sand and get devoured by the water until they’re gone. The other one is already missing. There’s only a melting sticky patch left on the ground. You push on Kris’s chest, and nothing happens.

Harder. Harder. You put your weight behind it. You don’t know what you’re trying to do, force the water out or the air in. This is supposed to work. 

This is a world without magic, which you aren’t very good at anyway, and you have none at all in your hands pumping on Kris’s chalk-fragile chest. You feel another crunch, deeper and sickening. Does that mean stop? Does that mean it’s working? And you need to do Noelle, too, you’re running out of time. Kris needs to start breathing now so they can help you, so they can tell you what to do next. How dare they just- How could they-  Break and break and break beneath their chest for what good you can’t do. They refuse to breathe. You refuse to give up. 

The ground is dustless, so you can save Noelle, so you can save Kris. There is still time. It feels like you make more time with every push. 

“Kris, come on,” you say.

“Kris, Noelle’s going to die!” you yell. 

“Kris, please, please, I’m sorry I took so long,” you beg.

You punch them in the chest because it feels as useful as anything else and they deserve it and you hate yourself because it does nothing and it hurts your knuckles and Kris and Noelle and why is everyone in town celebrating a world away when you need help.

Why is no one coming to help you? You know the answer to that. It’s the same it’s always been. 

You just- You got used to the idea that you were wrong, sometimes.

You want to look up and Toriel to- No, not Toriel, no, how could you admit that you left Kris alone, that you left them, and they and Noelle- So, maybe a laugh, maybe an impossible laugh and the old man would- He’s in the ground twice over, and how could he be proud of you now, when you can’t do something as simple as save your best friend’s life-

You know who could fix this. Ralsei.

What are you going to do, carry them both to Castle Town? While they lay there, not breathing, and every second you know they’re further away, and the only reason you have hope is that Noelle is still flesh and blood.

You grasp her hand. You squeeze it tight.

It feels-

You take your hand away.

If you can’t bring them to the Dark World.

You’ll bring the Dark World to you.

And Ralsei can be disappointed with you later if he wants. He won’t be, but maybe he’ll want to be, which will hurt just as bad. You don’t care. You’ve made one fountain; you’ll make another. 

You still have Kris’s knife. You just… never gave it back. There was never a moment to. And it was weird and familiar to have it with you, like Kris is weird and familiar to have near you. 

You take it out. Your hands shake.

Okay. Okay. So.

So you pick Kris up. Not much. You hook your hands under their armpits and haul them up as if to sit. They flop back, directly into your chest, their head dropping across your shoulder. You try not to think about the water that spills out of their lips or their half-open eyes. You wrap your arms around them to keep them put.

You can’t live in a world without your best friend, and you don’t want to live in a world where they, where she, didn’t stop to think about the Susie-shaped shadow on the shoreline that was going to find them. You have Kris’s knife in your hands, and Kris’s body, limp, enclosed by your arms, and so you make it Kris’s hands around the knife, too. Your right hand over their right hand. Your left hand over their left hand. Pruney, powerless fingers clenched around the handle because if Kris doesn’t do this with you, you won’t be able to breathe. 

You lay your chin on Kris’s head. They smell like lakewater, cold and damp and lost. You are both in the reflection of the blade. You look over to Noelle, serene in the sand, except for her sightless eyes staring up at the sun and her gaping mouth. Blonde hair melting into the shore, losing its shape, turning into-

“I’m not going to let you go,” you tell them, and you mean it with every driving force of your will. You mean it more than you have ever meant anything before, which has to count for something, which has to change something. You were told your choices matter. “It’s going to be okay, Kris. It’s going to be okay.” You snuffle your snout in their hair. You don’t have time to cry, so you aren’t, and everything is too wet to tell if you’re a liar. 

You hold Kris’s hands, and you hold Kris’s knife.

You plunge their blade into the earth. You drown in a shadow that rises above your head faster than you can blink. 

That is the only Susie thing you can do.

Time closes in like the jaws of a ravenous snake, its winding body threatening to sneak into her baby’s crib at midnight and coiling around him until he’s gone from her grasp. Mary makes a choice the first moment she holds Sam; she remembers a deal through blurry tears and sour death pressed against her mouth, and she has no intention of holding up her end of the bargain. In the morning when John raises the alarm, they’ll call it post-partum madness, but Mary is thinking clearer than she has in years when she takes her Sam into her arms and runs from every hungry thing that chases his little soul.

Sam’s big sister is always there for him, even when Dad and Dean leave him alone for days.

He knows she’s something unnatural (not like she tries to hide it; she speaks in resonances that sting his ears to tease him and blows dark smoke into his mouth that makes him light-headed) but she can’t be a monster, not when she’s always treated Sam like he’s important, like he’s special.

“Whatever the boy king wants,” Meg says, sharp-smiled, and when she leans close to Sam, he can see right down her low-cut shirt and feels his entire body go uncomfortably hot.

It’s Amy who dares her to climb to the roof, though Mels might have done it anyway just to prove it could be climbed, and though Rory protests nervously from the ground, Amy follows her halfway up before finally losing her nerve.

Mels laughs as bright as the sun as she clings to a terraced bit of the wall, watching Amy climb back down as she begins to taunt, “It’s not that high-“ before a resounding crack freezes Amy in her tracks, and before she can turn her head upwards, she hears the terrible whoosh of something fall past her and the heavy thump and silence.

She scrambles down, panic sickening her stomach as Rory stares down at Mels with wide eyes- Mels pops up cackling, and for weeks, Amy won’t be sure if what she saw was real—if her friend’s eyes were golden with fire.

But I did not pen the romance, as I promised. Some things would be ours to keep, not shown off quite as impressively as my Dupin’s talents.

“You’ve left the traces of us,” Dupin told me—Try yourself to keep such a voracious reader out of your drafts.—“in every personal implication.” I left my hand free for him to kiss, to study as if future admissions hid in the whorls of my prints.

“The reader will be too busy following you,” I reassured him, “and if they aren’t, I’ve proven a poor narrator, to leave them unenamoured with you.”

On the planet Montressor, there stands an inn, rebuilt from ashes and more resplendent with each passing year. It's a warm place, full of local color and good food, always a traveler with a story to tell inside.

The cook, they say, is a cyborg. Keeps to himself.

Except for when the innkeeper's son—Top of his class at interstellar academy, did you hear? And he used to be such a troublemaker.—comes home to visit. Without fail, after a kiss on his mother's cheek, he goes to the kitchens.

And all you'll hear, they say, is proud, raucous laughter.