#fantasyjune

If I were a tardigrade, I’d move out from home

Why live in the shrubbery when you could have a throne?

Pressure wouldn’t squash me and fire couldn’t burn

“Are these… instructions for fireworks?”

“Oh yeah, those!  I can’t believe they didn’t get tossed out in the move.”

“When did you need to make fireworks?  And how the heck did Edith let you?”

“It was a Guild thing.  There was a celebration for… an ambassador, I think?  Something like that.  We had to help with the festivities.”

“And Edith was just okay with that?  Like, ‘Oh, it’s an assignment involving a bunch of explosions, but the Guild told us to, so I guess it’s fine’.”

“Eh, I think it was more like, ‘I will do whatever you want, just please stop begging me about it’.  I was a very stubborn child.”

“You say that like something’s changed.”

“Shut up.”

“Did your fireworks end up in the celebration?”

“Maybe?  We submitted our blueprints, but so did every other Researchers team.  It ended up being a whole bunch of lights and explosions, no real coherency.  The only thing I really remember about it was hating how loud it was.”

“Dang.”

“Yeah.  And in the test firings, I got it to do this crazy rainbowy thing, with a fade to different colors and smoke and all that.  Would’ve been so cool to actually see…”

“Embracing the gay aesthetic even then.”

“You know it!”

“What about afterwards?  You had the instructions; why not make more?  Throw your own party!”

“Well, here’s the thing.  Edith only let me make them the first time after copious amounts of begging.  And that was in the Guild’s official labs, with a bunch of other ‘mons around to help make sure nothing went horribly wrong.  So making them at home was… less plausible.”

“Aww.  So no more fireworks for you, then?”

“Mmmm… Not exactly.”

“Oho?”

“See, I knew Edith wouldn’t want any explosives around.  But I also knew that fireworks are a really fun thing to have.  For celebrations, like you said, or for shooting at bad guys.  And I figured, ‘well, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right?’  And so… I made them anyway.  And then that backfired.  Literally.”

“Oho?”

“I was putting some together one afternoon, while Edith was out getting groceries.  She was supposed to be gone for a while, but I ended up in the zone, you know?  Complete focus, nothing could stop me.  Which meant that I had no idea that she’d gotten back until she came in to check on me.  So she sees me, fiddling with highly volatile materials, covered in various dusts, and she goes to her default response when I did something crazy or dangerous or dumb, which was to shout ‘Veronica!’ at full volume.  And in my defense, that is not how you respond to someone holding explosives.  So she shouts, and I panic, and the materials go flying, and then.  Well.  Boom.”

“Oh, sweet Arceus.”

“Yep.  I’d bet there’s still a mark on that ceiling, and soot in the floorboards.  Cleaning that up took forever.”

“You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“Nah, nah.  Just spooked.  And also very, very grounded.  I’m surprised Edith didn’t use Thunder Wave to make sure I didn’t leave my room.  The upstairs neighbors gave me an earful, too…”

“How disrespectful of them!  A baby scientist’s first explosion, and they weren’t even a little proud!”

“Hey, at least give Edith some slack.  She didn’t know she was adopting an overzealous science child when she took me in.  She was new to the field.”

“So that was the end of your fireworks escapades, huh?”

“Oh yeah.  Edith threw out all of the ones I’d made before, and the materials.  I was sure she’d gotten rid of these blueprints, too.  Guess not.”

“Well, of course!  It’s like when parents save their kids’ crappy old drawings.  Except these make things blow up!”

“Heh, yeah.  Probably.”

“...You know, Edith is running errands right now.  And you’re more responsible and careful since back then.”

“Am I, though?”

“Mmm.  At least a little bit.”

Ruby’s tiger stripes are too-red flames in all their murals.

Topaz looks gnarled now, with cracks and spikes.  Not sturdy.

Pearl’s lost their softness in the paintings, their curving grace.

Jade, in contrast, is jagged no longer, and overly bright.

Emerald’s stories are a joke, all flowers and harmless whimsy.

Diamond’s renderings sap out their luster.  They look so pale.

Sapphire has curled horns now, and scales far too dark.

Amethyst’s statues don’t smile like they did.  Not at all.

Moonstone is flatter than their tapestries.  Too rough.  Too blunt.

Obsidian’s gentle mischief has been blotted out of their texts.

The Great Dragoness, their mother, beautiful in the wrong way.

And Ammolite?  The final sibling?  The one who knew them best?

Atop a mountain peak caught in a stranglehold of ice, snow, and bitter, bitter cold, at the end of a snaking, whip-thin trail, sits the remains of an ancient fortress.  The halls are barren.  The wooden furniture is closer to dust than to trees.  The structure itself is beginning to crumble, if only just.  The only sound is the agonized shriek of the wind.

Well.  Almost the only sound.

For snoring upon the fortress’s tallest roof, irreverent to the deathgrip of the blizzard, is a beast of razored teeth and claws.  A primal thing, a seeker of death and domination, a thing which every creature residing in the hills and plains and forests below have learned to fear.