#mckeitbeautiful

@mckeitbeautiful :: Toi hasn’t celebrated Mother’s Day in years. Hopefully leaving a couple flowers (that he pulled from someone’s yard) and a hand written Mother’s Day sign is enough to leave for her to find.

Bel was gone most of the early morning, as Mother's Day was a major holiday for the Wallflower coven. A grand ceremony at 12am for members, followed by an impassioned speech by the reigning Madame and any troupe leaders before sending the members off on their assignments with newly impassioned bloodlust to protect the mothers of the world where law enforcement ceremoniously failed...

... but Bel was tired. As a newly indited "mother" that year, she got her honors and praises for taking after her own mother, but with a teenage boy under her roof (arguably, 3 of them) all she wanted to do was some chores, some meal prep, some cleaning. She was granted a break from jobs, but all the time in the world wouldn't be enough for her to reach the level of devotion she wanted to reach in being Toi's caretaker---

Dropping her jacket on the kitchen chair, the humble arrangement caught her eye. Without a doubt, it was his handwriting. Similarly, she just passed by the original location of those flowers on her way up to the house. Weariness left her face in the form of sparse tears as she sat before them, admiring the petals, the leaves, clearing an aphid or two that were hiding. A small choke and a sigh left her lips in a hushed peep as her eyes fluttered to his door. Long gone to school with his friends, but her mind’s eye saw him sitting beside her, scribbling his message before departing, his features etched deeply into her soul.

Kittyyyy

If he could have rolled his eyes any harder, they would have gotten stuck there. That kind of thing might have been cute when he was still in the single digits, but he was practically an adult now!

Toi shook his head and stepped away; ducking around her to reach for a glass from the cupboard. That was the last time he tried having any ‘boyfriend’ conversations with her. If she was going to start calling him cute for bringing up the possibility of needing the house to himself for a night…

He was wrong when he thought it couldn’t have gotten any more embarrassing.

“I’m gonna forget this conversation ever happened,” he said, attention on getting his drink. “Just remember to knock if my door’s closed and we can go back to you thinking I’m still some kid that doesn’t know what boyfriends and sexual activities are.”

“ Can’t you just let me have this one thing before you leave me forever? “ she exaggerated. An exasperated sigh coupled with a look of utter defeat. She read his tone but couldn’t help the way his subtly disappearing child-like features lingered despite their adult conversation. Without a doubt, she never wanted to be the one to take anything from him, or stand in the way of his choices... but something within her did want to send him off with her affections.

After clearing her face of any sign of maternal angst, she met him assertively. Infantilizing him was the last thing she wanted to be doing.

“I’m sorry…?” The exchange had happened countless times within his time as an arbiter. Nothing felt out of the ordinary upon greeting her. She would work on repairs and discover new ways of intensifying the games… Although, something was odd. The question wouldn’t have caught him off guard, had it not been phrased in such a newly-discovered negative way.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by calling them ‘twisted’.” His admission rooted in curiosity, he couldn’t help but think that there should have been some other word to describe it. The supposedly ‘correct’ term escaped him… had it really been so long since he last shared a memory with the doll seated by the bar?

For a moment, Decim relied on his silence to cover what words may have tried to force themselves into the open. It was one thing to feel the guilt pinching nerves in his chest, but another to say something about it.

He forced his hand to another glass, lifting it from the dishpan before drying it. It was all he could do to not grab his chest while waiting for the pain to subside; teeth gritting enough to escape his ability to notice that gesture went along with it. After all, seeing that from one of the freshly deceased came from a physical pain.

The bartender wasn’t known for suffering those.

“If you’ll excuse any further interruptions,” he said, hearing the clean glass squeak against the cloth. “Please let it be this one: I would like to ask you what YOUR thoughts are on the games played here…” He already knew where so many of his co-workers stood on how things were run. Another point of view could very well replenish his understanding of others again.

Oh no, she wailed sarcastically in her mind, This is unacceptable. How dare you keep me from the deafening silence that fills these corridors? Bel canned herself with a smirk as she sat herself at his bar beside the doll, respectfully acknowledging her timeless inanimance with a short dip of her head before crossing her legs.

“ I sat in on one of Ginti’s trials. You know, your biggest fan? “ she said, her eyes appearing unable to leave the doll beside her as she rested her cheek in her chin, “ Sadistic motherfucker. “ Her tone was already leading into her opinion. “ I’m usually proud of my work, but the way he used the software... I witnessed a pair of siblings nearly rip each other apart over a game of Flappy bird... They walked in the sweetest things, had each other’s back all their lives. It was as if he wasn’t searching to expose any darkness to judge but was... creating it... “

The conflict hit a nerve she didn’t know she had. Furthermore, she didn’t know why she was upset. Like the others around Quindecum and Viginti, she awoke atop a bed of ivy with no prior knowledge, no memories, and was told that was the way she was meant to be. For some reason however, she wasn’t given the role of arbiter before graduating to the other occupations. Instead, she was promptly given the memories of an engineer and put to work creating the delicate links between players and the game.

A quiet, some may even say excessively subordinate character, Bel had no reservations keeping her thoughts to herself around Decim. He did invite her, after all. And if he tipped her off to someone? Nona, maybe? Oculus? What could they even do to her? She didn’t like the increasing unease it brought her to be catching feelings over these humans.

Well when the temperature, air pressure, and moisture in the sky provide the proper circumstances...

You should have found me when I had envy on my blog xD

It was cartoony in some parts. More so than the original was. And it messed it up for me. Among other things.

THANK YOU FOR DESCRIBING IT BETTER THAN I EVER COULD

This is exactly fucking it. It felt very convoluted and I didn’t really like the Chinese dynasty arc and characters? Like? It felt like it didn’t fit? Is that just me??? It felt forced idk???

So much stuff felt random and it totally messed with me.

A lot of it just felt all over the place? Idk. Call me an idiot I guess for having a hard time following and staying engaged dfkjfnbjkd

‘It’s canon, it’s how the story is supposed to be, so it’s automatically right and liking the other one is wrong’ Naaaah. I ain’t feeling it man. Olivier is the only thing I love more about Brotherhood.