#toriel week

She feels nauseous at having left them alone, even after they passed her test of independence. She wants to hold them and tell them everything will be alright and show them her favorite bug hunting spots and—and if she wants any of that, they have to stay.

So she has to clean. She has to make her Home worth staying in.

She sweeps. She scrubs. She places the knife block in the highest kitchen cabinet. She hides the wine and cider and polishes the dining table with its one-too-many chairs.

(Three drops of water land on the clean wood. She wipes them away before the salt can stick.)

Her work is quick and thorough and soon the house looks like a diorama, the set for a play that’s run its course for too many seasons. 

That’s how it looks. But the smell—she can’t erase the drunken scents quite so easily. Shame heightens her senses, choking her. Cleaning alcohol and drinking alcohol blend together in a horrible concoction. 

Gasping, she digs her claws into her palms, then into the wood of the fireplace. It lights with the scents of maple and char. Better.

Better, but—she can do better. The scents that used to envelop her home—butterscotch and cinnamon. It’s been years—decades? Centuries?—but the recipe is stamped in her soul. She couldn’t erase it if she tried. 

It won’t take long to pick up ingredients. None of the monsters in the Ruins ever stop her for small talk. She’ll have the pie baking before the human tires of playing in the leaves.

She flees her house, locking its current pathetic scents behind the front door, and takes a deep breath.

She can fix this.