Ra'hel's Realm

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“hairy women are disgusting!“ 

Hamlet is genre savvy. Hamlet knows how Tragedies work, and he’s not going to rush in and get stabby without making absolutely certain he’s got all the facts.

Except once he thinks he has all the facts – once he’s certain that it really is the ghost of his father and Claudius really did kill him, he rushes in and stabs the wrong guy, which starts a domino line of deaths and gets Laertes embroiled in his own revenge tragedy and ultimately results in the deaths of nearly every character other than Horatio.

Remember that scene in The Princess Bride where Westley challenges Vizzini to a battle of the wits—you know, the one with the iocane powder?

The last few times I watched the movie, something about that scene didn’t set quite right with me, and I’ve been developing a theory about what’s really going on.

Westley was involved in a battle of wits against Vizzini, a battle which, necessarily, involves a certain amount of deception. I think that Westley was deceiving Vizzini about his use of the iocane powder.

Westley describes iocane powder to Vizzini as being “odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man.” 

When presenting the poison to Vizzini, Westley also gives him the explicit instructions “Inhale this, but do not touch.”

While I believe Westley may truthfully have spent several years building up a resistance to the effects of iocane powder, I propose that rather than poisoning both goblets as he claimed to have done, Westley didn’t pour the iocane powder into either cup of wine!

Especially since the iocane was in powder form, I suspect that rather than being an ingested poison, it was an inhalation poison!

Vizzini wasn’t poisoned when Westley poured (or didn’t pour) iocane powder into the wine goblets, but when Westley told him to waft the vial of iocane powder. Since iocane powder is odorless, Vizzini wouldn’t have noticed that trace amounts of one of  the “more deadly poisons known to man” had been introduced into his system…trace amounts that were still enough to kill a man within minutes.

And since iocane powder came from Australia, and it’s well documented that Australia is home to some of the most venomous species of plants and animals on earth, there’s no reason not to believe that such a small quantity iocane powder could have killed a man of Vizzini’s stature.

Westley had already won the battle of wits before it had begun, and was simply stalling for time until the poison took it’s effect.

I had a dream that I was living in colonial times and wearing colonial American clothes. I was walking down the street and the weather was really nice. There was nobody else on the street because it was Sunday and everyone else was at Church. In the dream I thought to myself “I’m so glad I don’t go to church, I am a witch.” Once a witch always a witch right?

Ever just sit and have coffee and discuss parenting.

Especially in terms of adopted children and the struggles with that?

“Sometimes I just stare at the ceiling and realize two people had to abuse a kid and three people had to die just so I could be happy.” Darkwing would swish his beer can around before taking a swig.

Donald would snort. “I can’t even take care of all three all the time. My uncle has to help-”

“I can barely take care of one. I’m waiting for the day I screw up past the point of no return.”

“Aren’t we all,” Donald mumbles, before the two clink beer cans in solidarity.

It’s more, “We don’t know what we’re doing with these kids, and we’re hoping we’re not screwing them up like we are.”

I kind of imagine them discussing laundry matters and school work. Gosalyn’s immune system isn’t as strong as it could be, and Drake has to make sure she takes all of her vitamins in preparation for the day.

Donald complains that he wasn’t responsible for the color coding system. It was Della, and he didn’t have the heart to change it. He keeps up with it, and has to buy color detergent because he doesn’t want their colors to fade every time they go into the wash.

So happy thoughts.

Drake complaining that Gos has this ratty old shirt she won’t let him throw out. It’s too big for her, and it has dozens of holes and she tore her room apart looking for it when he took it away to be washed.

Donald nodding, and offering to show Drake how to patch it up, and a few tips on taking care it doesn’t rip. Drake sharing a few tips he’s picked up repairing Gos’s toys.

Sharing disaster stories about home improvement projects, and the best way of removing yourself when you crash through a wall.

Sharing pictures and videos, and the two of them crowding around their phones, because even if they are sharing these videos, they still want to watch.

There’s a play, a community thing, and somehow both Gos and Dewey have parts. (It’s launchpad’s fault, he’s helping build the scenery) and Donald and Drake working together to put together their costumes. It turns into a competition, everyone is laughing at them, but then Dewey and Gos is up on stage (for about 2 minutes, they don’t even have lines) and both Donald and Drake have video, so they set up a viewing side by side to compare, the sounds better on one, the camera was steadier on another.

And somehow, nothing they do seem to break this odd little friendship they’re building. Not missed meetings (crime never sleeps! Scrooge grabbed Donald for an adventure!), not the weird stories, or occasional lie, or failing to talk for months on end, not the fact they are both super competitive.

Gosalyn has a terrible immune system. But so does Huey. He was the runt of the bunch and it’s consoling to know that so far, he’s turned out fine. But they still trade vitamin brands that worked best.

They exchange recipes over text. Stuff that Gosalyn loves and stuff the triplets can’t stand. All organic baked ziti that the triplets would kill for and Gosalyn’s beloved beef and noodle stew that he’ll make whenever she’s laid up.

Darkwing will send Donald pictures of Tuffy and instructions on how to patch up beloved dolls and Donald exhibits an incredible knack for fixing dents and scratches in any video game.

Sometimes it’s as simple as a picture. Drake texting over a snapshot of him in bed with Gosalyn ticked to his side. “Rare moment,” he’ll add “Enjoying it while it lasts.”

“You don’t know the half,” Donald texts back, a picture of all three of his boys quietly reading the comics at the breakfast table.

They’re their own little single parent support group.

While we’re at it, they definitely are a support group. Which means that they talk at the best moments. And talk through the worst.

Tantrums are a common theme that gets texted about. Either the three are holding a riot, practically unionizing against him, or the single tiny terror has blockaded herself in her room and has come to the conclusion that he’s practically Joseph Stalin and she’s living under the cruel reign of a dictatorship.

They talk through the resolutions, too. Either if they apologize or, more likely, when shame faced small children hook to their waists and mumble quiet please for forgiveness into their torsos.

On laundry day, Donald jokes that he’s washing apologies out of his shirt and Drake bitterly comments that his sweaters are too heavy with guilty tears and thank god for oxyclean.

Hospital visits are tougher. When Gosalyn ended up in the ER with a random bout of seizures or that one time she’d had pneumonia and he’d found her in the early morning practically coughing out a lung. When the triplets all got chicken pox or when two of them broke a wing and the third had nearly broken his neck and so much of it was Scrooge’s fault…

They share anger. Frustration. Grief. Loss. Uncertainty.

When they’re afraid they’re not good enough.

When they tell the other that they are.

It’s always good though when the pictures arrive on the others phones. Of children fully awake and happier with their favorite dolls tucked under their chins.

Gosalyn holds Tuffy and wears her favorite torn shirt. He took Donald’s advice and patched it using bits of an old Darkwing cape. There’s a short and blurry video of her rasping out complaints and demands. ‘Dad’ she’s barking out through a sandy throat, ‘dad I’m cold! You’re supposed to lie down next to me, dad!’ The caption reads “Hooray! My arch nemesis, The Bossy Terror, returns!”

And the triplets all have their best grins, all holding tiger dolls. Every child has jello. The triplets like green. Gosalyn will only eat orange.

“Good day,” Donald texts. “No pain! Ordering pizza!”

“Better day here, too. Going home tomorrow. Promised her I’d make soup. Updates to come.”

They’ll meet up for coffee later and discuss the relief. The shared panic. The way they could all finally breathe.

The triplets ALWAYS have broken bones. Gosalyn seems to always get sick.

And you know why!? Becuase Huey is the runt. And so Donald has his hands full of medications, vitamins, doctors visits, and eye drying whenever the anger and frustration and unfairness of the whole thing became too much for the duckling. 

Huey often boasts that he’s the “oldest” triplet. He is, in a way. He hatched first. Hatched too early. Hatched without having built up the right resistance or immunities. Della had fretted and fussed and feared. Donald had taken over her duties when she’d gone, and hadn’t realized the full extent until he had.

So Drake coming to him about Gosalyn, while he sits on a plastic hospital chair, voice cracking and hands shivering -…they said it’s because of her past… something about her parents… she’s too small, Donald… she’s underweight… thinking I’m not feeding her enough… they said… they told… I don’t… I just don’t… help… she had a fucking seizure and I could’t… a seizure, Donald… I didn’t… I can’t… how do I…- isn’t news. 

“Give them her records,” Donald would instruct calmly. “She’s probably going to need iron supplements.”

Or in the mornings, when there’s about fifteen pill bottles to choose from and Donald needs to teach him how to color code for morning, noon, and night, because that’s what he does with Huey (mornings are blue, evenings are pin, and afternoons are bright, bright yellow) 

The worst of it, Donald warns him ahead of time, are the frustrations that build up. 

he’s been there. 

Watching Huey completely lose it. Having to be there to pick up each and every peice and shove them back together, no matter how messy or unnorganized. He’ll tell Drake over another one of their coffee meet-ups that there’s no real preparation. No exact right second when it all can collapse. It isn’t a tower of blocks. You’ll never see it falling. It’ll just collapse. And when it does… “You’ll never be ready,” says Donald into his coffee. “First time Huey did, I wasn’t even sure what to do. Poor kid. He’s tired of being tired and I can’t stop it.”

Drake Mallard was not prepared. He wasn’t prepared, after her first soccer game, to absolutely lose it in the back of the car. She’d been so quiet. Hecouldn’t see why she’d been so quiet. Until her face had twisted in his rearview mirror and the hiccups were followed by sobs which were followed by wails which was all followed by him jarring the wheel to the right and stopping them at the shoulder of the road. 

“Honey-!”

“I-I c-c-couldn’t kee-ee-eep u-up! I haa-AAaate this! I hate everything!” He’d seen what she was talking about, somehow, even from the bleachers. Those odd few seconds where his daughter, usually so fast and quick and venemous, had stopped to catch her breath. Had halted. Had looked pained and put out. Had added it to the list of other problems no doubt already seeping through. He could see it. Even while he twisted round in the drivers seat. The way she fidgeted through her cries. Her feet were already swelling inside her kleets and her downy fur left her freezing cold in the chilly night air. 

You’ll never know, Donald had said. You’ll never be ready. 

He hadn’t been ready. Still. He reaches behind and tugs her into the front steat. There aren’t any words. There don’t have to be. 

Runts. They’re still something society kept hush hush. Something that base instinct still kicked at and pointed down towards from its pedestal. Huey feels it. And so does she. The lowest platform on the biological stepping stools.

It stings. The aches, the pains, the medications, the lungs, the soft feet, the softer fuzy bodies. The endless scorn from a silent society that eyes you with contempt. 

Born wrong. That’s the tern he’d use (and he would have to remember it for his next coffee date with Donald.. born wrong…) 

He kisses her brow and lets her sit on his lap behind the wheel, and they stay parked on the side of the road until her sobs turn back into hiccups. “Aw, Gosalyn…” he’d sigh. She’d sniffle in return “Let’s go home.” 

The next day there will be color coded medication and food charts and calorie counts. But that night, sh’ll sleep in his bed, curled up and miserable. And he’ll text Donald and not hear back until the next afternoon while he’s in the middle of helping Gosalyn get ready for a new day. 

you did good, Donald will text. Coffee today?

Please!

You bet your bottom dollar Huey Duck was the runt of the nest. When he hatched at the hospital, the doctors immediately knew something was wrong. Donald was in the hatching room with Della. It happens. He had to calm his sister as she started to worry over how.

While his brothers came into this world just as well, Huey came at the worst possible time for him. Some hatchlings need to remain in the egg for an extended period of time. He was shuffled to an incubator. 

My headcanon is that eggs are laid about a month or so after conception. They hatch approximately 7-8 months later. 

It’s entirely possible Donald wasn’t around when the boys were hatched. He was in The Navy at the time. He didn’t come home until Della had managed to create some form of normalcy in her home. She had a calendar and charts. She was definitely an overwhelmed mother.

But we know Donald was there since the boys were toddlers, so he had to have been there before Della’s disappearance.

And whe she goes missing, he goes through the extensive process of discovering how comprehensive Della’s schedules were. 

Medications, vitamins, formula…and the expensive as hell formula that only Huey can drink. It’s specifically made for ducklings who have hatched too early. Also the detergent gentle for downy feathers and vitamin deficiency. Donald’s been dealing with this for 12 years; at some point he’s got a system for them, especially Huey.

What are you doing to me with Drake? What did this man…oh jeeze.

But yes…Donald knows the rodeo. Right now, Drake needs instruction. He needs comfort and sympathy, but he needs instruction to ensure he doesn’t lose his daughter. 

He’ll show him the different pill containers. Blue, red, color coded and Date branded. Drake is going to need these to ensure nothing gets mixed up. Because things gets mixed up, and it’s freaking dangerous when mix ups are digested.

Huey is in the Junior Woodchucks. It’s an outdoorsy organization, and can you imagine how worried Donald was about letting him join? Huey returns home with the forms. He’s beaming like he’s never done before. He’s got this goofy grin on his face when he shoves the application in his face.

“What’s this?” Donald takes them from him and starts to read through the first page, “Junior Woodchucks?”

“Yep! It’s an awesome club that teachings young men all about responsibility, physical awareness, and helping the environment!”

Donald wants to say no. His first instinct is to tell him no. He gets sick so easily, and he’s afraid of what will happen. What if an adult doesn’t know? What if he isn’t there? But he can’t tell him no…he can’t deprive him of this, so he signs the papers. The next day they go to Duckburg’s local JW center.

He lays down the law in no uneven terms. They need to know this, and they’re both afraid, a little wary of what the Troop Master will say. But the man is understanding and nods firmly. 

There’s a deal between them. It isn’t hard. Huey is mindful of his medication and his limitations. He hates admitting them, but he has no choice. It’s non-negotiable, and the only way he can stay in the JW. 

Think of Dewey and Louie, the first time one of his illnesses catch up to him, and they’re terrified. Donald has to comfort and ten to Huey while tending to Dewey and Louie’s emotional needs at seeing their brother sick like that. They know the routine. 

When Donald meets Drake, when he meets him for the first time…he doesn’t like. Drake leaves an impression. All it takes for them to click is to see how they interact with their kids, and it’s easy to drop a line, to leave a phone to text and call.

And I still firmly believe that a huge chunk of this IS a perception society has of them. Before they’d been given the ability of speaking and walking and having houses, while they were still just birds in ponds, prey…

Runts were always the first to go.

They hold back the process of advancement. Of evolution. Of passing genes forward. Usually, the runts were either left for dead or quickly finished off by a predator or the nearest duck or goose who felt kind enough to do the family a solid.

Runts were killed for the convenience of not having them live.

It’s taught in every biology class, in every history workshop, in most playful little children’s songs sung while they hold hands and spin round and round

Fuzzy wuzzy was first to fall

Fuzzy wuzzy was born too small

It isn’t hard to spot a runt, kids used to whisper behind the slides. They’re fluffier! And smaller!

Gosalyn remembers the first time her second grade teacher had gone over the history of St. Canard. Could remember the moment she’d said that the biggest and the strongest birds had built it and someone in the back had asked “wha about the runts?”

“We don’t use that word,” the teacher had said. “It’s rude.”

“No it ain’t. It’s what they are. What about em.”

“Well…” she pondered. “They would have been gone by then. Most parents didn’t keep… ahem… runts. Usually the father would, well, you know-“

“Kill it out back?”

Gosalyn flinched, her own father popping into her mind.

“Not quite the way I’d put it but yes, sure. Usually it was the fathers job to quickly take care of the less suitable babies. Now, back to how they-“

Less suitable. Even the teacher has her ideas about it. There’s something that still exists. An odd base instinct maybe? A terrible string of hatred that they were born with that made them want to exclude and eliminate the weaker links of their society…

Gosalyn comes home in tears.

No medication or calorie counting can fix it. Just a few good hugs and grilled cheese and a long talk on the couch on how she isn’t weaker. Isn’t a bad egg. And he’s not going to take her out back and do the deed (she’s giggled at that through the tears so at least he got a few smiles from it all)

Huey gets it, too. Scrooge has his own idea about runts. He’s from a time where doctors believed they could cure such an “ailment” and had, in turn, ruined many a child’s life. But his perceptions of them still remain. Weaker. Less able to help or contribute.

Dewey and Louis are so protective of their brother, it can be near unbelievable. He’s the eldest. He should feel responsible for them. And yet, the tables turn faster than they could stop, and the two youngest are quickly reasserting themselves as the eldest. 

Gosalyn… Gosalyn is an only child. But she still has biology and history classes. She’s torn down from the meager distance of her second isle desk. 

Donald and Drake talk about it over the phone. About letting them sign up for soccer and football and hockey and Junior Woodchucks and Varsity and go on camping trips when they’re not sure what will happen when they’re out of their sight.

What might occur. What might be said. Especially if they’re not around to patch it up.

In the end it’s all about communication. Donald has Huey call him from Junior Woodchucks every afternoon before lunch. Drake has Gosalyn check in every day from the counselors office when she convinced him that all day soccer camp was a good idea. They go over everything quickly, exchange I-Love-You’s and hope for the best.

There’s ultimately some unfairness. And that may very well be how Huey and Gosalyn finally meet.

When his brothers are allowed to do sleep away camp. When Honker is given permission to do a week long camping trip. When other kids get that ONE THING that they’ll never get. That freedom they’re still not given.

Huey had lost it. Gosalyn had completely blown up. There were tears and cries of “I hate you” and so much apologizing heads might have started to spin.

But things to quiet down to a miserable, sniffling beat.

Donald and Drake need support then more than ever. With two kids gone and with a single kid absolutely grief stricken, they meet up. And they bring along the two kids. It’ll most likely be at Scrooge’s mansion just because of the variety alone. And they let the kids introduce themselves.

These two might have never gotten along. Huey might be a geek, but he’s got more of a spine than Honker and two brothers to boot.

And yet, this is the one thing that binds them.

“Well,” Donald makes coffee and hands Drake a mug, “this is a disaster.”

“Honker’s not back for six days. Not sure how I’m going to get her to cope.”

Donald snorts. “Roll with the punches and try to make it fun.” They clink mugs. Upstairs there’s laughter and the sound of running. Better than before, at least.

“Can we just stay here for six days?”

“Make it two weeks. I signed his brothers up for the half experience and it’s still not short enough.”

“We’re gonna need a schedule. Mini golf on Tuesday?”

“Why not. Scrooge has boats if you want to sail Wednesday? There’s some good swimming around the mountain.”

“As long as it’s not too cold. And we get them out in time.” The list of rules is long, but Drake prides himself on near memorization. Donald lifts his glass in a salute.

“Amen.”

Two figures bound down the stairs. “DAD HUEY’S GONNA SHOW ME THE GROSS BUGS OUTSIDE!”

“They’re called insects-“

“Whatever book worm! CAN WE DAD!?”

“Sure. Be back for lunch.”

“Keen gear!”

There are hugs. Promises. Then they’re out the door.

Doing laundry when they come back dirty and disgusting is easier when all the right detergents are already laid out. Drake takes notes about the best brands. He’d been bouncing between two or three.

Making a calorie-appropriate lunch with a side of color-coded medication on the side is even easier with the other there. And there are no complaints about taking them when the two are too wrapped up in talks about bugs (insects!) to notice the pills they’re being handed and popping back with glasses of OJ.

I have no doubt that Gosalyn and Huey become close. Closer than she could be with the other two of the triplets. They share these griefs and strifes.

At the same time, Donald and Drake find an enormous common ground. Donald may have hated Drake before. But he gets it, now. He absolutely gets it.