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“Hey guys, check out what I just adopted,” Roman called, running into the kitchen to the other sides. Patton instantly perked up and wanted to know, eyeing the box Roman was holding.
“What is it?” He asked practically bouncing in his seat.
Logan looked up from his book with a questioning look while Virgil kept his head down for the most part.
“A pet rock!” He exclaimed, taking it out of its box to show to the other sides.
Virgil rolled his eyes and started scrolling through Tumblr on his phone.
“May I hold it?” Patton asked as if he was asking to hold someone’s newborn child.
Roman nodded and happily passed it to the moral side. Logan was trying to understand why Roman would go out and buy such a useless thing.
“Roman, why did you so-called ‘adopt’ a pebble? You could have just taken any rock from outdoors to call a ‘pet.’ Along with the fact that a pet is not supposed to be an inanimate object. Rocks belong outdoors.” Logan tried to explain to Roman.
“Nonsense. This pet was what the people of the village gave me a choice of adopting after saving the village from the dragon-witch. I could not possibly get rid of the gift!” The fanciful side exclaimed.
“It is so cute!! So smooth!! What are you going to name it?” Patton asked.
“Spider Killer,” Roman said making sure to look straight at Virgil.
Virgil gasped offended, looking up immediately. "You are not going anywhere near my spider with that damn rock!"
"Suuuure he won't," a deceitful voice chimed in, momentarily scaring the others.
Being the fatherly side Patton is, he waved and greeted Deceit even though he didn't like him.
"You cannot possibly be thinking about naming a rock," Logan said turning back to Roman.
"I guess you could say Logan's relationship with Roman's rock is a bit rocky," Patton giggled.
Logan ignored Patton and Virgil facepalmed. Roman held back a giggle with a smirk.
"You could not use your rock as a weapon," Deceit commented.
"Or shove it up someone's butt!" The dark creativity commented, popping up.
"Like I would use my pet as a weapon or put it near someone's butt!! And its name is Sir Oliver III."
"A terrible name."
“Now if you would excuse me, I will take Sir Oliver III to my room,” Roman said leaving the room holding the rock.
A few nights later, the sides were awoken by a scream in the middle of the night. Patton was the first one downstairs to see what it was. Logan walked down the stairs slowly to where Patton was and Virgil didn’t hear anything because he had headphones on. Standing at the door was Roman with tear-streaked cheeks. Patton ran to Roman engulfing him in a fatherly hug, trying to get the prince to stop crying.
“What happened?” the moral side asked softly after Roman was a bit calmer.
“Sir Oliver III is gone,” the prince sniffled.
Logan stayed in a corner watching, wondering why the rock was such a big deal.
“What do you mean?” Patton asked.
“I accidentally threw him at the dragon-witch as a last resort. I didn’t mean to! I thought I grabbed the stone next to him but I ended up grabbing him! And now he is gone!” Roman’s voice cracked on the last sentence.
Patton pet Roman’s head softly. “Let’s get you to bed and we can have a funeral for him in later in the morning. How does that sound?”
Roman nodded and sniffled again. Patton helped Roman up the stairs to his room. Logan followed behind them and went to his own room to fall back asleep. Patton got Roman to his bed then tucked him in. He put tissues on the bedside table and turned off the light, going to his own room. Roman didn’t fall asleep after Patton put him in bed and instead started working on the gravestone for Sir Oliver III and a box to bury. He continued working on it until the sun came up.
Patton was the first side up who actually fell asleep. He went downstairs like normal to make breakfast. Soon enough, the other sides were down and eating breakfast. Roman was unusually silent but it was understandable after losing his pet. This caused all of the other sides to be silent at breakfast, even Remus.
As soon as breakfast was picked up, all the sides (dark and light) went to change for the funeral that they were all notified of by Patton before they got their meals. Virgil, Deceit, Logan, and Patton wore what they wore to the courtroom. Roman and Remus had suits like Deceit’s in their respective colours, both still keeping their sashes and Remus using his octopus belt. Roman came back down to meet the others holding the gravestone and box. The only thing in the box was a picture of Sir OliverIII. All Logan wanted to do was roll his eyes but Patton had warned him this was a very emotional thing for Roman and Logan did not want to upset Patton.
All of the sides went outside to the corner of the yard and watched as the hole was dug. Roman gently set down the box and covered it back up, placing the gravestone to the back of the newly dug dirt. Roman went back to stand where the others were. It was only a matter of seconds before he started crying. Thankfully, he was next to Patton. The fatherly side tried to comfort the prince but as far as he could tell, it wasn’t working. No one spoke, trying to be as respectful as they could with how stupid they felt this all was. The clouds in the sky started looking like it was going to rain.
“Hey, kiddos? Maybe we should go inside,” Patton said gesturing to the sky.
The others looked up and agreed, except for Roman. He kept his face on Patton’s shoulder, not looking up. Not wanting to wait for Roman’s answer, Patton picked him up like a baby and brought him inside to the couch with the other two light sides following. Remus and Deceit went elsewhere because Deceit knew that Remus would not be able to keep it together long enough to stay with the others even with Deceit’s silencing help. Logan and Virgil took their respective seats on the couch on either side of Patton, leaving room for Roman if he ever decided to get off of Patton. Patton grabbed the remote that happened to be beside him and turn on the TV to a random Disney movie. Slowly but surely, the movie calmed down Roman and he started to fall asleep. Patton and the other two had a feeling that he wasn’t going to move for a while and cuddled up next to Patton. It didn’t even reach noon yet and everyone was already exhausted.
Epilogue? (very short)
Around 6pm, everyone had decided to get up. Patton had decided to go cook dinner early since they all missed lunch. Roman took the chance to go up to his room to change out of his funeral outfit. He didn’t feel so glittery and changed into his pyjamas instead. He went over to his bed and felt something on his back. Confused, he rolled over, reached his hand back and picked up something hard. A rock. Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t just any rock, it was Sir Oliver III.