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Late afternoon sun spilled over the lake, making it shimmer like it was made of liquid gold.
Wilbur leaned back against a tree stump, letting the sunlight warm his face as he listened to Tallulah splash in the shallow water along the shore. It’d been a quiet day for the two of them. Phil had babysat Tallulah for him this morning, letting her tag along with him and Chayanne while they completed their daily tasks.
Taking advantage of the break, Wilbur did his best to clean the house as best he could. The flowers Chayanne and Phil had planted for Tallulah were vibrant splashes of color against the moss-covered wall they’d built their house beside, their stalks stretched tall and leaves fluttering in the breeze. It made the outside look a whole lot prettier than it had before, but the roof was Wilbur’s domain, and he had never been a very good builder. Maybe he could ask Phil to fix it for him tomorrow.
He also did some other menial chores. Bed sheets and sweaters hung on a swaying clothesline, being dried to a crisp by the dark yellow sun. Freshly-picked berries were piled high in a wooden bowl, ready for Tallulah to snack on whenever she got hungry. The broken handle of Wilbur’s pickaxe had finally been repaired, he restrung the bow Tallulah used to practice her archery, and perhaps most importantly, Wilbur cleaned himself up.
Like the hanging bed sheets, Wilbur was letting the sun dry his hair as he slumped further back against the stump. After Tallulah came back from her day out with Grandpa Phil, Wilbur frowned when he noticed the dirt and dust caked on her clothes. When he asked Phil what happened, Phil laughed awkwardly and said something about Chayanne showing Tallulah a nearby cave, before telling Wilbur he couldn’t stay for long.
Despite how weird Phil’s behavior was, Wilbur decided not to push the issue for now. Instead, he focused on the bigger issue at hand, which was getting Tallulah cleaned up.
He listened to her splash around in the lake, her giggles warming him even more than the sun could. After another minute or so, her laughter faded out, and he smiled when he heard footsteps running towards him.
Opening his eyes, he saw Tallulah running towards him, the old sweater of his he’d given her to wear hanging down past her knees with the sleeves completely swallowing her hands. She had her own clothes of course, but they were also drying on the clothesline at the moment, so the sweater would work for now.
“How was the water?” He asked her as she ran over, her wet curls sticking to her cheeks.
“It was cold!” Tallulah signed, balling her hands into fists in front of her and shaking them to look like she was shivering.
Wilbur frowned, offering his hand to guide her over to a chair. “Was it too cold? Do you need to go inside?”
At this, Tallulah shook her head. “I’m okay,” she reassured him, the hand not holding his forming an ‘o’ and a ‘k’ before wrapping around herself again.
Sighing in relief, Wilbur gestured for her to sit in the chair settled on what he supposed could be considered their ‘front porch’, despite the fact that there was no delineation between the rest of the land and the porch. Tallulah hopped up on the chair, arms still wrapped around herself as Wilbur carefully arranged her hair behind her so he could comb it through and then braid it.
Right as he picked up the comb Phil had given him though, Tallulah tapped his arm.
“What is it?” He asked, something inside him twinging when he noticed the crease between Tallulah’s brows.
“I don’t think I got all the dirt off,” Tallulah signed, gesturing to her face. “I kept dunking my head under but every time I looked in the mirror I had these brown spots on my face!”
Wilbur frowned and gently grabbed her chin, tilting her head back so he had a better view of her face. Then he leaned down and tried to see the ‘brown spots’ she mentioned.
It only took him a moment to realize what she was talking about.
“Oh sweetheart,” Wilbur laughed, grinning down at her. “That’s not dirt. Those are freckles!”
The freckles were dusted across the bridge of Tallulah’s nose and cheeks in a soft shade of brown that reminded Wilbur of cinnamon. And once again, Wilbur was struck by how similar to him she was. While his own freckles were much fainter than hers at the moment, he remembered how prominent his would get after spending whole days in the sun as a child. While he’d never mistaken his freckles for dirt, he couldn’t blame Tallulah for the confusion given her… unusual childhood so far.
“F-R-E-C-K-L-E-S?” Tallulah fingerspelled out since she didn’t know the sign for the word.
Holding up a finger, Wilbur quickly searched up on his translator what the sign for freckles was. Then, he put the translator back in his pocket and held his hands up.
“Freckles,” he repeated, tapping all his fingers twice on his cheeks while also saying it out loud.
Tallulah nodded, trying the sign out herself before looking back up at him. “What are they?”
“Well, uh-” Shit. How did he explain what freckles were? It had something to do with melanin, right? He’d never been good at biology.
“They’re just tiny dots some people have on their skin,” Wilbur explained, deciding a simpler explanation would work just fine. “Sometimes people have them on their whole bodies, other times people just have them on their face. They’re not harmful or anything. They’re just a part of your skin.”
Tallulah frowned again. “I didn’t have them before.”
“The thing about freckles is that they tend to show up more when you’ve been in the sun. But before I found you, you were staying in that attic where there wasn’t a lot of sun, right?”
At the mention of the attic, Tallulah’s face fell, and Wilbur’s chest ached. Fuck. Why did he have to bring up the fucking attic? He knew it made her sad to think about. It would make anyone sad to remember the weeks they spent living in an attic living off fucking dirt-
“No, there wasn’t any sun,” Tallulah signed, her hands held close to her chest and interrupting Wilbur’s train of thought.
“Hey, it’s okay, you don’t need to be sad,” Wilbur quickly said, walking around to face her so he could rest a hand on her arm as he shoved his anger at himself out of the way. “You’re never going back there, remember? It’s you and me. I’m never gonna leave you.”
Tallulah perked up a bit at this. “I know, Papa.”
“Good. You’re my girl, okay?” Wilbur reminded her, giving her a soft smile. “And the point I was trying to make was that since these-” he reached up to gently poke one of her freckles, making her laugh as she tried to swat his hand away, “show up when you’re in the sun a lot, you probably weren’t able to see them before because you’d been in the attic for so long. But now you’ve been out in the sun all the time so that’s why they popped up.”
“They don’t look weird, do they?” Tallulah asked, her brows furrowed again.
“No! Of course not!” Wilbur exclaimed. “Are you kidding? They’re adorable, just like you!” He reached out to poke her again, but she caught on this time and hid her face in her hands, giggling all the while.
“Noooo, mi niña, don’t hide from me,” he cooed, reaching out to gently tug her hands away.
Tallulah lifted her head again, giving him a very exaggerated pout. Wilbur mirrored her pout, and after a moment she dissolved into another fit of giggles.
“Here, I have something I can show you that might make you feel better about your freckles. C’mere,” Wilbur then said, sitting on the ground in front of the chair and gesturing for Tallulah to join him.
Dropping her hands, Tallulah climbed off the chair and onto the dirt, Wilbur wincing when he remembered she was still wearing his sweater, and was definitely going to get dirt on it. Oh well. At least he’d done laundry today.
Shifting a bit so they were sitting right in front of each other, Wilbur angled himself so the sun hit his face, and leaned down close to Tallulah.
“I have them too,” Wilbur whispered, like he was sharing a secret with her. “They’re a lot fainter than yours, but you get them from me.”
Tallulah’s eyes widened, her mouth opening into a small ‘o’ when she noticed his freckles. With the sun shining right on him, Wilbur squeezed his eyes shut, and was about to move away when he felt small hands on his cheeks.
“What are you doing, Tallulah?” Wilbur asked, trying not to laugh as Tallulah poked his nose.
He opened his eyes again for a moment to see Tallulah’s brows furrowed in intense concentration, and he realized she was trying to poke every single freckle on his face, presumably as a way of… counting them? It was probably something like that.
“Alright, I’ll leave you to it.”
He shut his eyes again, and waited for Tallulah to finish her counting. Her fingers were soft and so small against his cheeks, and he couldn’t help but giggle himself when she poked a particularly ticklish part of his cheek.
A minute passed before she pulled back, and Wilbur moved a bit out of the sun so he could open his eyes. Tallulah was grabbing the hand mirror he’d given her a few days before out of her pocket, and was glancing between her own reflection and Wilbur’s face, like she was trying to see how similar their freckles were.
After a moment, she seemed satisfied with whatever conclusion she reached, and put the mirror down. Then she scooted over so she was pressed against his side, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close.
“I like my freckles,” Tallulah then signed, looking up at him with a small smile. “They make me look like you.”
And- fuck, Wilbur was pretty sure he was going to melt on the spot if she kept being this adorable.
“You’re gonna kill me one of these days with how sweet you are, my petal,” he told her, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of her head. “I like your freckles too. I think you look very cute with them.”
“Yours are also cute!” Tallulah then signed, giving him a look like she was daring him to disagree.
Wilbur chuckled. “Thank you, Tallulah. You’re very sweet.”
And although Wilbur had meant to braid Tallulah’s hair before it dried so it would be easier to brush through, he found he didn’t really want to get up. Not with the sun warming his cheeks, and Tallulah curled into his side like the spot was perfectly made for her.
Who knows? Maybe they’d both get more freckles out of this.