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False has very few expectations for the day when she wakes up in the morning to the sound of her doorbell being incessantly rung. However, possibly the last thing she expects is for Joel Smallishbeans to be stood on her doorstep, rocking a baby stroller back and forth.
“Oh, thank god, you’re still home,” he says, and brusquely pushes the stroller past her to get inside, which she allows mostly because it’s half past six in the morning, and her brain hasn’t come online enough to protest anything at the moment. “Look, I know it’s out of nowhere, and I know we don’t really talk all that much, but I don’t have anyone else I can go to with this. I need you to take care of Hermes for today.”
False blinks very slowly. Looks at the stroller. Looks back at Joel.
“…no?”
Joel does his best puppy dog eyes. Which are unfortunately really good, what with him being a werewolf and all. “Please. Everyone else I know is busy with the blummin’ soulmate festival, and I remembered you saying you got the day off work!”
Oh, right. Today was the Festival of Bonds. False can feel her mood tanking by the second. She does her best to look dubious, though expressions are still hard at this early hour. “I have the day off for jury duty. Which is in an hour, by the way.”
“Just take him with you!” Joel pleads. “Look, he’s a super sweet kid, not hard to take care of. He’ll probably sleep most of the day anyway. Please, False, I’ll owe you literally forever for this.”
False opens and closes her mouth a few times. Damn it, but he was really good at those puppy dog eyes. Probably came with the territory, being a sort-of-dog part of the time. Well, an IOU from Joel was hardly the worst thing in the world, she thinks, utterly resigned to her fate.
“Fine,” she finally relents.
Joel sighs with relief. “Oh, thank god.” He pushes the stroller towards her. “Diapers and bottles are in the bag underneath. I’ll send you his feeding schedule. Oh, heck, speaking of which.” He grabs one of his own swollen breasts, where False can see a tiny wet spot seeping through his shirt, and swears under his breath. “Can I use your bathroom to pump before I go?”
“You know what, sure,” False says helplessly, because what did it even matter at this point.
Hermes is not an especially cute baby, False thinks. She’s sure that between Sausage and Joel’s genes, he’ll grow up to be a perfectly fine-looking lad one day, but right now he looks sort of like if you took a bald old man and shrunk him down. So she supposes maybe she ought to be a little offended when the folks at the courthouse immediately assume that he’s hers. Then again, once he starts crying, they do let her leave the jury selection process early and tell her to enjoy the rest of her day, so maybe she shouldn’t complain.
It does, however, mean that she has the rest of the day off, saddled with a baby. On the day of the Festival of Bonds, no less, which is the last day in the world she wants to be spending idle and undistracted.
Driving around seems to keep the kid soothed, at least, so she decides to go on a bit of a road trip while she figures out what she wants to do.
All around town, she can see evidence of people preparing for the festival. Mostly, it’s shops setting up for the day, bright red signs being set outside to advertise special discounts for soulmate pairs. A happy-go-lucky goblin is erecting a street stall, his stock of bond-ribbons streaming from a rack behind him. This early, there aren’t too many pairs out and about yet, though False does spot a few here and there, getting a head start on the festivities—couples, mostly, but plenty of other relationships besides.
A pair of twin pixies flies, hands joined, into a bookstore. False tightens her grip on the steering wheel.
Behind her, Hermes stirs and begins to cry again. A glance at the time indicates that it’s probably time to feed him.
“Yeah, alright, kid,” she says. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
“Welcome, welcome!” says the barista—a were-lion, if she’s not mistaken, based on the large mane that’s carefully tucked beneath a hair net. “Can I interest you in our soulmate special today? A free upgrade in the size of your drink if you get two!”
False aims for a polite smile, but knowing herself, she probably ends up looking strained. “Just me and the little one,” she says, bouncing Hermes a little awkwardly in her arms; he’d thankfully stopped crying as soon as he’d been picked up. “And I don’t think he’s big enough for coffee yet.”
The were-lion waves a paw and gives her a toothy grin. “Not to worry, you can bring one to whoever’s waiting at home.”
“It’s fine,” False interjects. She doesn’t bother keeping her tone polite this time. “I’m unbonded.”
The barista’s face falls. “O-oh,” he stutters, and he gives her a sickening look of pity. “I, er. So sorry to assume! What can I get you?”
False gets her usual order—a medium dirty chai and a fruit danish. The barista gives her the free size upgrade anyway, and she grimaces; she won’t be able to finish the whole thing.
She sits down at a table in the corner and extracts a bottle from the bag Joel gave her. There’s a charm on it, keeping the milk inside at comfortable body temperature, which seems quite handy; probably Lizzie's innovation, if she had to guess. It’s a little uncomfortable, finding the right position to hold Hermes and feed him, but False ends up managing it rather decently, to her own surprise.
He babbles happily once he’s done with his bottle, and it’s enough to at least slightly cut through her sour mood.
“People are always so weird about it,” False complains to him, “the whole unbonded thing. As if having a soulmate is always hunky dory.”
Hermes just reaches up and grabs gently onto a lock of her hair.
She lets him play with it as she finishes her danish, and discards the quarter-full cup of chai in the bin when she leaves.
Ultimately, False does have to hand it to Joel: he was right when he said that Hermes was easy to take care of. By the time she makes it home, he’s already fallen asleep again. She sort of wonders if that’s healthy, but then again she knows nothing about babies.
It does, however, leave her horrendously undistracted.
She tries to focus on little chores around the house. She loads up a few jars with oats and milk to keep in the fridge for the next week’s worth of easy breakfasts. She starts a load of laundry, and on a whim decides she may as well do the sheets and bedding as well. She prints out a few important forms she’s been meaning to get to—at least she does until her printer decides to jam up on her, and she has to spend the next twenty minutes figuring out how to get it working again.
It’s honestly the best part of her day up to that point.
False gets about halfway through scrubbing her kitchen floor before she realizes that her knees hurt terribly, and that it’s a task that gives her entirely too much time to think. She decides to try a movie instead.
She pulls up Pix’s archive of pirated (or “restored”, he would say) films on her laptop and puts on something that seems kid-friendly, just in case Hermes decides to wake up. She knows that Joel probably swears plenty around the kid, and god only knows what Sausage is ever saying around anyone, but at least she can have some plausible deniability.
Scrolling through her social media while the movie plays ends up being a mistake; everyone and their mother is, predictably, making cutesy posts about Bond Festival Day. She even spots a selfie from Joel and Lizzie, foreheads pressed together, matching ribbons tied around their wrists.
Right. Of course that’s why he’d be busy.
False presses the lock button on her phone a little more aggressively than is wise and sets it firmly aside.
She ignores the phantom itch around her own wrist and keeps her eyes fixed on the movie instead.
Rather than Joel, it’s Sausage who eventually arrives at her door to pick up his son.
“There’s my little boy!” he cries out joyfully, rushing over to lift Hermes up off the sofa and raise him up in the air. He gives False a huge grin. “Thank you so much for taking care of him today! Next work party, your drinks are on me!”
False cracks a tiny smile. She’s always a little overwhelmed in the face of Sausage’s sheer energy, and she’s never been quite sure how his whole thing with Joel really works, considering that they're both otherwise bonded and also spend and awful lot of time flirting with most everyone they know. But among their little circle of coworkers, he’s one of the few who’s always gone out of his way to be kind to her. He’s definitely the closest thing she has to an actual friend these days.
“I think drinks ought to be on Joel, really,” she says. “He’s the one who offloaded the kid on me.”
Sausage laughs and bounces Hermes on his hip. “Yeah, that’s right, drinks on Joel! I hope Hermes didn’t give you any trouble.”
“No trouble at all, really,” False says with a shrug. “He’s a sweet little kid.”
Sausage beams with pride. “That he is!” He plants a big, messy kiss on Hermes’s cheek, then sets him back into his stroller. “Well, I gotta be going; can’t keep Pearl waiting too long! See you at the F—” He blinks, and quickly cuts himself off. “See you around at work, False!”
And with that, he is gone, and False is left alone once again.
It’s only half an hour later when she discovers that Sausage has left Joel’s bag of baby supplies behind. With gritted teeth, False grabs the bag and slings it over her shoulder. At least she knows exactly where to find him.
False decides to take the train to get to the festival grounds, to avoid the hassle of traffic and parking. She’s not sure that enduring the swarms of bonded pairs who clearly had the same idea is better, exactly, but there’s a trade-off for everything, she supposes.
The Festival of Bonds is a spectacle as always. Hordes of people form bustling lines through the spaces between busy stalls. Over by the lakeside, there are soulmate pairs setting off wish lanterns that float a short ways into the air before settling onto the water. Here and there, stages are set up, where musicians perform to throngs of dancers. Conjurers cast bright spectral images to dazzle the crowd—as Falses watches, a giant blue whale sweeps through the sky overhead, diving towards the main avenue before vanishing into a shimmering burst of cicadas that gradually dissipate as the people below ooh and ahhh.
The whole thing is a bit overwhelming to False’s keen elven senses. Her head immediately starts hurting.
Luckily, one thing she’s always been good at is tracking people down, even in a crowd. She manages to catch up to Sausage over near one of the music stages, Hermes strapped into a sling on his chest as he spins Pearl around, then catches her in a dramatic dip as the two of them laugh and laugh.
False almost thinks better of the whole thing as soon as she sees Pearl, but unfortunately, Pearl manages to spot her before she can disappear into the crowd. A momentary confusion passes over her face, but she ends up smiling and waving False over all the same.
“Hey, Falsie!” she calls out. “Or…is it Symm, or—”
“False is fine.” False gives her a smile that feels more like a grimace, and she holds out the bag of baby supplies. “You forgot something,” she says to Sausage.
“Oh, silly me!” Sausage cries, taking the bag and strapping it firmly around his waist. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here to bring it, though! We could have caught up at work.”
Well, it sounds really obvious when he says it like that. False feels pretty stupid for not thinking of it herself. “Yeah,” she says weakly. “I guess we could have.” Pearl is giving her a look that makes False want to crawl out of her skin, so she does her best attempt at a cheery wave. “I’ll see you guys around!”
“She’s here, you know!” Pearl calls out before she can leave.
False freezes in her tracks.
Sausage gives an awkward laugh and tries to gently shush her, but Pearl continues anyway. “I’m not sure where exactly,” she says, “but she came. If you wanted to, you know. Talk to her.” A pause. “She misses you too, even if she won’t say it.”
False’s hands clench into fists at her sides. She walks away without another word.
For some reason she can’t fathom (or at least, won’t allow herself to fathom), False ends up staying at the outskirts of the festival grounds, watching the sights and sounds from an overlooking hill. She tells herself that she’s come this far already; she may as well watch the eclipse firework show.
The moon rises overhead, the shadow of the Earth beginning to pass over it, and the noise from the festival gradually lessens as the crowd all pauses what they’re doing to watch. False can see every mated pair present all standing together, hands linked as they celebrate their bond with the joining of the Earth and Moon.
In a moment of weakness, she feels for the thread in her soul that ties her to another, the link she’s spent so long trying to suppress and ignore, and reaches out through it.
I hate you. I miss you. I’m sorry. I forgive you.
Come back to me.
And as the first fireworks burst into the sky, she feels a familiar tug in return.