Archive of Our Own

Seventeen.

“December—”

“Dess!” Fighting with her mom isn’t anything new, for a Friday afternoon, though Dess was really hoping for something a bit more, you know, fun. She has plans. Another aimless wander around the same stupid empty town. Dragging Kris out to the lake because they’re the only person who will join her in hitting things and eventually each other with sticks. Finally allowing Noelle to paint her nails again because much as the polish chips within the day Noelle really likes doing it, and Dess likes seeing her sister happy.

Though mostly that’s all moot and bullshit anyways. The kids are at school, and Dess is not, and despite her best efforts she’s the only one of them to ever be suspended.

“What did I ever do this time?” Dess snaps, before Mom can try to do anything. And continues, before Mom can point out you were suspended, which, yeah, Mom, but you can’t even pretend you give a fuck about the people I hit, just the effect on your image. Dess’s nails dig into her palms. “I’ve gotten my fucking grades back up to Cs and Bs”—not that she can get them much higher because Asriel won’t work with her on projects anymore and apparently they give out grades for friendliness and not hitting your classmates, or whatever stupid bullshit Mom and Dad put Mr. Gerson up to, but if Dess’s classmates want to go unhit maybe they should stop being so hittable, then—“I haven’t actually hurt anybody that badly, and I even listened to you the last time Azzy and I took the kids out camping and we stayed the whole boring thirty feet from the backyard the entire time!” Which is actually true, meaning her and Kris’s jam sesh was up the highest tree within that thirty-foot zone. They still aren’t any better at guitar than when she started teaching them music, though they’re leagues better than her at piano and it’s not like it’s the kid’s fault they can’t haul a grand piano out into the woods.

“It isn’t any of that, December, it’s that—”

“So you’re just yelling at me for no reason then?” Dess crosses her arms and kicks off the wall she’s been leaning against. “Great, awesome, I’m gonna go crash at the Dreemurrs’ then. At least Aunt Toriel doesn’t yell at me for just existing.” Granted she’s been getting into more fights with Asriel recently but she’d take that over her mom any day, because Dess is better at fighting than Asriel is.

“December—!”

“And I’ve told you!” Dess whips around to glare at her mom. “It’s Dess!”

“Oh, why do you put up such a fight about this?” Mom’s voice is sharp and angry and Dess sort of has never wanted to hit something more than she does now, in this moment, like she’d seeing red and dust and oh maybe she shouldn’t go hit a child with sticks today because she’s not entirely sure she could stop herself from hitting them too hard and after she’s not shaky with adrenaline she’d probably feel a bit bad if she hurt Kris for real. “It’s just a nickname!”

“No it isn’t!” But Dess’s angry stomp is stopped by the couch in her way, and she slumps against its cushions. Her heart is hammering in her chest her throat her everything, she can feel her pulse all frantic under her skin. It sticks to her sides. December. Like some rot growing there she can’t cut away. When her mother approaches she flinches, turns away and gives up on standing to instead pull herself onto the couch, hugging her knees to her chest.

Dess glares down at the couch so she doesn’t have to meet her mother’s gaze. “No, it…it isn’t.”

Five.

“ASRIEL!!!!!!” Dess slams into the back of her best friend, tackling him right out of the stupid four square game that is stupid Asriel because anything she’s not allowed to do is stupid. It’s not Dess’s fault she hit the ball too hard once and broke Catty’s nose and now nobody wants her to play anymore! Catty’s the stupid one for having a dumb nose. And for not passing the ball to her and whispering about her to Bratty all the time. So sure Dess hit the ball hard on purpose but that’s because she had good reason to!

Not that Auntie Toriel appreciated that when Dess explained it all to her. And she was even less impressed with Dess’s very good argument that since Toriel was her aunt it meant she should side with Dess always actually. Who cared about Catty! Catty didn’t sleepover at the Dreemurr’s house and didn’t share Christmas with them so really breaking her nose was good, actually, because it wasn’t like she hurt anyone who mattered and could Dess go back and play pretty please Auntie she’ll be so good and only break a nose if it was deserved.

But whatever! She smushes her face to Asriel’s side. “Asriel, Asriel! I gotta tell you something important! Uh…down here!” She glares at both Bratty and Catty as she hauls Asriel up to his feet, just daring them to try anything, and then drags him off around to the front of school. Technically recess is only supposed to be behind the school but Auntie Toriel isn’t watching them and also in charge of the entire school, and as her niece that means Dess is probably also in charge of the whole school right? Plus Mommy’s mayor which means in charge of the whole town so Dess is pretty sure that means she can just do whatever she wants!

She drops Asriel in the grass near the road and beams.

“Wah! December!” Asriel rubs at his arm as he stands, his muzzle crinkling. “You grab really hard…and I was totally winning at four-square! Why’d you have to yank me away?”

“Pfft, my thing is way cooler!” It’s the coolest ever, because! She! Has picked out a new name for herself!!!! Not that anybody else knows that but Asriel is her best friend so now that she’s figured it out she’s gonna tell him and then nobody will ever call her December again!!!!

Asriel pokes her. “You’re zoning out.”

“I don’t zone!” Dess smacks his hand away. “I gotta tell you my big thing though so I’ll forgive you for now. I have a new name!”

“A new name?” Asriel tilts his head, frowning. “You can’t do that? You just have one name. Your parents already named you.”

“You can too do it!” Dess crosses her arms, kicking at a clod of dirt as she heads over to the road to sit on the curb. “But if you’re gonna be lame I don’t have to tell you.”

“Wait no! December tell me tell me!” Asriel hurries after her. “I’m your best friend you can’t keep things from me!”

Dess preens. “Yeah I am.” Who cares if she’s not allowed to play games with other kids? They never wanted to play with her anyways and they’re all stupid and Asriel is her best friend so she’s clearly winning. “Okay you’re the first person I’m telling so you gotta be really happy for me, okay?”

Asriel grins at her and offers her a thumbs-up.

“Okay okay!” Dess bounces a bit in place. Oooooh she’s never done this!!! It’s so exciting!! December is all long and stuffy and even she trips over it sometimes and no Mom having a long name didn’t make her better at spelling it just makes writing her name take longer, which Mom and Dad really should’ve thought about when they named her. But it’s okay because Dess can do it better than they ever did. She grins at Asriel. “My name is Dess now!”

She’s expecting Asriel to clap and cheer for her. Instead he just kinda blinks which is not the excitement she is owed. He says, “wait is that it?”

“It? It?!” Dess charges forwards to shake him. “It’s my name! Isn’t it cool? Dess! Dess Dess Dess!”

“Well that’s not a name though. That’s a nickname which is different.” Asriel scrunches up his muzzle. “That’s like if I said my name was Azzy instead of Asriel. Cause like…if I go to the doctor they won’t call me Azzy. And when I’m in trouble nobody does either.”

“I’ll call you Azzy when you’re in trouble,” Dess tells her best friend, though Asriel just kinda looks confused, so she sighs and pats the curb next to her so he sits. “And it isn’t a nickname! It’s my name now!”

She smacks his arm. Asriel wails, “ow! Dess, don’t hit me! I’m telling Mom!”

“Hey no don’t tell Aunt Tori—” Dess races after him as Asriel bolts for the back of the school again, and she is faster so she manages to trip him up, and they end up in a whole pile of limbs and fur and his stupid baby horns that have started to grow in poking her in the stupid eye which hurts and she doesn’t even have anything to poke back with because Mom and Dad say she won’t start growing antlers for another year or two or maybe even three or four. Which isn’t fair! She wants to stab Asriel too!

“Dess did you just bite me!” Asriel yells, smacking her arm, and okay yes maybe they’re fighting and she’s mad she can’t fight back so well but. But but but. Dess he said, Dess Dess Dess, and she can’t stop grinning even when Aunt Toriel comes over and stares down at them.

“Children,” Aunt Toriel greets. “Would you like to tell me why you aren’t out on the field, but are instead wrestling a few feet from the road?”

“It was her fault!” Asriel says, poking Dess.

“Hey no! Aunt Toriel Azzy did it! Not me!” Dess smiles as sweetly as she can. “You can trust me Aunt Toriel I would never do anything bad ever.”

“You stole my juice this morning!” Asriel wails, and she grabs his arm and pinches it as hard as she can. “OW! Mom!”

“December, stop hurting Asriel.”

Dess grumbles, “I’m pinching him, not hurting him.” Which are two different things because Asriel’s just being a baby who can’t take a little pinch. A lot of pinch. “It’s his fault.”

“It seems to me that both of you snuck away from recess,” Aunt Toriel says. “I suppose that means you don’t want to play on the field, doesn’t it? Well, I’m sure you two would love to help me fix up the classroom for when we go back inside, then.”

“What? MOM!?” Asriel shakes his head. “I don’t wanna do that at all! I was playing four-square!”

“And I was—” Dess was poking at an ant hill with a really big stick because maybe she’d be able to convince the ants to bite all the other kids. Maybe she shouldn’t say that actually. “I was doing something cooler than him.”

Aunt Toriel shakes her head, smiling a bit. “You weren’t invested in it enough to stick around, it seems. Asriel, December—”

“Dess,” Dess says. Aunt Toriel pauses. “Um…I was tellin’ Asriel. My name is Dess now.”

“Dess, then,” Aunt Toriel corrects. Dess can’t help but wriggle a bit at how nice it is. Now that’s two people! Toriel offers her hand to Dess. “It would be a big help to me if you two fixed up the classroom.”

Dess bristles up even as she takes her aunt’s hand to help her up. Owowow Asriel’s horns are tiny but really sharp… “You just want us to do boring work for you.”

“Well,” Aunt Toriel says, “I suppose if you don’t want to, I can always ask one of your classmates to do it…”

“Okay okay okay!” Dess snags her aunt’s sleeve. “You can’t let them do it! They’re all stupid. We’re way better.”

“December,” Aunt Toriel says.

“What? I’m right. You like me way more than them! I come to your house all the time! They’ve never even been there once! And you aren’t their aunt. Only mine!” Dess smushes herself to Aunt Toriel’s side and hugs her very hard. Look at how good she’s being! The best niece ever. Which means she should never get in trouble for anything ever. She grins when her aunt hugs her back.

“Hey, what about me?” Asriel whines, picking himself up, and Aunt Toriel laughs and drags him into the hug too.

“Alright, alright,” she says, “I love you both very much. Now go setup the classroom for free reading and I’ll let you both eat the rest of the goldfish, alright? Just share with each other.”

Dess lights up. “Asriel first one there gets all the green goldfish—”

“The goldfish colors taste the same!” Asriel yells, as Dess takes off for the school. “Hey wait you can’t take all the green ones Desssssss! DESS!”

Victory tastes so much sweeter when Asriel complains and calls her Dess the entire time.

Seven.

Dess stares down at Asriel’s new baby brother and says, “does he like do anything.”

“Dess!” Asriel smacks her across the arm, but not hard at all because he’s all baby-distracted which is normal distracted but specifically caused by a baby which is worse than normal distraction because it makes people all weird. Dess does not get the appeal. The baby is like mostly all weird and wrinkly. He keeps staring at her. She scrunches her face up at him and he scrunches back. Maybe all babies just sort of look like that.

“Okay but Winter does stuff though.” Dess flops backwards across her aunt and uncle’s bed, rolling over so she was still facing Asriel. “He likes…babbles. And cries. Honestly mostly crying.” Dess scowls. When Mom and Dad sat her down to say hey you’re going to have a baby brother they did NOT tell her about all the crying she’d have to sleep through and really for that alone they should return the baby. He’s like. Fine. He’s okay. He can’t say her name so good but she kinda likes that because he calls her ess, like the d-sound just kinda was forgotten at the store or something and it’s better than December. And Mom doesn’t even say anything! Probably ‘cause babies can’t say long words yet.

Asriel tosses his head. “Oleander is just better.”

“HEY!” Dess smacks him back. “Winter is better and you know it!!! Well except for the crying. And always coming in my room and I think babies are hiding how smart they are because why can he open doors.”

Asriel giggles, reaching a hand down into Oleander’s crib. The baby grabs one of his fingers, and then blinks like he has no idea at all what he’s supposed to do next. Dess does not laugh at that because it’s not funny at all. But she scoots to the edge of the bed to get a better look. Weird weird wrinkly baby. Like a person all smushed and squished into the tiniest possible body that could fit it. Oleander doesn’t have fur but his skin is kinda like the color of her fur in that it’s real brown. ‘cept he doesn’t have fawnspots which makes sense ‘cause Asriel doesn’t either.

She pushes herself right right righttttt up to the edge of the bed and leans across the gap between bed and crib to peer inside. It is not super comfortable and she’s like halfway to falling and kinda only isn’t ‘cause the crib is a good spot to place her hands and hold like literally the entire rest of her body up. But from here she can look down at Oleander who giggles or maybe just gurgles at her it’s kinda hard to tell, and he lets go of Asriel’s paw to reach for her.

“Gah Dess!” Asriel’s hand flutter through the air and smack against her sides. “Get off get off you’re gonna make the crib break!”

“No I’m not!” But Dess drops back down, and only falls a little bit on her face. She scrambles back up to reclaim her spot on the bed, hugging one of Uncle Asgore’s pillows to her chest and resting her chin on it. “I can look at the baby too.”

“Not if you’re gonna hurt him!” Asriel puffs out his chest. “I’m his big brother, I gotta keep him safe!”

“Yeah you’re a big brother alright,” Dess sits up, straightening to realllllllly show off the like four inches she has on Asriel. Does it work when she is sitting and he is standing. No not entirely but it’s the principle of things. Probably. She thinks she’s using that right ‘cause Mom says it a lot. “Sooooo big.”

Asriel pouts. When he does he slouches which makes him even shorter than her. “Dad says I’m gonna be so tall one day. And you aren’t gonna be tall at all.” But his voice isn’t mean or anything and she grins as he finally leaves the crib to come join her on the bed.

“But I’m taller now!!! So I think I’ll be taller forever.” She wriggles and pounces on him, delight all warm and bubbly in her limbs. Asriel is fun to wrestle even if he is such a cheater sometimes and no she does NOT cheat Asriel she is perfect and would NEVER, and oh would you look at that Oleander is standing HA GOT YOU, and she shoves him right off the bed.

On the floor Asriel crosses his arms. “Lying about what Oleander is doing is cheating.”

“No it isn’t!!! I’m just better than you.” She sticks out her tongue. Asriel sticks his out back so she makes an even sillier face. And that lasts for a little while before she gets bored and Oleander keeps kinda snuffling. Not crying but like close to crying and Dess is so done with all the crying. So she rolls off the bed and to the crib. “Let’s go show him stuff.”

“Huh?” Asriel follows her off the bed.

“Yeah! It’s funny.” Dess kinda knows how to hold babies. Something something support the head don’t drop them which like yeah duh Mom and Dad, of course she knows not to drop the baby. Still though usually whenever she holds Winter it’s cause Dad will put him in Dess’s lap when she’s already sitting so she’s not entirely sure how you pick up a baby when he’s like on his back in a crib. Babies are like footballs right. Hold baby like football. “Winter always stares at stuff like woah what’s that and I don’t know if he understands me so well when I’m like that’s the grocery store they sell food there. I guess for a long time he just kinda drank milk so maybe he doesn’t really get food yet? But he eats weird baby food now and stuff so I dunno.”

She can figure out picking up baby. Dess reaches into the crib.

“Dess!” Asriel tugs at her arm. “We aren’t allowed to pick him up.”

“Okay you aren’t but I’ve been a sister way longer than you so I totally—”

She’s cut off by the door opening to reveal her mom and Aunt Toriel in the doorway and Dess leaps away from the crib, crashing into Asriel a little bit and knocking both of them to the floor.

“I’M NOT DOING ANYTHING!” Dess rolls on top of Asriel. “I was just looking. Just looking! Oh hi Winter!” Dess waves to her baby brother held in Mom’s arms. “…wait why are you guys here?”

“Winter needed somewhere quiet away from the crowds.” Mom looks down at Dess like she’s somehow seen Dess break the rules even though there aren’t any rules in her aunt and uncle’s bedroom probably. Dess digs her elbows a bit harder into Asriel’s back so he doesn’t say anything. “December. What did you do.”

Dess bristles. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Were you being good watching Oleander?” Aunt Toriel adds.

“So good,” Dess says and she smiles because she IS being good, actually, she did literally nothing wrong at all and she is the best daughter and niece and wow she should get more cake for this actually who cares if it isn’t cake time until later she helped make the cake with her aunt which means really she should get like three slices actually. Who cares if the cake is for the baby-party or whatever it’s called Oleander can’t eat cake which means wow. Look at that Dess is so nice and she’ll eat his cake too.

Asriel squirms out from under her. “She was trying to pick up Oleander!”

“AZZY!” Dess shrieks, lunging forwards to pinch his arm very hard. Asriel yelps and twists to bite her which HEY OW NOT FAIR, and also Dess can bite harder, except. Um. She stops with her teeth in Asriel’s arm and Asriel pulling her hair because. Oh yeah their moms are like right there.

She spits out Asriel’s arm and steps away from him.

“December, what did I tell you not to do?” Mom snaps, and Dess bristles up.

“That’s not—!”

“December.”

“…to pick up Oleander. But Asriel tattled!” Dess runs up to smush against Mom’s legs, looking up at her so good and sweet. “…‘sides I just wanted to show him stuff. I wasn’t gonna drop him! Mom I really wasn’t it’s just no fair he’s all stuck in a crib there. We were just gonna go to like Asriel’s room probably.” She didn’t really think that far ahead but there are way too many people downstairs and also she would get in so much trouble if she carried a baby down stairs. Down the hall is way less bad.

“December…” Mom sighs. She sighs a lot around Dess. Well whatever Dess sighs more. Mom still doesn’t even call her Dess most of the time even though she has said so many times Mom I picked a better name than you did let’s use that okay. Even Dad messes up. Suddenly smushing against Mom isn’t so fun and Dess jerks away. “I am trusting you to watch Oleander. Not to get him hurt.”

“But I won’t!” Dess stomps over to the bed. “I won’t I won’t I won’t!!! You let me hold Winter!”

“When someone is around to watch you, in case—” Mom shifts Winter to just one arm and rubs at her forehead with the other. Winter kinda babbles a bit which makes Dess smile. A little. Not enough to go back to smush Mom though. “December, Oleander is still very little and very fragile. Even if you did not want to, you could still accidentally drop him and get him hurt.”

“But I don’t wanna hurt him,” Dess says, slumping down against the bed. “I just wanna play with him.”

“He’s a bit too young to really play with you yet,” Mom says. She frowns a bit. “Why don’t you come join us downstairs? Winter is due for a nap and he and Oleander can keep each other company while you and Asriel play with your other friends.”

“But they aren’t my friends.” Dess crosses her arms. “I don’t even know why they’re all here. Only we get to come here. Not a bunch of classmates.”

“The entire town wanted to come greet Oleander, now that he’s a bit older,” Mom says. “Isn’t that nice of them?”

“But they’re dumb,” Dess says just in case her Mom didn’t hear that part. Dess impl—imepled…implied it! Which is saying something but you don’t actually say it out loud to someone’s face. Mom is so good at it and Dess wants to be too. “I don’t want them to be nice I want them to go away. They’re taking up like everywhere good downstairs! I saw Catty sitting in my spot on the couch! I’m gonna KILL HER!”

“You will be doing no such thing,” says Mom. Dess huffs, kicking at the underside of the bed. “You’ve been hiding up here long enough, December.”

“Then why do the babies get to stay?” Dess twists away. “It’s a baby party but it’s no fair they get to be in here if I have to go downstairs.”

“Because they get tired easily,” Aunt Toriel cuts in. She’s quiet for a second looking at Mom and they do that Annoying Grown Up Thing where they like talk to each other in their minds or something which Mom says she can’t do but um no Mom if you aren’t talking to Auntie Toriel in your head where I can’t hear then why do you always say the same things without talking to each other? Huh? Huh? Hey wait Mom stop leaving teach me how PLEASE—

Dess shakes herself and realizes that oops. She totally missed a few things. Like one Winter has been put up on the bed. And two Asriel’s gone off to be all stupid looking at Oleander. Dess slumps further until she’s just kinda lying on the floor. Mom’s kneeling near her but Dess just flips around. No carpet is not fun to stare at but it’s better than having to go downstairs where there’s a whole bunch of strangers in her house!!!! And yes okay she knows it’s not her house like home is but so what ‘cause this is hers too like how her house is also Asriel’s and Toriel and Asgore are her aunt and uncle! Nobody else’s!!! Why do her stupid classmates get to come over? Dess doesn’t want to play with them. She wants to hit them until the house is hers again. Though there’s a lot of people. She’s not sure how to scare off like so many adults too. More adults than she can count on her hands.

“Alright,” Mom says, and Dess’s ears twitch. “Alright, December—”

“Dess,” she grumbles into the carpet.

“Dess,” Mom says, and Dess perks up. “You can stay here and keep an eye on the babies. But. Promise me, Dess, that you will not pick them up, and if they want to sleep then don’t disturb them, okay? Come find us or your father or Asgore if anything happens.”

“Okay!!!” Dess scrambles up to her feet to barrel into Mom’s legs, hugging her as tight as she can which is very tight, Dess is so good at hugs. “Okay Mom! I’ll do that. Only a little tiny bit of picking up.”

“Dess.”

“Nooooo picking up!” Dess giggles, smushing her face against her mom’s side and looking up at her. She feels!!! So bubbly!!!! Like she could fly maybe!! Oooh maybe she should try that actually she’s very good at climbing high places and flying means she wouldn’t keep scraping up her knees jumping down. “Can I have cake too. When is cake. If I helped make cake can I get all the cake.”

“A bit later,” Aunt Toriel says. “Actually, Carol, now that I think about it, there’s a few other parents with small children downstairs, aren’t there? If December here is offering her babysitting services, maybe we should see if they’d like to partake…”

“WHAT.” Dess springs away from her mom and aunt. Asriel off near Oleander’s crib starts laughing. “No that’s okay Mommy Auntie Toriel I just want these two actually please and thank you.”

Mom laughs. “Well, at least you’re honest,” she says, and comes over to ruffle Dess’s hair. Dess swats at her hands but grins. “Remember: do not pick up the babies. And make sure Winter doesn’t start putting anything in his mouth.”

Dess nods. “Mmm-hmm!”

“Asriel,” Mom turns to him still near the crib. “Keep an eye on Dess.”

“Wha—Azzy?!” Dess springs up before Asriel can agree. “Why’s he watching me? I’m older than him!”

“Because I trust he’ll do as he’s told,” Mom says, which, okay yes maybe Dess doesn’t always listen but she has a good REASON for it! It’s because sometimes she has ideas that are better than what her mom or dad or aunt or uncle say and if she knows she’s right and good why wouldn’t she do them? Huh? Huh?

“Hehe.” Asriel giggles.

“I’m gonna hit you,” Dess tells him. Asriel giggles harder. “You only listen ‘cause you’re boring!”

“No, ‘cause I’m responsible!!!” Asriel dodges her lunge. On the bed Winter giggles and claps, and Dess glances over to her brother, waves a bit. And he waves back!!!!! Kinda!!!! He’s trying to!!! And oh okay Dess totally has to beat Asriel. She owes it to her brother!

“Asriel, please actually make an appearance later instead of staying here all night?” Aunt Toriel adds, grabbing Dess and Asriel both when they run past her. Dess flails a bit before settling for just squinting real dark at Asriel. He sticks out his tongue. “Many of our guests would like to congratulate you on being a big brother!”

“Ugh fine,” Asriel says. “But later.”

“So long as you actually show up,” Aunt Toriel says, letting them go, and with that their moms leave. Dess huffs at them not closing the door but at least they do crack it and that’s okay enough that she doesn’t go to close it fully. Instead she returns to the bed to flop next to her brother, picking him up and dropping him on her belly.

“Dess!” Asriel squawks. “Your mom just said no picking up!”

“Pfft I didn’t pick up, I just moved him a bit.” Baby on chest is actually kinda not very comfortable. “He wants to be tall.”

“He’s a baby,” Asriel says.

“A smart baby.” Dess sits up and slides Winter into her lap. He seems happy enough to just kinda chill there for a bit. He rests his head on her knee and Dess grins. “Azzy did you notice Mom called me Dess?” She preens, puffing out her chest. “She like never does that!!!”

Asriel rolls his eyes, returning to his spot by the crib. “I dunno why it matters. You get mad about it way too much. I’m not mad when Mom and Aunt Carol call me Asriel. It’s my name.”

“It’s different!” Dess says, turning to face him. Winter babbles a bit at being moved but Dess pats his back and he chills out again.

“How?” Asriel squints at her. “Dess is just like Azzy. They’re the same sort of nickname. They have the same number of letters and everything. Why does it matter.”

“It—it—” It’s because she doesn’t like the way December sounds and how long and stuffy it is and that whenever someone calls her it it makes Dess’s skin crawl kinda and her fur stand on-edge and she likes Dess and likes that she picked it and Azzy didn’t pick Azzy people just started calling him that for fun. But Dess picked Dess and she didn’t pick anything else. Someone else did.

Dess pouts. “It just is,” and Winter puts one tiny hand on Dess’s. Which is nice of him. Dess sniffs.

“You can’t be mad that your mom calls you your name,” Asriel says.

“Yes I can!” Dess grabs the nearest pillow and throws it at him. But baby-in-lap means she’s worse at throwing than usual. So kinda it just lands on the floor with a sad plumph.

Asriel rolls his eyes. “Yeah, whatever,” he says. “I’m gonna go downstairs and play with my other friends if you’re just gonna be all weird.”

“WELL FINE HAVE FUN,” Dess yells after him, scowling, but it’s no fun when Asriel isn’t even looking at her. But she’s having more fun than him. Because Mom and Aunt Toriel trust Dess to watch the babies and Dess is going to watch the babies so good. Better than anybody has ever done it before. Unless Mom and Aunt Toriel try to bring another baby in which case she is going to take her two babies and go somewhere very far away where all the other stupid babies can’t reach.

“Maybe I get a wagon or something.” Dess says, rolling onto her stomach. “Cause then it’s not carrying so nobody can yell at me.” Next to her Winter giggles, a bit. “Yeah you better be fun when you can talk more and stuff. Asriel’s real dumb sometimes.”

Winter just kinda nods. Talking to babies isn’t so bad maybe. Her brother is like. Okay. Or whatever. Even if kinda all he can do in conversation is babble and only sometimes say things that maybe halfway sound like a words. In the crib Oleander sniffles and whines.

“Okay it is not my fault Mom won’t let me carry you,” Dess tells Oleander, even as she scoots to the edge of the bed again. “Um…” He does seem to like her though. Or at least not make sad little whiny sounds when she’s talking to him.

And then oh!!! Oh she is so smart and good at this. Because she can’t pick up the baby but nobody said she can’t move the crib, so she gets up to push it right up next to the bed. Now it’s like Oleander is with them too! When she flops back down Winter pulls himself up on her leg and blinks into the crib at Oleander.

“I dunno how to get the bars to go down,” Dess tells them both, sticking her hand through to poke at Oleander. He doesn’t really stand up yet like Winter does but Mom said it’ll be a while until Oleander can do more things because he’s really itty and Winter isn’t that itty anymore. Apparently new babies are stressful or whatever which is why the first time Dess gets to come to her own aunt and uncle’s house is at their new baby party. Even though the baby still isn’t at his own party.

“That’s okay though,” Dess says. “Everyone out there is dumb anyways. They’re stupid and play boring games and we’re way better than them. Azzy’s just missing out.” Oleander grabs one of her fingers and she grins, a bit. Even Winter seems super fascinated. “Yeah! I’ll show you both all the cool places all over. Just remember that we’re family and that means I think you guys get to be like honorary mayor too. Mom says it doesn’t work like that but I say yes it does I should be in charge of everything ever actually. Last year she let me pick out stuff for the festival!!! Well and Asriel. And then we had to help Aunt Toriel set up the school for parent-teacher conferences this year. Which were late because of you!” She pokes Oleander’s tiny baby head. All soft and downy with hair. “You had to go get born!!!! I wasn’t allowed to watch. Or go to the hospital. Mom said, um, your birthmother didn’t know me and probably wouldn’t want a random kid there and I said okay but why can Auntie Toriel go and Mom said well because Oleander’s birthmom knows her and I said okay but that’s stupid I want to go too. But I did get to see you when you came home! And then not so much…”

She wasn’t upset or anything about it. It’s just she didn’t get to go to the Dreemurr house after school really and Asriel was talking to everyone about his new baby brother like they mattered, when, when okay Oleander wasn’t her brother but he was, was hers!!!! Like how Auntie Toriel and Uncle Asgore and Asriel were hers, like Mom and Dad and Winter were hers, and!!!!

“You better not be dumb,” Dess says, smushing her face against the bars of the crib. Winter crawls up to perch on her back, which is not very comfortable but whatever okay he’s cute he can do it. Dess’s gaze flickers up to him too. “Neither of you!”

Winter looks between the both of them, and then points to Dess. “‘ess!”

“Hehe yeah!” Dess grins a bit. “You guys aren’t gonna be stupid like everyone else! All December December when I said that’s not my name! Even Azzy’s dumb about it sometimes.” She sniffs a bit. Winter kinda smacks her head a bit which Dess decides is probably him trying to pat her like Dad does. Oleander just gurgles.

Maybe hanging out with the babies isn’t so bad after all.

Dess squeezes both Winter and Oleander’s hands. “…you’re going to be way better than any of them.”

Nine.

Dess is slumped in her desk when her dad comes into the classroom and that jerks her up again, leaping out and scrambling over to her dad to grab his hand and say, “I’m getting in trouble for nothing!”

“Nothing,” her teacher Mr. Gerson says, and Dess scowls. But he just kinda smiles at her and Dess scowls a bit less. He is okay. He’s the best person in this dumb school who isn’t Asriel or Aunt Toriel and sometimes Dess even likes him a bit more ‘cause when she says I did nothing wrong he lets her talk instead of saying no be quiet. But still. She crosses her arms and slouches against Dad. “Sorry for having to call you in, Rudy. Figured it’s better to try ‘n talk this one out some.”

“Ah, it’s fine,” Dad says, pulling up another chair to sit in. Dess only sits down again ‘cause Dad does. Not because she isn’t mad still. She can be mad forever. And ever and ever and ever ‘cause she’s right and all her dumb classmates are wrong and Asriel—“What’s this little terror do this time, then?” Dad grins at her when he says it.

“It wasn’t even my fault!!!” Dess says, bristled up all over again, because she’s explained and explained and nobody gets it!!!!! How is it her fault that she stole that stupid ball everyone else was playing with? If they didn’t want it to be stolen they should’ve been better, and if Asriel had just played with her then she wouldn’t even want their dumb ball, she wanted to go explore the mostly empty school with Asriel but oh no we wanna play with him, well that’s STUPID! And through it all Asriel just stood there and so what else was Dess supposed to do? The ball was right there and she hated it and it was like all the dumb faces of classmates who didn’t matter. Except kicking it away mostly didn’t fix anything ‘cause then Bratty was yelling at her for getting it lost and everyone was joining in and she looked at Asriel and he wouldn’t look at her, and she sorta wanted to smash everything. Like then there’d be nothing else left and she and Asriel could go do their own thing forever, and the world was all fuzzy and then someone was screaming and tugging at her. And Dess’s hands were still moving to crush the Nothing and Shapes she’d pinned down, and Bratty was crying real loud, and Dess hit harder to make her shut up. And still Asriel wasn’t looking at her.

“Woah, Miss Dess,” Mr. Gerson cuts in, and Dad puts a hand on her shoulder and Dess didn’t even realize she said all that out loud. But she’s breathing real hard and fuming and nobody gets it but her, and when she blinks her eyes are all wet and sticky and she rubs at her face with her arm. “This is just a chat, okay? That’s it.”

Dess sniffs. “Then why are you suspending me!”

“Unfortunately,” Mr. Gerson says, but in that wry kinda voice like this is a joke between the two of them, “that’s what happens after you’ve hit your classmates one too many times. It’s outta my hands. Unless you want me to get fired.”

“I don’t,” Dess mumbles, and crosses her arms. “But I didn’t hit Asriel. So I dunno why it matters.”

“Don’t you think it matters to Bratty?” Mr. Gerson asks.

Dess shakes her head. “I don’t care about her so it doesn’t matter.” Dad takes a really big breath. Dess continues, “they weren’t letting Asriel play with me. And they were being all stupid—”

“Stupid how, Dess?” Dad asks, and he sounds a little bit like he’s dying or something but he’s still warm when Dess tips sideways against him. It’s really not that comfortable. There’s like pokey chair arms separating them and Dess’s face feels all gross and her breathing is like way too loud but she can’t really fix it. And Asriel’s not here.

…she just wanted to play with him. ‘cause yesterday they ran around the school and pretended like it was a dungeon they were breaking out of and she wanted that again, but everyone else was crowding him and saying stupid pointless words Dess never listened to ‘cause they were all stupid pointless people. And they were keeping Asriel from her. To play their dumb games outside where it’s everyone and then Dess who they never have room for which whatever she doesn’t wanna play their games anyways. But she had to go. She had to steal that ball and hit Bratty and keep hitting. Because then they’d all just shut up, because they all kept calling her December, like stop December, go away December, nobody wants to play with you December, and Dess is! So! Tired! Of people she doesn’t even like!! Calling her!!!! December!!!!!!! And through it all Asriel stood there and didn’t say I wanna play with Dess even though she knows he likes playing with her best, and didn’t say hey stop calling her that, was just quiet and looked away and nobody listens to Dess but they all listen to Asriel. And he just stood there.

Asriel’s her best friend. Hers hers hers, and she’s the one who sleeps over at his house and gets to play with his baby brother and bake stuff with Auntie Toriel even if she’s still not so good yet and go on weekend fishing trips with Uncle Asgore and, and, and—!

“I wanna go home,” she mumbles. Her eyes kinda sting—not from crying she does NOT cry she isn’t a crybaby like Asriel can be—and her chest hurts and breathing is kinda achy and she doesn’t want to be in this stupid classroom when everyone else comes back in from recess and they’re all talking about the games they played together. Even if she was at recess she wouldn’t get to play with them. Not that she wants to play with any of them anyways.

“…alright, alright,” Dad says, standing up. “C’mon, Dess, let’s go check up on Mom at town hall, okay? And we’ll talk about being a bit more friendly with the other kids.” The last part he directs towards Mr. Gerson.

“I’m so friendly.” Dess takes her dad’s hand as she stands. “The most friendly.”

“That you are, darling,” Dad says, glancing down at her before looking back to Mr. Gerson. “…we’ll talk about it.”

“I’ll see you next week, Miss Dess,” Mr. Gerson says as they go to leave. “And hey, how about you finish that last book of mine I lent you, eh? Might have another one for you by then!”

Dess perks up a bit. She does like Mr. Gerson’s books. About cool things like magic! One day Dess is gonna learn magic even if all their history lessons say magic probably wasn’t ever real and is super extinct even if it was once. But she’s Dess! She’s the best ever! So she can totally learn magic too.

“Okay,” Dess says, pausing in the doorway. “But!!! You gotta promise to teach me magic too! ‘cause your books are all about it and I still don’t know any yet.”

“One magic lesson, coming right up,” Mr. Gerson says, and Dess is grinning as she exits the school.

Outside is—nicer. It’s getting warm again, though really it’s kinda always warm. Dad tells her it snowed the year she was born but Dess is pretty sure it didn’t ‘cause it sure hasn’t ever snowed any other year. She makes sure to wave very aggressive to everyone outside at recess as she makes a show of skipping away from school. They’re gonna have to go back in. But not her! Not her!!!!!!! She waves even harder when Asriel doesn’t look at her. Fine. Stupid Asriel. She’s a way better best friend than he is. Now he’ll have to work with someone else during classwork and they won’t ever be as good a partner as she is! Not ever!!!

“Mad at Asriel, huh?” Dad asks as they leave the school behind.

“YES!” Dess jumps forwards to stomp in a puddle. It rained this morning! Though the only proof of that left is a few puddles. It doesn’t really make her feel better and kinda just gets the fur above her hooves all wet. “He never says anything Dad! I gotta do it all myself! And then after he’s like oh boo hoo I didn’t wanna hurt feelings but who cares about their feelings? I care about my feelings! Mine, Dad! And Asriel’s I guess.”

“Ohhhh boy,” Dad says. “Well, I bet the rest of your classmates care about their feelings, too. Y’know, usually people don’t want to feel bad? And hitting people usually makes them feel pretty bad.”

“They make me feel bad.” Dess crosses her arms as she stomps in a few more little puddles. There’s not so many people out right now. Kinda just her and her dad and some of the old people who sit on their porches and stuff. She shies closer to Dad’s side and presses up under his arm ‘cause they don’t need to see her right now. She doesn’t like old people. They never listen when she says her name is Dess now. Like ‘cause they knew her when she was a baby they know everything about her. “None of them get it.”

“Get what?” Dad asks, and his voice. Isn’t his mad voice. Well really Dad doesn’t have a mad voice. He was a surprised voice which Dess hears a lot but he doesn’t yell or anything. And Dess doesn’t wanna talk about it ‘cause he still doesn’t get it either, ‘cause nobody does, just her her her her her, but she’s only quiet for a few seconds before all the words bouncing around in her head have to come out.

“Asriel never says anything!!!” she blurts. “I don’t care when everyone else is being dumb because well whatever. I don’t like them I don’t care I could fight all of them and win because I’m way better. But when Azzy—he—”

She just wants him to say something. Like hey it’s not December it’s Dess. Or she’s my best friend so you all go away we don’t wanna play with you. People listen to him. Everyone wants to work with him since he’s the best kid in their class. If he just said something, then! Or, or if he said I want Dess to play with us too. Not that Dess wants to play with anybody but Asriel. But Asriel wants to play with other people which. Is. It isn’t.

“It’s not fair Dad.” Dess sniffs. She is NOT CRYING. Her eyes are just TIRED. “Asriel’s supposed to be on my side.”

“He is, baby,” Dad says, squeezing her arm. They’ve gotta way far from the school with all their talking. “But you get him everywhere else. Your classmates only get him at school, so they really want to hang out with him, yeah? But he’s your family, Dess. He’ll stick around for the long run.”

“I dunno.” Dess kicks at a rock. “Sometimes I think Asriel doesn’t know that.”

Dess goes quiet after that ‘cause she doesn’t want to talk anymore, even if Dad kinda tries. Especially about the whole hitting thing but really Dess doesn’t even have that much dust left stuck under her nails so who cares. So she just says nothing and kinda her chest is all twisty and it still is when they end up at Town Hall where Mom works. She takes a few big breathes just ‘cause, and then hops up the steps two at a time and pushes her way in, ignoring the receptionist lady and going right past her and to her mom’s office. She only waits for Dad before pushing open the door.

Oleander is the first one to notice when they enter Mom’s office, ‘cause he perks up real fast and runs over to her. He’s not an itty baby anymore! Just a normal sort of baby. Even if he still doesn’t really talk that much but Dess is pretty sure everyone worried about that is just being a bit dumb ‘cause she understands Oleander plenty good. Dimly she can kinda hear Mom and Dad talking but Dess is a bit too busy being tackled by a kid who is like not even half her height. Oleander is very short.

He perches on her chest and shoves a bit of paper in her face.

“Hi Oleander,” Dess says, sitting up and letting him fall into her lap. She does take the paper though, squinting at it. “What’s this?”

“Hi hi,” Oleander parrots. He does that a lot! Like copies what other people say instead of coming up with the words himself. Dess thinks it’s very cute!!! ‘cause he copies her the most. She preens a bit as she studies the messy crayon lines on the paper. Oleander paws at her chest and then points to the page, which is Oleander-speak for something like I drew you.

“Aww!” Dess ruffles his hair. “It looks just like me!”

Well kinda it looks just like her. Mostly it’s a lot of scribbles and honestly she doesn’t look like scribbles, she looks like a monster and her mom and dad and Winter! But she likes the scribbles too! Like there’s all so much of her that just her body can’t contain it all so it’s gotta be bigger and better and cooler.

“I bet I’ll grow cool spiky bits when I’m older,” Dess adds.

Oleander giggles and tugs her over to where him and Winter must’ve been playing ‘cause Winter’s still sitting there. Her own brother is holding one of his favorite plushies which Dess won for him at the festival last year! A unicorn with a lotta floppy limbs that’s a really pretty purple and Winter wanted it so bad but can’t throw so good yet. So Dess did it for him! Even if it took like all her tickets…

“Dess!” Winter waves. Then squints at her. “You’re not in school.”

“Supposed to be,” Dess says, and puffs out her chest a bit. “I’m too cool to be stuck there so Dad came to break me out.” She likes the way Winter and Oleander watch her. Like she’s the best person they’ve ever known, which okay yes she is, isn’t she? Way better than Asriel! She drops down onto the floor next to them both, kicking her legs in the air. “Why are you guys here?”

Oleander shrugs, picking up a green crayon to start scribbling on another bit of paper. Oooh, that one has words on it! Mom must’ve let them use the papers she doesn’t need anymore. Mom has a lot of papers on her desk and Dess can only read a tiny bit of them because they use a lot of complicated words. Winter says, “Daddy put us here.”

“Oh,” Dess says. That makes sense. Winter and Oleander are too little to go to school and Dad is the only one who doesn’t work during the day so he watches them so they don’t like die or something. Dess would be sad if they died. “Well now I’m here! Let’s go on an adventure. I know where the vending machines are! We can get chips and stuff.”

Dess is the best at adventures. She knows all the fun places to go and it is her duty to show all those fun places to Oleander and Winter! Like the secret little nook in their house and how you can totally climb on top of Asriel’s roof if you go out the right windows and yes, okay, they are a BIT too little to do that one Asriel fine she’ll wait until they’re like old enough to climb good and stuff. But one day! One day.

“Chips!” Winter cheers. Oleander claps his hands together and starts chewing on a crayon.

“Okay that’s not a chip,” Dess tells Oleander, tugging the crayon out of his mouth. Ewww, it’s all covered in spit! She drops it on the floor and shakes out her hands. “Daaaaad!”

“Yes, you can have a few dollars for the vending machine,” Dad says, and Dess grins, hurrying over to him. “Two, to be precise. One for you, Winter and Oleander can share.” Winter is already bouncing behind Dess, tugging Oleander with him, who mostly just seems sad he can’t eat crayons anymore. Maybe she should get him sprinkles or something. They’re just wax too. “Make sure nobody chokes.”

“They won’t!” Dess snatches the dollars and shoves them in her pocket. “To snacks!”

“SNACKS!” Winter shrieks, and Dess leads the charge out the door. Ha! Take that, Asriel! Dess gets chips and to hang out with Winter and Oleander while he’s stuck in stupid school doing stupid class with stupid classmates. That’ll show him. If he’d just fought for her—

Dess only kicks the vending machine a little bit. It doesn’t get her any extra chips but it makes her feel a bit better. Doritos for herself! And Winter asks for animal crackers and yeah okay sure whatever, babies can have baby tastes in foods. Oleander immediately starts slobbering all over one of them but at least Winter can eat food normally.

The kids are way more interested in snacks than anything Dess has to say even though she is trying to teach them about that time she tried to sneak into the town hall vents and got caught so fast by Mom but if they cover for her maybe she can totally do it this time. Which is fine. Not like it would’ve been fun or anything. But it means there’s really nothing fun to do so she leads the way back to Mom’s office, except she hesitates before pushing her way in.

Because she can hear her parents talking in there.

Dess slows, stops. Winter bumps into her, and Oleander into him, and Dess says shhh shh, which mostly just makes the two of them echo her. But at least they get that they gotta be at least a little bit quiet. Dess passes her chip bag to Winter to let them share and creeps closer to the cracked door of Mom’s office.

“—in another fight with her classmates?” Mom is saying, in her annoyed Mom voice which Dess knows very well. Even though it’s never Dess’s fault. Really Mom should be more annoyed at the people who say dumb stuff so Dess has to prove that no she’s the right one! “It’s every other day with her, I swear…she loves her brother and Asriel and Oleander, how is it so hard for her to at least extend some respect to everyone else?”

“I think she’s just not a very friendly person,” Dad says, and Dess bristles a bit at that. But he says it’s like he’s joking. “Just like this real wonderful woman I know.”

“Oh, shush,” Mom says. She sounds—not so mad. But not not mad either. Dess chews at her cheek. Tastes a little bit like dust. All thick and choking. She swallows nothing and wishes she never gave the babies her chips. “I learned to hide it. She can, too. She kept hitting that girl—does she want to drag us into a lawsuit?”

“Eh, she’ll get there. Hopefully.” Dad’s voice turns to something a bit more serious. “Do we do more to keep her paired up with Asriel…? Guess Gerson can’t control what the kids do at recess, but…”

“Toriel wants Asriel to make more friends.” Dess is pretty sure her mom is rolling her eyes. “And tells me I should aspire the same for December. Honestly.” Dad snorts. Mom continues, “as if those other children have anything to offer her.”

“Y’know,” Dad says, “you used to mock other parents for thinking their kid was the specialist kid in the world.”

“Well, they were wrong. Of course December is better than them all.” Mom laughs, a bit, and something in Dess’s chest loosens a bit. Yeah. Yeah she is better than them all. Behind her Winter and Oleander are being really loud digging through the chip bag but at least they aren’t talking to each other ‘cause Winter talks very loud. And Oleander likes to yell for no reason. “What was this fight even about, anyways? Maybe I’ll just ban recess ball-games…”

“Eh, kinda feel like it’s a bit deeper than that.” Dad’s quiet for a bit. “Dess—well, she was a bit out of it. I think she just wanted Asriel to step in and actually take her side, rather than just watching. And of course the whole December thing.”

“Hitting children she doesn’t even like over not calling her a nickname,” Mom says, “that girl.”

“Spirited as hell,” Dad says. “She’s gonna change the world one day. Dunno what the hell Asriel’ll be doing, though.”

“He’s going to be a pushover when he’s older,” Mom grumbles. “Just like his dad.”

“He’s—okay, no, you’re probably right.” Dad laughs. “Y’know, maybe we’re worrying for nothing and those two will just balance each other out in the end. Dess will drag Asriel out of his shell, he’ll mellow her out a bit, and we’ll have two well-adjusted kids by the time they’re both eighteen.”

“One can hope.” Mom sighs. And then says, “…was your best idea for getting them to go away for a few minutes eating chips?”

“Hey, Winter has all his teeth! And Oleander can just gum on them.”

“You,” Mom says, “are a terrible influence on them.” But her voice is very soft. “Thanks for always watching them.”

“Eh, least I can do. One of us had a very promising career, and it sure wasn’t me!” And with that his voice goes back to Normal Dad and okay yeah Dess doesn’t need to hear anymore. She rubs at her eyes just to make sure they’re still okay, steals back her chips from Winter and Oleander and then pushes her way back into Mom’s office.

“Welcome back,” Mom says. Dad waves, leaning against her desk.

“Enjoy your little adventure?” he asks. “Because we’re about to take another one back to the house, to let Mom work, okay?”

“Noooooo,” Winter says, giggling, though he hurries over to grab his unicorn plush around the middle, and lug it back over to Dad. Oleander drops down, rolls around on the floor, and then springs to all-fours and crawls over to join them. “Dess got us animal crackers. Mine’s a horse!” Winter proceeds to bite off its head. “Not anymore though.”

“I can see that,” Dad says. Mom smiles a little bit, returning to her work. “Dess? Ready to go?”

Dess hesitates. If they’re going home that means soon Asriel’s gonna come home, since he always goes to their house after school since his mom and dad are still working and besides Dess’s house has all the good snacks they’ve hidden in her room. Which means probably Asriel will want to be in her room. Like he gets her snacks even though he didn’t do a thing at school. Just stood there not meeting her eyes like that helps any. He knows how she doesn’t like December and she’s told him like everything she’s ever thought ever because he’s Asriel, so he knows that Dess is her and December is like when her parents are mad at her and the world is too-loud and she kinda just wants to hit everything until it stops moving and then she can just do whatever she wants. He knows and he still doesn’t say a single thing.

“…don’t wanna,” she says, and she sits right there on the floor.

Dad sighs. “Dess—”

“I don’t wanna go if Azzy’s gonna be there!” She crosses her arms and Dad doesn’t say anything which means he is gonna be there soon! “I’m gonna stay with Mom.”

“Mom has to work, sweetie,” says Dad.

“I can be good!” Dess scowls at her dad. “I’ll help her work.”

“She can be good,” Mom says. “Let her stay, Rudy. Better she burns energy here instead of fighting with Asriel. I’m sure I’ll be sending her your way in an hour anyways, once she’s gotten too cooped up.”

“I won’t ever get cooped up!” Dess runs over to drag a chair up to Mom’s desk. Which is a bit hard ‘cause the only other good soft chair to sit in is on the other side of the desk but she’s not a visitor, she’s gonna be mayor too! The best mayor ever. She’ll. Um. Pass laws? Or something? She totally knows what Mom’s job is. Dess picks up a pen and writes Dess is the best on the nearest piece of paper. “I’m mayor now.”

“Mayor Dess!” Winter pulls himself right up to the edge of the desk. He can just barely peek over. Probably because he’s standing on Oleander’s back. “Make a new rule! Um…ice cream for dinner every night!”

“No veggies!” Oleander yells from the floor.

Dess grins. “Dessert…only…no…more…vegetables!” She frowns down at her letters and looks to Mom. “Did I spell that right.”

“Close enough,” Mom says. “You put an ‘s’ where there should have been a ‘g.’ Remember to sound out the words slowly, okay?” Dess squints. Oh she did. Oops. But it does kinda sound like an s goes there! Asriel’s way better at spelling than she is anyways. “Unfortunately, the only one who can sign new laws into being is me. And I happen to rather like vegetables…”

“Mommy!” Winter pouts. “No! No!!!!”

He falls back as Oleander must crawl out from underneath him, because Oleander’s little head pops up on the other side of the desk, wriggling between Dess and Mom. He slaps his hand very seriously onto the paper. “Ice cream.”

“You’re gonna make him so sad Mom!” Dess squishes Oleander’s cheeks as she drags him into her lap, giggling. “He’s gonna cry!” To Oleander she whispers, “okay cry now we’re gonna manipu—mani…we’re gonna trick Mom!”

Oleander just kinda grins wider. Okay so he’s not so good at crying on command yet.

“That’s okay,” Dess tells him, “you’ll get better.” And then, to her mom, “he’s crying!”

Oleander smacks the paper again.

“Crying so loud!!! No ice cream for dinner is gonna kill him! He’s gonna be DEAD Mom! That would be so sad!”

“What a predicament, hmm?” Mom tuts. “We’ll just have to come to a compromise. Keep vegetables legal, and you get ice cream after dinner.”

Winter finally manages to see over the desk again, because Dad picks him up. “But that’s nothing changing!”

“That’s how compromise tend to go,” Mom says. “A whole lot of back-and-forth, only for everything to remain as it was.” She tugs the paper Dess wrote on out from under Oleander’s hands, and tucks it back into her Giant Paper Stack. “You’ll learn to get used to it. Now, I think you’ll find more things to do at home than in here, hmm?”

“Yup,” Dad says. “Time to go, kiddos.” He sets Winter back down. “C’mon, Oleander.”

Oleander slides down from Dess’s lap and crawls over to Dad and Winter by going under the desk.

“Awww.” But Winter is giggling as he links his arm through Oleander’s. “Bye-bye Mommy. Bye-bye Dess.”

“Bye Dad! And Winter! And Oleander!” Dess waves until it’s just her and Mom left in the office. “So…”

“I do need to work, December,” Mom says, and Dess pouts. “Maybe you can do your homework?”

“Gross,” Dess says, and hops off her chair to go find something to do. Anyways, she left her backpack at school. Which means she is immune to homework. Nobody can ever make her do it!!! Except Asriel when he gets real annoying about it. And Mom and Dad. But not today!

Mom’s office is a little bit boring. Dess knows when Mom is working she’s not supposed to be super loud and bother her but that’s a bit easier to do when she’s at home and has a whole house. Now she’s kinda sharing a room with her, but Mom does say she can go out and explore town hall so long as she doesn’t break anything. Which Dess does for a bit. She even goes outside where it’s started to rain again, sitting in the doorway and just kinda watching the rain fall. She’s pretty sure school is over by now. So Asriel’s back at home with Winter and Oleander. Probably all having fun.

But Dess can have so much fun on her own so THERE. And if she’s playing by herself then everyone calls her Dess. Because everyone is just kinda her own head and of course she knows what her name is. She drags her knees up and hugs them against her chest.

…she misses Asriel. It’s no fun without him. She likes having a best friend to run around with and explore with and know he’s always gonna be there. But she also doesn’t wanna go home. She shouldn’t have to go to him. He should come find her.

It’s no fair she always finds him first.

It’s getting dark out when she finally wanders back into Mom’s office. Mom glances up when she comes in and says, “I’ll be done in about an hour, but if you want to go home you can head back. You know the way.”

Dess shrugs. “I’ll wait.” Looks around. There’s a lotta stuff in here. Most of it is just boring grownup stuff. Like papers and cabinets and metal drawers and did she say papers, there is sooooooo much papers. But there’s some interesting stuff on the wall. Fancy art. What she thinks is the handle of a sword but Mom never says so when she asks. And…

“You have a guitar?!” Dess hops up to try and tug it down. “Can I play it?”

“It’s not my guitar, it was—my sister’s.” Mom is oddly quiet as she comes over but she does get the guitar for Dess! Dess bounces until Mom hands it to her.

“You had a sister?” Dess plucks at the strings. Ow! Kinda sharp…she plucks again. Maybe she just has to figure out how to do it so it’s not hurting her fingers. Fur probably helps. “I didn’t know that. How come we never met her? We see Auntie Toriel all the time.” Hmm. The guitar doesn’t sound so nice. Maybe she’s gotta pluck the strings better? “Wait did she DIE?!” Dess nearly drops the guitar. Luckily Mom catches it. “I’d be so sad if Winter died!”

Mom laughs though Dess isn’t so sure what’s funny. “Something like that,” she says. “Here, how about you sit? Be careful.”

“I’m so careful,” Dess says, though she does sit, and gets the guitar back. It does look pretty old which makes sense. Mom’s old so if she had a sister her sister was probably old too. The wood is a nice sorta reddish brown, which Dess likes because that’s like the color of her fur! Though it’s all worn in places. And she thinks maybe a string is missing. Or at least there’s a spot for one. She tries playing it again and crinkles her nose. “How come it sounds so bad? Guitars sound good in songs.”

“Because you have it tune it, dear, here,” Mom comes to sit down next to her, carefully picking the instrument out of her arms. “And this one is rather old. I doubt it’ll sound as nice as it once did.”

Dess tilts her head, watching her mom. “Did you know how to play it?”

“No,” Mom says. “I just—watched.” She hands it back to Dess. “It should sound a bit nicer now.”

“Thanks.” Dess plucks at the strings. It does sound a bit better! She giggles, a little, plucking more. That’s music! That’s she’s making! Ooooh she should try to make one of the songs she likes!!! Dad likes a lot of music that has a guitar in it she thinks! Or at least that sounds like this guitar. She could totally play something like that!

Mom returns to her desk, and Dess stays on the floor. But she glances to her mom whenever she can. And Mom is smiling a bit. Like what Dess is doing is good. Like she’s actually making something new and cool and perfect, and Dess grins to herself. She has to focus on the music. To make it sound how she wants it to. Which means she can’t think about anything else. There’s no room left.

“Mom,” Dess blurts, “do you think I could keep this.”

Mom is quiet for a moment. “Do you want to learn guitar, Dess?”

Dess shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Mom says, and she laughs. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Eleven.

Dess really, really, really hates homework.

“It’s not that bad,” Asriel says. They’ve basically turned his room into a homework nightmare zone. There’s posterboard everywhere because Dad and Uncle Asgore bought like way more than they needed. Like six books from the library Asriel claimed they needed even though he’s only opened one. Dess is currently doodling in the margins because if she tries to read another few pages she’s gonna go cross-eyed and her head already kinda hurts from all the focusing. For some reason there’s an open marker and it keeps getting all over her arm. “Besides, it’s fun homework.”

“No homework is fun.” Dess rolls over where she’s sprawled on the floor to glare at Asriel. “We shoulda done the baking soda volcano.”

“Everyone’s gonna do that,” Asriel says with a huff. “I’m going to do something unique. And something that actually takes effort and shows that I’m good at science.” He puffs out his chest a bit, and Dess rolls her eyes. Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Azzy is the best student. Dess is perfectly happy with her Bs and Cs. And Ds. And an F. But that was a dumb F. It wasn’t her fault she hit all those people. Her classmates shoulda tried being less hittable. “Besides, if you wanted a baking soda volcano you could’ve just done one yourself. You know, like every other kid in the class? I really don’t know why we’re the only two who get to work together.”

“Because we’re special.” Dess preens. A little hard to do on her back on the floor. She rolls over and scoots up to lean against Asriel. He’s made it about halfway through writing the first of three big paragraphs on their posterboard. Helping figure out what to say was the hardest ever. The actual science bit was fun though. Even if Asriel vetoed all her cool ideas because that’s too dangerous, Dess. But, um, no, throwing fruit off the roof to see which one has the biggest explosion was actually her best idea ever, and no she didn’t stop arguing for it because Mom got mad when Dess stole an entire pineapple out of the fridge OKAY. She stopped because she didn’t want to share it with Asriel and write it all down and really it makes a lot of sense she thinks.

She leans over Asriel to steal another handful of fruit from the snack bowl Aunt Toriel made for them. Maybe pineapple does taste better when it hasn’t been exploded on the sidewalk.

“Not because your mom is mayor and mine’s principal?” Asriel asks, amused.

“Nahhhh. Definitely my super special magic powers I’ll get one day.” She’s ignoring the fact that Aunt Toriel did literally tell her that they can work together because she knew they’d just team up anyways. For sure it’s because Dess is different from everyone else and she’s gonna wake up one day and prove it. Preferably with cool magic!

“Pfft. Magic’s just made-up,” Asriel says, as Dess shoves at him. “Hey, what’re you—”

“My turn to do the writing,” Dess says, and he hums, allowing her to take both his marker and his spot. Dess’s handwriting is usually a bit bigger than Asriel’s but she tries to match the smaller shape of his letters. Even if otherwise they’re still pretty different. But really this is all the boring stuff. Blah blah, write what happened and draw graphs and stuff. Since they already did it on a smaller paper it’s really just copying. “And what do you mean magic’s made up, it’s totally real!”

“I think we’d know if monsters used to have magic,” Asriel says, shifting a bit so she can better see the posterboard. Wow, they’ve got a lot of empty space left. Maybe they can tape bits of their project to it too? Hopefully. “There’d be proof and stuff. Like, they’d find magic artifacts when they dig up old gravesites or whatever.”

“Rule one of cool magic,” Dess says, “use magic to make sure nobody can steal your cool magic. This is magic one-oh-one, Azzy! You gotta know this stuff!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, “remember to leave space for when we draw the plants.”

“Oops,” Dess says, moving down to the next line. “I’ll do that for the rest of them.”

They work in silence for a bit longer, save for the squeak of marker against posterboard and the fact that actually Dess hates the dead silence and she’d rather talk to Asriel even if it’s about literally nothing at all. Better than just doing homework. But that doesn’t last very long, before the door to Asriel’s room is kicked open, and there’s only one person Dess knows who kicks open doors with that level of force.

“DESS!” Oleander shrieks as he charges into the room, only to immediately trip over some of the stray posterboard. Not that that stops him any, because he just scrambles over it and leaps onto his bed. Which does crush another posterboard. Dess was not exaggerating when she said their dads bought too much. Honestly she’s not sure why they did that. “Oh hi Azzy.”

“Why am I the second person you notice?” Asriel throws up his hands. “I’m your brother!”

“Boring,” Oleander signs. Sign language is a new thing he’s learning! Aunt Toriel was real worried about how long it took him to start speaking and how even now he doesn’t do it all the time. Something something, Dess doesn’t get all the doctor stuff, all she knows is now she’s also learning sign language and while she’s not so great at signing herself she’s pretty good at understanding it, or at least at the same level Oleander does. Though he still talks out loud to her a ton so she’s not sure why it’s such a huge deal or anything. Maybe he just likes having two different ways to talk. Sometimes three. He also likes animal noises.

“And why do you talk to her and not me,” Asriel adds.

Dess stands to join Oleander on his bed, dragging him in for a hug, ruffling his hair as he grins and tries to smack at her. Since he’s like four years old she barely notices. Like a very large gnat. Oleander smacks harder. “It’s because I’m the best and he knows it.”

Oleander braces a hand on her arm. “Soooooo best,” he says, giggling a bit, and then removes his hand to return to signing. “Dess likes adventures. Adventures are very fun. Dess is the best.”

“Okay, so the fact that I don’t want to nearly drown in the lake makes me boring?” Asriel drops the posterboard to bop Oleander’s head.

Oleander nods. Very serious. Like he’s trying to mimic Mom. “Yes drowning the funnest ever.”

Dess crosses her arms. “I did not nearly drown,” she grumbles. “I was diving, and I was going to come up by myself. But there was something shiny down there! I bet you’re just mad you didn’t see it.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you saw it either, Dess, the lake is murky and nobody can see down there.” Asriel’s grinning, though, and Dess rolls her eyes but grins back. It was nice of him to jump in and save her. Even if she didn’t need to be saved. She could’ve held her breath for longer. Probably. And she really didn’t think the lake was that deep.

Still totally saw something shiny down there. Buried treasure!

“Well,” Asriel continues, coming over to pick up Oleander and set him down near the door. “We’re doing homework, Oleander, remember the science fair I was talking about at dinner last night? That’s in two days and Dess and I need to finish writing stuff down on our posterboard. So go play with Winter or something.”

Oleander crosses his arms. “Don’t wanna.”

“Don’t— Oleander!” Asriel glares. “I’ll get Mom.”

“NO!” Oleander grabs at his legs. “Wanna play in here.” He growls when Asriel tries to move.

“Oleander —” Asriel snaps.

Oleander growls louder.

“He probably just wants to run around in the woods or something,” Dess cuts in, and Oleander nods so fast she’s sure his neck must be hurting. “See? Like an hour of that and I bet he’ll just fall asleep. I can go do that and you can like, take a break from homework.”

“Dess—” Asriel grunts when Oleander nearly trips him in his attempt to get closer to Dess. “…this is due in two days, and we aren’t even done yet!”

“One hour of break time isn’t gonna kill you,” Dess points out. “And my hands are getting sore anyways! Promise I’ll come back and help. But would you rather take a break or try to keep going when Oleander is like halfway to biting you.”

Oleander shows his teeth. Asriel sighs.

“One hour,” he says, pointing a finger at Oleander. “And then you can’t come bother us anymore.”

“One hour!” Oleander signs, and then wriggles their way into Dess’s lap. “Dess protect me! Azzy’s soooooo scary!”

“Oh, yeah, he’s scary, alright,” Dess says, and grins at Asriel’s scowl. “C’mon, Azzy, you’ll live. I’ll let you borrow my DS!”

“Didn’t you give it to Winter?” Asriel asks, as Dess stands, dragging Oleander up with her. He dangles there in her arms. He is getting heavy. But still not so bad she can’t hold him. Mostly. She only staggers a little bit.

Dess tilts her head. “If you can steal it from Winter you can play on it.”

“If I can—I’m not stealing from your five-year-old brother!” Asriel throws up his hands and Dess laughs, grinning crooked up at him.

“Sounds like a you problem,” she says, setting Oleander down and offering him her hand. “C’mon, kid, woods time!”

“WOODS!” Oleander echoes in his squeaky little voice, and Dess leads the charge outside.

The woods are pretty cool. The woods behind Asriel’s house are the same sort behind her house, and she and Asriel have gone pretty deep into them, though their parents like it if they stay within sight of one of their houses if they bring the babies with them. Which is mostly okay. Usually with the babies they just make s'mores or something, although they aren’t allowed to do that without one of their parents anymore after Dess maybe accidentally a teeny-tiny bit set her sleeve on fire when trying to use the lighter. Look, she was being so safe, okay? It’s not her fault she forgot she was wearing long-sleeves! Really it was Asriel’s fault for distracting her by stealing all the graham crackers when they were the most boring part of the s’more and NO Azzy that DOESN’T mean you get to HOARD THEM ALL she still WANTED ONE!

Which she isn’t still mad about or anything.

Even though his house is like still visible Oleander seems to be having a good time. Just running around, trying to climb trees that are too high for him, and of course Dess eggs him on because watching a baby try to bite a tree like that’s gonna help is really funny. When he gets mad enough at that to start trying to hit Dess she hits him back harder and sets him on catching various beetles and spiders, which goes better. He’s real good at catching them! Pouncing after them and yanking random plants up out of the ground.

“Hey Dess,” he says, as Dess leaps up to balance on a particularly tall rock. Her hooves only nearly slip. “Can I tell you a secret.”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah! Course you can.” She drops down to sit and pats the space next to her. Oleander scrambles up, sitting back with his hands braced on the edge of the rock. “Is it something you stole from Azzy? Wait, did you take my copy of Dragon Blazers for the DS? I thought Mom stole it ‘cause she finally learned there’s curse words!” And Dess never even got to finish it, either! Oooh, she’s gonna be so mad if Oleander broke it—

Oleander giggles. “No!” He flops down to rest his head in his lap. “‘nother kinda secret. Winter doesn’t know yet. Or Azzy or Mama or Daddy or Auntie Carol or Un—”

“Okay, nobody knows, got it,” Dess cuts in, because he could do this forever. “Pinky-swear I won’t tell anybody else.” She sticks out her pinky.

Oleander’s hands stay on the rock. “Wanna tell others though,” he says. “Just um. Dunno how.”

“Oh.” Dess frowns. Well that’s new. Usually Oleander is pretty bad about keeping secrets. See, why Dess knows every single spot of Asriel’s room where he hides things he doesn’t want his parents to see. Not that she really knows why they’d be mad at him for reading, like, romance novels. Everyone knows those things are fake but if Asriel likes them Dess will support him. A little bit. Okay look she’ll tease him but she won’t tell his parents. Oleander will do that for her. “Uh, okay, then. What kinda secret is it?”

Oleander looks around like somehow somebody is going to stumble across them in the middle of the woods behind their houses, which so clearly belong to them and Dess would chase anybody else she found here out so quick. And then squints off into the distance. Dess smacks his arm.

“Literally nobody but me is going to hear you,” she tells him.

“Still.” Oleander’s voice is a hissed whisper, and he fumbles with his hands for a moment before shaking himself, and bracing them back on the rock. He scrapes at it with a nail. “…you can’t laugh at me.”

Dess puts a hand to her heart. “When have I ever.”

“When I fell off the tree like a little bit ago,” Oleander says, “when I tripped. Tripped again. Winter tripped me. Dinner once. Twice? Um…” He squints down at his hands like they might hold a list of every time Dess has absolutely, totally laughed at him for doing something dumb and silly. How is it her fault for laughing at any of that? It was funny. She’s not about to not laugh because the object of laughter is Asriel’s little brother. It’ll give him like, thick skin, or something.

“Okay! Okay, angel, you made your point.” She scowls at his stupid little grin. Babies are so annoying. It’s truly so unfortunate this one has wormed his way into her heart like mold growing on bread or something. She is way too cool for that and it is never happening again. Oleander and Winter and nobody else. If her parents tell her they want another kid she is gonna make sure they know that is never ever happening. “Tell me or I’m not taking you into the woods again.”

“Noooo!!” But still, he hesitates. “Um.” Paws at the ground. “…I think my name. Is dumb and bad and stupid.”

“Oh.” Dess says.

Oleander bristles. “Oh? Oh?!” His voice pitches up, squeaky and loud, even more-so than it usually is. “I don’t like it!!! ’s not mine!! But, but,” he growls and thumps backwards, lifting his hands to swap over to signing. “can’t talk right nothing sounds right it’s bad and itchy and worse—”

“You can just change it,” Dess says, grabbing his hands before he switches over from signing to like, smacking himself or something. Oleander glares at her with all the fury of a four-year-old, which is actually quite a lot. Even if he’s tiny and she could absolutely take him. “Like, pick something new? That’s what I did. Mom and Dad named me December but I said that’s dumb.”

Oleander frowns, his hands going limp in hers. “Your name is December?”

Dess shakes her head. “No,” she says, “it was December. But it’s Dess now.”

“Oh.” Oleander blinks. Once, twice. Again. He trips backwards off the rock in his attempt to break free from her, slinks around it to peer up at her. His shoulders are all hunched and his hands dig into the dirt. “You can do that?”

Dess preens a bit. “Pretty sure!” She tilts her head. “You might have to fight a lot of people about it though. Like Asriel sometimes, and Mom most of the time, and like everybody at school but they’re all dumb anyways…”

Oleander, though, clearly is not listening to her Sound and Sage advice, because he sits back and stares wide-eyed up at her. “You can do that?! I can do that?!!”

Dess leans down to pat his head. “I will add fighting anybody who tells you you can’t into my daily routine.”

“I can do that!!!” Oleander shrieks, his version of delighted laughter. “Gonna do that!!!! I wanna do that!!!! I’m Dess too!”

“Okay, you absolute terror, Dess is my name and you can’t steal it!” Dess is grinning, though, even if Oleander manages to dodge her attempted smack. “There’s only one Dess and it’s me!”

Oleander giggles. “No me!” He scrambles back up to perch alongside her and continues, in probably the worst attempt at sounding like her she has ever heard in her entire life, “I’m Dess now.”

“You do not sound even a little bit like me,” Dess tells him.

Oleander switches over to signing. “D-E-S-S!”

Dess pushes him off the rock.

“Why don’t you pick out a new name instead of stealing it from someone else?” she says. “Like, um…” What are names? She considers this as Oleander flops down on the ground next to her rock, attempting to use her hoof at a pillow. Which cannot be comfortable and does sort of tickle, but he just giggles when she kicks him off her. “Like, uh, there’s Holly, Eve, Nick…um, Comet? Oh, Chris, Blitzen, Noelle, Poinsettia—”

“Chris?” Oleander perks up. “Like Christmas!”

“No, like—wait.” Dess pauses. “Were all my names—were they all holiday themed?” How? Literally, how, is she cursed or something? This is totally Mom and Dad’s fault for thinking that holiday themed names were ever a good idea. “HOW?!”

Oleander is ignoring her entirely. “Chris,” he says, “Chris Chris Chris.” It slurs together as he pounces over to snatch up a stick, dragging one end of it in the dirt. A straight line, two lines… “K…r…i…s…”

“Hey, kid, that’s not how you spell…” Dess trails off. K-R-I-S, in his messy baby handwriting dragged out in the dirt, and the kid himself sitting there alongside it and staring at the letters like they’re the most special thing in the entire world. And they aren’t, really. It’s literally four letters, and yet his entire body is wriggling. His eyes are practically shining. Has she ever seen him this happy before? No? No. And she did that. Hehe…

“Kris…” His gaze jerks back over to her. “You, uh, you really like that one, huh?”

“Yes yes yes yes yes,” and he tackles her directly off the rock, and Dess yelps, going down in a pile of limbs. He smushes his face against hers. “So good best ever ever ever!” He springs off to her to roll over in the dirt, and watches her from his back, beaming. “…I can do that?”

“…yeah,” Dess says. “Yeah! Yeah you can, Kris! C’mon!” She stands, shakes dirt off her limbs, offers him a hand. “Let’s go back and tell Azzy and Winter! They’re gonna be soooo jealous that we got to pick our own cool names!”

“Very cool!” Kris echoes, snatching her hand. “Match too! One two three four. Four letters!”

“Ha, yeah. You’re getting better at spelling too.” Even if he did misspell Chris. But she sort of likes it better with the K. More…him. More Kris.

“Best at spelling,” Kris says, which is clearly a lie, but she’ll let him have this one. It’s not like she can claim the title either. It’s so obviously Asriel. Kris slows as she leads them back towards his house, bunting against her side. He mumbles, “thank you.”

“Yeah,” Dess says, ruffling his hair. Something in her chest goes gooey and softens. Against her Kris is warm. “Of course. Anytime.”

Thirteen.

“Wow,” Dess says, strumming at her guitar. Acoustic guitar. Even though Dess has made it super clear that she wants an electric guitar. And she does not have one. Which is. Fine. It’s so totally fine that Mom will buy her literally every instrument but the one she actually wants the most, and no, MOM, there is not more blah blah value to it or whatever because it’s a hand-me-down from your dead sister. Probably dead. Dess actually isn’t entirely sure. But either way that doesn’t make it worth it. It just makes her hesitate more before smashing it. Also because then she’d have no guitar. “You are comically bad at this.”

“You’re comically bad,” Kris grumbles.

“Aww, chin up, Kris,” Asriel says, where’s he’s on his back next to Dess on her bed, tossing a ball back and forth into the air. “You’ll get good eventually. Dess was terrible when she first started out too.”

Dess shoves him onto the floor. “I was perfect, shut up.”

Asriel rolls onto his elbows. “You broke a finger because you let the piano cover crush onto your hands.”

“Perfect,” she stresses, and sets her guitar down to go sit next to Kris. He isn’t cool enough to sit on her bed. Also isn’t allowed because he keeps getting chip crumbs all over it and only Dess is allowed to do that, thank you. Since she just has the one guitar he’s making due with a violin. She’s long since broken the bow through, all its horsehair strings scatted about her room, but, y’know, you can probably play a violin like a guitar if you try.  “You’re the one who wanted to learn,” she tells Kris.

Kris turns away from her. “You’re bad at teaching.”

“I’m good at everything I do. You’re just a bad student.” Kris crosses his arms and turns even further away from her. She rolls her eyes. “You aren’t gonna get better if you just sit here.”

“I believe in you Kris!” Winter’s calls from where he’s dragged a pillow to sit against her closet, having been playing on her DS for the past hour. Theoretically Dess is teaching both Kris and her brother music but mostly Winter just sits and watches and steals her DS. He’s not worse than Kris, but that’s mostly because he doesn’t really try. He likes watching more than playing, she thinks, which is probably for the best because one Kris is bad enough.

“Kris, c’mon,” Dess says, nudging the kid. “Look, just—you keep moving your hands when you shouldn’t. Here, put your fingers here…” She snatches up his hand.

He jerks his hand away from hers and shoves the violin away. “Dunno why you’re doing this ‘cause you won’t even let me use the real guitar!”

“Well duh,” Dess says, “that’s mine.” And she is not about to let a six-year-old touch it. She already lets little kids play with way too many of her things. If he wants a guitar so bad he can get his own.

Kris throws up his hands. “Then how ‘m I supposed to learn it!?”

Dess shrugs. “Get good? It’s not my fault you suck at this.”

“Nnnn—” Kris growls. Dess leans over him, reaching out to grab the violin, which isn’t broken and good, she was not about to take the blame for that one again. She shakes it out a bit and squints at the wood grain.

“What are you even doing to this thing?” she asks. “You’ve got like, sticky residue on it, how are you still sticky from church? You drink way too much of that juice.” Kris shoves at her arm resting across his head. “Ugh, you’re gonna clean it before Mom notices. Here, how about you just watch what I do until you don’t mess it all up again—”

“NO!” Kris shrieks, jabbing the side of his head to her arm, which, OUCH, his stupid horns are on top of his head! Kris scrambles away from her, chest heaving as he glares at her under his overlong bangs, hands splayed across the floor. “I don’t wanna if you’re gonna be—be—be bad!!!”

“OW! You little—” Dess only doesn’t curse because Asriel smacks her arm, right where Kris’s dumb baby horns jabbed her, which, great, now it hurts more! She bites back another curse and returns Kris’s glare. “You’re the bad one here!”

Kris growls once more before turning tail and running right out of the room. Asriel sighs. Winter blinks, looks between them and the door now swinging open, and then picks up Dess’s DS and follows after Kris. Dess grabs the nearest object—the now discarded violin—and hucks it after the both of them. It crashes against the door and falls silent.

“Dess!” Asriel yelps, his voice high-pitched.

Dess throws herself back on her bed and groans. “He stabbed me!”

Asriel’s glare is unimpressed. “His horns are plastic.”

“You aren’t saying that when he beat you at sparring,” she grumbles, though the pain has already died down to a distant throb she soon won’t remember at all. Not that she’s gonna tell Asriel that. She offers him a hand to haul him up onto her bed, and he hesitates a moment before taking it. “What’re you scared of? ‘s my bed.”

“I’ve seen what you keep in here.” Asriel eyes her. “You’re really bad at teaching, aren’t you?”

“Oh, like you could do any better.” She scoots sideways slightly to give Asriel a bit more room, which is mostly a ploy for her to be able to put her head in his lap. He’s all fluffy and stuff. Makes his lap a pretty good pillow. “It’s mine, anyways. My thing. Music.”

“I think music is for everyone?” Asriel’s voice pitches up slightly, his hands fluttering around her head like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Dess snags one so he’ll stop moving. “Besides, I think it’s cute. That he looks up to you like that.”

“Pfft, yeah right.” Dess reaches out to grab the neck of her guitar, holding it up above herself. She feels a bit bad about just kind of throwing it around. Only a bit though. It really should be cooler. She sets it down against Asriel’s leg. “He’s just—bored. Y’know. Trying to find something to pass the time. He’s probably just gonna steal my DS from Winter and they’ll play that for the rest of the day.”

Asriel shrugs. “I dunno, maybe.” He goes quiet. It’s—nice. Fine. Fine is the better word. Quiet itches at the edges of Dess’s brain like it’s trying to worm its way in there and splinter something. So, like a real splinter. Like the time she got one just under the bridge of her nail and nothing she did got it out. Eventually it fell out on its own but she’d gotten used to the pinprick of it. Silence with Asriel is like that pinprick. Just too-far for her to poke at.

At least he’s stopped flailing his hands all about. Dess has claimed one for herself, rubbing his fur back-forth on his palm. The other he’s rested on her shoulder. Her head bunts into his chest. Her legs are like half falling off the bed. Not the most comfortable position, but Asriel’s fluffy enough to make up for it.

Gives her a clear view of her broken violin, so that’s great. She can probably hide it from Mom for a week or so. But Mom might find out anyways. She’s got a second sense for it, Mom does, whenever Dess does something a little too cool or is rightfully upset. Or maybe it’s just that Dess has left a trail of broken instruments behind her. They just didn’t sound right. Didn’t drown out the sounds. It all just clicked. And she knew it was wrong and she had to fix it.

Probably why she’s mostly self-taught, despite Mom and Dad’s best efforts. Something about being told she was doing it wrong. It sounded good to her, and she liked it, and why would she care what some random lady her mom hired thought about it? YouTube tutorials can’t talk back to her. She can just strum away ‘til the sounds are what she wants to hear, ‘til everything else doesn’t matter anymore

She watches the still shattered wood of violin against the wall and breathes.

“—ss?” Asriel presses down on her shoulder and Dess jerks, glancing up to him. “Bit lost in your head there.”

“I just didn’t want to pay attention to you,” she says, and he rolls his eyes. “Uh, what did you say?”

He huffs, but there’s a faint grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I was just curious, I guess. About why you like it so much? Music, and stuff. I mean, I’ve never really seen you stick with something for this long. But it’s been years now. The longest hobby you had before this was baseball and that didn’t last a season.”

“Okay, one, that’s because our baseball team was three people, and one of them was literally like a four-year-old. It wasn’t even real baseball anyways, we were basically just free babysitters, Aunt Toriel said. Besides, I kept the bat!” Mom doesn’t let her keep it in the house so it’s regulated to the shed out back. It’s fun to hit branches with. Probably a real baseball bat would be cooler, though. Solid instead of hollow. “And two, well—I dunno. Music’s just kinda my thing.”

“Yeah, but why?” Asriel slides back a bit so he’s sitting against the wall, and Dess rolls up to join him. Folds her hands and shoves them in her lap.

“Dunno. It’s just…nice.” She reaches out to snag her guitar, pluck out a few chords. Not entirely sure where her pick is. Buried in her sheets somewhere. She’ll probably roll over onto it one of these days. “When I’m doing it, I can’t think about anything else. Just—what I need to do to make everything sound right. And then I do it. Nobody can tell me I’m doing it wrong.” And if they do, she will hit them. Very hard. Even if it gets her grounded for a month. “The whole world goes quiet for a bit. The music is all that’s left.”

Asriel squints at her. “What do you think about so much that you need to not think?”

“Thinking in general, I guess?” Dess shrugs. How is she supposed to know how her mind works? She just lives it! But she leans sideways against Asriel, the solid warmth of him. “It’s like, there’s all this stuff Mom and Dad and everyone want me to do. But the music is just mine. I make it say what I want it to say and it just does that, and everyone finally has to hear it and listen and know I was right. ‘s why I’m gonna be a rockstar when I grow up!” She puffs out her chest, a bit, pushing off the wall. “I’m gonna see the entire world and be so famous everyone’s gonna know my name!”

Asriel grins a bit. “I hope you remember me when you’re out there.”

“Pfft, duh!” She snags her arm through his and tugs him closer. “You’re gonna be right there with me! You gotta do all my album art and stuff. I can just draw stickpeople.”

“Hehe, yeah. You aren’t good at drawing.” Asriel breathes against her, the rise of his shoulder pressed against her breastbone. “It must be nice not to have to think about all the stuff that worries you.”

“Well nothing worries me at all, so.” Dess kicks her hooves against the baseboard of her bed. Solid dull thunks. Twists her hand through Asriel’s. “You don’t gotta worry either. Kris might suck at guitar but I could teach you if you want.”

“Be nice,” Asriel says, though with little bite. “I…I don’t know. It’s—it’s too loud and chaotic, I think. I don’t really understand where you’re supposed to put your hands, or how to make it sound good, or…anything like that, really. I guess it all just comes easier to you.”

Dess studies him. “Easy how?”

“Easy like…you already know nobody likes you. Like, they don’t expect anything from you ‘cause you just aren’t going to do it.” Dess flinches, a sudden chill bristling down her limbs. Asriel’s hand is limp against her own. “But…but I know everyone wants a lot from me. And when people, when they like you like that, you…you have to spend a lot of time making sure you do everything right. That you won’t make them all hate you.”

Dess drops Asriel’s hand and pushes off her wall, landing hard on the floor. “Sounds hard,” she says.

“I dunno. I guess. I just don’t want to let anybody down. It’s, um, scary? Haha…” She makes it about halfway to the door, but the waver in his voice makes her hesitate. He sounds small and pathetic and scared and no best friend of hers should sound like any of those three things. “I guess I just wish I was brave like you sometimes.”

A bit of wood splinters underhoof. It doesn’t feel like brave. It feels like living.

“I’m gonna.” Dess hooks a hand to point towards the door. “Get something to eat or something.”

“Oh! Right, it’s been a bit…” Asriel shakes himself. “Um, I’ll just wait here, then, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Dess says. Her voice sounds flat. The sort of thing music drowns out. But she’s left her guitar with Asriel. “You do that.”

Outside sound—roars. Sound. It’s silence mostly but that’s the worst sort of sound, a pounding in her ears. Music drowns that out. Music screams back at it and demands it submit and that Dess was here first, and so silence can screw right off because it has no place here. She drags her nails down the wall and the scratch is an itch in her brain that doesn’t help much at all.

But still. But—

Her ears twitch at the rise and fall of piano notes through the house.

Dess never did end up sticking with piano. Too—plodding. It’s not that she was bad at the piano, it was that the keys all stuck against each other and were too-slick and really, there was no catch to them, nothing so sharp like the press of a momentarily lost guitar pick against her thigh, or the way plucking guitar strings left their indentions behind in her hands like the music was a part of her too.

Needless to say there’s not a single person in her family who uses the piano. Dess isn’t even sure why they have it. Probably ‘cause it’s a big rich thing and they live in a big rich house.

The sounds are inexpert and not particularly good. Nothing so melodic. There’s no rhythm to them, really, but, well, it’s keys ringing out as they’re struck: since it’s not the bang of a hand slammed on it, it’s hard to make a sound so bad she’d need to hit it.

Dess creeps down the stairs, hand trailing on the railing. The living room is empty—it’s just the four of them in the house, because Mom is, of course, working, and her dad and aunt and uncle are back at the Dreemurr house, which Dess lead the charge out of because she was getting bored of their grown-up talk, and besides, Kris wanted to learn music from her, not her dad’s meandering story about how he totally played guitar back in college, which, yeah, uh-huh, sure you did, Dad, and you were very good and it doesn’t mean a thing that you suck now.

Still though. She assumed Winter and Kris would be fighting each other over the DS, or playing together if Kris brought Asriel’s over. But neither sprawl across the couch and crush the cushions.

Her steps are light as she enters the kitchen, and sure enough, there the kids are. The piano-player is Kris: with his gaze firmly fixed on the piano he doesn’t notice her, and Dess ducks behind the kitchen counter to keep it that way. His back is ramrod straight and his hands’ movement across the keys is nothing graceful. A pick-and-peck rather than anything flowing. Not that Dess ever was flowing, either.

Winter’s sat next to him on the bench. “I think it sounds really good!” he says, in a tone that suggests this isn’t the first time he’s said so.

Kris’s voice is dry. “Dunno.” He pecks at a few more keys. Scales, Dess thinks—so he did retain at least that much from her lessons. And enough to try and translate it to piano. “Kinda terrible.”

“I think it sounds good,” Winter repeats, with more force. He hooks his chin on Kris’s shoulder. “Why’d you stop?”

Kris blinks at Winter’s weight pressing down on him.

“Oh.” Winter scoots back a bit. “Oops.” But Kris’s mouth quicks up into something approaching a smile, and he presses a few keys again. “Can you play a song from Dragon Blazers? Ooooh, did you hear they’re gonna make the second game soon? Dess says she’s gonna get it and when she plays it I can play it so you can come over and play it with me if Azzy won’t buy it!!” Winter’s jabbers on as Kris begins pressing a new series of keys. If Dess really strains her ears, she can almost hear the home screen music for the first Dragon Blazers game. Winter better not share her copy with Kris. Whenever the two of them squirrel away with her DS someone always spills juice or crumbs or something and she is getting tired of it. Plus they keep deleting her save games to play the game all over again before Dess has even finished finding everything!

Little siblings are annoying.

Kris finishes his attempt with a stumble and he frowns, growling down at the keys. “Be better,” he snaps, as if the piano might listen to him. He smacks it to the tune of a discordant shriek of piano-noise.

“It was good! Well, until you hit it…” Winter bumps against him. “Why do you wanna learn music so bad anyways? I mean you keep storming out. But then coming back.”

Kris pokes at him. “You too.”

“Because you’re there, I don’t go to learn it myself!” Winter pokes back, giggling. “And Dess and Azzy too! Besides I like the sounds. They’re nice.”

Kris grins a bit. “Nice.” His hands twitch and he draws them up off the keys, shaking them out and using them to sign. “I like it ‘cause…” He hesitates, chews on his knuckle, flexes his fingers. “Things are tight. Like too-tight all over. Like it’s…wrong. But I dunno the words for the wrong. But when I do this,” he draws his hand across the keys, “it sounds good again. And things are better. And feel better and stuff.”

“What feels bad?” Winter asks.

Kris pokes his chest. Moves his hand down to indicate legs, his arms. Brushes a hand across his throat.

Winter tilts his head. “You just pointed to your entire body.”

Kris shrugs.

“…oh.”

“Mirrors are weird,” Kris continues. His signs are shaky around the edges. “Like it shows me ‘n I know that’s me but—I dunno. I look different in my head. But then people see me and they don’t see that too. It’s—itchy.” He shivers. “But then music. I—I make it. Just me. So it has to sound how I want it to.”

Dess freezes, unable to take her eyes off the kids.

“I…I think I get that,” Winter says, after a moment. His voice is hushed like this is some big secret they’re sharing, something rare and raw and just-for-them, and something seizes up in Dess’s chest like it’s trying to crush her lungs. “I, I, I just—sometimes I think like maybe—” He hesitates. “…I really like your name. Kris. It’s—it’s really good.”

Kris scrunches up his nose. “You tell me now? I changed it forever and ever ago!”

“I know!” Winter shoves at him. “I just, I never told you. That I think it’s really pretty. And good. It sounds like you more than your old one did. I’m glad you changed it. I wish I could do something like that sometimes. Just—be someone different. But then I get really scared.”

Kris nudges his head against Winter’s side. “We can be scared together.”

“I—I know. I know. It’s just Mom and Dad, and your parents, and Azzy and Dess and…” He trails off into the same sort of silence that roars in Dess’s chest, seizes up even tighter at her name in her brother’s mouth, on a list of—of something. Her hooves slip against the tile floor of the kitchen. She catches herself before the sound is too loud. If Dess is anything, it is good at making sure she is not caught.

The kids lean into each other and Asriel’s absence aches against her sides. But it’s the sharp sort of ache. The ache of his words, when she tried to explain. Nothing so simple as a me too. The way he blinked, recoiled, briefly, and looked at her like he’d never seen her before, like they hadn’t been twined together since they were both born.

Kris plinks out another few unsure notes. Winter giggles, presses a key of his own. Links his arm through Kris’s and hums, and despite the added weight Kris returns to plucking away. It really does sound like the Dragon Blazers title screen song. Maybe he’s a natural, too. Just not at guitar.

Dess’s hands twitch. She can taste her heart in her throat, coppery. The static shock of her fur on-edge.

It would be easy to leave. The kids haven’t even noticed her. Just snag something from the fridge for herself and Asriel, and leave them to it while she returns to her bedroom, resumes figuring out a song while Asriel doesn’t understand at all. She aches for him. She cannot bring herself to turn away.

The kids play away at the piano without a care in the world.

She vaults over the counter and throws herself down on the bench between them both.

“GAH!” Winter yelps, nearly falling backwards off the bench, but Dess catches his arm before he can. “Dess—what—how much did you hear—”

“Hear?” Dess asks, her voice as light as she can make it as Winter steadies himself. On her other side Kris slinks closer, having sprung to all-fours at her intrusion, though now he settles at her side like a dog who has remembered this new person is a friend. “What were you talking about that’s so bad I can’t hear it?”

“NOTHING,” Winter shrieks. “Nothing AT ALL who said talking we weren’t talking,” and his fur is bristly against Dess’s side.

Kris signs, “Dragon Blazers.”

“We were talking about Dragon Blazers because Kris was trying to play one of the songs!” Winter’s voice finally drops back down from its high-pitched terror. “Ha. Hahaha what.”

I get it too, Dess doesn’t say. The words scrape in her throat. Like two kids not even half her age could just somehow say everything trapped in her gut. Like Kris figured it out before she did. She thinks, briefly, breathlessly, to that day out in the woods: to his wide-eyed delight that he could do something like her, too. And now that memory curdles. He came to her. And now he goes to Winter.

“Didn’t hear a thing,” Dess lies. Instead she elbows Kris, lightly, and says, “heard you playing the piano, though. You’re pretty good, huh?”

Kris ducks their head, flushing. “Dunno…”

“Yes you are!” Winter plants his hands on Dess’s lap as he leans across to Kris. “You’re so good!!! Way better than you are at guitar! You should do this forever!”

Kris’s head stays low but he flushes, grinning sideways at Winter.

“Well,” Dess says, “if you like it so much, I did try piano for a bit. I could probably start out teaching you. And then show you how to teach yourself.”

“Really? Really really?” Kris’s excited little voice should soothe something in her, as he throws his arms around her middle and grins into her chest, as Winter on her other side laughs and does much the same. Clearly they’ve both forgotten what it was they were talking about, just kid-stuff, left behind to not be remembered again. Which is fine. It’s fine! She’s doing great. Dess is doing great.

“Yes really,” she tells Kris, and hates the way her voice wavers, even if only around the edges. “Here, budge over, lemme try to remember, it’s been a bit since I’ve done this…”

She’ll teach them piano and they can have that while she gets her guitar. And one-day the sounds will be right again. One day the silence in her chest won’t roar so loud because she’ll make something louder than it ever could be, and she’ll drown out everything else. It and the silence and the kids’ conversation, bouncing around her head.

It doesn’t matter anyways. She’ll be better than it all.

Fifteen.

The kids are hiding something.

“They aren’t,” Asriel tells her, for what has to be the tenth time that day and thousandth time that week, enough times that she’s starting to become sick of his voice. He’s only half-listening to her anyways, texting one of his dumb friends from school, which, no, Dess still doesn’t get why he bothers with. But he’s with her, so the anger only burns a little bit. Today they’re at his house, alone in his room because the kids have been scurrying off together more often than not. Dess is bouncing a rubber eraser that she stole from Kris’s dresser off the cracked-open door. “They’re kids. They’re probably just, like, getting into trouble or something because you influence them too much.”

“It’s not a trouble secret.” She’d know if it was. She’s told trouble secrets. She fixes trouble secrets. Like that pizza box they burned in the dead of night, or the ghosts under Winter’s bed Dess chased out with a bat that were suspiciously giggling Kris-shaped, or the fire extinguisher incident of last year, which no Mom was NOT Dess’s fault, how was she supposed to know Winter was going to try to bake cookies? He was totally old enough to use the oven!

They do get into a lot of trouble. The sort that makes her heart beat faster, but in the good way, the fun way. The thrill of getting away with something. She’s never felt more alive than when she’s convinced Kris to follow her out in the woods and up a tree too tall for either of them, but she’s going to climb it. And of course Kris will follow.

Now though she’s spent the past hour aimlessly hucking stuff at a door because Asriel doesn’t want to do anything.

“We could go on an adventure,” Dess says. Even saying it sounds stupid. She’s fifteen, not five. But still. It’s not like there’s anywhere in this town for them to go, because the singular diner is staffed by classmates she has no desire to watch Asriel talk to, the ICE-E’s has banned them all after one-too-many times Kris has tried to bite their mascot to death—and Dess has helped, though with threat of bat rather than teeth because she isn’t an animal—so, yeah. Out into the woods. Deep and dark and pressing, but Dess knows their secrets.

“Half your adventures involve nearly drowning in the lake, so I think I’m good staying home,” Asriel says.

She retorts, “but the buried treasure, Azzy!”

“You know the only buried treasure in there is the iPod you lost, right?”

Dess crosses her arms. “I’m getting that back one day.”

“Sure you are. Maybe it’ll even still work!” There’s laughter in Asriel’s voice and she flops with a dramatic groan across the floor, staring up at the ceiling. “If you’re so bored, you can go on my computer. Just don’t mess with any of my accounts.”

“But Azzy,” says Dess, hand to her heart, “if your passwords are so easy for me to guess, I deserve to go mess around on them.”

Still, she stands, heads over to his desk and waits for his computer to power on. Back on his bed Asriel rolls his eyes, grumbling, “they’re only easy for you to guess because you’ve known me my entire life.”

“Or you’re just bad at it,” Dess says. “Very very bad at it.”

“Oh, shut up.”

All the CD’s he’s transferred onto his computer are mostly terrible, but he has a few decent albums she lent him, and that’s good enough to play, at least. His speakers are definitely in need of replacement—they crackle with a static that buzzes in her teeth and the edges of her antlers—but, again, it’s his broken computer, at the end of the day. She opens up Paint and traces out random scribbles into the white. Asriel asks her for advice on texts, and ignores all her great answers, but at least they make him laugh. Again: he’s here, not with his dumb school friends, so take that, dumb school friends.

Eventually the door creaks more open than it already is.

“Um…Dess? Asriel?” Winter stands in the open frame, wringing his hands together. “Can you come downstairs? Me and Kris wanna say something to you all…”

“Oh?” Dess perks up, casts a glance over to Asriel. Secret? Secret! It says. Asriel huffs, responds with an it’s just a coincidence in the glance of his eyes and hunch of his shoulders, though he shuts off his phone and stands up. Together they follow Winter downstairs.

The living room is already crowded with their respective parents and a Kris who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, and he latches onto Winter the second he enters the room, signing to him in quick, jerky motions hidden by the curl of his body, his shoulders all bunched up. Dess frowns, but Asriel tugs at her hand to pull her further into the room, and she goes.

The Dreemurr living room is right on the edge of too-small for them all to cram into, and because there’s just the one couch and Toriel’s chair it means Dess is, as always, doomed to the floor. Though she does steal a pillow from her dad to at least have something soft. But Kris and Winter are worse-off, right in the center of the room, silhouetted by the dim glow of the CRT TV that someone has, thankfully, put on mute.

Asriel pokes an elbow to her side, and whispers, “they totally broke something.”

“Maybe.” Dess frowns at the babies. There’s some sort of panic etched into Kris’s features she’s never seen before—the kid’s like her, he fears not a thing, which is why he’s the best woods-adventure companion. Winter gets too scared and Asriel tells her it’s a bad idea and you’re going to get eaten by a bear one day, but mostly he’s smiling when he says it. But today Kris is all panic, his hands shoved into his pockets as if trying to snuff out whatever words might form. Winter flits about around him, only stopping to press their shoulders together.

They have been hiding something. Dess shifts, the carpet scratchy against her legs. Old crumbs and dirt and dust.

“What’s all this about then, sugarplum?” Dad asks, breaking the weird silence. Doesn’t really fix how scratchy the carpet is scraping against her legs but Dess just shakes out her head and pretends like she can’t hear Silence all heavy in her ears. Next to her Asriel frowns. “You get yourselves into trouble again?”

Winter bristles up, and next to him Kris shifts, tugging at Winter’s arm as if he wants to flee, but Winter’s hooves are planted. “NO!” he snaps, and Dad nearly recoils, and Dess does, too, at the—anger? Fear?—in her brother’s voice. “No no no! We didn’t!”

“Okay!” Dad puts up his hands. “What is it, then? Are you okay?”

Aunt Toriel adds, “if you two got hurt somehow—”

“Not that either.” Winter shifts a bit, grabbing at the sleeves of his sweater. “Um…”

He glances to Kris, who just sort of grimaces. But bumps his shoulder against Winter’s, who takes a breath, links his arm through Kris’s, and starts to speak.

“I, um, haha wow I thought this would be so easy but maybe I—I mean everyone staring at me is, um, but! But but but!!!! So I, well, me and Kris we’ve been doing it together and, and I mean, I, I don’t know if without Kris I would’ve—like, it feels!!! Wrong? Wrong like, um, people see me but they don’t see me and I guess before I didn’t really know enough to notice but then we went to school and, and even before school too I guess I don’t know sometimes I’m like maybe I’m making it all up and then Kris growls at me and bites me really lightly and says no no no and I guess sometimes it’s just, just kinda hard but—but I want it to be true!!! I want it so so bad so the fear can’t, I’m not gonna! Let it stop me!”

He squeezes Kris’s hand next to him, and Kris squeezes back.

“So I just, I’m gonna say it!!! I’m—I’m a girl. I’m a girl!!! I’m…a girl…”

It’s the silence again, as Winter’s voice trails off. That roaring and terrible thing that Dess must drown out and defeat because it doesn’t belong here and it especially doesn’t belong around the kids, because for all they might run around being annoying little pests they are bright and brilliant and hers, and the silence cannot have them! It never can and it never will. The carpet itches and it crawls there up her shoulders, at Asriel stiff next to her, at her parents and all that lying-in-wait of the same terrible silence, and no. No! It will not be so.

Dess leans back against the couch and says, “so I have a baby sister now?”

Winter lights up, and breathes out, and just like that the silence is gone. “Yes!” she says. “Yes! Yes, um, I, me and Kris were looking at names ‘n stuff and—and I found one I really liked and, um, hi!” Her voice pitches up. “I’m…Noelle…”

“Noelle!” Dess echoes. She will shatter every silence, and she springs up, charges to her sister. “My perfect little baby sister.”

“I’m not little! I’m nine!”

“Soooo little,” Dess teases, and grins when Noelle smacks at her hands. She drags Noelle into a hug, just kinda breathes there for a moment. She can feel the frantic pound of Noelle’s heart she thinks, or maybe that’s just her own heart who knows, the important thing is—is—

Is look at her!!! Look at her.

She presses her face to Noelle’s hair—her itty baby sister is getting taller now, Dess can do things like that without having to stoop so dramatically, and mumbles there into her, “you’re gonna be the best girl there ever was.”

“Ha ha ha,” Noelle says, “I think I’m gonna pass out…”

“Well don’t do that!” Dess squeezes her tighter. Kris smushes up against them as if trying to hold Noelle up, and Noelle laughs, breathless. “I just learned you’re a girl, you gotta like, bask in that for a little bit!”

“It was so scary Dess,” Noelle says, sniffling, and her eyes are bright and shiny and yes, okay, it’s the tears, but Dess has maybe never seen her sister this happy, either. Her sister. Sister. She twirls her around and Noelle giggle-shrieks, staggering a bit when Dess finally sets her down. “But, but I wanted to do it!!!! SO bad, and, and I was looking online too ‘cause other people are like me!!!” She grins, swaying against Dess. It’s a ramble but the good sort of ramble, Dess thinks: the way Noelle gets when talking about something that’s brightened her life and everyone just has to know about it. “There’s like, shots you get! Um, I think they turn you into a girl or something, there were a lot of big words and some of them I still don’t really understand. But! But I understood that part! And I thought oh! I bet you can do that for me Dess! ‘cause the shots are scary so I dunno if I could do that but you’re brave! And I trust you!”

Dess doesn’t cry, because Dess Holiday doesn’t cry. Her voice is choked up for other reasons. “I’ll give you whatever shots you need. Where do I get them.”

“I think a doctor maybe?” Noelle shrugs. “I kinda dunno that part…”

“I’ll figure it out,” Mom cuts in, and for a moment—a moment—Dess tenses. She nearly forgot their parents were still here, and, and if…

But Mom just says, “whatever you need, we’ll make sure you get it. And, Noelle?” Noelle looks past Dess to their mom. “I—I am very happy to have you as my daughter.”

“Mommy…” Noelle sniffs, and twists out of Dess’s grip only to run and hug Mom, though really it’s Mom who hugs Noelle, and Dess—watches. Even as her Dad joins in. It’s her family too, it’s just—

She rubs at her arms. Next to her, Kris bunts their head against her arm, and their bright red horns only scrape a little.

“We got two daughters now, don’t we?” Dad says, and Noelle giggles against him, delighted. “Guess you are Dess are gonna have to battle it out for the title of best daughter, huh?”

“Nah,” Dess says, “it’s okay. Noelle can have it.”

“Then it’s officially Dess-approved!” Dad laughs. “Which means no fighting over it. Writ in blood here.”

“Rudy,” Mom says, though she mostly just sounds amused.

“I’m not gonna draw blood,” Dess says, rolling her eyes. “Sides we can’t even make a blood pact like that. We don’t even bleed.” She scrunches up her nose as she finally joins them, only because Dad looked at her with real sad eyes, okay. She’s doing it for them. …the hug is pretty warm. “Why’s it called a blood pact if we don’t even bleed?”

“Well,” Asgore cuts in, “bleeding is actually the verb, monsters still bleed dust, it’s just humans share what they bleed—blood—with the verb, because—”

“Asgore!” Toriel says.

“Erm, I mean…glad to have you as my niece, Noelle!” Noelle laughs.

Toriel speaks next. “Noelle, dear, I’m—I’m very glad you were able to tell us this. If there is anything I can do to help you, please do let me know, okay? I believe I have a few old dresses I’d always thought of passing down, if you’d be interested in looking at them.”

“Ha…thanks everyone…” Noelle rubs at her eyes. “Um, I dunno…” she slumps a bit more against Dess. It’s been a long time since Dess has sat in her parents’ laps like this. But she’ll do it for her sister. “I’ll figure all that stuff out later. I just—I just had to tell you this. It…it hurt. Before.”

“Never again,” Dess tells her, leaning her head against her sister’s. “I’ll fight the world if it tries.”

Here is better than the silence. It cannot take form here.

Noelle is the one to break it off, though, with a gasped wait as she wriggles out from between Dess and Mom and Dad to snag Kris’s hand, halfway to trying to escape the room.

“Kris!” she says. “You have to talk too!”

Kris ducks his head. “…don’t wanna.”

“Yes you do!” Noelle drags him back into the middle of the room. “Of course you do!!! Tell them or I’m telling for you.” She scowls at them. Mostly, she just looks adorable. “Kris…”

Kris growls at her. She keeps glaring. He growls louder.

“Kris,” Noelle says.

“Nnnn fine!” Kris snaps around to look back at all of them. There’s a sort of wild terror to his stance, though he relaxes some when Noelle touches his arm, shakes out his bangs and flexes his hands. But it is in a faint and only kinda raspy voice that Kris says, “…not a boy.”

“Are you a girl like Noelle then, dear?” Toriel asks.

Kris shakes his head. “Not a girl either.”

Asriel frowns. “Well how is that possible? How can you not be a girl or a boy?”

“Asriel!” Toriel snaps. “Both Kris and Noelle have been very brave today.”

“What?!” Asriel bristles. “I’m just—I don’t want him and Noelle to get hurt ‘cause they’re being different! I mean I get Noelle’s thing because girls do exist and stuff, but what else is there to even be? Kris, if you aren’t a boy how are you not just a girl then?”

Dess almost smacks him. Almost. But Kris needs her more, as she stands, tossing her head and springing over to drag Kris to her side, glaring at Asriel hard enough that he flinches first. Ducks to look at the floor.

“Course Kris isn’t a boy or a girl!” she says, ruffling Kris’s hair, and that draws a bit of laughter out of Kris. Not he, not she, so… “They’re way cooler than either of those, aren’t you!”

Kris bounces against her. “YEAH!!!! Coolest ever!” They stick out their tongue at Asriel. “Dess is smarter than you.”

“I—how is it my fault for not getting it!?” But he cows under his mother’s glare. “…okay. I’m, okay, if you aren’t a boy or a girl that’s…that’s cool. But what if other people don’t get it?”

Kris shrugs. “Bite them?”

“Hit them very hard,” Dess adds.

Kris giggles. “Kill them!” They hug Dess’s arm against their chest. “…I think being a boy is dumb and being a girl is dumb too. For me. It’s good for Noelle.” Noelle grins at them. “But I don’t wanna do any of that! I wanna be Kris still and I liked how Dess said it! They!!!”

“You want to be…our child, then?” Toriel asks.

Kris grins. “Yeah!!! That!” They barrel into their mother’s chest and grin up at her. “…you don’t hate me do you.”

“Kris, no,” Toriel breathes. “Never. No matter what you could ever do. You have never had to be my son for me to love you. I’m very proud of you, for being so brave to tell us.” She shifts when Asgore comes in to hug them, too, laughs a bit when Noelle clearly is feeling a bit left out and goes to hug Kris’s arm. “And Asriel, is there anything you want to say?”

“Mom,” he whines, but sighs, too, pushing up off the floor to join them. “…I’m sorry, Kris. I just, I don’t get it. But I’ll figure it out! Promise. You’re my, my sibling, Kris? Right?” They nod, wriggling. “Right! My sibling. I love you a lot, okay? And—yeah. Just…yeah.”

Kris pats his arm. “You’re okay too Asriel.”

“Okay, Kris,” Asriel says, laughing, and Kris grins at him as the Dreemurrs all disentangle from each other. “Um…do you wanna do what Noelle was talking about? With shots and stuff? ‘cause Mom and Dad can probably ask Aunt Carol to figure that out for you too.” He glances back to them. Asgore offers a thumbs-up. Back to Kris.

Kris shrugs. “I don’t wanna be either of those things. I dunno if there’s shots to be neither.”

“…Aunt Carol can probably figure it out,” Asriel says. “Um…do you want to play Super Smashing Fighters?”

Kris lights up. “YES!!!! I call Dess for my team!”

“Wah! Hey!” Noelle smacks their arm. “I want Dess on my team!”

“Children, children,” Dess says, in her best impression of her mother, “I’ll just beat you all.”

She does, indeed, absolutely destroy two babies and one Asriel in Super Smashing Fighters. It’s—fun. It’s fun, really, truly, and the silence can’t catch them here, not with the TV so loud, with everyone laughing, with Noelle’s little grin whenever anybody calls her her new-chosen name, the casual sister, daughter, niece. Kris wriggles into it, too: sibling, child. Dad offers nibling as an alternative for nephew, and Kris giggles about that for far too long, but Dess doesn’t really mind. They deserve it.

The evening winds down, as it always does. Dinner is eaten, spread across the kitchen and the living room. Eventually her parents leave, though Dess and Noelle stick around. Eventually her aunt and uncle head up to bed, and Asriel, too, though Dess isn’t so tired. Instead she sits on the stairs, listening to the faint voices of the kids still playing in the living room. When they fall quiet, too, she assumes she’s the last one up. Just her and her thoughts, which mostly play Kris’s tiny voice on repeat: not a boy, not a girl. How wonderful for them.

She’s maybe halfway to sleep when there’s a sudden pressure around her waist, and Dess jerks, blinking down to see a very awake sister squeezing Dess as tight as she can. Which, being a baby still, isn’t hard. But it’s the thought that counts.

“I thought you fell asleep,” Dess says, blinking. “Why are you hugging me?”

“‘Cause,” Noelle says, and hugs harder. “Thank you,” she adds, as Kris pounces to Dess’s other side, shoving themself up under her arm and practically purring against her, draping across one leg and knocking their hands against Noelle’s head. “I, I was so scared that it’d go bad and you’d all hate me and I don’t wanna be hated but I couldn’t, I couldn’t!!! It felt so wrong and I don’t want it to get more wrong, and, and,” she’s crying.

“Hey, hey, Noelle. Elly.” The nickname comes easily and Noelle sniffle-laughs. Kris whines low and bunts their head to her shoulder, and Dess just sort of accepts that this is her life now, trapped under the weight of these two kids, stuck on the most worn bit of the floor, and if she falls down the stairs and dies, well, she’ll be sure to come back as a ghost. “Nobody’s ever gonna hate you because of this. And if they do they’re a piece of shit and I’ll make sure they’re never around you again.”

“Dess!” Noelle’s little teary voices pitches somewhere closer to happy. “You’re not allowed to curse!”

“What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Dess says, and she wraps an arm around her sister’s middle, tugging her upright. It drags Kris with her, too, and Kris splays their hands across Dess’s knee and springs free, sitting back against the stairs. “Hey, uh, I’m kinda wondering…if you went and picked a whole new name, why’d you stick with the holiday theme? You coulda done anything else.”

Noelle shrugs. “I dunno. I…I like it. Being part of something. And I also match Kris now! Krismas,” and she leans across Dess to poke at them, Kris growling playfully and snapping at her, though not enough to break skin. “Hehe.” Noelle breathes out. “If it went really bad we were gonna run away.”

Kris pipes up, “woods kids.”

“Yeah! Go live in the woods and be scary creatures that lurk in the night.”

Kris shows their teeth. “Gonna hunt things!” They drop down as if they’re a wolf prowling in the night. “Grr…” They slink past Dess, their eyes bright and happy. It’s like all that tenseness from earlier is gone. From both of them, really. Dess can only watch. All that fear shaken right out of them.

“No, we’d eat berries and stuff! I don’t even eat meat!” Noelle sticks out her tongue.

“Catch a squirrel Noelle!” Kris crouches down, wriggling at her, their hands sliding across the carpet. If it stings they don’t seem to notice. Maybe it can’t anymore. Far past all those little sharp pains. Breaking their cage and stretching out into something new. Cage, Dess half-thinks, but the thought slides away before she can grasp it. Kris is already talking again. “Creep and pounce and blam!” They spring forwards in a leap, landing just past Noelle, and lift their head as if they’ve really caught something. “It’s dead and it’s gonna touch you!”

“KRIS!” Noelle shrieks, laughing, and they chase each other up and down and around the stairs. It ends when Noelle trips over them, and Dess scoots up a few steps to sit alongside them again, offering her sister a hand, though Noelle just shakes her head, and hauls herself up against Kris’s back. “…thanks. Again.”

“Don’t do that.” Thanks itches against Dess. Like she could’ve ever done anything else, like she would’ve looked at her sister and Kris and not wanted to split the world in two if it meant they got what they wanted. Woods kids. She can’t even laugh, just exhale. It’s stupid how tall they’re getting. In her mind’s eye they’re still the little babies she stared at and didn’t understand, that a person could be so small and alive, somehow, if not then than one-day, one-day when they’d be bigger and sillier and warmer. And here they are.

Noelle just shrugs. “I mean I know it could’ve gone bad. A lotta people online say that…”

“Well I’m not any of those dumb people online!” She would never be. Not for her sister and not for Kris and if she has to spend the rest of her life here on this staircase then so be it, she will make it the best staircase in the world if it means they get to just exist. She shakes out her limbs and continues. “You’re Noelle. You’re my sister. Anybody who says otherwise I smack very hard. For you and Kris both.”

“Me too!” Kris adds, nudging their head to Noelle’s hand. “I wanna bite people!”

She pets their head. “Haha, thanks, Dess. Thanks, Kris…though I think you’d just do that anyways.” Kris beams wider. “…I guess I’m just, I dunno what happens now. I wanna, I know there’s all these body changes,” and she shudders, “and stuff. But what if I’m too little to make it stop? Like nobody believes me.”

“I’ll fight them too,” Dess says, and means it. “But all that stuff Mom’ll probably do, right? Like, if you have to talk to doctors or something?” Noelle shrugs. “And she’s Mom. She’s in charge of the entire town. Really we should be too by association or whatever.” Some part of Dess still believes it works like that. Though time has proven her wrong. Plus Mom’s too boring to let Dess pass any fun laws. The most she gets to do still is help out with the festival, which is basically just giving her home-homework. Double homework! But she shrugs. “Hey, if you ever feel like you gotta run away, lemme know. I’ll run with you.”

Noelle perks up, and even Kris lifts their head. “Really?”

“Yes, really!” She drags them both in closer, Noelle grinning, Kris yelping and flailing to get free, so she grips tighter. “We’ll go somewhere big and shining and bright! Like those cities in all the movies. And nobody will know us so we’ll be able to be whatever we want!” She ruffles Noelle’s hair, grins at her sister’s offended shrieking. “What’ll you be, Elly?”

“Well…I dunno,” Noelle says. “I don’t know what I wanna be when I’m old. I just know I want to be a girl.”

“Then you’ll be the best one there ever was,” Dess says, “cause you’re my sister.” Kris sticks their face against her chest, and Dess laughs. “And you’ll be the best Kris there ever was.”

“I’m gonna do music like you!” they say.

She pats their head. “We’ll make the coolest band.”

The time turns on. Here with everyone else asleep it’s just her and the kids, like there’s nobody else in the world. Though they drop off before she does, Noelle dozing against her shoulder, Kris sprawled half on the floor, half in her lap. She can only just about see the window from here, but the sky’s ink-dark outside. Not even the moon’s light pierces into the hallway. It’s just the hall lamp they’re lit by, and it’s on death’s door, flickering faded yellow.

One day, Dess thinks to them both. She’ll make sure wherever they go next is somewhere good. No matter how many people she has to hit to make it happen. They’re going to make it to that city. Sprawling out forever. No lines to pin them in. Just the world. Endless and eternal.

She’s used to the silence as it settles there around her, like some giant cat waiting to pounce. The twitch of its tail blots out the light, though it comes back, always. A pendulum swing or something. Watching an old grandfather’s clock. Tick tick tick like a countdown though to what Dess hasn’t ever known.

Her chest aches when she breathes, even more-so when she stands, sliding Kris onto the ground. They curl into themself, roll a bit closer to Noelle, as Dess creeps into Asriel’s room, steals the blankets off Kris’s bed and returns to drape them over the kids. So, so tiny, and so much bigger than they’ve ever been before.

She doesn’t sleep that night. Just sits and waits and watches.

Seventeen.

She’s not really sure why these are the memories that stick.

There’s more, of course. So much she could say. Something about not liking the sounds of it. That December ties her to Holiday in a way Dess never really has and maybe she wants her own name, her own sounds, where it’s just her her her and nobody can ever tell her what to do again. Maybe it’s that she refuses to be small, that she has to be bigger and louder and more because that way everything else is drowned out and she’s the only one who matters. Maybe, maybe. Maybe she wants Asriel to have no other friends but her like how she has no other friends but him. Maybe it’s the kids. Maybe.

It’s probably all stupid anyways. Why does it matter? It’s just a nickname. Azzy is just a nickname. Azzy is being six years old and dragging him after her through the woods, her ears twitching at every broken branch or crunched leaf underneath them, but always, always angled back towards him, because his were the sounds she wanted to hear most; it’s being eight and flopping across him because he should pay attention to her, not the book he’s reading, who cares about getting pizza if he reads enough books they can get pizza right now, if they’re quick and clever enough; it’s being ten and convincing him that yeah, c’mon, we’re big kids now, we can watch all the horror movies we WANT, and only realizing after the fact that Noelle and Kris had snuck into the room, and really, it’s a good joke that the babies watched a guy get dismembered and covered with fake-blood on screen, it’s character building!

It’s watching Asriel grow up and seeing herself older only because he tells her so: your antlers are growing in, your face looks a bit different. It’s her smug pride at being taller than him, though that only lasted ‘til sixteen-and-a-half. It’s being the Dess at twelve who rolled her eyes through every soppy romance Asriel wanted to watch on movie night, but still flopped across him anyways to throw popcorn at the TV just ‘cause she liked the affronted squawk to his voice as she ruined all the tension. It’s the Dess at fourteen who listened to all of Asriel’s frantic ramblings about what to do now that they were both old enough to go to the school dance, punching him in the shoulder, and saying c’mon, idiot, let’s just skip and go climb my roof while our parents are too busy trying to stop people from kissing. It’s Dess, sixteen, sprawled in Asriel’s bed while she watches him try and fail and try again to beat the final boss in the game he’s playing, and catching herself grinning so stupid at him because he’s right there, and he’s with her.

It’s all delight at having him for herself, knowing that she’s the one who can dare him to climb the roof of his house and he’ll actually do it. It’s annoyance whenever he refuses to cheat at cards, even though it’s so much more fun that way. It’s that weird gooey feeling in her chest like she could ever be something soft, and grabbing him tighter anyways, because there’s so many countless people in the world who don’t matter a single bit, but he does, and he’s hers.

She calls him Azzy, sometimes, but when she thinks of him, he’s Asriel.

She wants the entire world to look at her and only ever think Dess, because there is not another name they could use in its place.

Dess, of course, says none of this. Twists away from her mother. The back of the couch cuts into her spine as she smushes the cushions down even further, just the way her mother hates. The only words that come out of her mouth are, “you don’t do this with Noelle and Kris.”

“I don’t—” Mom recoils, almost, and Dess’s hands twitch. When she next speaks her voice is cold. “December. That is different. And you know it.”

“Yeah,” Dess says. Like dead silence all stifling and smothering. For silence it roars loud. “I know.”

It’s always different. She is always something different.

It was a dumb thing to say anyway. If her mom ever called Noelle or Kris by the names they discarded Dess would grab both the kids and make good on her promise to help them be woods kids. But Mom doesn’t. So Dess stays.

“December—” Dess bristles. Mom says, a bit softer, “Dess.”

“What do you want, Mom?” Dess still isn’t looking at her, because it’s easier, that way. Who cares what her mom thinks she’s getting from this? It’s all the same anyways. Everything is always the same. There’s only so many paths she can wander when her town’s the size of a shoebox and nobody ever lets her out.

Dess never does learn what Mom is going to say, because she’s cut off by a shriek of delight as the door is shoved open, and Noelle and Kris come tumbling in, tracking rainwater and mud as they shove at each other and laugh. Kris’s horns are askew on their head, their hair water-slick as they try to shake off all the excess water clinging to them onto Noelle, who yelps and dodges, pulling up her backpack like a shield.

“Sorry,” Asriel says, slumping in after them. He’s a lot less muddy but clearly didn’t escape from the rain, and it’s only then that Dess hears it, dimly: some sort of distant thrumming. Through the still-open front door the world is hazy. “I…I tried to stop them…at least from jumping in the mud puddles…” He rubs a hand across his face. “Oh, and Dess, I got your homework.”

Dess shrugs, sinking down a bit on the couch. Awesome that she forgot Asriel’d be coming home soon. Just great of him to remember her homework.

Mom says, “you’re cleaning up whatever mud they’ve tracked inside, Asriel.”

“Yeah.” Asriel sighs, wiping his feet off on the doormat. “That’s fair. I’m gonna—” he gestures up towards the bathroom. “Shower, or something. Dess, I’m stealing one of your shirts.”

Dess shrugs, only half-listening as he heads up. She’s a bit too focused on the kids, huddled together on the stairs, whispers and signs too low and hidden for her to hear. Mom looks to them, back to Dess, and sighs.

“This isn’t over,” Mom says.

Dess rolls her eyes. “What is there to be over, Mom? It’s just—” she bites back a growl at a spot of laughter from the stairs, lowers her voice. “December is just a word.”

“Just a—it is your name.”

Dess shrugs. She doesn’t watch her mother leave the room. Breathes there, for a moment, on the couch. Silence presses in and crowds around her, and she shakes it off her limbs, sucks in yet another breath. Guitar’s too-far and up in her room. Asriel’s gonna be hogging the shower for at least another hour.

Good thing she doesn’t want either of them right now.

“HEY! Were you jumping around in puddles without me?” Dess says, vaulting over the couch, and up on the stairs the kids giggle, Noelle’s wavery what noooooo and Kris sitting on their hands and doing their best to whistle, as if to say how could I ever do something like that. “Thought you’d run off and have an adventure on your own?

“We would’ve done it with you!” Noelle’s always been a bit of a terrible liar, hasn’t she? But she kept at least one thing from you for who knows how long. The thought rolls; Dess crushes it. Underhoof, as all things are to be. When she hooks an arm through her sister’s and Kris’s both kids giggle as they follow her back down the stairs. Noelle continues, “we would’ve, swear it!! But you weren’t at school.”

“Yeah, it can’t contain me.” Dess pushes open the door. The rain’s really coming down. When she shoves a hand out it stings, almost. But almost never scares her. Nothing scares her. She’s only not the first one outside because Kris has already tugged themself free to nearly trip directly on a muddy patch of ground.

They leap up to peach on one of the larger garden rocks. “I wanna not go to school too,” they say, shaking water out of their bangs. “But Mom always tells me no.”

“School is important!” Noelle says, trailing after Dess. Kris took the good rock, but there’s more for Dess to balance on, and the stones are only a bit slippery. Atop it she peers down at both kids, Kris sitting back on their haunches, hands braced against the stone, Noelle side-stepping some of the worst bits of mud like she’s only just now realize that playing in the rain has the side effect of getting muddy clothes. “And I think it’s kinda fun sometimes. We got to do art today! You like art.”

Kris sticks out their tongue. “I can do art at home.” They recoil a bit. “The rain tastes kinda bad.”

“Then don’t drink it!” Noelle scrambles over to their rock. “You’re so weird.”

Kris knocks their shoulder to hers. “No you!” But their voice is delighted, and they shift to give Noelle space. “We’re the best weird people.”

“Ha! Yeah.” Noelle leans against them. And then, “…bet I can run around the yard faster than you.”

Kris springs to their feet. “You wish!”

“December!” Mom calls from the house, and Dess glances her way. The kids are a bit too busy racing and throwing mud at each other to notice. “Come back inside before the storm gets worse. And don’t let Noelle and Kris ruin their clothes.”

See, she could do that. She really, really could.

“December,” Mom says, again, and Dess can only grin.

“Who’s that?” she yells back to her mom, and turns her back to home and Mom and Asriel, sequestered away inside as if that’s not the most boring option in the world, when presented with rain and mud and thunder soon, maybe, hopefully: the sky’s certainly dark enough for it. Like night’s fallen way early, and the town will be theirs and theirs alone.

In such loud rain the silence can’t even take form. Dess squishes it between her hands.

“Hey, kids, let’s go adventuring!” She leaps up onto the rock between them, a tad overcrowded, but she’s the one who doesn’t fall. She bends down to offer Kris a hand, and they only nip at her a bit. “I bet the lake’s real cool in this kinda weather! Like a real ocean or something. With waves!”

“Waves?!” Kris perks up, bunting against her side as Dess steps off the rock and heads down towards the gate. Their hair is plastered to their face and they’ve got mud clinging to their cheeks, not that they seem to notice.

“Uh…” Noelle hesitates. “Won’t Mom get mad? We’re kinda really wet and muddy…”

“Ah, c’mon,” Dess says, holding out a hand for Noelle. “When would I ever let you down?”

“Well…okay!” Noelle grabs on, and then onto Kris, too, when they try to wriggle inbetween. “But if you push me in the lake Kris I’m gonna be really mad!!!”

“I would never,” Kris says, as Dess wrestles them back to her other side. They giggle against her, the points of their horns jabbing into the underside of her arm. “NEVER!!!”

“Let me do the leading, okay?” Dess tugs them back before they can break off in a sprint down towards the street. It’s child’s play to open up the gate, let it slam shut behind them, loud enough it makes Noelle jump. Though not for long.

The streets are water-slick and the kids chase each other down them, back and around Dess in some strange pattern only they can see. And it does, yes, prick against Dess’s sides. Like they’ve figured out something she hasn’t, which, impossible, they’re just now reaching double-digits. Other than the rain it’s them she hears most, the splashing and laughter. Something about becoming mud-monsters. Kris, she thinks, would make a good one: they’d do ominously rising out of the mud perfectly.

She stops only once, to catch a glimpse of herself in a singular clearish puddle despite all the brackish ones. With how hard the rain’s coming down nothing about her reflection stays still, distorted always by new raindrops, scattering out to the edges of the puddle. Some vaguely deer-shaped creature of indistinct coloring, never quite in the same shapes twice.

“Heh,” Dess grins down at it. “I could get used to that.”

She charges off down the street. All blur and black, in this sort of rain. Like the town’s washed away and all it’s been left with is dark nothingness, for her to take and make as she will, shadows that belong to her, and so there’s nothing at all left to try and hold her back.

To finally create a world where everybody sees her, and only ever knows Dess.