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"I’m here," Serious calls, clinging to the heavy oak front door, his dirty boots crunching painfully against the gleam of the freshly polished wooden floors.
"Why you’re here?" Regina grits out, the corner of her lip twitching, as her whiskey-brown eyes hitch over his wet, muddy prints trailing ruined tracks across the immaculate entryway behind him.
"I’m here to collect," Serious annunciates, one leg arching outwards as he dips forward in a playful smile against the backdrop of the cozy home.
"What basket?" Regina questions, her voice carrying an edge of exasperation as she arches a brow, the warm indoor air thick between them.
"You know, the basket. The one," Serious tells her, his eyes averted toward the rustic walls as he rolls his hand in a gesture of attempting to recall.
"The one!" he snaps suddenly, with a flick of his fingers, finally looking at the trim of her shirt, "with the red velvet blueberry muffins, fancy cigarettes, Civet de Lapin," he explains, his gaze shifting to the corner of her perfectly done-up hair as he finishes with a flick of his finger, "and that nice wine you always take from the cellar."
"After the last package failed to arrive," Regina hisses, her face twisting into a sneer as her voice dips into a drawl in the quiet room, "we’ve decided to go with a different delivery service."
"Yeah, yeah," Serious agrees, a smile on his face as he moves towards the brown team, his posture stiffening as he slowly turns to face her. "You what?"
Regina turns, trailing slow, steady steps across the gleaming floorboards towards him. She opens her mouth, annunciating each word carefully. "After you," she reminds him, waving a finger sharply at his chest, jabbing just at the corner of his ribs.
Serious winces, pulling away, a sorrowful whimper passing his lips as he looks up at her, scratching into the dark grain of the wooden table.
"—failed to deliver the last package, we decided you shouldn’t be trusted anymore," she reprimands, spinning on her heels back towards the sunlit kitchen.
"But I told you!" Serious explains, his voice growing defensive against the quiet surroundings. "I was attacked on the way by bandits that ate—"
Regina pivots slowly on her heels to steadily meet his gaze, her eyebrow arching slowly to her hairline under the bright midday glow.
"I packed enough food for a five-person tea party to eat three meals and then have two snacks," Regina reminds him, a finger pressed sharply to the underside of his chin. "And a bunch of men ran over and robbed you so thoroughly that they managed to tiptoe off with a full pot of stew without getting burnt?"
"Yes! I'm your big brother, you have to believe me!" Serious insists, pressing his hands sincerely to his chest.
"I do believe you," Regina agrees simply, surrounded by the peaceful warmth of the house.
"—I used to carry you on—" Serious pauses, his eyes snapping to meet hers as he pulls his hands together. "You do?" he questions.
"Of course I do. How could I not?" Regina allows, slowly patting her hands down the length of her dress. "I mean, the alternative would be that you ate the equivalent of a 15-man military course, and that would just be horribly..." Regina allows, turning fully back to the kitchen counter. "...what kind of greedy, degenerate brute would steal that much food from his parents and leave them starving for an entire day?" she agrees softly, as she begins unpacking the empty plates.
"Well, maybe the bandits had a good reason! Maybe his mother was a bitch and his father already had one foot in the grave," Serious shrugs, shifting awkwardly near the furniture.
"No, no, I get it," Regina agrees, tilting her head, the golden sunlight flickering through the wide glass windows over her sun-kissed skin. "I would need to have been raised in an underground sewage system to treat another human being like that—especially knowing that they were elderly and blood-related."
"They didn't raise us like that," Serious points out, his voice wobbling slightly as he shrinks his neck into his shoulders.
"No, they didn't," Regina cuts sharply, banging the ceramic plate against the porcelain side of the sink, causing a loud crack to echo off the timber walls of the cabin. "In fact, they raised us in a rather financially stable situation," she grits out, her head slanting just over her shoulder to narrow her eyes at him.
Serious begins to shuffle his muddy boots on the floor, sliding a hand across the underside of his chin as he looks down at the dirtied timber.
"So no, I don't believe that my big brother," Regina croons softly into the atmospheric quiet, "would ever do something so cruel or negligent."
"I mean," Serious shrugs, "they might have just been hungry," he points out, leaning over the back of his wooden chair to catch sight of a wall clock ticking in the living room.
"You don't understand, I have a metric now. My brother has always been such a remarkable man, you see," Regina begins softly, her voice reminiscent of a lullaby amidst the rustic charm of the room.
Serious felt sweat prickle at the back of his neck in the cooling air.
"You know, my big brother even introduced me to his wonderful friend. But perhaps that's the issue," Regina tilts her head in the light. "I've been spoiled by the better men out there," she drawls, another plate cracking sharply against the sink basin.
Serious flinches. "So where's James?" he asks excitedly.
"Don't worry about James," Regina tells him softly, walking over with a soft smile at the corner of her lips as she rests a steaming cup of tea on the table in front of him.
Serious leaned over the top, his nose twitching at the rising vapor before his eyes snap to hers. "It smells like cinnamon."
"Mhmm," she agrees, nodding her head softly, a gentle smile creasing the corners of her lips, a sharp, dangerous glint catching her eyes through the shifting moonlight filtering into the room.
Serious did the experiment: she had deceptively soft eyes. It was the fate of most people in the house, but the test was simple: if someone with greasy hair and beady black eyes looked at him like that in the shadows, would he be terrified for his life?
...
"Hhhhuhhh!" Ursa gasped, her hands pressed to her cheeks amidst the cool wilderness air.
"What? What is it?" Liddell questioned, hiking up her skirt to begin stomping around in her flat shoes, her face twitching constantly as the feeling of thick, cool mud splashed up against her calves along the rutted dirt trail.
"It's not on you," Beatrice tells her curtly, taking in the quiet rustle of the surrounding foliage.
"Is it crawling?" Liddell insists, pivoting slowly on her heels, her feet wobbling slightly as she tries to maintain her balance on the uneven ground, her fog-like pupils cutting sharply around the damp path and its dense, shadowed tree line.
"No," Beatrice complies, rolling her eyes before turning to settle on the massive gray beast watching them from the edge of the woods.
"Here," Beatrice calls softly, pulling out a large piece of sausage from the broad, woven basket on her arm to waggle it in the face of the gray wolfhound.
The wolf leaps forward from the brush, snapping with its jaws at Beatrice's hand. She pulls back into the dappled shade just as its mouth reaches around to clamp its jaws on her, giggling as it only manages to catch the sausage.
Ursa stomps right past her over the churned soil, reaching a full palm into the tuft of the beast's coarse fur to grab it by the corner of its neck, tugging it roughly from the tree line's scattered, dew-drenched grasses. Tilting its heavy body to gesture at its thick coat against the wild backdrop, "This is the kind of coat I wanted," she tells Beatrice.
"You can't just treat animals—" Beatrice begins, her voice growing stern under the towering forest canopy.
Ursa whips her head around, not getting the response she had wanted from Beatrice. "Liddell, come feel this!" she calls down the winding path at a still-twitching Liddell.
"Is it black or white?" Liddell questions, feeling slowly with her feet around the muddy ground.
"Beatrice, go get Liddell, she's going to take forever to get here," Ursa insists, smacking a hand to Beatrice's arm under the canopy of leaves.
Liddell, her face twisting into a sneer, snarls into the open forest air. "I can do it myself! Being visually impaired doesn't make me disabled. I'm still better than both of you," she reminds them, aiming a finger in the direction of the dense tree line where the wolf had been standing. "Filthy posers, I was here first!" she declares proudly.
"You're pointing in the wrong direction, and hurry up! I want somebody to tell me if this is good or not before I peel it," Ursa complains, throwing her head back in annoyance toward the overcast sky.
The wolf ducks its head into the dirt, its eyes narrowing as it bears its teeth, growling lowly with a sound that vibrates through the forest floor.
Ursa, her head snapping from Liddell, turns to look down at him in the brush, raising her free hand to smack his snout. "Don't get drool on my coat!" she complains loudly. "Do you know how much this costs?" She continues dragging the heavy hound closer across the earth to press their faces together, her gray eyes flickering with a piercing intensity to peer into the beady, black eyes of the hound.
The hound leans down into the soil, whimpering softly as it tries to pull away toward the safety of the trees.
"Stop that, I swear to God!" Ursa insists, her voice dropping into a growl as she begins shaking the scruff of its neck in the dirt. "If you ruin my coat, I'm going to—"
"Girls!" a voice shouts, echoing sharply from deep within the woods.
"What are you kids doing?" the man insists, his figure shifting slowly from the shadowed tree line out into the late morning sun that filters through the branches.
"Uncle Remus!" Liddell calls first into the clearing. "What color is the coat? I've been asking, but no one would tell me the thread count!"
"I—" Remus tries, opening his mouth as he turns to Liddell on the dirt path.
"I don't know the thread count," Ursa begins, her eyes squinted as she drags the side of the wolf's neck, her face contemplative under the morning light as she looks over the fur, "but it's a light gray."
Remus, pivoting on his heels, turns to jog across the rough ground towards Ursa.
"I want a white one!" Liddell chimes, clasping her hands together over the front of her gown.
Remus opens his mouth, his head snapping over his shoulder at Liddell as he pauses in his tracks on the path towards where Ursa was stood holding the wild animal.
"If she's getting a coat, I want a coat," Beatrice cuts in, folding her arms to blink at Remus against the sprawling forest backdrop.
"Nobody's getting a coat!" Remus reiterates, his voice growing shrill enough to startle the birds in the trees.
Remus stands there in the clearing, a hand outstretched at the beast that kept twisting around in the mud, the corner of its sharp teeth sliding off Ursa's hand as she held it, her free hand brushing away the dirt clumped in its thick fur.
Remus, his eyes warily fixed on the wild wolf, sneaks around the girls, wrapping an arm around each of them as he twists away on the forest trail. Turning to run towards Liddell, he feels a heavy, dead-weight tug of something pulling him back through the grass.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" Remus questions, looking down at Ursa, who was still firmly grabbing it, dragging the creature on its side across the dirt and pine needles, her hand still entangled firmly in the side of its neck.
"I'm not leaving without my coat!" Ursa insists, glaring viciously at the animal on the forest floor as though it owed her money for far too long.