Prompt 8 (Mouse in the House): It’s snowing outside, and it’s going to keep snowing--all night long. They're not calling it a blizzard but it sure does feel like one. The power seems like it’ll stay on, which is good because it’s so cold outside. You’re safe and warm--but you’re not alone. At first, you might not notice anything. Maybe you see something move out of the corner of your eye, or hear something in the other room. It doesn’t take long to find the culprit: a mouse.
A mouse is sharing your living space, your shelter from the storm. On one hand, you don’t know where it’s been. On the other hand, it’s freezing outside, and it has big, sweet eyes. Do you have the heart to kick anything out in this weather? ...Do you really want that thing running around your place unchecked?
With his requisite social duties out of the way, Nataniel returned home. He lamented his idiocy at the thought that he could pick Basyl up a drink at his first meeting and expect it to still be warm by the time he made it home. Absolutely ridiculous. Basic nonsense. He’d intended to retrieve a new one, but already felt entirely drained by the time he was done with Zaidyn, and so the task went undone. Nataniel walked into his home with a full cup of cold coffee and abandoned it on the counter with a resigned sigh.
Basyl would probably throw it in the microwave and still drink it, anyway. No need to let it go to waste, he supposed… Maybe Nataniel would DoorDash him something else later.
For now, one more necessary task. One more holiday “pleasantry,” and it shouldn’t even be too terrible. He and Tanwyn were supposed to be close. It was dealing with a friend in his own home, rather than a work colleague he had limited information about. It just would’ve helped if Nataniel knew how to handle Tanwyn in his current state.
It usually proceeded as normal, with no issues, but Tanwyn had lost a lot. Sometimes he wanted companionship, sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he seemed fine. Sometimes he seemed depressed, on the verge of tears.
It was a mixed bag where Nataniel never knew what to expect out of the deal.
And that made him more wary than friendly. Basyl frequently reminded him to show compassion and empathy, and Nat tried because Tanwyn was his friend and not just some stranger. But it was difficult sometimes, and he was often unsure of what to say. Any of their interactions could be one of those interactions. Tanwyn could be upset today, now, and Nat wouldn’t know what to do about it.
He still had to try. He walked up the stairs to Tanwyn’s room.
Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2022 1:50 pm
As Nataniel had expressed, some days were better than others. Some days he could shove the grief to the back of his mind, lingering and ever-present, but not the only thing in his thoughts, not the only thing dominating his mood. Other days was harder to focus on the world at large. It seemed surreal and impossible. How could he have lost his whole family and been awakened to magic in the same night? It had been several months, but it seemed fake, as if he was drugged, or something. Other days he was just tired, tired and lonely and unable to mentally grasp anything.
Tanwyn had taken a few weeks off from work to stabilize, but that had been an indefinite solution, and he still had to go on making assignments and grading papers for his online students. He still needed a job, needed to pay his bills and mortgage in a house he wasn’t staying in and make sure he wasn’t burdening his friends with his presence. The world didn’t stop for him, no matter how his struggled to just acknowledge the reality of it. That, and it would’ve been lousy of him to abandon his dozens of students to a substitute for the entire rest of the year.
The kids had two weeks off for the holidays, but Tanwyn had procrastinated or been too distracted to keep up properly earlier in the quarter, so he needed this time to catch up, send any emails to parents and students who had yet to complete assignments, grade history papers that had been submitted, and record lectures for the coming quarter. He could reuse some of them from last year for chapters where the updated book was largely the same, but others needed to be made entirely new.
Doing his job was more important than worrying about holiday things. Those would’ve been done with his family, anyway, most of which weren’t here for him now.
Most of those that were still alive, his parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, didn’t keep much contact. That’s what happened when you ran off with a girl they didn’t approve of, eloped, and had a child. They weren’t cruel to him, just distant. They didn’t reach out, and neither did he. Without all that, he wasn’t much interested in the holidays, didn’t care for big dinners or presents or religious ceremonies. No music, no decorating. Maybe it was a blessing Basyl was way too busy to care what the house looked like, and Nataniel found it too troublesome to decorate for a holiday he hardly believed in.
They had families for that, anyway.
And so, largely ignoring the season, Tanwyn shuttered himself away in his borrowed room. Today he was flipping through the year’s textbook, marking passages he needed to go over in his lecture, making sure to notate chapters and pages and questions to assign his students. He didn’t look up from the book as he hummed a, “Come in,” at the knock on his door.
BiggerinTexas
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2022 11:15 am
He’d expected no other response- or, perhaps he would’ve understood if there’d been no response. Tanwyn secluded himself often, and Nataniel knew he slept with a frequency that made he and Basyl envious. But not at the moment, it seemed. It was early afternoon, besides. He had a handful of seconds to mentally grapple with trying to decide if this was ideal or not, but he had to enter regardless.
Nataniel cleared his throat as he stepped in, and did not even bother with discretion as his gaze scraped judgingly over the room. “You are awake…” He murmured, as he stared at Tanwyn over his books and laptop.
Right. Because he still worked, just at a job that allowed him to spend much of his time at home. Maybe it seemed like less because Tanwyn didn’t have to go anywhere, and class wasn’t even in session at the moment, was it? For the winter holidays? But he should be compassionate and not judgemental, as Basyl said he was supposed to be. He probably wouldn’t ever understand everything Tanwyn was feeling, and he shouldn’t be thinking less of someone that was supposed to be his friend.
This seemed like maybe it was even one of those “normal” days. Nataniel should be grateful for that.
He loitered in the doorway, arms tucked behind himself as he struggled to decide what to do- how to proceed. It shouldn’t be so difficult, not with Tanwyn, but what was acceptable and welcome felt like such a narrow line where grief was concerned. Maybe the most customary question simply was the best in this regard. “How are you feeling?”
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2022 10:31 am
Tanwyn snapped the heavy textbook shut and slid it toward the corner of his small work desk as he turned to face Nat. Yeah, Nat and Basyl both were creeping around on eggshells in a pretty obvious sort of way. Not what Tanwyn wanted at all, since they’d already been gracious enough to let him stay with them, and he appreciated that and didn’t want it being something they had to struggle to live with.
“Yeah, awake and fine,” Tanwyn replied. “Just preparing for the third quarter.” He gestured to the textbook. He stared back as the other man watched him, and after a few seconds, tacked on a quieter, “Staying distracted…”
Because he was. He didn’t want to think too hard about any one thing, didn’t want his thoughts to wander. But anyway.
“You need something? You can sit if you just wanted to hang out,” he said, motioning for Nat to take a spot on the bed, if he wanted.
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2022 6:26 am
“I had no intention of disturbing you,” Nataniel started, but then he supposed if that was what Tanwyn wanted, if that was what he thought would help him, Nataniel should provide. He sat on the edge of the bed, but wasn’t sure what to do from there. They should be able to just “hang out.” That was what people did. That was what friends did. They just didn’t have the in-person experience they’d had back when they were teenagers.
Tanwyn had grown up and gotten reliable work and a family.
…And Nat had just gotten worse. More distant. More unsure of social etiquette. He had Basyl, but he hardly understood how, and he didn’t know how to handle what Tanwyn was feeling well enough to comfortably… “hang out.”
It was fortunate, then, that he had come with an actual purpose.
“I brought you something,” Nataniel invited as he produced a small, black box from the back pocket of his pants and held it quietly in both hands for a moment before extending it for Tanwyn to take. And because he could already feel how awkward it would be for Tanwyn to open the box and see jewelry there, just after the holidays, Nataniel decided to cut the surprise and explain before any other conclusions were made.
“They are magical in nature. My general gave me a pair when I was starting to find my footing, and they are… invaluable, when you would otherwise be alone.”
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2022 4:04 pm
“Oh, I didn’t really… go shopping for anyone this year, or anything,” Tanwyn admitted as a small jewelry box was held out to him. It was past Christmas, so he thought he’d dodged the holiday bullet, but apparently not. Somehow seemed worse that it was jewelry of all things. A weird gift to get someone.
It wasn’t until Nat claimed they were magic that Tanwyn’s skeptical glance flit from Nat’s face to the box, and he hesitantly took it and opened it to see a pair of gleaming silver earrings. They looked ordinary enough. The whole magc thing was still a little… strange.
Hard to believe how much of it was out and about and had been there all along. Now they could just pass magical artifacts around like candy.
