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It was without Quixana, or without Cressida - or without any form of backup - that Leontas Aristipossos ventured to Library; stood at the door, hands shoved into his pockets, compelled by something his partner had never felt when she had been passed on Courage and Xana. Generally Leon feared nothing, worried about nothing, cared about little that was out from the influence of his tiny family unit - but today he looked at the door, restlessly pushed back his long fair hair, and felt disquiet.

Well.

It was not a matter of stepping away, either; nearly dreamlike, he pulled his hand out his pocket and touched the door, and felt more than annoyed at himself for the terrible and illogically ethereal urge to step through it.

It takes no longer than a second before the air is filled with the trill of crickets. The door doesn't shut; in fact, it disappears right beneath the victim's hand, a first for the House. Surging up from the ground is plantlife of the swamp variety, and what was once the staircase sinks quickly into a mirky pit of swamp water. Features once that of a house melt away rapidly into the setting of a twisted, miscoloured bog.

A ridiculously oversized fly shoots past the victim's ear, doubling back to rest on his shoulder, its buzzing magnified with its size.

Leon swatted absently at the fly, staring in open and uncharacteristic surprise at his surroundings: and then, mouth pursed, stepped forward into the reeking bog. Nothing loath - as if the fen had been placed there specifically to challenge his testosterone and manful stubbornness - he picked his way forward, at the edge of the brackish swamp-water, staring out over the buzzing wasteland.

Immediately, his foot steps down on mire, which acts as a suction and captures him up to the ankles, as if purposefully doing so. The fly remains, not bothered by the movement, and ritualistically cleans itself, its buzzing growing louder still.

Beneath the green scum afloat in the water, something seems to disrupt the natural flow - something rather big and dark skinned - but it is gone without another sign of it being there.

At this point, Leon said a very rude word. (It did not appear as if the bog was really affected by this.)

He tried to tug one leg, and then the other, the mud making obscene sucking noises - and not releasing him, trying to pull himself away from the swamp and looking stupid, flailing around impotently. Stress level plunging to Permanent Fray, he muttered "s**t," and stared down at the peaceful green scum.

"s**t," he said again, by way of underscoring the point, and attempted another swat at the fly.

Animal life increases all around, and in turn so does the noise. The stench, however, is last to arrive, and it seems to have planned that way; to call it overwhelming would be putting it lightly.

The fly jumps over the hand as if toying with him, and settles back down on his shoulder again, nestling its disgusting feelers into the skin of the victim's neck. Upon the repeated exclaim, the fly stops, antenna twitching, and as if it recognized what had been said, it does just that.. on the victim's shoulder.

Leon didn't bother swearing; just swatted down on his shoulder with force, expression set, wiping the flydirt off his shirt. He tried to struggle again, held down fast by the mud - and getting more and more pissed off with each moment, eyes still down on the scum, waiting for whatever was coming his way.

A distant rumbling is his only response. With every struggle, he is only further sucked down by the mire, acting much like quicksand in this abnormal setting. Nearby, a group of trees dance as their leaves momentarily turn pink, and they sway in a way suggesting they're passing the colour back and forth much like a ball.

The scum atop the marsh's water begins to bubble nastily, bits and pieces flying up and speckling anything it can with flecks of green. The movement in the water is more visible now, as a sleek black figure slides unceremoniously closer to the victim, but not directly at him.

The scenery now vaguely hallucinatory, hip-deep in mud and rotting swampweed and what was probably dead crickets - Leon pushed his hands down into the mire in an attempt to get himself out, ignoring the fact that movement meant you were just sucked deeper, eyes still on the ominous Thing in the water.

"This is not going to end well," he said, though it was not readily apparent for who.

The deep rumbling grows louder, only it seems to be coming from behind the victim, whereas the Thing is slowly making its way toward him without bothering to hide. Despite how murky and thick the water is, the creature finally catches some light - well, there ARE three suns, so what do you expect? - and is illuminated in glimpses.

Vibrant, intelligent crimson eyes.

Sleek, but rippled, black skin that seems to melt away into the water itself.

The upturning of a toothy grin.

Something nests atop the victim's head, chirruping gleefully, which suggests it must be some sort of bird. It brings with it a pungent smell, perhaps one that radiates off what it carries in its talons...

Leon stared down the crimson stare, not even bothering to shake his head: he was getting more and more filthy each passing second, so who gave a damn for bird s**t and offal. His own dark eyes narrowed at the creature, hands searching the sucking mud for - it was useless. It was mud.

"I'm not going to be eaten," he informed it darkly. (For one thing, it was his turn to cook dinner.)

The ripples in the water grow more violent as the Thing approaches; it doesn't bother hiding anymore, and again it shoots the scum off the water almost cheerfully. A limb breeches the water about ten feet away.

Above him, the bird-beast lets out a high pitched note, dropping the slug it had been carrying, which runs down the bridge of the victim's nose, leaving a nice, slimey trail. The bird screeches again before taking off.

It's almost musical, the beat of the setting and its creatures, or at least it would be if it wasn't so repulsive. The rumbling from behind grows loud enough to become a dull roar, not one recognizable from the throat of any beast, but one more earthy, if anything.

He didn't bother to turn around, because he couldn't; up to his knees in mud, tense, sticky, filthy, passing out the spectrum from annoyed to nearly Zen and waiting for whatever came for him - eyes on the Thing, the water, the sun off the scum, and the rumbling.

Whatever happened, happened. Leon narrowed his eyes until they were nearly closed.

Finally, the Thing emerges.

It slides out without disturbing the water's flow; sort of anti-climatic, in a way. But its sheer ugliness makes up for whatever is lacking in its arrival. Its skin is ribbed and pitch black with a slimey sheen to it. Two enormous red eyes bulge unevenly out the middle of its head, and its toothy smile, framed by tusks, is where its forehead should be. Two nostrils replace what might have been ears, and it displays a beard of thin, dangling tubes with holes all down their fronts. Its body resembles an enormous centipede, and all down its back in three rows are dull red blades.

" 'LO CHAP," it shouts, rushing forward to clasp the victim on his back with the biggest of its chunky arms. He draws back, but keeps a firm grip on the victim's shoulders. "WELL, DON'T YOU LOOK BLOODY AWFUL! YA GOT s**t ALL OVER YA!" He bellows an hefty laugh, shaking quite visibly as he does.

Leon paused, generally because he was half winded from the shaking.

"Yes," he said, after a tiny bout of wheezing, having looked over the Thing in a second and ascertained everything he needed to ascertain. Mainly, the tusks. He was now in a Happy Place, which was far away from the psychedelic swamp and mainly involved coffee. "And dead crickets. - Excuse me, but I'd like to get out of the mud, if you don't mind." (All of this was said only mostly though clenched teeth.)

The Thing pauses for a moment, then flips himself over. His many arms crack sickeningly and replace themselves lower on his back, now tummy, and now his flute-like beard becomes something like dreadlocks. His buggy eyes blink sideways, and he extends his mouth into a grin that moves around his tusks.

"WELL, WHY DINNIT YA SAY SO?" he roars, sliding his many hands all over the victim in a way that almost encompasses him from head to toe. He doesn't seem to mind invading personal space, if he even knows the word. There is a disgusting pop, and his feet are freed - minus his shoes.

Setting him back down, the Thing moves his hands quickly, flipping a top hat out of the water and up the line of hands til it is flicked atop his head. The rumbling is deafening now, but that doesn't seem to be the reason that the Thing shouts. He submerges himself deeper in swamp water, still much taller than the victim even in doing so, which begs the question of just how tall.. or.. long.. the Thing really is.

"NO ONE'LL NOTICE," he says decidedly, his round eyes giving the victim an obvious look over. "BUT IF YA DON'T HURRY, YA'LL MISS THE WHOLE DAMN THING!"

"... But what am I missing?" Bare feet. Top hat. Leon was pretty sure that, in fact, somebody had left the rye bread too long, and he quite possibly had had a little go at the LSD. It was the top hat that had done it. Jeans hopelessly muddy and wet, he waded in after the Thing, again wondering at the scenario of following a gigantic swamp-monster with a charming colloquial accent who -

Okay, Leon didn't care. He was pretty past caring. Even over the shoes. L-S-goddamn-D. Alice down the rabbithole, only he had a bit too much pubic hair. "And who'd notice? It's only you and me in here."

The Thing snorts suddenly, wading further out in the swamp water. "THAT SHOWS HOW MUCH YA KNOW," he bellows mischeviously, his hat tipping up against his bubbles of eyes unblinkingly. "MAYBE THAT'S WHY YA TOOK SO BLOODY LONG T' SHOW UP! YA GODS-DAMN FERGOT WHERE YA SUPPOSED TO BE!"

Shaking his head, he sends pieces of slime up off the water with an enormous sigh.

Leon tentatively tried another step, slipping momentarily and wetting himself up to the shoulders. He was not so much worried at catching pneumonia than he was at, say, lyme fever, or giardia. The scum was starting to seep into his hair, turning it an arresting camel-vomit green.

"Where am I supposed to be?" Deep breaths. There was no point in getting pissed off at Things. With. Hats. - There hadn't even been any rye bread in the cupboard; Cress wasn't a fan. "... what am I doing?"

"OH DEAR," the Thing murmurs, if softer shouting can be considered a murmur. "YA REALLY HAVE BEEN GONE A LONG TIME, FERGOTTEN THE SOUND OF YER OLD FAVOURITE SONG, EVEN! BOLLOCKS.."

The Thing slips under the water without disturbing its natural flow, the top hat left floating. He re-emerges again suddenly after an undeterminate amount of time, popping the hat back onto his head. "WELL?" he roars impatiently, clasping the victim roughly on the shoulder with a dozen of his arms. "COME ON THEN, STOP FARTING AROUND AND COME JOIN THE PARTY WE'RE HOLDING IN YER HONOUR, BLOKE!"

He gives an enormous wheezing sound, and his chest all but caves in. The deafening noise behind the victim reveals itself, as if breaking through a barrier not seen before, but always present. The trees meld into completely whacked out colours, the sky giving into a more violet hue, and the water comes alive in the form of other black Things. The Things emerge from the water as if, seconds before, they were actually a part of it, not hidden within it. The scene blasts to life, the smell growing more unbearable with every passing second and the noise absolutely surreal.

It was very nearly delirium, and hard to look at: Leon kept on blinking, as though that would clear all the scenery around him, the epileptic number of Things crawling out as if they had been part of the psychedelic camoflage - it hurt his head, it hurt his eyes, and he had one hell of a headache. Much to his shame, he gagged - and then, mouth set in a tight line, struggled a little in the Thing's arms, head rocking to try to get the colours away.

There were good trips and bad trips. This trip: bad trip.

The scenery even seems to be enjoying this party. Strange but exhilarating music blasting, trees having a good time, and many, many Things dancing as if in some sort of co-ordinated seizure.

"YA CAN AT LEAST PRETEND YER ENJOYING YERSELF!" shouts the Thing with the top hat, shoving something into the victim's mouth that looks very much like a sponge. He pops one in his own mouth, too, which is again on the top of his head, suggesting he flipped over again. "CHEW IT NICE AND SLOW, LAD, ELSE YA LOSE ALL ITS JUICES, AND THE'FFECTS GO ALL SCREWY."

He laughs another roaring laugh, and other Things around him join in, also snacking on these vibrantly coloured sponges.

Leon quite abruptly spat the sponge-texture highlighter back into the swamp, where it sank: the taste had been pretty indescribable, though he was pretty sure he was on the way to completion by starting with old towels. He retrieved it before it sank all the way.

"I'm not very much a party person," he said, and eyed the sponge some more. He had seen more appetizing things in his life. For example: boots. "I... I just ate." (This was a minus-five for pathetic and no spine, which annoyed him even more.)

The music dies down first. The Thing's smile turns upsidedown - that is, right side up, being that his mouth is.. well, you get the picture. He looks truly infuriated between the victim and the wasted sponge. Things of the party begin to notice, and soon everyone is staring, turning a mass of black flesh and huge beady red eyes onto him.

"PLEEZ TELL ME YA DINNIT DO THA' ON PURPOSE," a nearby Thing shouts, shrinking visibly as the Thing with the top hat shoots him a look.

The top hat Thing swishes forward in what's left of the swamp water, and the temperature around him rises considerably. He kicks aside the sponge and roughly seizes the victim's wrist in one of his very hot hands, burning the flesh on the touch.

"HOW DARE YA," he roars, and many Things quiver at the sound. "HOW DARE YA WASTE THAT HREKIN SO CARELESSLY. FOOL. PETTY FOOL. DAMNED, YA ARE!" He spits, and in turn, green flecks rain down on the area again.

"I was fine," Leon said levelly, as he felt his flesh sizzle like bad bacon, "when this was just a Charles Dogson-esque hallucination; but I am not a little girl called Alice, I don't think we want to get into a relationship, and I want to know what I'm doing here. I'm... sorry about the sponge." (Cressida would say diplomacy was Good.) "I didn't drop it on purpose, ... whatever."

A lone hazy breeze drifts overhead, whistling past.

The Thing gives a throat growl, a few of his hands twitching. Other Things, anticipating his actions, throw themselves at the top hatted Thing, but their efforts are in vain, as he is certainly larger and stronger than they are even combined.

"THE.. HREKIN.." he roars as he lunges forward, knocking the victim down into the swamp water and pinning down underneath his blubbery body and many arms. Everything in the victim's vision is suddenly very black..



It felt like a year had gone by when Leon came around; a musty, terrible taste in his mouth, and a pounding headache, lying on dusty floorboards flat on his a** as he opened his eyes.

"That," he murmured to himself, eyes still half-closed and everything misty, "is not something I am repeating any time soon."

The setting has clearly improved. The atmosphere is warm bordering on cosy; the candles nearby leap in greeting as the victim comes around, illuminating the Library beautifully in a hue of orange and browns. The noise has subsided, though the silence here is almost as deafening as the music of the Things.

Rows and rows of books are shelved in the most welcoming of ways, stacked unevenly on the floor and laid out unceremoniously across the shelves. Despite being washed out in orange and brown colour, they each have very distinguishing features, many of which books shouldn't naturally obtain.

Near the victim's hand is a damp book, flecked with the moss that has fallen from his clothing, but also soaked thoroughly, as if it had withstood the same journey as he had. A rusty orange eats the corners unevenly, and its pages are damp and opaque from maltreatment.

Leon did far better in libraries than he did in swamps; he sat up, rubbing his temples judiciously, taking the book without even thinking about it: it reeked like the swamp had, of brackish foul water and mosquitoes, and his brows furrowed as he very gently tried to pull the book open without damaging any of the water-soaked pages.

"Someone has been mistreating you," he said. (And felt stupid again; Cressida would laugh at that, him making a book some kind of real creature.)

Despite the pages dripping with tinted water, they are surpringly resiliant to the threat of breaking. Indeed, under his touch, the book grows a little warmer, as if expressing its fondness [but maybe that's just reading too much into it].

A thin, pale girl appears nearby via the sliding ladder attached to the mounted bookcases. The tresses of her hair are pinned neatly up near her elongated ears, and she wears a neat, simple black dress, which she brushes off after hopping down from the stair she rode on.

"Hello," she murmurs calmly, joining him at his side. Her eyes wander over his current attire, and the corners of her mouth tug up into an awkward smile. "Did you find a book you like, or did it find you to like?" Her eyes twinkle with a secret deviousness, but otherwise she betrays none of the excitement she feels.

"I'm not sure," said Leon, too swampified to have been surprised any more; he raised his head and looked over the girl with dark eyes, taking in the pointed ears and dismissing her as somebody not about to shove a sponge in his mouth. (He looked just a little haunted, being covered in swamp scum and general crap that would need extra-strength Surf in the washing machine.) "I found a book, - or maybe you're right. Maybe it found me."

This answer seems to satisfy her, for she relaxes just a little, though she doesn't seem to be all that tense to begin with.

"Read it to me," she requests with a childish delight, scuffling closer to the victim, ignoring his damp clothing and the retched smell eminating off of his being. As an afterthought, she adds, "Please."

Leon thumbed through the wet pages, having gotten good at this kind of thing after Quixana and endless repetitions of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. He cleared his throat (and then cleared it again, having found a small and terrible piece of the sponge-thing) and squinted at the text.

"'One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea,'" he read, and scanned ahead, and paused with one raised eyebrow - "It doesn't look appropriate for a little girl."

She reaches out and presses her hand onto the page, staring at him with a stoney, serious look. "'That is fine," she muses carefully, "That is good enough."

She rises to her feet, her thin black shoes clicking softly on the hardwood floor. She extends a petit hand to him, willing him to stand as well. "I have something to tell you, and it will require our temporary leave, if you please."

Leon finally stood up, dripping rather morosely on the floor, book in the other hand and the first dwarfing the dark-haired girl's. If he thought he had been down the rabbit hole before, he hadn't seen anything yet. "Take me where you want and tell me what you will," he said. "I can face anything after what I faced before." (Considering it had involved mass quantities of feces.)

She laughs suddenly, a strange and hollow laugh. Clasping her lips together in a considering pout, she gives his hand a light tug as she leads him toward the beautiful Victorianesque table, one leg shorter than the other three. With her free hand, she motions wordlessly for him to put the book on top of it, watching him intently and soaking up the details without bothering to hide it.

Leon only paused for a moment before taking the book and putting it down on top of the polished wood: stepping back and wiping his hand down the front of his jeans, just getting it wetter, turning his streaked face to the girl with his own expression of well, now what?

She turns away from him, not releasing her light grip on his hand, and begins to disappear into the shadows of the rows of freestanding bookshelves. She easily becomes one of the shadows herself, and if not for her holding his hand and the soft humming she emits, he might have looked over her without a second glance.

Minutes crawl by without a word from the girl and without any purposeful direction to their wandering; in fact, it seems as if she's leading him in loops and twists and turns purposely to skew his sense of direction.

At first he tried to measure their steps and remember what path they had taken, try to make landmarks out of the books and bookshelves they were passing - but after a few they all faded into the same scenery, screwing with his head, and he gave up and uncharacteristically left it all in the hands of the girl in front of him. He also nearly asked are we there yet, but caught his tongue at the last moment. (He was not in a car, and they were not on a road trip.)

She stops suddenly, sliding her hand from his grip and whirling around on her heel. "I am Petra," she explains in a soft, if not monotonous, voice. "And I am a Forgotten child."

Her words cry of double meaning, but she doesn't look as if she'll explain that further. Instead, she hurries on with what she had possibly brewed while they travelled. "What you have done was answer the call of a higher power," she says, barely over a whisper, examining his face for any sign of change in expression. "And it has succeeded in luring you here, sir. You opened that book, and you will leave here with lives that are infinitely precious, to be guarded at all costs."

Her brows knit together in all seriousness, her tone darker in warning. "Do not fail in this task, sir."

"You have my word," he said immediately, as if he was a soldier, and he put one hand over his heart without knowing what he was doing. "And my oath as an Aristipossos. I do not fail." (And that was a little more egotistical.)

She moves a hand to her waist, considering him seriously to determine whether or not to trust him. Her hand slips off the hip she doesn't yet have and she lets out a strong whistle, turning expectingly to her right. Emerging from the shadows as easily as she had, a stoney creature easily the size of a pony emerges, the whistle having been his cue.

He is at her side in a heartbeat, wasting no time delaying their reuniting. Petra pats him fondly on the neck before pulling herself easily onto his back, where she looks a if she belongs.

"This is Desperate," she explains, her voice returned to its normal stoney pitch, and the daemon lowers his head respectably. "We will escort you to your children, but the journey from then on is only yours to travel."

"I wouldn't need a guide anyway," he said, and pushed his hair back os that some of the slop came off on his fingers. "I'm an old man. I will get there on my own."

Leon cursed himself for not recognizing it before; that Petra and Desperate were like Courage and Quixana, and that he was blind for not making the connection. He nodded, a little bit aristocratic, at both girl and stone monster. "Thank you for the escort. I appreciate it.""

Her expression is interrupted by a twinge of sadness. Perhaps he did not know what he promise entailed, but she hopes she did the right thing in urging him to make it.

Desperate starts on ahead at a much faster speed than Petra had walked, not particularly caring if the victim can keep up. They wind in and out of bookcases, tossing aside the unnecessary twists and turns Petra had purposely taken, and silently, save for the thuds of Desperate's feet on the wood floor, guide him back to the clearing.

They stop just before the last bookcase, doubling back. "This is where we part ways, sir," Petra explains, brushing a stray strand of hair from in front of her face. "I do hope we will meet you again."

Not waiting for his goodbye, the pair passes by the victim and easily melts away into the shadows.

She was gone before Leon could make any attempt at goodbye; he opened his mouth and then shut it again, filing it away for if they ever did really meet again, for Quixana to take with him as his rightful son. He put his hands into his pockets again by force of habit, and walked towards the last bookcase. Stubborn face, Cressida would have called his expression, and laughed.

The last bulwark.

A shriek of bubbly baby laughter can be heard before its origin is seen. Atop the slanted table is a baby girl and daemon, doused plentifully in clear, almost gelatinous, water. The girl, her hair the hue of a bleached winter beyond tinted roots and her skin light and spotted with rust-orange markings, splashes greedily in the water that covers the table and spills over onto the floor.

She shrieks again as her daemon companion nudges against her bare arm, and she purses her lips at him, smacking them twice before succumbing to a fit of giggles. She kicks her legs gleefully, splashing more of the cool water across her skin, and only after the layer of water has thinned enough for her to notice does she stop her swimming fit. She lifts an arm, staring incredulously at it as it drips her plaything away and off of her skin. He, only to be described as a sort of mutated lizard beastie, moves aside to reveal a damp scrap of paper, scrambling to move in front of his Forgotten's face.

The paper reads, "So far I have not shot myself as my uncle Douglas did. I bought an automatic and almost took the step, but certain dreams deterred me. The tense extremes of horror are lessening, and I feel queerly drawn toward the unknown sea-deeps instead of fearing them. I hear and do strange things in sleep, and awake with a kind of exaltation instead of terror. I do not believe I need to wait for the full change as most have waited. If I did, my father would probably shut me up in a sanitarium as my poor little cousin is shut up. Stupendous and unheard-of splendors await me below, and I shall seek them soon. Ia-R'lyehl Cihuiha flgagnl id Ia! No, I shall not shoot myself - I cannot be made to shoot myself!"

"Darling angel? Time to wake up. You can't nap the day away or you'll never sleep tonight." A hand touched his feathery baby hair gently. "Wake up, my precious one. I have someone for you to meet."

Quixana resisted his mother's soft voice for long moments, twisting to better bury his face in the squishy-new pillow. One of his little hands scrabbled downwards, searching out the edge of a baby-blue blanket. Grasping it, he tugged it up and over his head. He made a tiny noise of annoyance and then settled as he felt Courage shift beside him. (There had initially been a small storm over the idea of letting the lioness cub share the crib with claw-damage and weight-limits brought to the foreground but a judicious application of huge, brown, tear-filled eyes had solved the debate. His tears had nearly brought on Cressida's which made him feel inutterably guilty but, at the same time, worked 100% faster on Leon than his own.)

Cressida laughed under her breath and neatly snatched the blanket away. "Come and meet your sister, Quixana," she ordered with a smile. Courage mewled pathetically as the brunette reached in to scoop up the little boy, hands under his armpits to hoist him up over the gate of the crib. "In a minute, your majesty," she assured the lioness. "One baby first."

Swinging Quixana up into the cradle of her arms, Cressida turned to where Leon stood - freshly bathed and clothed and ready for battle - holding a small bundle of squirming blanket. "Quixana, I would like you to meet your sister. Leon? Let him see Anemone, please?"

Much like a couple introducing their new cat to the second, Leon hesitantly searched around in the blanket until he came up with the newest addition to the family; he put his hands under her arms and held her up for Quixana to inspect. Terror had wound himself around Anemone's arm and was staring with numerous red eyes at Courage.

The fish daemon hissed and spat. However, having been around Anemone, both parents had learned that this was simply the way the little fishmonster made noises. His mistress seemed to do much the same, burbling like a singing goldfish whenever she was happy. She had made a good fist of starting to wriggle off the t-shirt Cressida had altered for her the night before, hemming slits in it so that her fins could poke through; but her war with clothing and the right to go optional without it was paused momentarily as she got an eyeful of Quixana.

It was only a pause. Anemone sucked her thumb judiciously.

"Anemone, this is your brother Quixana," Leon said firmly. "He is your older brother and he will be responsible for you later on. You should always do what he asks you to do."

"Fssss," said Terror.

A low growl came from Courage in response and Quixana absently waved a hand as if to quiet his daemon. Meanwhile, his big eyes never left the strange little girl. Pursing his mouth, he inflated his cheeks and squinted. Cressida stifled a giggle and looked over his head at Leon, smiling happily. Clearly, she read these all as good signs. Then she slipped an arm under his backside and hoisted him into a more comfortable position - his back to her front, sitting on her forearm while her other arm curled about his middle. "And she has Terror who is like your Courage," she added.

Quixana tilted his head to one side and relaxed his face suddenly into a smile. Then, solemnly, he blew a bubble at his new sister.

Leon slung Annie into a matching position, with Terror clammily flopping on his arm; the little fishgirl sucked her thumb even more furiously before pulling it out and waving her arms at Xana. Her tiny fingers curled and uncurled in an obvious impatient gesture of want; her father tentatively moved her forward so that she could touch him.

Thus followed every baby greeting ever conceived; Anemone helpfully tried to stick her fingers up Quixana's nose, licked his eyebrow, and then wrapped her arms around his arm and put her little cheek on his shoulder. What was a bit worrying was how she sniffed him like an animal, but then he apparently met with her scent approval (if Cressida had anything to do with it, Leon betted baby powder and Johnson and Johnson's No Tears Shampoo). She also investigated his ear and wrinkled her nose at his neck.

Quixana, for his part, bore it all with a startling serenity, only moving his head or pushing at her hands with his when her fingers threatened to violate an orifice. When she finally calmed enough to cuddle in, he tipped his head against hers and reached across to poke at one of her fins. "Mmm?" he hummed curiously. Then he squinted at Terror for a long few moments. He pointed at the creature and then made a noise that sounded like an exact replica of Courage's rumbling purr. Courage obediently padded her delicate way to the edge of the crib mattress and gave the new Forgotten and daemon a close inspection. She nodded slowly and then lightly leapt to the floor.

"... She shouldn't be able to leap the crib rail," Cressida murmured in dismay.

"She's a cat," Leon said, but his voice betrayed the same dismay. "We'll have to put up a higher baby fence on the room to keep her penned in."

Terror hissed again when Courage inspected him, but it did not seem to be a wholly aggressive sound; his long tongue flicked out and touched Courage's muzzle very briefly, and then he wriggled back to his mistress and tucked himself under her arm. (Anemone, for her part, was prodding and sniffing at Quixana's gauntlet, huffing to herself, prodded her new 'brother' in the nose again, and went back to sucking her thumb. The inspection had obviously netted a 'satisfactory' in the baby business, though Leon knew better than to trust this serenity the first time both of them wanted the Play-Doh or something.

"We'll need another crib, too," Cressida sighed. Then she eyed the fins and gills and general fishy-ness of her new daugther. "Or something to put our little naiad in when it's bedtime.

Quixana scowled a bit and politely drew his gauntlet away from Anemone. Clearly, he was not keen on people touching it. As if to make it up to her, though, he offered his other hand, wiggling little fingers in Terror's general direction. Suddenly, his face screwed up and he managed a loud and exceedingly wet "raspberry" at Anemone. Cressida uttered a low unhappy sound at the event; siblings should be close, she thought, but they really ought not to wear each other's saliva. "Quixana," she sighed.

Unfortunately, this just made Anemone attempt to blow a raspberry back; she didn't manage, but shrieked in the attempt, trying to do it again. Both children were now trying as hard as they possibly could to shower each other in spit. (Leon winced.)

"Well," he said, after Anemone gave up trying and just shrieked with laughter again, "I suppose it could have been worse."

Cressida merely smiled at her lover. "I always wanted a daughter."

The child in her arms, oblivious to the discussion, squirmed and pointed to the floor where Courage stood, patiently waiting. Rolling her eyes good-naturedly, Cressida immediately crouched to lower Quixana to the floor. He sat there, head tilted as he looked up at Anemone. Courage padded over and nuzzled his shoulder.

That admission softened Leon somewhat; enough to put Anemone and Terror down on the floor, and to brush Cressida's shoulders with his fingers, as Annie tried to wriggle out of her t-shirt again and kicked her feet in the air.

"Well, we have a family now," the head of the clan said. "I think this is all we wanted."

Cressida nodded and moved closer to him, leaning into his shoulder and smiling dreamily. "It's perfect, isn't it?" she murmured.

For his part, Quixana ignored the iminent cuddling and once more studied Anemone. He clearly couldn't understand what her issue was with her clothing. Reaching for his own shirt, he gripped chainmail and jingled it with a happy laugh. He liked his clothing. It was good clothing.

Anemone did not like clothing and saw no reason for it; unlike Quixana, she had come buck-naked and happy with it, and was satisfied as soon as she got the t-shirt over her head. She gleed with another burbling sound, waved her hands in the air, and flopped down to wriggle against the carpet.

"Perfect," agreed Leon, who had decided to hot-glue Annie's clothing to her body.

As if reading his mind, Cressida giggled. "I'll come up with something that she'll wear. Maybe a loose dress or something."

Quixana burst into delighted laughter and clapped at Anemone's performance. Then he flopped over on his side, rolled to his stomach, and rested his chin on the bare arm. Couraged moved to rest her head on the small of his back and began to purr.

"A dress would be nice," agreed Leon. Both of their children were crawling around like army trainees faced with their first breadth of barbed wire. Terror was in a tiny lizardly circle on Annie's back as she waved her heels to the ceiling. "Something feminine." (To prove how feminine she was, Annie ate fluff off the carpet.)

"I'm glad they like each other."

(Quixana stretched out a hand and, in a clumsy baby way, patted Annie on the head. The fact that this caused her nose to bounce off the carpet seemed to make no difference to the little girl She still gurgled happily, mouth full of fluff.)

"Me too," said Leon, and had to put his hand over his mouth not to laugh.

"Though he's going to have to learn to play more gently with her. She is, after all, a delicate little girl." If the hilarity in Cressida's words registered with her, she hid it well. She merely continued to smile down on the children.

Quixana abruptly gave up on the head-patting and crawled over to lay beside her and fling an arm around her in tried and true baby-cuddle fashion. His free hand patted the rug in front of them and Courage obediently padded over to sit in front of them. Quixana indicated her and beamed. His. Then he stretched out his hand in Terror's direction.

Terror curled between both children as Anemone stuck her thumb in her mouth again; she seemed perfectly content and smugly happy at the attention, nothing loath to let Quixana cuddle her and burrow into him like a hookworm. She kicked her feet again to show willing, beamed gummily, and that was that. The sibling connection seemed to have worked.

Pleased, Cressida took Leon's hand and drew him quietly out of the room. "I think they'll be alright for a moment, beloved," she murmured. "Let's make their dinner."

It was at that moment he took her hands and brushed his lips very briefly over her knuckles; and then he nodded, and let himself have a lopsided smile in exchange for the hysterical laughter.

"Let's go and do our job," he said.

And they did.

Humming softly under her breath, Cressida cradled Quixana on her lap. Together they watched both the twinkling lights on the oversized Christmas tree and the wriggling form of a half-naked Anemone as she cheerfully gummed various ribbons. Cressida leaned her cheek against her son's head and laughed softly. "Your sister is a silly wiggle worm, isn't she?" she asked.

"Meme is silly," Quixana agreed contentedly. Then he shook a finger at his little sister. "No eat, Meme," he warned. "Get sick."

Anemone rewarded his concern with a noisy bubble. Then she abandoned the ribbon and scrambled over to a large silver box with a huge green ribbon. Laughing, she reached for it. Not quite able to reach, she hissed. Terror immediately abandoned his own ribbon and skittered up to help her. Cressida sighed but her smile never budged. "I think she's determined to make herself ill, darling angel," she informed Quixana. He shook his head, face sober. "I know. We'll just have to explain Santa to her later."

Quixana pointed at the tree and then at the fireplace with its merrily flickering faux log. "Santa come down there," he explained.

"With the fire off," his father noted, who had just rescued the present from Anemone's mouth: she was cutting another tooth, and made whining little noises until Leon handed her a hard biscuit. She pull-crawled underneath Cressida's chair to noisily gum it, Terror tangled in her curls, and Leon leant against the arm. "It'll have died down enough tonight."

This brought a wrinkle to Xana's nose as he worked out the new problem. "Daddy," he finally sighed, "Santa already came." He pointed at the presents. "He came early."

Cressida went pink in her attempts to avoid a vicious bout of giggles. "Darling, um, those are from Mommy and Daddy. Not Santa."

"Ah." Quixana nodded and leaned back against his mother again, content at the explanation. "Good idea," he added after another moment of thought. "Make sure Santa knows where to put the presents."

"Good deduction," said Leontas, one hand at the back of Cressida's neck with his fingers curled under her hair. He was absolutely blank-faced with Not Laughing; apparently he was nice enough to laugh with Quixana's mother in private. "It wouldn't work if Santa put the presents in the dishwasher. - Would you like to open one present tonight, son?"

"Wheeeek!" said Annie, under the chair: it was well-timed excitement, but it was mainly at finding a label discarded on the carpet.

Yes, please." Twisting, he met his mother's eyes. "Down?" he asked, forgetting the please but still managing to sound polite. Cressida smiled and let him slide down her lap to land on the carpet. Quixana immediately dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled under the chair for his sister. Grasping an ankle, he tugged gently. "C'mon, Meme, c'mon."

Courage appeared at the back of the chair and attempted to aid the extraction with a few playful growls directed in the little fish-girl's face. Annie snarled back at Courage, mainly as both liked growling, and allowed herself to be pulled out by her brother. It involved a lot of shrieking and giggles and Terror running down Quixana's shirt, but eventually she was extracted: Leon watched them, and sat himself down next to his partner.

"Blue ones are yours," he said to his son, as if this fact had not been said every day from the outset. Both adults watched the children for a moment, before Leon cleared his throat.

"I have a present for you, too."

Cressida turned her blissful smile on her lover, reluctantly dragging her gaze from the children. Quixana was busily helping Anemone choose one of the silver-wrapped gifts, something not too small and not too big. Clearly, he was planning on getting her organized before taking advantage of one of his own blue-wrapped presents. "You did?" Her eyes danced. "Did Santa come early just for little old me?"

He snorted a bit at that, but it was gentle; "Weird tradition," he said, as he had every year for the past countless years. "Mmhmm. Thought you deserved something... for producing a family out of your pocket like this."

The lights were flickering on and off, slightly epileptic; Anemone had gotten entranced, and had to have her attention pulled back by Quixana to clumsily pulling the paper open. Her fingers - a little webbed, and ringed with bracelets of baby fat - weren't very good, and her brother had to assist. "A little bit of a miracle."

"It's why you love me." There was no ego in the words, just a happy sort of lightness and certainty. Cressida took Leon's hands and kissed over his knuckles gently. "And you brought one of them home, too." Shifting closer, she kept his hands in hers as she tilted her head to rest on his shoulder, violet eyes watching the children.

Quixana had finally managed to get Anemone's present unwrapped and he was now busily prying off the lid for her. Then, helpfully, he pushed it on its side so that she could happily delve into the piles of tissue paper and discover her treasure. Satisfied that she was settled, Quixana moved over to pick up the most medium blue box he could find and neatly began stripping it of paper.

"We have such perfect children," Cressida sighed, utterly content. "Genetics or not, that makes them clearly yours."

That just seemed to amuse him; they watched as Anemone gave a fire-engine shriek and kicked herself on her back with her latest acquisition, which was a Winnie the Pooh toy at least as big as herself. She wrapped her little arms around it, strangling the life out of Winnie, and kicked her little legs in appreciation. "And yours," Leon said, and his voice was a murmur. "You did well."

And if that wasn't classic Patriarch Complimenting, nothing was. There was a rustle of tissue paper as he drew something out of his pocket: and then the cool bite of metal as he draped something around her neck and deftly did the clasp up. An exquisite tanzanite pendant rested on her chest: recognisably not Leon's work, but in the best of taste and elegance. "Merry Christmas, beloved."

Oh!" Eyes gone huge, Cressida visibly melted as she touched a finger to the pendant. "Oh, Leon," she whispered. "It's beautiful. It's perfect." Twisting, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, sweet and lingering. "Thank you."

Their kiss dragged on slightly until Anemone, still strangling Winnie the Pooh, let out a shriek of horror that they were in a lip-lock; Leon broke off but his arm was still around Cressida's shoulders, watching the children. "I thought you'd like it."

Cressida giggled. "I adore it. Wherever did you find it?"

Helpfully, Quixana left off his activities to hug Anemone, whispering in her ear. To all purposes, it seemed he was explaining what a kiss was. Then, satisfied, he went back to his present, eventually uncovering a fuzzy hat and scarf set. He beamed. Anemone seemed satisfied at his explanation, and went back to her headlock of Winnie.

"It was a jewellry shop I hadn't seen before - nice techniques." (Which was, again, High Praise.) "I'll take you there sometime. Twilight Designs. I know you like tanzanite."

"It's the prettiest color." She again touched delicare fingers to the stone and her smile was just for him. "And I read somewhere that it means something like firstborn child."

His smile was a little bit lopsided. "Well, we have two. Take your pick."

She watched the children in question play with their toys, Annie gumming Winnie's ears and Xana wrapping the scarf around and around his head. "I suppose we'll call Quixana first born," she said thoughtfully. "He did arrive first and," she paused and cuddled into Leon's side, "brothers do best as elders."

"Especially with sisters like Anemone," her lover said, a little wryly. "She needs him to look after her. Him and Courage."

"Quixana is such a good boy," Cressida agreed cheerfully. "And Courage is getting better about sharpening her claws on things."

"And she uses the litterbox," Leon amended. "And Anemone sleeps the night through in her tub."

"I'd say our foray into family life is an unqualified success."

The banshee shriek that Anemone released upon having the bow that she was busily trying to gag down, having abandoned Winnie, interrupted the moment of basking glory and Quixana's cheeks flushed red at making her unhappy. He held the bow tight in his fist and looked extremely sheepish.

Cressida giggled. "With a few hiccups."

Quixana as a toddler could do a lot more than he could as a baby; he could stay up longer, have more fortitude to put up with boring adult things, and was in general a lot more entertaining than he had been as a baby. (And he was fairly entertaining then.) He could do things with his mother, now - and with his father - and it was agreed that one would stay behind and look after Anemone, who was still licking the television and eating fluff.

Leontas had known from the start that he wasn't half the babysitter that her brother was, or a quarter that her mother was, considering; Cressida would do all of those little things that seemed to be ingrained in her as a mother - freshen up Annie's water when it had been sitting in her sippee cup a little too long, make sure that all of the rough corners were pulled up, etc, etc. Leon sat with his Wall Street Journal as Annie, equally stuborn, pushed the edge of Where The Wild Things Are over and over again into her daddy's shin while Terror attempted to balance on the spine.

"I'm not reading it to you again," her father said comfortably, and flipped a page. "We read it ten times. I know your brother will do it, but he's only pretending, and both of you read it upside-down; you don't care."

"Fssss," said Annie, and prodded again, even more insistently.

"No," said Leon.

"Fsssssssss," said Annie.

"No," said Leon.

"Wawa," said Annie.

"No," said Leon.

"Wawa," said Annie.

"I don't know if you want water, or if you want Walter," her father said ponderously. "You can have water in half an hour, when I give you your bath, and you can't have Walter. You're only dating when you're thirty, by the way," he added.

His baby daughter stopped banging the book, her motor control exhausted; she rolled onto her back and kicked up her chubby little feet, and then attempted to suck one of the fins on her arms and on her fingers. She also pulled a terrible trick with her sippee cup, as was her wont, which was mainly to unscrew it when her father was busy with the DOW and dump it all over Terror and herself with shrieks of delight. Considering they put down a tarp wherever Annie went - to prevent fluff-eating, for one thing, as Cressida was terrified that she would put it into her sinuses, or some other old wives' tale - Leon did not bat an eyelid. Annie exhausted the entertainment purposes of rolling in about three tablespoonfuls of water, and looked around for her brother.

Her crawling was not too excellent, and the baby bar was up; Leon didn't worry about her getting away - and she had only just learned to really pull herself up properly, though she was getting dangerously close to pulling herself up to stand. However, he paid no attention to her until she angrily demanded, "Hana!"

"What?" Leontas looked over the Journal. "Huh?"

"Hana!"

"Are you trying to say 'Xana'?"

"Heeehaaaaanaaaaaa," Annie said piteously, and screwed up her face in preparation for a fire-engine wail. Her face went red, and she gave a piercing shriek that would have done a pack of howler monkeys proud; still faintly bemused, Leon put the magazine down and finally picked her up to try and comfort her. (Which was probably an act of bad parenting.)

"If I give you a bath, will you repeat that when your mother's back?" (Wail.) "Well, we'll see."

Probably the worst thing about Anemone being a toddler was her new mobility: she could no longer be unwillingly trapped behind a baby gate, left only to howl miserably and chew on her alphabet blocks while her father read the paper. She had to have a close eye kept on her now; her daddy had taken to doing some accounting on the kitchen table and closing all the other doors, circling houses in the newspaper with a marker. Thankfully, Annie had gotten so jealous to see Daddy getting to draw and have fun that she wanted to be artistic too; so he left her with the foolscap and the big waxy crayons that Cressida had bought. They were non-toxic, non-injurious, and Terror had already eaten through Sunshine Yellow and halfway through Sparkling White.

That was all right: Anemone wasn't using Sunshine Yellow or Sparkling White.

After what was a very long time in toddler-world, a chubby toddler fist tugged on Leon's shirt; he turned around in his chair to look at her (already half-out of one of Xana's rompers: that seaweed thing was half-aronud her waist, and he knew that they were soon going to have to superglue her clothes on).

"All done," said Annie. "I give."

"Giving it to me?"

"Yess," said Annie.

"I see," said her father, and took the pieces of paper solemnly.

Anemone wasn't a budding Monet; or a budding Leonardo da Vinci; or even a budding Picasso, frankly. Somewhere in the parenting books he'd read that it was a bad idea to say "What's this?" to your beloved's little artistic offerings, so it died on his lips. He pointed to the first scribbly red blob.

"Why don't you tell me about that one?"

"Dead cow," said Anemone.

Second red blob. "... and this one?"

"Dead cat," said Anemone.

The third blob was purple. "What about this one?"

"Whale," said his daughter.

He was about to pat her dear fluffy little locks for that, only she added - with wide eyes, and the sweetest little expression, "Evil whale."

"I like evil whales," her father said firmly, with the underline of no Aristipossos is going to go into therapy. So long as Evil Whale was swimming in the sea alive, well and living, Evil Whale was great. "Draw Momma and I more... evil whales. All right? I like the evil whales. Very good... whale."

Annie just gave a delighted little chuckle and toddled back over to her foolscap and Terror, who had just burped out crumbs of Sugar Pink. Leon decided that not in his lifetime was Dead Cow hanging up on his refrigerator.

Ever.

((reserved for xana/samara/annie))