Taylor had a lot to think on. That’s why she was planted on her living room couch, staring at the television as reruns of some cartoon played with the volume one notch above inaudibility. Her sisters were all in the room and under quite a few threats demanding that they stay quiet for just an hour.

It was, surprisingly, hard to think with four screaming girls in the room.

The quiet, on the other hand, was nice. Crochet was fiddling with some needles on the couch right next to Taylor, sometimes bobbing her head to the music from commercials while the knitting needles in her hands clack-clacked. She was in the middle of making a nice fluffy scarf with bits and pieces of yarn of every colour.

The other three were sitting on the floor to one side playing an intense game of Go Fish over a few papers with chores like ‘dishes’ and ‘dusting’ written on them. Taylor wasn’t going to do all the chores when she had this many extra little sisters adding to the piles of dishes to do and all the dirty clothes to wash every day.

Pop and Cheshire were glaring at each other over their cards. “Sevens?” Cheshire hissed.

Pop’s face twisted into a smug grin. “Go fish, neko.”

Cheshire tore a card from the top of the pile and placed it in her hand with a sullen pout. Then Remedy looked at her and smiled sweetly. “Do you have any sevens, dear sister of mine?” she asked.

Taylor watched to make sure that no one got stabbed after Cheshire tossed a few cards into Remedy’s face, but they settled down soon enough. She didn’t comment when Pop swiped a few cards but made a note of it for if she ever played Uno with her.

She went back to staring at the television while her mind waffled over her choices. She knew that her dad had been buying more food, and that her spare money had all left to buy clothes and things for the girls. Soon she’d need to ask dad for help with that too.

They just didn’t have the money to take care of four more hungry little mouths. And the Wards would cover for a good part of that. But they would insist on putting her sisters at risk, or they’d discover that her sisters were made by her and would do things to them. The nightmarish ideas were giving her pause.

She was still mulling over other options when the door opened up and her dad stepped in. “I’m home!” he called out before the door clicked shut and she heard his jacket slipping onto the hanger next to the entrance.

***

Danny made sure his jacket was going to hold in place, a smile growing as he heard Cheshire scream “Dad!”

He walked into the living room in time to see her dropping some cards onto the floor and jump to her feet. His eyes widened a second before he caught a ballistic Cheshire in the gut. “Oof! Hey there, little kitten,” he said.

“Gimme headpats!” she demanded.

He laughed and patted her head, then blinked down at her ears. “Wow, that’s a neat toy,” he said. She had probably gotten it for Halloween. Maybe. He couldn’t quite remember what she went as, but he could look at the pictures later. Surely he had taken some. He dismissed his worries and smiled down at his daughter, the new words he had learned coming to mind. “Hey, how would you like it if we spent some time outside yeeting a ball back and forth? You know, some daddy daughter bonding time? We’ll be super tight in no time flat.”

Cheshire blinked up at him. “Huh?”

Danny walked around her and into the middle of the room, completely ignoring the way he blocked the television as he pointed to Crochet. “Hey there, sweetie. Your dress is super fleek this evening,” he said.

“Thank... you?” Crochet said. She looked confused, but didn’t protest when he patted her on the head.

He did the same to Taylor, even if he knew that mussing her hair was a crime punishable by pouting. “Hey little owl, you watching over the kiddos?”

“Yeah dad,” she said. “They’ve been behaving. I only had to threaten them a little.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, and decided that ignorance was the better part of valour. He laughed. “That’s a mood.”

He moved on to his other daughters and paused. One was a cute little brunette with freckles all across her cheeks and nose. The other was definitely asian. She couldn’t be annette’s daughter, although the hair matched. Maybe Annette had some parentage she had never told him about? It didn’t matter, she was his daughter, obviously. “Um, hey girls, T-B-H your old man is getting old, he can hardly remember all the girls he has! Bit of an Okay Boomer moment, huh?” His smile widened and he patted both girls on the head. “But don’t get too salty with me. You’re all my bae.”

He stepped past them and towards the kitchen with a grin and a whistle on his lips. “I am so Gucci. All those other dads are basic,” he whispered. He wondered how his kiddos would talk about him on the playground. Would they brag that their dad was the most wokest dad ever?

***

“That, that was,” Taylor began. She looked around and found that all of her sisters, without exception, were hiding behind the couch. Slowly, after making sure she could hear her dad puttering in the kitchen, she turned to Remedy. “Could you, you know, do something about that?” she asked.

Remedy shook her head violently from side to side. “I don’t want to catch whatever sort of cooties do that to you.”

“I... don’t think it’s cooties,” Taylor said. She didn’t even sound sure to her own ear. “More like, uh, old age?”

“Does that mean Big Sis will be like that one day?” Crochet asked. She was looking at Taylor with guiless eyes.

“I’m like, four or five years older than you... sorta,” Taylor defended. Having to defend her youth was a rather new experience. “It will take a long time and maybe a few hits on the head before I become like... that.”

“I trust you, Big Sis,” Crochet said. She patted Taylor on the knee in a way that felt all the more condescending coming from a girl half her size. “Maybe Remedy can make you young like us so that you won’t go crazy.”

Taylor shook her head, then shook it harder upon seeing the considering look Remedy was giving her. “No, no, I like my age where it is, thank you. I haven’t suffered through this many years of puberty just to do it again.”

“Oh my god, it’s beginning,” Cheshire said. “She’s complaining about when she was a kid.”

Taylor was still trying to calm down her panicked siblings when her dad’s voice called out into the living room. “Come on kids, supper’s ready and it’s hella extra.”