On a beautiful sunlit beach, a small crab sat deep in thought.

Everything is like a crab.

Crabs are born. They eat. They die.

If they are lucky, they make more crabs. Those crabs are born. They eat. They die.

It looked at the big light in the sky.

It is born. It eats… itself? It dies.

Maybe, it makes another big light.

The thought depressed him further.

The little crab looked at the ocean.

It was born. It eats… and one day, it will die.

It looked at the trees.

They are born, eat, and die.

It bubbled unhappily.

Everything dies… Even… everything itself…

Nothing mattered. Everything died in the end.

It felt yet another new feeling.

It hurt.

***

“Alright,” Pantsu said as she stood in a small, hidden mountain valley.

In front of her was a rag-tag group of faeries, ogres, dragons, goblins, unicorns, and all other sorts of fantasy creatures standing around Geelvara, the golden dragon.

“You have been called monsters, hunted like monsters…”

She smiled wickedly and gestured to the group behind her, standing in a perfect line at parade rest.

“We are monsters. We live to cut adventurers down to size, hunt them… run them… punish them… We turn their every waking moment into an exercise of frustration and misery. Adventurers who enter our realm… well…”

The group behind her smiled in unison, filling the clearing with cold dread.

“They had better be prepared to play.”

“Wait,” a blue-clad dragonlet said behind her, “We’re monsters?”

“Why, yes, we are, dear,” Pantsu said indulgently.

“Cool!” the dragonlet said cheerfully.

“It is, isn’t it,” Pantsu smiled gently, “Now, please be quiet for a little while. I’m doing a cutscene.”

“Oh! Sorry!” the dragonlet exclaimed and fell silent.

Pantsu beamed at him and then turned back to the natives.

“Where was I? Oh yes.”

She started to pace.

“We are monsters, and we will teach you how to be monsters. You will learn tactics, strategy, logistics, combined arms, and most importantly, psyops, drama, and style, the things that separate monsters from spawns.”

She grinned malevolently.

“You will learn how to turn the night into a nightmare. You will learn how to make every shadow in your caves loom, every tree in your forests whisper, and make every breeze chill them to the bone. You will learn how to terrify them, making them waste their consumables and spells on shadows while you laugh. And we will teach you how to make those laughs wake them up screaming for years. We will teach you how to make them turn on each other, killing their comrades while you drink beer and eat pizza… and we will teach you what pizza is! It’s important.”

“But me no want be monster!” a huge giantkin said. “Me no want hurt.”

“Do you want to help?”

“Yes. Me want help but no hurt!”

“Then you guys can handle logistics,” Pantsu replied, “You probably don’t know what ‘logistics’ is yet, but you will. Everyone can play a part. For every hand on a blade, we need at least five sets of hands backing them up, bringing them food and supplies, tending their wounds, and so much more. We will also need supply chains, craftsmen, food producers, and other industrial support. You are at war, people. You need to start learning how to fight it.”

She smiled at the group.

“And that is what we are here for. Take a seat. Class is in session.”

“Is the cutscene over?” the dragon prince asked.

“Yes, it is,” Pantsu smiled.

“Good, because I really need to pee.”

***

On a beautiful beach, a little crab was having a less than beautiful day.

All crabs did, all they were, was eat, fight, and die.

That was it.

All everything did was eat and die.

There was nothing else… nothing… no greater truth… The knowledge that delighted him for just a moment was now torture.

Why had this happened to him?

What was the point… of anything?

Suddenly, a beautiful sound washed over him.

He turned to see them, the glowy ones, still without their shells, holding claws and making sounds, happy sounds.

They were happy…

But they knew. They had to know. They had to know the awful truth of everything…

But they were making happy sounds.

Why?

They must know something.

That was the only answer. They knew something he didn’t. There was some knowledge that made everything make sense.

He had to know what it was!

He rushed after them.

So great was his haste that he failed to notice that he wasn’t scuttling anymore. He was simply moving.

***

The staff of the Adventurer’s guild of Adventurer’s Haven just stood there (or hid), absolutely terrified…

And a bit queasy.

All of the adventurers, all of them, had been slaughtered…

Well, almost all of them.

“That is…” Zvaxus said to the guild treasurer, “an irrationally large amount of money for a single location to have,” as the guild officers, big grins frozen onto their faces, handed over literal piles of gold.

“Meh,” Evangeline shrugged as she started shoveling it (like with an actual shovel) into one of several reality-defying bags of holding generously donated by their fellow adventurers, “Just go with it.”

“But there are no defenses,” Zvaxus said. “No fortifications, no guards… Nothing except for these iron bars, which are clearly nothing more than decorative. We didn’t have to sell them all of those items. We could have just taken it.”

“Because if we tried,” Evangeline replied as she scooped, “We would have probably only found three coppers and an old sock in there.”

“What?”

“Like I said,” Evangeline said, “Shitty game design. Now stop breaking immersion and give me a hand.”

“What are we going to do with it all?” Zvaxus asked as he grabbed a shovel.

“That isn’t the point,” Evangeline replied, “It’s loot.”

“But… why?” Zvaxus asked. “Only a small portion of this will be more than enough to sustain us for the length of this operation. Why are we bothering with all of this?”

“Huh?”

“Why are we wasting time selling all of these items and collecting all of this money?”

“Because it’s loot!”

“But it’s pointless.”

“It’s loot!” Evangeline said as she stopped shoveling and looked at Zvaxus curiously. “After a fight, you get loot, and then you sell it. It’s what you do.”

“But… why?”

Zvaxus turned to the guild master.

“How much would a nice meal for all of us, all we could reasonably eat and drink, cost?”

“M-maybe… f-five s-silvers… a-a l-lesser g-gold if you w-wanted the b-best…”

“How much is this single coin worth?”

“A-a h-hundred l-lesser g-gold…”

“This single coin is enough to feed us for a hundred days,” Zvaxus said. “We need only a handful of these at most.”

“Now that’s just crazy talk. Less crazy. More scoop.”

“Why?”

“Because. It. Is. LOOT!” Evangeline replied, exasperated. “It’s a very simple concept. What aren’t you getting?”

“How is this remotely useful. We have accrued all the gold we could possibly need with the first shovel full.”

“It’s… loot…” Evangeline replied as if she was talking to the dumbest creature in the multiverse.

She turned to the guild master.

“You get it, right?”

“Y-yes, m-ma’am…”

“You!” Evangeline called, pointing at a barmaid hiding under a table, “Why am I doing this?”

“Eeek!” the barmaid yelped, bumping her head on the underside of the table, “B-because it’s loot?”

“Exactly,” Evangeline said, “Quit hiding and get me a beer. You know what, get everyone a beer. Fuck it, get everyone anything they want, all of you. I’m paying.”

“Yes, ma’am!” the barmaid replied, grateful for some normalcy.

“Their agreement is hardly support,” Zvaxus scoffed, “If you asked them if they ate by inserting things up their anus, they would not only say they did, they would demonstrate it.”

“You!” Evangeline said, pointing at the pretty girl who handed out quests. “Tell the truth. If you lie, I will do something rather unpleasant to you. You understand the concept, right?”

“Absolutely!” the woman said, peeking up from behind her desk. “It’s loot!”

“Was she lying, Zvaxus?”

Zvaxus sighed.

“Don’t think,” Evangeline replied, “Scoop.”

***

“Nice people,” Evangeline said as they rode out of town astride a black stallion with burning hooves.

She looked back at Veelanora.

“Enjoying yourself?” she smirked.

Veelanora grinned back.

“This thing is so cool!” she exclaimed as she sat astride a steel and brass steampunk horse. “I wonder how it works!”

“PFM and SGD,” Evangeline replied, “Pure fucking magic and shitty game design. I bet it doesn’t even need fuel, probably some sort of poorly thought-out magic golem or something.”

“Well, I love it!” Veelanora huffed. “I’m keeping it!”

“Suit yourself,” Evangeline shrugged. “It might not work, though.”

“I’ll make it work,” Veelanora replied.

“What I don’t understand,” Faun said as she rode on the back of a magnificent stag, “is why these steeds accepted us as their new riders. Do they not feel any loyalty to their former owners?”

“SGD,” Evangeline shrugged, “Hey,” she said to her horse. “Do you give a shit?”

Nope.

“See?” Evangeline said to Faun, “They don’t care.”

“This place makes no sense,” Zvaxus, now clad in ornately embellished red and gold plate.

“Immersion, please,” Evangeline huffed, “You’re taking all the fun out of this.”

“You’re having fun?!?” Faun exclaimed, “We… murdered… all those people.”

“Yeah!” Evangeline chirped, “Isn’t it great? And we didn’t murder anyone. We saved them!”

“By chopping them into pieces,” Flopsybun said quietly.

“What was that?”

“Um… This metal cloth is pretty nice,” he said, “What do you call it, again?”

“Chainmail,” Evangeline replied.

“You should really wear more padding under that,” Zvaxus said. “It works great but won’t help you with…”

“It’s magic!” Evangeline exclaimed, “Jesus, Zvaxus, does the word immersion mean anything to you?”

“Only in the sense that I want to toss you into a lake,” Zvaxus replied.

“The birds say an adventurer is approaching,” Faun said with a sigh. “I suppose we’re going to chop them up, too.”

“Yep!” Evangeline grinned. “Hey, has everybody spent their expee? We need to level up.”

“Why?” Zvaxus asked, “We’re gods.”

“Because we have expee,” Evangeline replied, “And we can level up. It’s what you do. I’m going to make a killer DPS build! I love DPS. You should totally go the tank route, though. Flopsybun, you should probably focus on your stats and maybe try to get some combat skills. Any healing spells wouldn’t hurt.”

“Um… Okay?”

“You are enjoying this entirely too much, you know,” Zvaxus sighed.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Evangeline said happily. “Now, let’s look all adventurey and then gank these fools.”

“Whitefang,” a whiny voice whined. “I’m tired.”

“You’re such a useless goddess, Trixx,” a young man replied, “We are almost to town. You can rest there.”

/// Private Message: Evangeline to team. We have one adventurer and… Trixx? ///

/// Private Message: Evangeline to Trixx. Is that you? ///

/// Private Message: Trixx to Evangeline. Oh God, you found Whitefang. No, that’s not me. When I offered him his boon, he tried to claim me with it. No fucking way that was going to happen, so I created a double and nerfed the hell out of her. I’ve been making his life miserable ever since. :D //

/// Private Message: Evangeline to Trixx. Want him to suffer? ///

/// Private Message: Trixx to Evangeline. No. He has suffered enough. Just put the poor bastard out of his misery… Wait. I have an idea! Is this possible? [File attached] ///

/// Private Message: Evangeline to Trixx. You’re evil. I like you 😊 ///

The guy looked at the four adventurers approaching him and waved.

“Hell—”

He was cut short by an intense beam of violet light from the nifty new staff that Veelanora was holding, blowing him apart.

“Whitefang!” Not Trixx screamed, “Nooooooooo!”

“Bedbug,” Evangeline said, “Halt and store process.”

(( o7 ))

Not Trixx disappeared, replaced by a very fat bedbug.

(( Burp ))

Evangeline dismounted and picked up the engorged little thing.

(( 😊 ))

***

“Whitefang,” otherwise known as Harold, fell to the ground in a tangled pile in front of an already stopped garbage truck.

“Get out of the way!” the driver shouted as he honked his horn.

Stumbling to his feet, Harold blinked in confusion, looking around.

“Move!” the driver shouted.

Harold staggered to the sidewalk as the garbage truck lumbered past.

He looked down at himself.

He was home!!!

It was over! Finally… It was all over! He was free! He could go back to just being…

“Whitefang!!!” a horribly familiar voice called.

“No…” Harold gasped in horror as “Trixx” scampered up and wrapped her arms around him in a warm embrace.

“Never say ‘forever’ unless you mean it,” she whispered in his ear.

***

“I just can’t believe that my little man has a girlfriend!” Harold’s mother said a little later as she pulled out the tin of special cookies she kept in the back of the cabinet for guests.

“Neither can I,” his father said suspiciously.

“He does, and we are in love!!!” Trixx said proudly. “And I have wonderful news! I’m pregnant! We’re having a baby!!!”

Harold spewed his cookie across the table.

“You actually had sex?” his father asked, somewhat shocked, “With someone other than yourself?”

“But… But I didn’t…” Harold quietly said (but nobody heard him).

“This is wonderful!” his mother said. “I had almost given up hope! Oh! There is so much to do! We have a wedding to plan… and a baby shower…”

“(Sigh) I guess I could put in a word for you at the plant,” his father grumbled.

Harold just sat there paralyzed with shock and horror.

His father just chuckled and punched him in the arm.

“I know that look,” he chuckled with fatherly pride for the first time in quite a while. “Don’t worry. It will be okay… And let’s face it,” he added as he looked at Trixx in complete disbelief, “You are never going to do any better.”

***

“Isn’t that going to break causality?” Faun asked. “My mentor says…”

“Maybe,” Evangeline shrugged, “But funny, no?”

“I’m with Faun on this one,” Veelanora said dubiously. “You just threw a veech spanner into the clockwork.”

“Probably not,” Evangeline replied, “Besides, that world’s timeline is all jangled from Nixx anyway. It will be less fucked after we’re done than it is now, even with Not Trixx and little baby Whitefang.”

“But you’ve altered the timeline,” Zvaxus said accusingly, “intentionally…”

Evangeline sighed.

“Okay, newbs,” she said, “Time for some knowledge. Flopsy, this is like ‘secrets of the universe’ bullshit, so if you want to take a little walk, you can, or you can stick around if you want to know how causality actually works.”

There was no way Flopsybun was going to pass this up!

“I’m good,” he replied.

Evangeline smiled at him approvingly.

“Alright,” she said, looking around. “We need a visual aid…”

She trotted over and picked up Whitefang’s head, now conveniently detached from his body.

“Perfect!” she enthused. She then drew a line in the dirt of the trail they were on, trotted down the path a little bit, and drew another line.

“Okay,” she said, pointing at the severed head, “This is the universe, and that,” she said, pointing at the path, “Is time. The first line is the beginning of the universe, and the second one is the end however you want to define it.”

She then took the head and rolled it down the road.

“That was the universe moving through time from creation to heat death, the big rip, the big crunch, bounce, or some incredibly unlikely but nonzero probability event.”

She looked at the group.

“Got it?”

“Must we use his head?” Faun asked with distaste. “Couldn’t we just use a ball or something?”

“I did it for a reason,” Evangeline replied. “Notice how it didn’t roll in a straight line. It bounced all over the goddamn place because it is a head and not a ball. That is uncertainty. In a perfect universe, one with no uncertainty, you could use a tidy little ball instead of a bloody severed head. Those universes do exist, but they are usually really boring, like dead boring. Matter and energy are perfectly distributed with no variance, so no stars form. Everything just spreads out and cools… or doesn’t even spread. It just sits there all perfect and perfectly pointless. We need that uncertainty. Well… most of us do.”

“Most of us?” Veelanora asked.

“Yeah,” Evangeline replied, “but you don’t want to meet the entities from uncertainty-free universes. They are really weird.”

She retrieved the head and rolled it down the path again.

“I took the exact same head and rolled it from the exact same point with the exact same initial velocity,” Evangeline said. “If you will notice, it didn’t roll the same way or cross the finish line at exactly the same point, but it did make it across the finish line. Things were different the second time around, maybe extremely different, but the universe as a whole crossed the finish line. Species may have gone extinct, Galactic empires may not have formed… or weren’t stopped… Entire galaxies may be radically changed… but the universe survived. You will also notice that even though it bounced around differently and didn’t cross the finish line at the same point, it did roll fairly straight overall. The different bounces sort of canceled out. This is a stable universe doing its thing. Adding Trixx to the mix just added a bounce, that’s all. The important thing is that I inserted her concurrently with Whitefang. I didn’t fuck with time. I just added a variable to Whitefang’s future and shifted the timeline from that point.”

“But you still shifted the timeline!” Faun accused.

“Faun,” Evangeline replied, “We mess with timelines all the time. You and the big guy are moving entire solar systems across galaxies for fuck’s sake. You don’t think that’s going to cause one hell of a ‘bounce’? And nobody, not even the big guy, knows for sure how that will turn out in the end. You might be doing good. You might be setting into motion a series of events that will kill trillions… or even wreck the universe altogether. Well… the big guy probably doesn’t know for sure, anyway.”

She put her hand on Faun’s shoulder.

“You can choose to be paralyzed by this and do absolutely nothing, so you are not responsible for anything. Some entities actually do just that. Some have even killed themselves so there would be no mistake. Others are afraid to do even that for fear of how it will alter things. Other entities revel in it and the chaos they can wreak. Some of those even seek to destroy universes just for kicks. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We pursue our own goals and our own interests and try to cause as little of a mess as possible as we do. I chose to insert Trixx’s clone into Whitefang’s world because it amused me and will likely not break the universe. I may have just saved that world, maybe the whole universe. Maybe I just guaranteed that entire universe’s doom. Odds are the result will be of little cosmic consequence or even impact that world overmuch. Hell, for all I know, I was supposed to do that, and the timeline depended on it. Fate is weird, yo.”

“So, how is that different from messing with time?” Veelanora asked.

“Oh, you do NOT want to do that!” Evangeline exclaimed. “Bad idea. On the scale of good idea to bad idea, it is the definition of bad idea.”

She held up her crossbow.

“This stock is wood, right?” she said. “That came from a tree (probably). Let’s say that I decided to go back in time and cut down that single tree before it was supposed to be harvested. What would happen to this crossbow?”

“It wouldn’t exist?” Flopsybun asked.

“Oh, if were only that simple, grasshopper,” Evangeline smiled. “The demand for this crossbow would still exist. Someone would still commission this crossbow. The craftsman would just pick up another piece of wood to make the stock. In the original timeline, that piece of wood was supposed to be in a table. That means that another piece of wood is now used in the table… Maybe that’s the end of it. Maybe there was enough wood floating around, so all the demands were met. If not…”

She grinned evilly.

“Another tree gets cut down. Let’s say that in that tree, there was a bird’s nest. In it were four eggs. Now those eggs don’t hatch. That’s four birds that don’t exist, don’t mature, select the mates that they were supposed to who then don’t make the baby birds they were supposed to… This starts a little ripple of, for lack of a better word, instability. Now let’s say that one of those birds was supposed to be the meal that saved a forest cat from starvation. Now that cat is dead. In the original timeline, that cat survived for several more years, killing and eating dozens of different species. Now all of those animals didn’t die, and some of them take mates they weren’t supposed to and make babies that never were supposed to happen. Now the ripple has spread to dozens of species on that world and is still growing.”

She rolled the head down the path again.

“But this is still just a little bump. No biggie. Now let’s add a new variable. In the original timeline, a few months later, one of those original four birds was under a bush doing bird stuff about the same time some bandits were sneaking up on some people. That bird was startled, took off, warned the people, and they survived. Now… no bird… no warning. Sapient beings just got killed out of sync. Shit’s about to get real. Maybe one of those people was gathering herbs they would use to invent a cure for a plague. Maybe one of their great great great grandkids was the one who figured out FTL or whatever magic bullshit they will do here to achieve the same thing. The development of FTL for that world never happens or is significantly delayed. Colonies never start. Other ones do. Billions and then trillions of people were never born and never traveled to thousands of different stars… The ripple is now bigger by several orders of magnitude. It’s a big bounce, sure, but still a bounce. I could go on and on, but you see where this is going. By the end of time, that one tree can change the course of history for an entire universe.”

“Wouldn’t it be limited to that one galaxy, though?” Veelanora asked.

“Intergalactic travel is quite possible, Vel,” Evangeline smiled, “And exactly what are you working on right now?”

“Oh… shit…” Veelanora gasped, wide-eyed.

“Imagine if the wrong tree was cut in your universe before your species ever existed. You might not exist, and therefore cross-dimensional travel wouldn’t happen for your species. Now the ripple has jumped universes, and the fun continues… all because I cut down a single tree.”

“By. The. Father…” Veelanora gasped.

“But we haven’t even gotten to the best part yet!” Evangeline exclaimed, throwing her arms wide and spinning about. “All of this is just… cosmetic. Yeah, worlds die, empires disappear, and others appear. The future of other entire universes can be influenced, but that’s no big deal.”

“What is the big deal, then?” Faun asked.

“As these ripples spread, we run the risk of overwhelming uncertainty itself.”

She took Whitefang’s head and rolled it down the path at an angle, causing it to roll off the trail.

“If a universe ever does that,” Evangeline grinned, “Pop! Bye-bye.”

“What happens?” Flopsybun asked, captivated.

“Weird stuff,” Evangeline shrugged, “It could literally be anything. Multiple false vacuum incidents, an entire quantum field changing its scalar value across the entire universe at once, a drastic change in a universal constant… Anything can happen anywhen. At that point, time itself gets fucky.”

“Time?” Flopsybun, the only one not frozen with dread, asked.

“Yeah,” Evangeline replied, “Time isn’t what you think it is. It’s not a nice steady flow from past to present. Shit can go both ways. Here’s a scenario that I know happened. You probably don’t think about it much, but each particle and photon in any universe is unique. Hydrogen atom one is not the same as hydrogen atom one thousand and one. Photon one is not the same as photon ten bajillion. As all of these ripples spread, the locations of an ever-increasing number of discrete entities change places. Continuity is conserved, dude. Those quarks, atoms, and photons aren’t just going to jump around. No. They are going to have to already be where they would be in the new timeline. This means that each particle’s light cone has to be different than what it originally was. This doesn’t just spread forwards in time. It spreads backwards as well… all the way to the beginning, and I mean the very beginning. That means that an atom originally created in one part of the universe is now being created somewhere else, and that means that the fundamental properties of creation itself have to be different, just a little bit, to make that happen. One particle isn’t that big a deal, but by the time the universe crosses the finish line, who knows how many particles have been shifted across galaxies, maybe even across universes themselves. The initial moment of creation may have to be very different indeed. Maybe so different that the constants themselves change, making the entire universe one where life never existed in the first place… all from a single tree.”

“Woah…” Flopsybun said, “Trippy…”

“Well put,” Evangeline smiled. “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

“And that could cause the same thing to happen to other universes in a chain reaction!”

“It is a much, much lower probability, but not a nonzero one,” Evangeline shrugged, “which means that it definitely has happened at least once somewhere. But you know the really trippy thing?”

“What?”

“Cutting that single tree might not change a goddamn thing,” Evangeline replied. “There is literally no way of knowing for sure.”

Evangeline turned to Faun.

“And yes,” she said, “Dropping the Trixx clone into that other world could cause something quite similar… Or us ‘altering the timeline’ here by stopping him could cause the same situation. In fact, you’ve experienced it firsthand. When you created your pantheon, you had absolutely no idea that it would start a causal chain that would result in the utter destruction of your universe and a pretty big chunk of another one as well. Maybe that is what was supposed to happen. Like I said, fate is weird. However, going back in time to screw with causality guarantees that you are making a potentially huge mistake… And this is even before we start to take other entities into account.”

“What do you mean?” Faun asked.

“Think about it,” Evangeline smiled. “Imagine if you and the big guy spend the next few million or even billion years saving species after species, and some random dickhead messes with causality a few galaxies over and wrecks the whole thing. The two of you aren’t from there and would be just fine… probably… What would the big guy do to them? Hell, what would you do to them? They would suddenly find the both of you in a very uncharitable mood and most likely wanting to have a little chat. That possibility keeps even the most demonic of entities in check. They make too much of a mess, and somebody is going to stomp a mudhole in their ass and walk it dry. There is nothing stopping a lot of us from time-traveling but polite entity society, at least around here, takes a really dim view of it because of everything I just told you. If someone starts monkeying around with causality, they will eventually find not only you and the big guy. They will find you, the big guy, Frostie, me, Cuddles, Sk’athor, and things that scare even us hunting them down. You don’t want what happens next, trust me. Let’s just say there’s a place someone can wind up and leave it at that.”

She took Whitefang’s head and sent it rolling down the path and out of sight.

“The best thing is to just let time and causality roll and deal with whatever happens,” she replied. “The tee ell dee arr is that shifting Trixx is consistent with the flow of time and may screw up that universe, or it may not. Going against the flow of time will. More importantly, all of the other entities are cool with it and won’t kick the shit out of me.”

She looked around.

“And, seeing as how no enraged entities have shown up wanting to kick my ass, everything turned out just fine. Let’s go.”

“I’m still very uncomfortable with all of this,” Veelanora said.

“That means that you are starting to figure things out,” Evangeline smiled as she climbed onto her dark steed with a mischievous smile.

***

*crash*

“Sorry!” Not Trixx, now known as Trixie, exclaimed.

“(sigh) It’s okay, dear,” Harold’s mom said. “Let’s get that cleaned up.”

The door opened, and Harold, now known to his coworkers as Harry, trudged down the hall, covered in grime.

“Darling!” Trixie exclaimed. “You’re home!”

“Mmph...”

“How was your day?”

“It was alright,” Harry smiled wearily. “No, don’t hug me. I’m filthy. I’m going to go take a shower.”

“Okay,” Trixie beamed, “And then after dinner, we can watch the next episode of Dark Lagoon Pirates!”

“Maybe not tonight,” Harry smiled. “I’m exhausted.”

“Okay!” Trixie said happily. “I’m going to go help with dinner now!”

“No!” Harry’s mom exclaimed, her eyes wide with terror, “Um… I mean, you should probably rest, you being pregnant and all.”

“But I feel fine!”

“All the more reason to sit down… quietly… and not move for a little while, so you keep feeling fine.”

“Okay!” Trixie enthused. “I’m going down to the basement to be with Harry!”

“That sounds great, dear,” Harry’s mom said with no small measure of relief. “I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

“Okay!”

Trixie bounced out of the kitchen as Harry’s dad walked in.

“How is ‘Harry’ working out?” Harry’s mom asked as she kissed her significantly less grimy husband on the cheek.

“He’s…” Harry’s dad paused, “He’s not the worst employee we’ve ever had…”

He smiled.

“How’s Trixie doing?”

“Well…” Harry’s mom said carefully, “I think I understand how Harry wound up with her after all…”

Harry’s dad laughed.

“Well, for everybody, there’s somebody,” he chuckled.

“I’m just surprised you let them keep staying in the basement,” his wife said.

“Well, the boy is working hard and not only paying rent but actually saving money. At this rate, he will be able to put together a down payment… eventually…”

He smiled.

“It would be nice to give him a decent start… and maybe be a real dad, right? Better late than never.”

***

“Guys!” Harry’s mom exclaimed loudly as she entered the basement (she learned to not sneak up on them the hard way), “Dinner’s…”

A clean Harry, in his boxers and a t-shirt, was sprawled across the bed, asleep in Trixie’s lap as she gently stroked his hair.

He was smiling.