MHA #6 Sunday Evening

[arboreal_priestess]

The high of taking down the ghouls who'd been murdering those girls had worn off sometime yesterday afternoon, leaving behind only the remaining guilt that she hadn't figured it out sooner and that she'd managed to have a great time with Liam and Sarah on Friday night, even with four dead girls hanging on her conscience. She'd gone to dance practice in a funk and James had ended up calling it half an hour early because her brain was clearly not in the music.

Which was even more depressing, because if there was one thing Verity had always been good at losing herself in, it was the dance.

Cries of exultation greeted Verity's key turning in the lock. She opened the front door to find the entire Aeslin congregation gathered on and around the tiny table where she kept the mail. Several of them were waving tiny banners made of tissue paper that had been meticulously painted with drops of blue, black, and red ink.

"Hail!" shouted the head priest, waving his banner with extra enthusiasm.

"HAIL!" agreed the congregation.

"Hail," Verity said tiredly, and shut the door, taking off Valerie Pryor's wig and tossing it onto her desk, since the mail table was in use. “What's the occasion?”

"Today is the Holy Feast of I Swear, Daddy, I'll Kiss the Next Man That Walks Through That Door," said the priest, sparking a second, more solemn declaration of "Hail" from the rest of the mice.

"Cool." Verity started for the living room. The mice scampered after her, still waving their banners wildly in all directions. Aeslin religious rituals were nothing if not enthusiastic. "Do I need to do anything?"

One of the novice priests looked at her like he wasn't sure whether or not she was joking. "Priestess…"

"Right, right. I have to kiss the next man who walks through the door, right?" Cheers from the mice, interspersed with more cries of "Hail." "Got it. At least I'm not expecting company." She had some quality brooding to get in.

Her stomach rumbled and she cursed herself for not stopping to grab food on the way. Time to order takeout--and specify that the driver needed to be a girl or non-binary. Thanks mice.

[For one, text taken and heavily adapted from Chapter 14 of Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon. Out of chronology but I just love this holiday so much. Up early because time zones are dumb (and also SP)]

Comments

[firstofitskind]

Liam hadn't actually realized how hungry he was until Verity had started unpacking the food.

"... I'm not sure which option I prefer," he admitted, going for a container of ginger beef. The answer was 'neither', of course.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Well, either way, if you're all that worried about it, you should just make sure you show up at my door on Sundays," Verity pointed out, gesturing with her chopsticks.

[firstofitskind]

"And now that you've extended that invitation, I fully intend to take you up on it," Liam pointed out.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity smiled at him. "Might need to show up early if you wanna be sure you're the first guy knocking at my door."

Like he hadn't noticed the delivery person had been a girl.

[firstofitskind]

"Mm, thanks for the tip," Liam murmured, leaning over to give Verity a quick, ginger-sauce-flavored kiss.

[arboreal_priestess]

This one didn't have her melting into the couch, but that was okay. For now anyway. There was dinner to finish scarfing down first.

Afterwards, well...the idea of kissing Liam for a few hours sounded a lot more rewarding than her original plans to brood into space all evening.

"I'm doing it for the mice," she murmured. "They get so sad when I don't fulfill the rites."

[firstofitskind]

"They do give excellent sad-face," Liam had to admit.

It was the way their little whiskers twitched. Lethal.

[arboreal_priestess]

And those sad little ink-drop eyes.

"I know they--" Wait. Pause.

Verity put down her chopsticks. "Liam, how many times have you been guilted into giving my mice cheese?"

Those little con artists.

[firstofitskind]

"... A few."

It wasn't like he was unaware he was being manipulated. Which almost made it worse.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Oh my god, they've got you wrapped more tightly around their little fists than I do."

Verity understood just how many 'a few' probably entailed.

[firstofitskind]

"Shut up," Liam mumbled, with no real heat behind the words. "I give'm cheese, and they tell me stories."

Would they have done so without the bribe of cheese? Probably. Shh.

[arboreal_priestess]

"They would do that without the cheese!" Verity protested. "Their religion is practically a pathology!"

Beat.

"Oh my god, you're asking about the catechism of the Arboreal Priestess, aren't you?"

Aeslin mice remembered everything. He could find out what order her baby teeth had erupted if he wanted to.

[firstofitskind]

"Maybe," Liam muttered, around a mouthful of noodles. He drew the line... somewhere long before asking about baby teeth, though. There was being curious, and then there was being creepy.

[arboreal_priestess]

No creepy was that her parents still had them, organized and shelved for...some reason. Probably to make sure no Tooth Fairy ever got a taste for Price children, creepy evil little fuckers.

If it came to a fight between a single cuckoo or a swarm of Tooth Fairies, Verity would take the cuckoo without hesitation. She might end up a willing slave to the cuckoo but at least she'd be clean.

"Well fine, but if you're going to hear my catechism, you're damn well gonna sit through Alex's and Antimony's, too," Verity huffed. "Only fair."

[firstofitskind]

"Seems reasonable," Liam agreed.

Look, he had millions of years of genetic memory stored in his subconscious. This sort of thing was exactly in the Kimera wheelhouse.

[arboreal_priestess]

One day she was going to come home to find Liam in a talking five-dimensional math with Sarah and hearing about the five generations of the Healy-Price family and then she'd just have to turn around and leave again.

"Oh Liam," she said, laughing. "You're only saying that because you've never met Antimony."

[firstofitskind]

Hey, she was the one who invited him into her home in the first place.

When they'd both been transformed into children, but not the point.

"Exactly," Liam said. "And if I ever do, I wanna have intel."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Smart," Verity said, giving him a wink and a fingergun. "A planner. Gotta admit, I like a man who knows the importance of intel."

[firstofitskind]

"My mother raised me right," Liam deadpanned. Even though Verity knew perfectly well his mother hadn't raised him at all.

[arboreal_priestess]

"I also like a man with the proper appreciation for intelligent women," Verity said. "We just get you to the point where you're packing silver bullets and rowan ash and you might just be perfect."

[firstofitskind]

"Silver bullets and rowan ash?" Liam echoed, eyebrow raised.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Silver bullets are for creatures infected with the lycanthropy-W virus," Verity explained. "Or, as popular culture knows them, werewolves. And rowan ash is just useful for a lot of things. I'd have to get you, like, a list as soon as Seanan decides on it."

[firstofitskind]

"Could you?" Liam asked. If this whole venturing out in to Verity's Baltimore thing was going to become a habit, he figured he ought to be prepared.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Sure," Verity said. "Better yet, I'll get the full thing from my mom, she'll know, like, fifteen more uses for it than I can come up with off the top of my head."

She shook her head. "We'll definitely have to get you more used to regular guns, though. Because if there is a lycanthropy-W virus outbreak anywhere around here, you're not getting anywhere near it without having silver handy."

Did Verity want to know how the virus interacted with Kimera biology? No, no she did not.

[firstofitskind]

Liam had, so far, proved immune to human disease (Taelon-created retrovirus notwithstanding), but who knew what would happen with one whose original vector hadn't been human?

"I'm used to them fine, I just prefer not to use them. Most of the time." He supposed he could make an exception if there was a werewolf problem.