Chapter 76: Reaching Out

She talks about school. He talks about death.

Totally a bad ass lady. How dare the other kids at school question her femininity?

"Learning to use chop sticks is for chumps," Parsley informs Basil.

"Because proper ladies use their hands to stuff their faces with hoagies," Basil counters.

 Aside from the inherited love of chopsticks, Percy likes to sing Chinese songs in the shower.

 "It's everywhere and you don't see it," Loki announces. "It's on our military uniforms, on our flag..."

"Plumbob, you're so weird," Parsley sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "Exactly. The green diamonds. Stella had nightmares about them."

 Percival keeps in touch with Abbie La Mer's family.

He tells them about the twins, and all the growing-up milestones they've reached.

He doesn't expect to run into Parsley's mother, Vivian Fleet.

He rarely ever sees Vivian on her off hours anymore.

This meeting is made more uncomfortable by the presence of Vivian's sons.

"I'm a big fan or whatever," the older boy lies, after his mother forces him to introduce himself.

Vivian's younger son, the rebel, forgoes talking and makes strange faces the entire time instead, hoping to freak Percival out. Percival gets the feeling they don't like him...

Chervil decided he wanted to be a professional football player. Seemed like the manly choice.

Then he discovers his father hates jocks and thinks football is unnecessarily dangerous... and then his father goes on some tirade about sports dominating school budgets, sapping funds away from education.

Chervil's world views are shattered. He isn't sure how he will recover.

Recognizing his parenting error, Tiberius buys Chervil a toy to make up for it.

Chervil names his new toy "Gabrielle" and takes "her" everywhere.

"Would you stop talking to that stupid thing?" Parsley complains. "Homework is kinda hard over here..."

The twins are old enough to know about their mother, now.

They spend some time with Abbie's brother Wilbert, learning about the family they've been missing out on.

For once, Loki isn't the one embarrassing himself with some weird story. He sits quietly and sips his milkshake while Cayenne tells Wilbert about ghost theories.

They're not supposed to tell the other kids about meeting their mother's family. Parsley and Basil might get jealous, since their maternal relatives have never reached out to them.

"But it's gonna be hard not to rub it in my sister's face," Cayenne realizes.

"Half-sister," Loki corrects.

Cayenne glares at him.

Tiberius never thought he'd be playing by the man's rules, working overtime, or sucking up to bosses... but here he is, begging for the time off to attend his son's scouts badging ceremony.




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Etc.: Vivian's eldest son is afflicted with some kind of aging glitch. He's aged adult, which should be impossible. The younger son cracked me up when he walked in dressed like a punk and started doing all those cutesy excitable trait animations. I've forgotten their names.

Chapter 75: Psychometry

"There's a thing called the Mummy's Curse," Cayenne informs her twin. "It could cause hallucinations."

He stares vacantly at the horizon. "Yeah?"

She furrows her brow seriously. "It's caused by mummies. So you can't have that."

"Snow," he says suddenly.

"Hm?"

"It snowed here, before the Perfect Weather Grids." He acts as if he's watching this happen; eyes wide, amazed, all smiles. "It's so... so..." Cayenne thinks he'll say it's pretty, or something, but Loki just grins wider and says: "Cold. Nobody lived here then."

"That's because of hurricanes," Cayenne says, after a pause, eager to show off any scrap of knowledge she's accumulated. "Islands weren't safe before PWG."

"I'd like to be someplace no one ever was," Loki tells her. "Then I could hear myself think."

Issues. Percival knew his kids would have issues, what with the absence of one parent in their lives.

He had issues himself, after all.

He just didn't think the problems would come from his kids' schoolmates, who are for some reason quite fascinated with his personal life. There's a rumor he had something with the very married actress Vivian Fleet. And poor little Parsley resembles the woman.

Parsley doesn't know why her father won't just tell her who her mother is.

At least Percival's father had a solid excuse for not being around. Creating an excuse for Parsley's mother, without lying, proves impossible.

"It wasn't your fault," he assures his daughter. "She just wasn't prepared to take care of a child."

Parsley glares sulkily at him. "Loki told me you were in love with Vivian Fleet so you made me with magic elf dust."

"I think you know very well that's not scientifically sound."

"That's your way of telling me I know where babies come from," she growls. "But I don't know where I came from."

"Well you certainly aren't one of your grandmother's sculptures brought to life. Nor were you sent by aliens to destroy the leader of the free world." Another of Loki's wild theories.

"Then why am I here?"

"Because you are. And I'm glad you are."

"Did you and my Mom break up because of me?" she persists.

"We were never a couple," Percy says uneasily.

Seeing his older sister is troubled, Loki attacks her with a pillow.

"I just tell you that stuff because I don't want you to be sad about the truth," he says, without having to ask why she's upset. He stares distractedly at the kitchen. Vivian is there now, telling Tiberius to put a shirt on. Telling Percy why they can't possibly keep the child. Leaving. "Vivian already had three kids, and a husband, and you were a secret."

"You're always making up crap!" Parsley laughs. She lands a vicious blow on his shoulder. "You could be a writer someday. Then you could just make up crap all day."

"Do you think he's right about my mother?" Parsley asks Basil. "Sometimes he's right about things."

"Because he was totally right about Chervil's mom being our dad?"

"That was obviously a joke."

"I don't know why you CARE," Basil scoffs. "We don't need a mother."

"I might need a mother to tell me how to be a lady," Parsley says mournfully.

"Since when do you want to be a lady?"

"Since now?"

Tiberius acquires another tattoo.

"You ever think of how much stuff has been in this bowl?" Loki mumbles, barely able to force the mac'n'cheese into his mouth. "Years and years and years of food..."



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Etc.: Why is the weather always the same? EXPLAINED.

Mittens has completed a sculpture of every child. I'll tack that on as "awesome." I'll have to remember to get her to sculpt Tiberius next. Her age bar is max, though, so she could go at any time. So could Kay, the cat. Kay's parents were dead within a day or two of filling their bars, so I'm surprised Kay is getting as old as he is. Remember, Kay was born when Percival was still a toddler.

I haven't actually loaded my game for some time now. The kids just hit teens in my last play session, and I'm still playing catch up with the blog entries.

Anyway Loki has psychometric abilities, which will surely be explained at some point as he gets older. I don't think it's an original idea. I'm sure it's been done. And here it is, done again! Fun!

Chapter 74: He's on TV

The Archer children all look up to their dad.

He's on TV you know.

Being the child of someone everyone knows just makes things weird in school, though.

Loki doesn't help.

Loki is always saying something weird.

Like that time he figured out the meaning behind the words "menstruation cycle".

Parsley kicked him in the shins for that one.

Parsley was voted "most likely to beat up the leader of the free world" in kindergarten class.

She's made it her goal to still hold the title when she graduates high school.

The children have given Mittens a new favorite subject for sculptures.

Basil hates the ice sculptures. They're creepy.

"Hey Tiberius."

"What?"

"Should I go with one button undone... or two?"

"..."

"...?"

"..."

Typical roughhousing from Parsley and Chervil while Cayenne and Basil are working hard on a book report.

Cayenne is interested in her book, and doesn't take kindly to being interrupted.

"This house is huge!" Cayenne complains. "You could play anywhere, but you HAVE to come here and bother me!"

"Does the wah-wah princess want her bottle?" Parsley mocks.

Percy's schedule is tight, but he always makes time for the children.

If there's one thing that can get Cayenne away from her books, it's games night with the grown-ups.

Basil opts to play alone most game nights. There are only so many players the video game system can handle, and he'd rather not be shown up by his siblings anyway.

Especially not by his brother. There's always that one kid who takes losing as an insult to their intelligence and gets all obnoxious and indignant if they lose, and in this family it's Loki. Just look at that intense expression. It's just a silly game, but he plays like he has something to prove.

Despite their surface differences, when time constraints dictate that each sibling can't be equally close, Basil and Parsley end up best friends. You'd think it might be Cayenne and Basil, for their seriousness, or Loki and Parsley, for their harsh competitive streaks, but no...

 ...it's Parsley and Basil who think they are the cool kids™.

Meanwhile, Cayenne and Loki share the weird twin closeness™. They are both introspective, they are both prone to sullen brooding, and they both like to play with dolls.

"You know all those people on the wall?" Loki asks, breaking out of the planned double doll date scene.

Cayenne glances at the photos behind her. "Those?"

"Yeah. I've met some of them. Not ghosts, but alive. They just go about their day and I can't talk to them or stop them or anything. They talk to each other but they don't see me."

"Ghosts usually haunt at night," Cayenne says.

"But they're not ghosts. I even see you sometimes. And me. Younger versions. Walking around. I know no one else sees because no one talks about it."

Cayenne the genius frowns seriously. "Do you take drugs?"

"Uh."

"I won't tell Dad if you tell me."

"I don't take drugs!"

She reaches for him. "Maybe it's a fever then..."

He hisses at her. Like the cat.

"Okay!" She throws her hands up in the air, annoyed. "I'll check the medical dictionary for other causes of hallucinations."

Chervil tries to be a peacekeeper and be everyone's friend equally.