#I’m a farmer or shopkeeper or at best a clerk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

drrove · 6 years

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The Last Joke on Earth

"So there's a donkey, a cow, and a sheep and they're all standing in a field just eating grass and crapping and such when they see the farmer coming. The donkey says-"

"Sorry what is this all about?" The voice in Sala's ear asks.

"It's a joke. I'm telling a joke," she responds.

"Oh." The voice seems exhausted and slightly confused. "I never really understand your jokes."

"You'll love this one. So they see the farmer coming and the donkey says 'He's out early today'."

"Can donkeys talk? I thought only humans exhibited coherent speech. Am I thinking of the right thing?"

"It's a joke," Sala grumbles, "things are different in jokes. Animals talk. Just let me finish and you'll be laughing your ass off."

"I should probably not laugh," the voice admits, "my bowels are loose today and I have been vomiting rather regularly. I suspect I will die quite soon. Perhaps we should focus on this mission of yours?"

"Maybe you're dying 'cause you've never really lived, Oleb." Her sage advice comes courtesy of a mis-quoted poster - the kind with beautiful people admiring glorious vistas from mountain tops. "Get out and explore a little."

"Just - BLARRGUH!" Sala grimaces as Oleb takes a moment to expel some disagreeable fluids in his unseen lair. "Just focus for once. If you don't get the job - urk - done in the next... 15 minutes then this whole 'living' discussion is rather moot." He ends the censure with a wet belch.

"Fine. Just stop making those noises," Sala sighs, "it's disgusting."

"I'll do my best," her ear promises with a long slurp. "Try to get here before - urk - before The Auditor."

The name sends chills down Sala's spine. She quickens her pace and crosses a busy street against the warning of the orange hand. A taxi honks, but she pays no attention, except to present her favorite finger in reserved reply. She pushes through the throng of people waiting on the curb and brushes off the indignant grumblings. If they only knew, she thinks, they would carry me to my destination upon their shoulders like a glorious hero. She trips over a small dog and hustles away before the owner can bemoan the assault. Idiots.

"Hey! Stop those kids!" A voice shrieks from somewhere ahead. The sea of humans packing the mid-morning sidewalk fluctuates slightly as a pair of teen boys in jerseys and cargo shorts shove their way through, both their arms fully stocked with snack-foods. An angry store clerk shouts frantically at them, his wide bulk preventing an effective pursuit. The lead boy, in all his excitement, slams headlong into Sala.

While the young thief crashes to the ground and spills his loot on the sidewalk, his notably smaller accomplice darts onward, muttering an unexpectedly polite "Excuse me," before abandoning his friend and rounding a corner. The fallen boy growls at Sala. "Watch your fu-" He stops mid-sentence as his eyes turn up to her, widening in terror. "Oh, shit."

Sala, having only herself just recovered her composure, raises an eyebrow. What does this little bastard know? Before she can learn more, he jumps to his feet and sprints away at full speed, leaving his misbegotten loot where it lay. Sala pauses, then grabs a candy bar. “12 minutes,” the voice reminds her.

"Ya had him!" The shop owner cries. "Why the hell'd ya let him go?" Sala ignores him and begins to walk away, certain the sweaty man must be shrieking at someone else, but he imposes himself. "I pay my taxes you know!"

The non-sequitur sheds new light on the boy’s fearful reaction at the sight of her, and Sala suddenly remembers the blue uniform, the standard-issue side arm, and the small, silver shield above her left breast. She had found some time ago that people tended to give her a wider berth and greater discretion when she wore this costume. She had somehow avoided the inconvenience of the implied civic duty in all her previous sojourns, and has since been lulled into a sense of social invulnerability. This time, circumstance and an angry shopkeeper seem intent to spoil the illusion.

Just my luck. Sala glowers at the man. "Get out of my way." She takes a defiant bite of the candy bar and pushes past the obstacle.

The clerk follows for a few strides, blathering about honest work and civil responsibility. Now less than a block from her destination, Sala taps her sidearm and considers the pros and cons of just shooting him. Eventually, a middle-aged woman chimes in, stealing the clerk's attention and the two pause to have a lengthy discussion about the decline of society and their shared, sober observations of humanity's failings. Sala walks into the coffee shop on the corner, oblivious to the two self-appointed watchers of mankind.

"Damn. There's, like, ten of these jerks in line here." Sala grimaces as she steps in to see the overlong queue.

"Will you - uuuggh - be able to get it in time?" Oleb asks over the earpiece.

"Yeah, I got this," Sala strides confidently to the front of the line and shoves her way to the counter, glancing for a moment at the furious patrons. "Official police business!” The fraudulent police woman places a firm hand on the counter and looks sternly at the girl in a brown apron. “Coffee person, give me a cup of coffee! Stat!"

“Uh…” The girl looks apologetically at the other patrons in line, then back at her companion manning the espresso machine. His blank expression offers no help. “Um. Yeah, sure. What size?”

“Make it big.” Sala nods assuredly.

“That’s a…” the barista seems ready to educate her on the correct naming conventions of serving sizes, but thinks better of it. “That will be a large black roast?”

“I dunno,” Sala’s confidence begins to crack, “that’s how coffee usually works, right?”

“Of course. I just want to make sure you want a brewed coffee and not an espresso.” The young lady smiles helpfully and points to the sign above her head.

Sala squints at it. “Wait, which one has that foamy stuff on top?”

“A macchiato?” The barista suggests. “Or… maybe a latté?”

“Whichever one Damien usually gets.”

The barista smiles glassily and glances around, wondering if she’s the only one hearing this conversation. “Who? Does he work here?” She looks back at the man on the espresso machine, and he does his best to appear deaf so as to avoid being drawn into this farce.

“Can we hurry this along?” A small, balding man in a charcoal suit lays a thick, sweaty hand on the counter.

Sala ignores him and twists her mouth thoughtfully. “Maybe if I see what it looks like. How long will it take to make everything?”

Oleb whines into her earpiece again. “Sala! We don’t have time for this!”

The suit chimes in as well. “You shoved to the front of the line and you don’t even know your order??” He becomes red in the face. “Police business my ass! I should report you to the-”

Sala silences him with a wave. “Obstruction of justice.” Before he can object further, she turns to the confused girl with a smile. “Big Mackayoto. Stat!” Sala slams a wad of crumpled, slightly moist bills on the counter. “Keep the change.”

The girl gapes at what must be over 100 dollars. “Um…” she smiles politely, “big macchiato right away.” She looks back at the man on the espresso machine, who is now eyeing the wad of cash. The girl slyly stashes the bills and glares smugly at him. “You heard the officer.”

Sala leans casually against the counter while the pions on the other side fill her order. The angry suit saddles up to the register and curtly rattles off his order which, judging by the number of items, must be for his entire office and then some. Sala tries to glare a hole in the side of his head. And this asshole was getting on my case, was he?

She quickly tires of murdering the suit with concentrated hatred and tries instead to catch the eye of a young man with curly black hair and an eyebrow piercing. Sala waves awkwardly and he glances up from his phone. “You like jokes?” The man’s eyes dart back and forth and he responds with a shrug.

“Sala. Focus.” Oleb pleads. She turns off the receiver and smiles widely at her new beau.

“Alright, so there’s a donkey, a cow, and a sheep and they’re just chilling out in a field eating and crapping like they do. So they see the farmer coming and the donkey says ‘He looks like he’s seen a ghost. What do you suppose happened to him?’ The cow says ‘I was in the north fields last night and I saw a strange light over his house. Maybe aliens got him.’” Sala pauses to chuckle. The young man looks back at his phone. “Meanwhile, the farmer is stumbling around like a drunk. The sheep’s like-”

“Ma’am? Officer?” The girl behind the counter holds out a cup.

“Ah!” Sala grabs the beverage and shrugs at the curly-haired man. “To be continued.” He deftly ignores her as she trots triumphantly out the door.

“Oleb, I have the item. How are we doing on time? ...Oleb? You dead? Oh!” Sala realizes she never re-enabled the earpiece and switches it back on. “I’m en-route. How we doin’, boss?”

“He’s here.” The voice hisses. “The Auditor is here. Get to the headquarters now.”

“Stall him!” Sala commands, trying her best to sprint without disturbing the delicate foam atop the beverage. “I’m five minutes away!” She knows it’s a lie.

Sala’s sprint quickly morphs into a trot, then gradually into a brisk walk. She stretches her free arm over her head and tries to ease a traitorous side-stitch. She silently curses the sacrifices she makes for all mankind. Or at least coffee.

Sala stops at a plain door set into a wall of particle board. The shop front is sealed off with a banner promising the imminent arrival of a store that appears to deal exclusively in pottery and throw-pillows. Sala glances at her watch and nods in self-satisfaction at the fact that her five-minute marathon has only taken a little over nine minutes to complete. She opens the door.

Her eyes take a few moments to adjust to the darkened interior. A foul stench fills her nostrils and a pair of hushed voices fall entirely silent upon her arrival. Two hunched figures fade into focus huddled around a small table in the back of the sparsely furnished room. A sad fern wilts in the corner.

“Agent Sala.” A familiar voice greets her. A thin figure rises from the table and approaches. Oleb is a lanky old black man with a sharply trimmed beard, his features withered and strained. His rumpled button-up shirt is stained a pinkish hue and his brown slacks leak something onto his loafers. Sala suspects he hasn’t bothered to change his clothes since acquiring this body. He extends a sweaty hand and Sala recoils in disgust.

“Did you shit yourself?” She plugs her nose and tries to enforce a minimum distance from the reeking cadaver.

“Yes,” Oleb replies without a hint of embarrassment, “I suspect I have but a few hours remaining in this one. Please, The Auditor-”

“-Is quite losing his patience.” The shadowy bulk still sitting at the table growls. “Could we get this over with?”

Sala’s eyes adjust enough to the darkness to finally make out this fearsome bureaucrat. What she finds is quite unexpected. The morbidly obese man is hairless except for a heart-shaped carpet of black fur on his chest. He appears at first to be entirely naked, but Sala spots the promise of a fuzzy pink thong somewhere beneath the voluminous folds of skin. His beady black eyes glare at her from beneath an obscene tattoo inscribed in the middle of his forehead.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Sala’s mouth blurts out before her brain gets the chance to advise otherwise.

“I would expect you could answer that.” The Auditor spits through two lipstick-smeared lips. “This form was among the default selections you provided, was it not?”

Sala opens and closes her mouth a few times as, among hazy memories of bourbon and ecstasy, the image of a bloated, hideous clown dances in her mind and into the “Physical Form Database” directory marked “default.” It had seemed funnier at the time. She smiles. “I must have mislabelled that. It’s… a regal form? Like a king.” She tries to smile more convincingly and silently begs for some weed to take the edge off.

The Auditor glances at his baby-oiled body. “Odd,” he grunts, then looks back at her with his eyes that seem too close together for his face. “No matter, I won’t be keeping it long. Why have you requested this special review?”

Oleb steps forward. “Thank you for your time, Honorable Chief Auditor- URP.” Something splashes on the floor and Oleb collapses face-first onto the edge of the table, falls to the floor, then becomes very still. Sala and The Auditor stare in silence, either considering how they might help, or more likely, considering the etiquette of continuing their meeting over his corpse. A grunt and a shudder from the body reveals he has not yet expired. “Pardon.” Oleb’s weak voice is slurred as he tries to lift himself to his feet. He repeats the apology. “Pardon. I… we thank you…”

The Auditor puts up a pudgy hand. “Prime Agent Oleb, perhaps you could use some fresh air?”

“No, urk, I’ll see this through. I don’t - hurk - want to waste any more of your time.” His face drips with sweat and other fluids as he forces himself to stand on shaky legs.

The Auditor grits his teeth. “I’m sure your protégé can handle this review. Please-”

“Get the hell out!” Sala bellows at the shivering mess of a man. “You stink like hell, man!”

Oleb looks to the Auditor, who confirms the sentiment with a nod, then sheepishly limps towards the door. Sala and The Auditor watch in silence as the pathetic, shambling creature, with some difficulty, turns the knob and finds his way out into the late-morning air.

As soon as the door closes behind him, The Auditor grunts in disgust. “Please tell me that’s abnormal for these things.”

“Yeah,” Sala shrugs, “I think he’s allergic to their bodies. He has to get a new one every week or so and I guess central never quite figured out what’s wrong. They called it ‘auto-immune failure’ or something. He’s pretty much been constantly dying over-and-over since we got here.”

“When we’re done here, I intend to identify how many bodies he’s requisitioned. That seems like a simply inexcusable waste of resources.” The Auditor’s beady eyes train on Sala, who has taken a seat and is sipping casually on her coffee. “Speaking of an inexcusable waste of resources, what exactly do you have that you believe can salvage this fiasco?”

Sala straightens up suddenly. “Yeah! Mr. Auditor, thank you for your time, much appreciated, yadda-yadda-yadda.” She rushes through the pleasantries, oblivious to the mounting rage on The Auditor’s round face, and pushes the coffee cup across the table to him. “I give you: coffee! Go ahead, give it a try!”

The rage on The Auditor’s face abates only enough to make room for confusion. “A beverage?”

“This, my good man,” Sala does her best impression of an infomercial power-seller, “is the pinnacle of craft. It is an art unknown throughout the universe.” She lifts the lid, prepared to wow him with the lovely patterns in the foam, only to find the foam itself has long-since flattened and mixed into the coffee. Her shoulders slump a fraction. “Just give it a taste.”

The Auditor sighs, lifts the cup to his lips, and violently expels the mouthful of brown liquid in a fine spray. “Ugh! It tastes terrible!”

Sala’s shrugs. “I guess it’s an acquired taste.” She takes the cup and sips at it in disappointment.

The Auditor taps a small orb on the table and it begins to glow. He glares intently at it for a moment, then grunts. “I was sure I had misread your message, but here it is, a request for Executive Review. ‘Item of second order progression’ it says.” He snatches the cup before Sala can take another sip and glares furiously. “Do you know what ‘second order progression’ means? Do you know how substantially you have failed to meet that mark with this putrescent water??”

“Oleb wrote that. He might have gotten a bit overzealous.” Sala fishes through her pockets for a joint, and pulls out a black pamphlet advertising a stripper named “Mike Hardon.” She crumples it up and tosses it absentmindedly. “Listen, it’s a cultural achievement. It at least makes eighth order progression, which means further analysis, right? Just give us an extension and I think you’ll see this planet’s population has reached well beyond the minimum requirement for retention.”

“If it’s so advanced, perhaps you should have mentioned that in your report.”

“We did!” Sala objects, then struggles to remember what she actually reported. There was certainly something about cars, she assures herself.

The Auditor once again studies the glowing orb. “I see you turned in a single page on which is simply written: ‘Golden Girls’-”

“That’s a classic. You're definitely a Dorothy.” Sala points out. He seems unimpressed, so she quickly fills in the details. “Also, it’s part of a complex cultural and technological achievement called television.”

“-‘The Yellow Monster’-”

“Yeah, that’s what we call my friend John’s car. It’s a piece of crap, really, but it’s great for doing donuts on the beach.” Sala confesses to herself that perhaps that was not made entirely clear in the report. “But it’s a machine that produces motion via repetitive chemical combustion, which I’m pretty sure is a technical milestone.”

“-And ‘all the porn’.” The Auditor holds in his seething rage and awaits her hasty clarification.

“Oh,” Sala considers, “yeah, that’s probably the internet. It’s a world-wide communications platform. It’s mostly porn, but there’s other stuff too.”

“And how was Central expected to glean this information from three cryptic phrases?”

“I dunno!” The young agent throws her hands up in frustration. “Honestly, I sent it to Oleb, and he never gave me any feedback. I figured he would have filled in the gaps before sending it. He’s the senior agent on this, after all, so he should have known better.”

The Auditor buries his face in his pudgy hands and groans for a rather impressively long time. His rage seems to melt into despair, then apathy. The fat man sits upright and speaks evenly in his bureaucratic monotone. “Agent Sala, do you have anything further to provide for this Executive Review?”

Sala looks at her coffee cup and frowns. She had been quite insistent with Oleb that it was sure to change Central’s decision on the matter, but now her brilliant plan seems to have fallen apart. She wonders where things went awry. Then she gets an idea. “Actually, they have this great joke. I think you’ll like it. So there’s a donkey, a cow, and a sheep-”

“If you have nothing further to provide, I now declare this Executive Review complete. Please decouple with this physical form and report to System HQ. Reclamation will commence in eight minutes.” He taps the small glowing orb and it vanishes.

“Wait, come on!” Sala cries. “Give me some time to beef up the review! These creatures have clearly surpassed the retention benchmark, and I think there’s a lot here for them to offer. Give us another week-”

“Denied!” The Auditor bellows, pushing the small table and knocking Sala from her chair. She dives and expertly catches the coffee cup before it spills its contents on the floor. “This is the most egregious failure I have ever witnessed! What the hell have you been doing here??” He puts a hand up to stop her answering. “I don’t care. Decouple your form and report to System HQ.”

Sala stands, cradling the coffee cup, and grimaces. “So you’re just going to slate a complex societal ecosystem for reclamation just because you don’t like our report? That’s cold, man.”

“I loved your report.” The Auditor’s face suddenly twists into a sinister smile. With a flick, the small sphere once again brightens. “It was very conclusive. ‘No coherent language… basic improvised tools… makeshift shelters are the epitome of technology.... so on.’ That sounds pretty conclusive to me.” He sees the shock and confusion on Sala’s face and sits back smugly. “You can read the rest when you get to System. It may be worth knowing the details of your own findings.”

“I never wrote this.” Sala stares, mouth agape.

“No, your predecessor did. Last review cycle.” The Auditor once again darkens the sphere. “I just made a few creative edits to throw off suspicion.”

“Why? Why would you do this?”

The Auditor strokes his naked chest absentmindedly. “You keep up much with Central’s course decisions? I suspect not. You don’t seem like the type to read… anything, really. Well, as it happens, the newest generation genesis-seed process is rolling out, and they need some test locations. A lot of the higher-ups are very excited to make way for the future, and it’s our job to make that happen.”

Sala’ mulls this over for a moment. “Prick.”

The Auditor frowns. “We all stand to make a nice bonus for this find. I recommend you stay quiet if you don’t want to ruin that for yourself.”

“And what if I talk?”

“I suspect it wouldn’t be too difficult to get Prime Agent Oleb to sign off on this. It would be your word against ours.” The Auditor shrugs and stands. “Besides, I think you’ll find any further appeal will come too late. Enjoy the rest of your brown beverage. You have… six minutes until reclamation. Decouple or be decoupled forcefully. Your choice, I don’t care.”

Sala wags a finger indignantly, but before she can object any further, The Auditor suddenly collapses to the floor into a lifeless heap. “Hey!” Sala stands and pokes the corpse with her foot, then delivers a few forceful kicks. “What a dick,” she grumbles. She reaches into her pockets for a joint and comes back empty.

Sala grabs her coffee and brings it to her lips to take a sip. Something in her pocket vibrates and she pulls out her dented flip-phone. It’s Damien. “You got Sala.”

“Hey Trouble, you still up to no good?” Damien’s cheerful voice annoys her.

“Just finished,” she replies, “I kinda’ fucked up and now the world’s gonna’ end.”

“That sucks. You still going to John’s thing tonight?”

No point in getting into things now. “Yeah, see you there,” Sala shrugs. She stares down into her coffee cup. “Hey, you want to hear a joke?”

“Sorry, I gotta’ run. See you tonight.”

Sala frowns at her phone, then tosses it lazily over her shoulder. She shuffles sullenly out the plywood door and onto the sidewalk. Sala blinks in the morning light, then glances down at the rumpled mass that is Oleb’s body. “You still in there, O?”

“Yesh…” Oleb whispers. “How’d it go?”

“Reclamation.” Sala replies flatly, then leans against the wall and stares absently up at the towering buildings above.

“Thank the stars,” Oleb moans. “Oh, sorry. I know how much…” He trails off, seemingly ready to pass out.

“Forget about it. Go ahead and decouple.”

“What about you?”

Sala shrugs. “Figure I’ll just…” she raises her cup. “Can’t let this go to waste.”

Suddenly, a breathless woman in her mid-fifties rounds the street corner on stubby legs, waving her purse. “Señor, I found a phone! I called an ambulance!” She spots Sala and slows her stride. “Ah, gracias! Officer, this man is very ill!” She signals the motionless Oleb.

Sala takes a sip from her cup and nudges the recumbent figure with her foot. He’s already decoupled. “Yeah, he’s dead.”

“Dios Mío!” Purse Lady brings a hand to her face and sinks slowly onto the edge of a bus stop bench. “Dios mío. I… He was so ill. How could such a thing…?”

“Eh,” Sala moseys over and lounges beside the distraught woman, “everybody’s gonna die.”

The woman is taken aback. “How can you speak so heartlessly?”

Sala glances up at the sky. “You know what’ll help you feel better? A joke.” She smiles and waits for the older woman to jump with enthusiasm, but powers forward when she remains silent.

“Alright. So, there’s a donkey, a cow, and a sheep, and they’re all on a hill just munching on grass when they see the farmer stumbling up the hill. The donkey says ‘He looks like he’s seen a ghost. What do you suppose happened to him?’ The cow says ‘I was out in the fields last night and saw lights over his house. Maybe the aliens got him.’ The farmer’s walking around like he’s drunk, and the sheep says ‘What would aliens want with an old bastard like that?’ and the cow says ‘I’ve been taken by aliens before. They did experiments and gave me an anal probe.’ The sheep’s eyes get wide and it says ‘What’s an anal probe?’ The donkey’s like-”

“Is this a vulgar joke?” Sala freezes in the excited half-standing posture of an impending crescendo, and stares at the sour face of the Purse Lady. “I don’t like vulgar jokes.”

“It’s… I…” Sala purses her lips, then slumps back down onto the bench. “Fine.” She absently reaches for the cup of coffee beside her, misjudges the distance, and knocks it over, spilling the contents all over the sidewalk. She curses under her breath and stuffs her hands in her pockets. “You know, I’ve had the worst day.”

It’s at just about this time when the gamma rays hit the upper atmosphere. Anybody looking up at the sky might notice a stark color shift from blue to a deep indigo. By the time the optical messages reach their brain, they have little time to process the unusual phenomenon before being incinerated in a bath of supercharged photons. When the beams reach the surface of the Earth, despite a valiant effort from the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field, they pack approximately 4.5 gigawatts of incinerating power per square meter, sufficient to vaporize most organic materials in less than a second, not to mention a few inches of dirt and stone beneath them.

Sala’s consciousness quickly decouples from its temporary physical form, which has become a rapidly expanding cloud of free atomic particles, and beams reluctantly to System Command. She delays for just a moment, though, deciding that she represents the last mind on this planet, and tries to come up with something poetic to think about in the off chance that final thoughts may linger on a planet’s soul. In the end, all she can come up with is: At least it was worth a good laugh.

The End.

#writing #original

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softshelltaakos · 6 years

Note

for ficlet requests, permhaps a little lupcretia on the starblaster?

Lucretia has kept a journal on her crewmates since day one. That’s to be expected. She’s the chronicler of this mission, dedicated to taking down as much information as she can. She writes with both hands in two different journals, and things don’t escape her sight easily. There are paragraphs written about each of them in days -- in-depth physical descriptions that fade into first impressions that give way to intimate details most people would miss. By the end of their first cycle she’s run out of paper in her journals.

By the end of the sixth cycle she’s filled nineteen journals on one crewmate in particular. She writes descriptions, writes notes, writes odes and lyric poetry and scribbles her name all over the pages-- she’s in too deep. It can’t be helped, not with Lup around. She’s electric, lightning striking Lucretia daily. She’s a wild laugh and a bright-eyed wink. She’s the most beautiful woman Lucretia has ever seen. Being around her is overwhelming.

(Being around most people is overwhelming for Lucretia. But it’s different with Lup. It’s social anxiety multiplied by ten, mitigated by the fact that it’s butterflies in her stomach and the fact that Lup is kind. She’s so kind, and it isn’t obvious at first, but then you catch her: she puts blankets on Barry when he falls asleep at his desk. She holds Taako so tightly at the beginning of each cycle. She wipes Magnus’s tears and makes him laugh when circumstances are getting him down. She ribs Davenport and makes him crack a grin like no one else. She even gardens with Merle, a task the rest of them have sworn off of as entirely as possible.)

Lucretia was never prone to having her head in the clouds before Lup, but that’s where she operates half the time now. It’s not entirely conducive to writing, as evidenced by the fact that currently, Lucretia is reclining in a chair on the deck of the Starblaster with a journal in hand writing more of a diary than anything else.

Taako is sick, so Lup cooked breakfast this morning. Nothing fancy, just omelettes, but as always they were delicious. She’s worried about him -- it just looks like a cold right now, but after last cycle, we’re all on edge about illness. It’s brought her soft side out like hell; she’s in his room more often than not, and I can hear her singing from inside. From what I can tell it’s an old Elvish lullaby. I’ve heard the two of them singing it together sometimes. It’s beautiful. Her voice is beautiful, just like everything else about her god Lucretia you have to calm down this is getting absurd

“Hey!” comes Lup’s voice from behind her, and Lucretia splatters ink across the page in surprise before immediately slamming her journal shut.

“Yes?” Lucretia asks, sitting up further and turning to look at Lup, who’s standing in the doorway, hands on her hips, uniform absent in favor of smart black trousers and a button-up shirt. She looks incredible (she always looks incredible.)

“I need to go shopping. You wanna come with?”

“Of course,” Lucretia says, trying not to sound too eager. She stands. “Let me just drop this in my room and, uh, change, then I’ll be ready to go.”

“Sweet,” Lup says. She walks past Lucretia and flops into the chair she’s just vacated. “Get me when you’re ready.”

Lucretia nods and hurries back to her room, hiding this particular journal under her mattress. It’s a childish precaution, one she knows that any of her crewmates could figure out in under five minutes, but she’s not one for much subterfuge. She spends longer than she’d like trying to pick out civvies to wear, settling on a blue sundress and silver slippers and then rushing out to the deck as she pins her braids up. “Ready,” she says, doing her best not to sneak up on Lup. (She doesn’t like to be startled, as much as she likes startling others.)

“Great,” Lup says, swinging herself out of the chair and offering Lucretia her arm. Lucretia feels her cheeks heat up, but she takes it, trying to stop the dreamy smile that threatens to overtake her face. “We gotta hit that farmer’s market, and Cap’nport wanted me to look for some engine type thing if we can find a scrapyard or something. Can I tell you a secret, though?” she asks, looking up at Lucretia conspiratorially.

“Of course,” she replies. It’s a struggle not to sound breathless at the idea of sharing a secret with Lup.

“I gotta get the fuck off the boat for a minute,” she exhales. “I’m getting cabin fever. The boys are killin’ me.”

Lucretia chuckles. “Understandable,” she says.

“It’s just nice to, you know, get some girl time.” She bumps her hip into Lucretia’s.

“Y-- yeah, it is,” Lucretia agrees. She thinks that some god must be playing with her. This is too much. She and Lup spend time together, sure, but not often alone, and it doesn’t usually entail so much physical contact. Lucretia wouldn’t describe herself as touch-starved, exactly, but

well, alright, it’s been seven years. Magnus is a hugger and the twins drape themselves over each other at any given opportunity, but the rest of them are a little more reticent about touch. Or, in Lucretia’s case, hungry for it and entirely unsure of how to initiate contact. She tries to relax, not to be so stiff next to Lup, whose movements are fluid and easy. She’s so confident.

They look for a scrapyard first, although not especially hard (“it’s not like we need the part,” Lup assures her, “Dav just wants to tinker.”) before heading to the farmer’s market. Lup is in her element, practically glowing in the sunlight as she flits from booth to booth, inspecting vegetables and haggling the shopkeeps down. Lucretia wishes she had something to write on. Not that she’d be able to do it subtly. All the same, she wants to chronicle every piece of Lup she sees.

Lup weighs her down with bags of produce and then claps. “Alright, I think we’re good!” she chirps. “Anything else you wanna check out planetside before we head back up?”

“Not off the top of my head,” Lucretia says.

“You sure? I’m literally looking for an excuse to spend more time down here with you.”

With you. Lucretia’s heart skips a beat. Twelve beats. It stops beating entirely and then dances a waltz set to the sappiest music imaginable.

“Luc? You good?”

“Oh-- yes, of course. Um. There was that little main street, right? We could look over there.”

“Fuck yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.” Lup grins up at her and holds her arm out. “Gimme some of those bags back, I shouldn’t make you carry ‘em all.”

Lucretia does, and they make their way to the street in question. It’s narrow with cobblestone paths -- not entirely unlike their home planet, and Lucretia feels a sick pang of nostalgia that she wonders if Lup is feeling too. “Oh, look at that dress,” Lup says, taking hold of Lucretia’s free hand with her own, sending shocks through Lucretia’s body as she’s pulled along to a window. The dress is made of some light, floaty fabric. It’s white with deep violet flowers embroidered along the trim. It doesn’t look like anything Lup would ever wear, and for a moment, Lucretia doesn’t understand why she pointed it out. Then: “This would look so pretty on you,” Lup says, letting go of Lucretia’s hand to look up at her appraisingly.

Pretty. Lup thinks she’s pretty. Or at least, Lup thinks she would look good in one specific dress. Lucretia tries not to let her mind run wild, but it’s hard. “You think so?” she asks sheepishly.

“Fuck yeah. Let’s get it.”

“What?”

“Come on! You have to at least try it on,” she says, pulling Lucretia into the store. “Hi, can we try on this dress in the window?” she asks, breezing her way to an employee. Lucretia stands awkwardly, clutching the bag she’s holding tight until the clerk nods and pulls the dress out of the window. Lup holds her hand out. “Let me hold that while you change,” she says, and Lucretia complies.

She steps into a dressing room and immediately has to sit down, pressing her palms against her face, heartbeat racing. Social anxiety times ten mitigated by Lup being kind plus the brand new information that Lup thinks she’s pretty is a lot to handle. She exhales and looks at herself in the mirror, unable to contain that dreamy smile anymore. She must be so transparent. God, she hopes that’s not awkward -- she’s trying so hard to stay professional.

She changes quickly, giving herself a once-over in the mirror before she steps out of the dressing room.

“Oh, fuck, Luc!” Lup says, grinning broadly. “You know how I’m always right? I was right. You look… you look great.”

“Thanks,” Lucretia says breathlessly.

They buy the dress.

That night as Lup chases Taako out of the kitchen (“you’re gonna fuckin’ cough in the stew, fuck off, bubbeleh!”) Lucretia lays on her bed, scribbling in her private journal.

She thinks I’m pretty. She thinks I’m pretty.

And for once, she doesn’t know what else to write.

#lupcretia #lucretia #lup #lucretia taz #the adventure zone #vi writes #sorry this is just Lucretia Is Useless And Gay: The Fic #instead of like They're Dating #but sometimes you just gotta have a horrible crush #anyway i love u apple thanks for the req! <3 #lesbianguila

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