Chapter Text
“Well, I suppose it could be worse.”
“Oh, really?
“Mom could have sent us a giant eggplant plushie for my birthday and then all three of us would’ve hated it.”
Terra looked away from the abomination of a bear plushie that was sitting in front of her just so she could give The Look to her stupid wife that she loved dearly.
“Saph, I love you, but that is the stupidest thing I’ve heard you say in a while and oh Brothers I’m imagining it now. No. No, I’m not laughing, shut up,” she said, elbowing Saphron as she attempted to muffle her laughter at that cursed image that was now forever etched into her brain.
As Terra slowly got her chuckles under control, she glanced over at Adrian’s room, in which the toddler was finally asleep in his crib after a giant meltdown over seeing the (admittedly very creepy) bear that was now a rather large problem. Metaphorically and physically.
And probably mentally too. The ragged dark fur, the uneven crimson eyes, and the eerily human snout was just a little…much. She couldn’t blame Adrian for screaming his little head off every time he saw it, but it was still a little frustrating to deal with.
She sighed to herself, and said, “Can I trust you to take care of the Ursa in the room by next Friday? I’ll be busy with my engineering work, especially with the way Atlas has been breathing down our necks lately. There’s probably a donation box somewhere you can toss it into when I’ve come home or when Adrian’s asleep.”
Saphron smiled at her. “Of course! How hard could it be?”
Terra tried not to wince. She knew Saph well enough to know that her poet’s mind would want to procrastinate on this. She had a mind that let all the thoughts in her head flow naturally together in a way that she loved her for. Worked great for her poetry, not so great at everything else. “Well, considering your track record for procrastinating, maybe harder than it looks?” she said, giving Saph a rueful smile.
Saphron opened her mouth to protest, but then very quickly realized that that was a route that led to nothing but self-destruction. She settled for a pout. A very cute pout.
And, well, maybe Terra’s brain was also easily distracted, as she went in to kiss that expression away. It was a very cute pout, after all.
One week later, Saphron sat down at the dinner table to find Terra giving her The Look .
Uh oh. The Look , at dinner, signaling that she forgot to do one of her chores, according to the Cotta-Arc Mannerism Dictionary, penned by yours truly, the greatest poet of this little neighborhood… wait, no, focus!
She’d done the dishes, taken out the trash, washed and folded the laundry… no… mail was on the counter over there, the giant water bottle in the dispenser wasn’t empty…Aha!
“Right, uh, forgot to cook today. We’ve got some leftover egg rolls from yesterday, we’ll just eat those.”
The Look downgraded into an exasperated smile from Terra that told her that that was the wrong answer, but hey! At least she wasn’t getting The Look . “Saph, hun, what is currently on your plate?”
“Uh… beef stew? It’s not an abomination, so I must have made it? When did I do that?”
Terra huffed a laugh and decided to finally give her a bone. “Saph, hun, attic. You know…” she waved her hand leadingly.
There was something to do in the attic? There weren't any chores up there! “Uh… I thought the attic was just storage?”
Oh no, she’d upgraded back into The Look!
Attic, attic, attic, what was up there…oh right! “The bear! The creepy bear! I remember!”
Next to her, Adrian apparently also remembered the bear, and slowly began to tear up.
Saph immediately shifted into Momma mode as she said to Adrian, “What bear? There’s no bear anymore, do you see a bear?”
Adrian slowly shook his head.
“You know what you do see? Me! I’m way stronger than any bear. If a bear ever comes to you, Momma Saph is gonna punch it in the face! Kapow!” she said, punching the air to accentuate her point. Ooh, accentuate, good word, need to use it more…
Adrian giggled a little, before going back to playing with his food and watching his tablet. Saphron breathed a sigh of relief, and she turned back to Terra to say, “Crisis averted!”
Terra, who’d grabbed Adrian’s favorite toy from his playroom just in case, just gave her another exasperated smile. She knew by experience that it was Terra’s most common expression to give her. “You could have just, you know, donated… Mr. Ursa sometime this week like you said you would and we wouldn’t have a crisis to avert,” she said.
Saphron pouted. “I did actually do some research! It’s actually kinda hard to find stuffed animal donation spots here! They’re all usually either clothes only or accept only the small ones. Not exactly useful for Mr. Ursa.”
Terra frowned. “Huh. Well, I’m sure you can get around that somehow. And, hey, worst comes to worst, you could always just toss it out into the wild for someone to catch.”
Saphron giggled. “It would have to be a really nice person for that to work, though. Ooh! I could track down that cute cashier at Trader-Mart and give it to her! She’s nice enough!”
Terra stifled a snicker, before saying, “Hun, giving a potential date the creepiest stuffed animal known to man is not how one flirts.”
Saphron scoffed. She had a comeback prepared for this one! “Terra, you’re the one who has chickened out about flirting with that one barista for a month now.”
Terra blushed, before replying, “I’m just, um, waiting for the right moment to start! I can flirt when I want to! You would know!” Terra then smirked at her, and Saphron immediately knew that she’d miscalculated. “Do I need to bring up the time you flirted with that fencer and she thought you were trying to challenge her to a match? Or that time you tried to seductively eat a popsicle in front of that girl who you thought was staring at you before you realized she was blind? Or that time-”
Saphron dramatically threw up her hands and said, “Alright, alright, I get it. Why you bully me?”
Terra had the audacity to just sit there examining her nails and say, “Because you’re my beautiful wife of 4 years and bullying you is in the job description at this point.”
Sappy comments! Her only weakness!
Saphron slumped into her chair and groaned, “Okay, yeah, I deserve that. But! I promise it’ll be out of the house by Monday morning. Promise?”
Terra crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow disbelievingly.
Saphron gasped in mock offense, then turned towards the one person she knew would understand.
Adrian, after carefully studying his mom’s face, gave Saphron a surprisingly good impression of The Look .
Saphron stared at her two year old, and burst out into laughter.
Terra fought off a grin at that, and said, “Well, I guess we know who he takes after.”
Helena breathed in the warm summer air and sighed contentedly. She loved the Argus weather in summer. Warm enough to get away with a thin windbreaker, but windy enough to get her hair waving in the cool sea breeze. Walking around to clear her head on a lazy Sunday was one of her guilty pleasures.
As one such breeze began to blow a little too hard for her liking, she realized she may have overestimated the time she’d spent walking around. A quick glance at the darkening skies overhead told her that, yes, that storm was indeed rolling in much sooner than anticipated. She began to hurry home, knowing that she’d probably make it before the rain hit, provided she didn’t get held up by anything.
The moment she thought that, she turned a corner and ran directly into a surprisingly soft something and stumbled back, as whatever poor soul she walked into wasn’t so lucky fell to the ground with a soft yelp. As she regained her bearings, she immediately turned to face the stranger, an apology already forming on her lips. That apology died a swift death as she realized what she had run into.
That was no person. It was, in fact, a giant, person sized stuffed teddy bear. She was usually too nice to think ill of people, but she had to admit, the bear was a little… gaudy.
She belatedly realized that, no, giant teddy bears couldn’t run around on their own, and quickly found a young woman wincing in pain on the ground behind the stuffed bear.
Apologize first, figure out what and why later. “Oh, I’m sorry, miss, I didn’t see you there behind your, um… friend?” she said.
The woman laughed and waved the concern away. “No, that was my fault. Should’ve probably realized running while carrying Mr. Ursa was a bad idea.”
Helena helped the stranger up, before picking up the stuffed animal she dropped. “Mr Ursa is, ah, certainly a unique specimen!” she said, turning back around to give it back.
The woman rolled her eyes, and replied that “You don’t have to be that charitable, I know that that thing’s an eyesore.”
“...I wouldn't use those words exactly, but…” as she inspected the bear’s face, the eerie ruby eyes glimmered with malice. She felt a shiver run down her spine.
The stranger snickered. “You’re too charitable.” She suddenly narrowed her eyes in thought, bright smile turning into a thoughtful frown. “You are too charitable ,” she repeated, almost accusingly.
“Um?”
“You’ve probably donated stuff to charities before, so would you happen to know anywhere that would accept donations for such a chonker? Greatdrive apparently doesn’t accept something that big.”
Helena did know, as a matter of fact. Her cousin had donated a couple stuffed animals to charity, and she knew one of those managers still frequented her coffee shop. “I do, actually. It wouldn’t be too much trouble to drop this guy off. It’s over at–”
Before she could finish, the woman yelled “GREAT! Thank you so much!” before hugging her tightly, bear and all.
Helena stiffened at the sudden contact, before the stranger released her and cheerfully said, “I’m so glad we met!” The stranger waved excitedly goodbye, before skipping back the way she came, humming away.
As Helena stared at her retreating form, she suddenly felt a drop of water on her nose. As she looked up at the billowing storm, she realized she was nowhere near home and burdened with a rather unwieldy payload, all without an umbrella. She sighed, and resigned herself to a rather wet walk home with an even wetter stuffed bear.
It was only after she had placed her new…acquisition next to an air vent (not in the bedroom, thank you very much!) that she realized she’d never asked for the woman’s name.
“Saph, when I said, ‘Just toss it out into the wild for someone to catch,’ I didn’t actually mean ‘throw it at the first person you run into, in the middle of a thunderstorm.’ Although I really should have expected it, now that I think about it.”