I’ve opened up a patreonwith three tiers ready to be claimed! I will be posting early art and exclusive stuff only available here. I will even be posting early chapters of Heart thumps here as well.
It would really mean a lot if you could check this out. quq
This is super late Saint pattie’s art but I’ve finally got my shit together and finished this piece of these dorks coming home after a long and alcohol induced party.
That one alcohol seltzer water was too much for Jason.
~Please do not remove artist comments or repost anywhere else~
New ocs I wanna do a GT story using brothers, I used my old ocs and an old giant concept (The Moon Giant) and I decided to make the giant a cyclops, and he’s so cute! The blonde boy is the one who became the moon giant… no one knows why
Hey guys, im opening emergency commissions due to personal reasons so for 15 $ i’ll draw full body shots of your charactersfully rendered, it’s 5$ per additional character and for about 10 $ more i can add a background of your choosing, dm me for more information or to discuss prices !
Hi I’m new I don’t even have an icon yet but g/t knitting
GT KNITTING
Tinies making blankets, but it’s barely the size of a dish rag for a human.
Giants making dish rags and they’re the size of blankets for humans.
The difference between the hole sizes and the needle sizes oh my gosh. Being able to like crawl through the holes in a giant’s blanket and thinking the tiny’s blanket is factory made because DANG where are all the HOLES?
I just like knitting okay and this was a beautiful concept to me
Marcy left the room to get some paper and pencils, setting up on the dining room table. Colin sat with Thistle in the living room for a few more moments, helping him calm down. Marcy sat shame-facedly at the table, listening to the hushed voices in the next room, feeling like absolute shit.
After he’d gotten Thistle to stop crying, Colin knelt down in front of his castle. “Here, take a few minutes in your private space to calm down. Come out when you’re ready, okay?”
Thistle skittered out of Colin’s hands in a flash, disappearing instantly into the interior of the castle. He did not even have the wherewithal to close the door right away. A hand emerged after a second to draw the door shut behind him.
Colin joined Marcy in the living room after that. Marcy desperately wanted to talk to Thistle, to dump all her thoughts on him at once, to plead for some understanding, but she knew he would only feel better if she left him alone for a little while.
“He saw me doing dissections,” said Marcy, rifling her papers absently. “I–I guess I just got engrossed in my work and forgot that–that if he saw that, he’d–”
“Doesn’t matter now, Marce. What happened already happened.”
She wiped her eyes. “It kinda–I mean I know I should be focusing on how he feels, but it kinda hurts that he still thinks I’d do that to him.”
Thistle heard the two humans continuing to murmur to each other from the next room, crouched in his castle with the door shut. He’d drawn down the blinds to cover the windows as well, leaving him in darkness. He spent the first minute balled up in the corner, before he remembered his belongings and sat on the chair he had, which was enough of the right size for him to sit on. His hands worked at the rubber clownfish like a stress ball.
Was he overreacting again? He was thinking with his prey brain, and not his person brain.
Marcy was kind and gentle, or at least she tried to be. She wouldn’t torture small animals unless there was a really good reason for it.
…right?
What could possibly be a good reason to do that?
He thought back to her lab, the place he’d gone to the first night, the bugs held prisoner in the fridge there. Who had set that all up? And to what end? Why had she brought him there, then suddenly reversed course and taken him home? Nemo had said She studies things… What exactly, and how? And how did she intend to study him?
Was he finally going to find out? And the nagging question of…what if he didn’t like the answers?
He waited until the suspense and anxiety of not knowing became too much to bear, outweighing his fear of facing the humans. He’d come this far. He’d survived. Maybe he could face this, too, and come out all right.
He opened the door and walked out. From the fishtank, Nemo hovered towards the bottom, hands on the colorful gravel. He mouthed something at him, but Thistle couldn’t read his lips.
“Shut up,” Thistle whispered. “You’re not helping.”
Marcy and Colin stopped talking as the drawbridge to the castle lowered, and Thistle walked out, hands clasped together in front of him. Marcy stood, clearly intending to go pick him up, but Colin quickly hissed, “Let him come to us.”
Thistle stopped once he was in the doorway of the dining room, looking up at them both silently.
“Come on up, bud,” said Colin, tapping the table. “If you’re ready to talk.”
He leapt up, catching the edge of the table and scrambling to pull himself up. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the table. Out of easy grabbing range, Marcy noticed. She also noticed his tiny frame was still occasionally shaking.
That filled her with a strange sense of pride. He was clearly still very afraid, which made her sad, but he was brave enough to come up here anyway. Well, let’s see if we can reward his courage by showing him there’s nothing to be scared of.
Not that this was going to be an easy task. This was definitely going to be an unprecedented test of her science communication skills. The voice of professors from years bygone hammering into her over and over that the average American only has an eighth-grade reading level echoed in her skull… But she’d explained her work to elementary-school children before, at outreach programs. She just had to take it down one step below that.
“I’m going to explain my work to you,” said Marcy. “What I do at work. Is that okay?”
Thistle nodded mutely. He vibrated his wings, perhaps as an involuntary reflex to accompany his chest trembling.
Marcy slid a piece of paper over and drew some squiggly lines with a green colored pencil: the approximate shape of trees, bushes, plants. “You know how humans grow food, right?”
He nodded. “Farms.”
“Right. We cultivate–We make a space ideal–we make a space good for plants to grow, and put a bunch of seeds in there, and let them grow so we can eat them later.”
“You do this?”
“Well, not me personally. Other humans. They do it for everyone as a group. Well, in exchange for money, but let’s not get bogged down in details here. I’m just trying to explain a very simple version of things here.” She drew some wiggly critters at the foot of the plants. Worms. Flies. Bugs. “There are lots of creatures that want to eat these plants, since we grow them specifically to be big and tasty for us to eat.”
Thistle hesitated, then nodded.
“So, to keep other animals from eating them while they grow, we put….things on them. Poison.”
“Poison?”
“They’re called pesticides.” She drew some purple drops on the plants. “These are special chemicals that hurt bugs that eat them, but don’t hurt humans.“
Thistle’s face scrunched up a little. He tightened his grip on the hem of his shirt.
“Does that upset you?”
It did, a little, but he supposed it shouldn’t…. It’s not like he didn’t kill bugs, or the hive didn’t harm predators who got too close. That was just nature. He shook his head. “We poi, ko… keep others from our food, too. But–I–I am…”
“Yes?”
“Worried, because…” He cringed. “I–ahm–took this food sometimes.” He ducked his head down, as though he expected her to be mad at him. “Not much very! Promises! Nobody ever notice it, that’s how small I took!”
“Relax,” said Colin. “Me and Marcy don’t care if you take food from farms. Like you said, it’s such a small amount.”
“But–But the bugs too take such a small amount, and you kill them.”
“That’s because there’s so very many of them,” said Marcy. “If we didn’t use pesticides, they would eat practically all of it. You understand how to share, and take in moderation. Like you said, nobody ever even noticed.”
“So…” He flicked his wings. “So you–you did not catch me from outside because I was stealing food?”
Marcy put her pencil down, reaching her hand out towards him. He finally, finally didn’t recoil from her touch, letting her take a hand with one gentle finger. “No. Of course not, sweetheart. And pesticides aren’t a punishment for ‘stealing.’ It’s just a matter of business. We need the food, so we keep bugs off of it. That’s just nature.”
“My family…” he said, eyes watery. “Cui ea seuaj? Mais citon? I take apples to them sometimes. I…” He made a chopping motion with his hands. “…cut for them to eat. The…babies. Is safe? I poison them? Safe?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marcy. “If they’ve never gotten sick, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s no way to know what effect it would have on them. But it could be harmless.”
"Harmless?”
“Safe.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“I know you’re worried about them, but please don’t blame yourself. It’s really not your fault.”
“It’s okay.” He was starting to seem a little more at ease, being pulled out of prey mode by the conversation and the concern Marcy was showing.
Marcy picked her pencil back up. “Okay, this is where I come in. So these big groups of humans are all growing all these different plants for us to eat, and using all these pesticides…And there are different kinds, and some work differently than others.” She drew some blue and red drops on the plants next to the purple ones. “Does that make sense?”
He shook his head uncomprehendingly.
“Hmm…What I’m trying to say is… Well, are there things your family avoids because they’re poison?”
“Yes.”
“Can you name some?”
He perked up at this. Marcy knew he’d spent quite some time poring over the encyclopedia entries about plants, trying to put English names to everything he knew. “Poison Ivy. Nightshade. Inkberry. Hemlock. Hogweed.”
“Right,” she said. “What happens when you eat these plants?”
“Poison Ivy….rash…and I can’t breathe. Nightshade, you can’t move yourself. Very sick. Inkberry, you shake.”
“So they do different things, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because they’re different kinds of poison.”
He nodded.
“It’s sort of the same thing. There are different kinds of poisons, different kinds of pesticides we use on our food. Get it now?”
He nodded.
“Right. Okay. So, we have different kinds of pesticides, and some people claim that the ones theyuse are better than the ones other people use. We have to have some way to test that.”
“Better how?”
“Well, for example, what we want a pesticide to do is kill bugs that eat the plants, but not harm other creatures. These poisons can persist in the environment–They can go into the bodies of other animals, and harm them. For example, if a caterpillar eats poison, then a dragonfly eats it, it can harm the dragonfly. That dragonfly gets eaten by a bird, and that bird is poisoned now.”
The gears in Thistle’s head were visibly turning. “But…Why…Why do you care that? Why do humans care if it kill birds and dragonflies? Isn’t it for the food?”
“You sound like a Republican,” Marcy muttered, before raising her voice and correcting quickly, “Well, that’s something that humans argue about a lot. Some of them think it’s fine if other creatures die, but a lot of humans–like me–think we need to make sure we aren’t harming the environment, and all the animals, and ecosystems and whatnot.”
Thistle blinked at her.
“Does that make sense? Don’t your people also want to minimize the harm–not destroy nature?”
“Well, yes,” said Thistle. “That is just common sense. If you destroy your home, you will have nothing.”
“Yes!”
“I just…didn’t think humans…would also feel that.” He broke eye contact, again as if expecting her to be mad at him.
“Why not?” she said gently.
Thistle looked over his shoulder, at the living room, at the fish tank. “I didn’t think humans…would care about others.”
“A lot of us do. We love nature, and animals.”
“But…You are killing these creatures to help them?”
“Ah! Okay! We’re almost there.” She scribbled out some other creatures, dragonflies, mantises, birds, lizards. “So the people making these poisons, and the ones using them, claim that they don’t hurt the environment and the other animals. Some people claim that they do. It’s my job to figure out who is right. Because if I prove that they’re poisoning the environment, that gives other humans the evidence they need to make them stop using them. But if it’s true that they’re harmless, then they can keep using them.”
“So you’re–You’re like a–Kind of a guardian of nature?”
Colin watched as Marcy’s pride swelled her head immediately. “Sort of,” Colin interrupted before she could get too many grandiose ideas about herself. “Marce, explain what exactly you were doing with the bugs.”
“Oh, right! Well, you see, we can tell whether pesticides are harming native ecosystems–see if they’re hurting the creatures around– by seeing if it’s accumulating in the guts of native species–seeing if it’s–If it’s in the bellies of the creatures around.”
Comprehension was dawning on Thistle’s face. “So you have to…”
“Remove the belly, and the organs, so I can test if there are pesticides in them. If all the bugs I’m catching are loaded with pesticides, that’s dangerous to the birds, and rodents, and even the people around.”
“Mie keas. No…You’re killing them to help them. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many?”
Marcy put her pencil down. “Does it at least make sense? So you know I don’t spend all day killing helpless animals because I think it’s fun? It’s not like I’m not sad about it–I wish there was a way to do it without hurting them. I don’t like hurting them. It’s just necessary to do what needs to be done.”
He looked up at her for a long while, then nodded. “Yes. It make sense.”
She let out a breath. “Good. Good, good. So, do you feel a little better about it, now?”
“Yes…but…”
“Go on.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
That caught her off guard. “Huh? Well, nothing I guess.”
“Then…ni ko…Why did you pick me up? And take me away from the field? It wasn’t because stealing food.” He put his hand on his stomach. “I still have my belly, so….you’re not interested in…pesticides in my belly. Why am I here? What do you want to do with me?”
Marcy tapped her pencil on the desk, chewing on her lip. “Ah… Well, well I…I didn’t expect to see anything like you in the field. I didn’t think you existed.”
“Right,” he said, face darkening. “Humans don’t really know we’re here.”
“Right. And well…I just got excited. I wanted to study you, too, before I realized you were a person and it would be wrong to do that to you. That’s when I took you home, because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Thistle curled up, his head in his knees.
“I’m sorry, Thistle. It was a careless, heartless decision. I was curious, and excited, and wanted to know more.”
It was all an accident. Somehow, he hadn’t considered that possibility. She’d ruined his life completely by accident, because she was just a bit careless. She had the ability to get a little too excited and completely change the course of his existence without even fully thinking through the consequences. Without even noticing that she was doing it. It really drove home just how powerless he was compared to the creatures whose hands he stood near. It made him feel smaller than ever.
His body started to tremble with sobs.
“Come on, bud, it’s okay,” said Colin. “This is all good for you, right?”
Marcy drew her hand around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could take it back, I would… I…I did try to take you back and let you go outside. Remember? But you didn’t want to go.”
Thistle sat up, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. He looked up at her, absolutely fuming, and pushed her hand back. “Yes, I remember! Reorun! Esimeoras, kai akorute nevolin predemi io! Liam didrasis ko ni ne ous ri, ke hoi vi ses mienilin! A ci mao, kiun i faas aci! Ko prie? They always say, ‘You can’t lead eanto…predator…back to us! You can’t have them follow you!’ Because of this! Because you can hurt so, so much even if you don’t want! What if you were trying? What could you do to my family?”
Marcy withdrew her hand, biting her lip.
Colin leaned over. “All right, buddy, I think you’re getting worked up again. You just had a lot dumped on you. Why don’t you take some more private time to process your thoughts?”
“Fuck you!” Thistle yelled, then his head swiveled towards Colin. “And fuck you, buddy!”
“Go,” snapped Colin. “Go to your castle.”
Thistle turned and dashed away, leaping down and sprinting across the living room floor into his house. The door slammed shut behind him.
Marcy lowered her head down onto the table, groaning. “Oh, Colin…”
Colin sighed and sat back in his chair.
“I fucked up.”
He patted her back. “We all fuck up sometimes.”
“Yes, but I’ve never fucked up this bad before.” She moaned again.
The chime on the front door sounded, indicating someone was coming in. Marcy propped herself up on her elbow.
Teddy walked into the room. She had a plastic bag in one hand. “Mm-hmm,” she said.
“What?” said Marcy.
“Yep, I knew my alarms were going off for a good reason. I had a premonition that we’d need some cheesecake on the way home.” She set the bags on the table and unwrapped several plastic takeout containers. “Nothing miserable people like more than cheesecake.”
****
Teddy and Colin eventually went upstairs to watch TV in their bedroom. Marcy stayed in the living room. Dusk settled on the room as the sun went down, the previously unneeded lights still sitting off. Marcy just sat outside the castle, head propped up on her curled-up knee, staring at the little door, the blinded windows. The quiet hum of the water filter was the only sound, the lights in the aquarium casting faint shadows in the room.
She so desperately wanted to lay eyes on him, but if she even once broke the sanctity of that space she’d promised was private, he’d never feel secure in it again.
She reached out a hand, hesitated, then moved it the rest of the way to the door. She tapped on it lightly. “Ardo? Will you please come out now?”
The blind in one of the windows went up. His face peered out from the darkness.
She brushed the tip of her finger against the little saucer she had by her knee, upon which was a piece of cheesecake she had painstakingly cut out from a regular-sized one and whittled down so it was appropriately sized for him. “I have something for you, if you feel like coming out.”
He gazed at her, then at the proffered food. Then he disappeared back into the castle, and the drawbridge came down. He came out, looking haggard and hunted. But he did have a tiny fork, taken from the set of miniature silverware replicas they’d gotten from the craft store, in one hand.
Marcy backed up a little to give him some space. He wordlessly crawled up onto the saucer, crossing his legs, and digging in. Tears filled his eyes after a few bites. “Oh…”
“Everything okay?” Marcy said softly.
He nodded. “This is…really good.” He put his fork down, lip wobbling.
Marcy held her hand out, and he rushed forward into it, hugging her palm. She gently closed her fingers around him, rubbing his back. “Shh…It’s all right. It’s OK. It’s gonna be OK.”
Thistle pulled back and wiped his eyes. “Th-thank you. This is very good.”
She crouched down, trying to get on eye level with him, trying to make herself as small as possible. “Are you feeling any better?”
He nodded. “A little. Yes. Thank you for telling me about it. Your work. It’s more sense now.”
She could still see the shiver up his spine, the fear in the words. She curled her fingers around him protectively. “Listen…I know we’ve…Well…I know you’d rather be with your family than with me. As much as it would pain me to see you leave, as much as I’d miss you….if there is any way I can make that happen, just say the word. I’ll take you back, I’ll– Whatever it is you need that would fix things for you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Iwant to understand. What is the actual danger? What do you think is going to happen?”
He swallowed. “We have always kept away from you. Humans. They can dangerous for us. So if we get seen, or handled, we can’t allowed to go back to the others, because someone could follow us.”
“But… Surely there must be a way to get around it, right? You know I’m not going to follow you back to your family.” Oh God, maybe that was too bold of an assertion to make. She trucked past it, ignoring the obvious discomfort on his face, not wanting to press it further. “What if I just put you back down where I found you? I could leave, and you could make your own way back there. They don’t need to know we ever interacted.”
“It’s too late, Marcy.”
“But–Butwhy?”
How to explain? He had more tools to do so now, but it was still hard. Even if he was sure it was perfectly safe…the guilt would be with him forever. He couldn’t keep something like that secret from his family. He had to put their security and safety above his own comfort. Not only that…but he wasn’t a good liar. “They will find out. I am…not good at secret. And they. Would upset.”
“But–But Thistle, please understand from my perspective this seems like such a non-issue to –to completely ruin your life about.”
He clenched his fists. “Just as before. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. That is our way.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does!” His chest heaved, his hands shook. “I would do anything to keep them safe! I would suffer anything! Torture, if I had to! I would die! I would live here forever even if I hated it and you were cruel! Any risk is…for me is…big no!”
Marcy sat in silence, watching the resolve on his tiny face, the anger, the dedication. She reached a finger out and placed it on his chest. “That’s very noble of you. And kind. And if that’s how you really feel, I won’t push it anymore. Just know if you change your mind, I’ll make it happen if I can.”
“Th…Thank you.”
She withdrew from him, laying down on her side, propping herself up. “Ardo, I… I understand completely why seeing what you saw me doing would upset you, but… I have to admit, it kind of hurts that even after all this time, you still won’t trust me. It’s hurtful that you see me as a big scary monster that would torture you just for fun, and hurt your family. I can’t believe you still think I would do that to you. I thought we were past that.”
He broke eye contact. He was still sitting on the saucer. He poked at the cheesecake. The kinds of monsters who would do that to him existed, and in numbers far too great for his comfort. His kind had to be quick to spot them. “It is…instinct. As you say. Bad things can happen to me. Very fastly. If I don’t careful.
“But… What more do you want me to do? I made a mistake, yes, but I’ve done everything I can to try and make it right. I saved your life, I gave you back the ability to fly, I would make the rest of your life here comfortable if that’s what you want–”
“What?”
“Assuming you wanted to stay here, that is…”
“No, what was that…saved your life?”
“I saved your life?”
“You think you saved my life?”
This one sentence smacked Marcy in the face like someone had just swung a sack of batteries at her. “Well…Yeah?”
“When?”
“When I found you in the field? You couldn’t fly? When we first met? I know I’m scary, but I thought you might at least be a little grateful for that…”
Thistle raised his hackles. She’d been congratulating herself this whole time on saving poor little Thistle from death in the cabbage field when they’d first met? That sent him into a rage he’d never experienced before, because she’d been the last thing standing between him and getting back to the hive. If she hadn’t scooped him up, he would have made it back to them as soon as he’d crossed the cabbage field and made it into the tall grass. And she was lecturing him on how he should be grateful for the wing? That was part of why he couldn’t go back! Because they’d take one look at him and know he’d been handled, or at the very least demand to know where he’d gotten it from!
“Kia dablo! Esimeoras, kai akorute nen pemi io! Lim diaie ko ni ne ous ri, kei vis mienilin! Aca, i faas aci kiu! Kai prie!”
Marcy stared at him, speechless.
Thistle’s anger boiled over. It was a struggle to string together sentences in English, while trembling with rage. “I was almost home! If you’d left me in the field, I wouldn’t die, I would have made it back!” He turned his shoulder, flickering his wings pointedly. “And this–these stupid wing you’re so proud of yourself–is why they will know! They will know you had me!”
“You…you mean I…”
“Kia dablo! You think you can ‘fix’ me and make everything better, but you know nothing! Who did you do this? For me? For yourself? Did you want helping me, or did you want to see if you could do it?”
The labyrinth of logic Marcy had put together to convince herself she wasn’t that terrible of a person–That sure she shouldn’t have scooped Thistle up from the field like that and taken him away, but hey, at least she’d saved his life! At least she’d given him back his ability to fly!–collapsed instantly at this revelation. She had nothing to defend herself, nothing to cushion the blow, the fall of who she thought she was to who she actually was. In this ego’s death throes, Marcy could only lash out in anger at what had hurt her.
If you hate your wing so much, then maybe I can just cut it off for you.
Shealmost said it. She came dangerously close to saying it out loud. She physically bit her tongue to swallow it, the smarter parts of her brain kicking in to tackle that thought to the ground before it left her mouth. If she said that,afterthis… They’d never come back from it.
Thistle watched her face journey, reading the dark cloud descend, the spasm of anger and panic. He took a step back, his own face laced with fear, as though he knew what she was thinking.
Marcy let out a shaky breath. “I need a minute. I need to walk away for a minute.”
Leaving him standing there unsurely, Marcy went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom. She took a few minutes to punch a pillow, let out her muffled screams into it.
She lay limply on the pillow she’d just unloaded on, sobbing. She was frustrated. She did want to study Thistle. She wanted it so badly it ached. She wanted to know everything about this amazing, impossible little creature she had found. But that very fact made Thistle uncomfortable and scared, so she’d worked so, so hard to reign it in just to make him feel better. And after that, he acted like she was careless and cruel and stupid?
From her perspective they’d be going agonizingly slowly, letting him set the pace. It was a far cry from their first day together, before she realized she needed to deny her scientific impulses, because her natural curiosity had led her to kidnapping and imprisoning him. Hell, the first day they met, she’d almost torn his clothes off just to see what he looked like. She’d come here from there, giving him all the room he needed, respecting his personal space, letting him rage and feel however he wanted, doing everything in her power to make it right. Could he really not see that? Did he really not realize the effort she was putting in, the progress she’d made?
But it still wasn’t enough. All it’d taken to destroy all their progress was for her to get just a bit careless while working, because she was stressed out and preoccupied. And it was frustrating, because it felt like nothing she did was good enough.
She let herself wallow for a while. She didn’t open the door again until she was sure she could interact with Thistle without hurting him.
When she shuffled across the room to open the door, her feet bumped the bracelet and anklet Thistle had dropped on the floor earlier. She bent down to pick them up, wiping her eyes and holding them gently in her hand, thumbing the beads and tassels.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, still holding them, when he came up a while later. She glanced up and saw Thistle on the floor by her dresser, partially behind it, watching her. His face was splotchy–evidently he’d been doing his own fair share of crying.
She sat up. Just as that first time when they’d finally come face to face and she didn’t know what to do, she just waited. Waited to see what he would do.
He cleared his throat. “Ah…Do you…like them?”
She nodded, already tearing up. “Yes. I love them. I don’t want to make any assumptions…Can…Can I still have them?”
He nodded.
Marcy slipped one on her wrist, then lifted her bare foot up to slide the other on her ankle. “Thank you. They’re beautiful. It’s obvious you put a lot of work into them.”
He stepped forwards. “Thank you. They’re copies of mine. My mother’s mother made them for me…for us…my family…from the tree where I was born.”
Marcy swallowed. “That’s so nice.”
“I couldn’t make the big ones from the same tree, but…”
He trailed off as Marcy opened her arms, holding her hands out to him. He hesitated for a moment before finishing the walk to the bed and leaping up, landing in her outstretched palm.
She drew him close to her chest, cradling him with both hands. “Don’t worry about that. It’s perfect.” She sniffled, trying not to let the tears overflow her eyes. “It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful gift that you’ve given me. I’m honored.”
“I’m sorry for being too hard on you,” said Thistle. He settled into her hand, snuggling up to her chest, right over her heart. “It’s only natural to be excited about new and interesting things. I too am. If I met someone this much smaller than me, I might mistake the same.”
Finally,finally Marcy had the ability to communicate Don’t be sorry without sounding like she was still mad at him. She brushed her finger against his jaw, tiling his head up to make eye contact.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Marcy. “Everything you’ve done and said has been a perfectly reasonable response to my actions from someone who’s lost and scared. I’msorry for how my carelessness has hurt you so deeply. I meant what I said about doing whatever I can to make things right. If you truly feel like you can’t go back to your family, I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life if that’s what you want. As long as I’m around, you won’t have to worry about your safety, or your comfort, or getting food to eat. I won’t let anyone question your personhood. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you can thrive as best as you can, however you want.”
Just when she’d started to think that his little body couldn’t produce any more tears, he started crying yet again. “It’s frustrating, but I–but I can happy that if anyone was going to pick up me, it’s you.”
She lifted him up and gave him a kiss on the top of his head. When she drew him back, he was wiping his face. “Even though I got upset…it is better it was accident. Because I… ko va…afraid of you having plans. Wanting to do things to me. Waiting for something. Now I know you’re not. It’s better. I don’t know if I can ever not afraid totally. But that’s…how I am. It is nature.
“I wish I knew how to comfort you. Yes, it’s true, I could kill you or do horrible things to you. But that’s also true of me with Teddy and Colin. We live in the same house, we sleep with our bedroom doors open. There’s nothing stopping me from grabbing the biggest knife in the kitchen and stabbing them in the middle of the night. There’s a certain point, for everyone, at which you have to just trust that the people in your life who care about you won’t do everything that they’re physically capable of doing.”
He nodded. “Right… You’re right. Thank you. And–And I’m sorry about–these wing is good. Not stupid.”
“Yeah?”
Marcy’s fix of his wing wasn’t perfect by any means…He couldn’t generate enough lift to fly the same way, because the shape was different. His muscles weren’t strong enough to keep it up for too long, because they had to work harder. The glue started to pull away if he flapped too much. And he still got occasional stabs of pain from the wing itself where it was torn. But all things considered…it was nice to be able to fly at least a little.
He leaned over and flared his wings, splaying out the two sub-pairs. “It’s…really cool that you were able to do that for me.”
She wiped her eye. “I’m glad.”
“And it can happen that something come and kill me in the field. Somaybe you did save my life. It could.”
She stroked his hair. “I’m glad. I’m glad that I could at least do something good for you.”
“You do many something goods for me. You make me safe. And…I miss my family, but…if you don’t pick me up, I would never meet you.”
She squeezed him against her chest, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You are–You are too–too fucking–too fucking–”
“Breathe, Marcy.”
She sucked in a breath. “Sorry… I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
“You’reoverwhelmed by me?”
“Yeah. You’re incredible.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Thistle was processing being called incredible. He had never thought of himself as incredible. He’d always been jealous of the other pixies who were good at magic, who were the incredible ones in his mind.
Marcy rubbed her nose. “Well–Well listen, I’m tired. It’s OK for you to sleep in your castle tonight, of course, but I’ll leave my door open if you want to sleep with me.”
He peered up at the wall. “I…would like…but there’s one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He pointed to the shelf on the wall, where her collection of preserved insects stood on display. “They…they make uncomfortable.”
“They…oh. Because they remind you of what you’re afraid will happen to you?”
He nodded.
She seemed to think for a moment. “I’ll take them off the shelf. But let’s take one last look at them together, and then you won’t have to look at them anymore, okay?”
He nodded.
Marcy set him on the pillow, then stood up and plucked the knickknacks off her shelf. She sat back down, and Thistle climbed onto her lap, sitting with his legs dangling off her thigh.
“My dad got me these for my sixteenth birthday.” She picked up the block of resin containing the millipede, its body frozen in a wave, hundreds of legs stopped in time mid-undulation. “He saw how much I was getting into this sort of thing. He also got me a subscription to the ESA. The Entomological Society of America. I couldn’t really use it for anything, of course, but it made me feel cool.” She ran her hand over the smooth surface of the cube containing the millipede.
“You did not make?” Thistle said. He cautiously touched the resin.
She shook her head. “No. Well, this one I did.” She brought over the mounted butterfly, the one that had so frightened Thistle for its wings’ similarities to his own. “I caught this one when I was an undergrad. I worked in a lab that studied reproductive evolution. The PI helped me mount it and everything.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Thistle.
“Yeah. I was…at first I was disappointed that I caught one with a chunk missing from its wing, because I thought it was an imperfect specimen…before I realized the little differences that make each individual unique are just as natural and real representations of what they are as what they’re ‘supposed’ to look like.”
Thistle could see the love in the delicate caress of her hands, her voice, her face. She cherished these creatures, so much so that she wanted to have them preserved forever. She spent all her time outside the house working to protect the small creatures around her, even if it meant doing difficult things like killing some of them. She had done all this out of respect, out of appreciation, because she could not forge relationships with individuals, only the species as a whole.
“A-anyway,” she said, setting the butterfly aside. “I always thought the scorpion was a little scary…something about the venom freaks me out…but looking at this one helped me get over the fear.”
“They are fearsome.”
“And the wasp…I got stung by a wasp on the way to the park when I was little…Good thing I’m not allergic.” She turned it over and took the next block. “And this stag beetle…it was always one of my favorites. I tried raising these guys from grubs one time…Didn’t work, unfortunately. I think I got the wrong kind of soil.”
“I like its pincers.”
She took out a set of three small blocks. “These ones I found in a thrift store. Which was really strange. They don’t normally sell that kind of stuff. And based on the quality, they look homemade. I’d be really curious how they ended up there.”
An odd sense of comfort overcame Thistle watching her handle these dead creatures gently, reverently. This was how she cared for them. She preserved their beauty forever to admire them. This was all she could really do to appreciate creatures that did not think, feel, or care about her, that would die in a cosmic heartbeat and decay instantly without even being able to conceive of her existence next to them.
And in her mind, it would be inappropriate for her to do this to Thistle, because that was not how she appreciated him.
No, she appreciated him by doing the things she’d already been doing. Caring for him, feeding him, keeping him safe, handling him. He’d been so scared the whole time she’d do something for her own satisfaction, but he’d so completely failed to notice she’d already been doing exactly what she wanted to do to him. The way she fawned over him was the equivalent of putting these bugs in resin and keeping them on the shelf. Because to her, they were different kinds of creatures, so they were to be treated differently, and she was simply giving both kinds the highest respect she knew how to.
The pieces clicked together as she set them in a pile off to the side. “I’ll put them in the trunk in my closet, okay?”
“Wait.”
She had been in the process of gathering them to stand up, but she stopped.
“You…You can keep them out.”
“Oh? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She put them back, brushing aside the dust, and settled back into bed. “Ready to go to sleep, then?”
“Yes.” He crawled under the covers, snuggling under her hand. Despite the loneliness, the upset, the hurt…he couldn’t help but feel the warmth in his chest, and think that all things considered, this was really not that bad of a place to end up for a creature like him.
The humans he found himself among might not be the family he was used to, but they were becoming family enough.
Marcy left the room to get some paper and pencils, setting up on the dining room table. Colin sat with Thistle in the living room for a few more moments, helping him calm down. Marcy sat shame-facedly at the table, listening to the hushed voices in the next room, feeling like absolute shit.
After he’d gotten Thistle to stop crying, Colin knelt down in front of his castle. “Here, take a few minutes in your private space to calm down. Come out when you’re ready, okay?”
Thistle skittered out of Colin’s hands in a flash, disappearing instantly into the interior of the castle. He did not even have the wherewithal to close the door right away. A hand emerged after a second to draw the door shut behind him.
Colin joined Marcy in the living room after that. Marcy desperately wanted to talk to Thistle, to dump all her thoughts on him at once, to plead for some understanding, but she knew he would only feel better if she left him alone for a little while.
“He saw me doing dissections,” said Marcy, rifling her papers absently. “I–I guess I just got engrossed in my work and forgot that–that if he saw that, he’d–”
“Doesn’t matter now, Marce. What happened already happened.”
She wiped her eyes. “It kinda–I mean I know I should be focusing on how he feels, but it kinda hurts that he still thinks I’d do that to him.”
Thistle heard the two humans continuing to murmur to each other from the next room, crouched in his castle with the door shut. He’d drawn down the blinds to cover the windows as well, leaving him in darkness. He spent the first minute balled up in the corner, before he remembered his belongings and sat on the chair he had, which was enough of the right size for him to sit on. His hands worked at the rubber clownfish like a stress ball.
Was he overreacting again? He was thinking with his prey brain, and not his person brain.
Marcy was kind and gentle, or at least she tried to be. She wouldn’t torture small animals unless there was a really good reason for it.
…right?
What could possibly be a good reason to do that?
He thought back to her lab, the place he’d gone to the first night, the bugs held prisoner in the fridge there. Who had set that all up? And to what end? Why had she brought him there, then suddenly reversed course and taken him home? Nemo had said She studies things… What exactly, and how? And how did she intend to study him?
Was he finally going to find out? And the nagging question of…what if he didn’t like the answers?
He waited until the suspense and anxiety of not knowing became too much to bear, outweighing his fear of facing the humans. He’d come this far. He’d survived. Maybe he could face this, too, and come out all right.
He opened the door and walked out. From the fishtank, Nemo hovered towards the bottom, hands on the colorful gravel. He mouthed something at him, but Thistle couldn’t read his lips.
“Shut up,” Thistle whispered. “You’re not helping.”
Marcy and Colin stopped talking as the drawbridge to the castle lowered, and Thistle walked out, hands clasped together in front of him. Marcy stood, clearly intending to go pick him up, but Colin quickly hissed, “Let him come to us.”
Thistle stopped once he was in the doorway of the dining room, looking up at them both silently.
“Come on up, bud,” said Colin, tapping the table. “If you’re ready to talk.”
He leapt up, catching the edge of the table and scrambling to pull himself up. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the table. Out of easy grabbing range, Marcy noticed. She also noticed his tiny frame was still occasionally shaking.
That filled her with a strange sense of pride. He was clearly still very afraid, which made her sad, but he was brave enough to come up here anyway. Well, let’s see if we can reward his courage by showing him there’s nothing to be scared of.
Not that this was going to be an easy task. This was definitely going to be an unprecedented test of her science communication skills. The voice of professors from years bygone hammering into her over and over that the average American only has an eighth-grade reading level echoed in her skull… But she’d explained her work to elementary-school children before, at outreach programs. She just had to take it down one step below that.
“I’m going to explain my work to you,” said Marcy. “What I do at work. Is that okay?”
Thistle nodded mutely. He vibrated his wings, perhaps as an involuntary reflex to accompany his chest trembling.
Marcy slid a piece of paper over and drew some squiggly lines with a green colored pencil: the approximate shape of trees, bushes, plants. “You know how humans grow food, right?”
He nodded. “Farms.”
“Right. We cultivate–We make a space ideal–we make a space good for plants to grow, and put a bunch of seeds in there, and let them grow so we can eat them later.”
“You do this?”
“Well, not me personally. Other humans. They do it for everyone as a group. Well, in exchange for money, but let’s not get bogged down in details here. I’m just trying to explain a very simple version of things here.” She drew some wiggly critters at the foot of the plants. Worms. Flies. Bugs. “There are lots of creatures that want to eat these plants, since we grow them specifically to be big and tasty for us to eat.”
Thistle hesitated, then nodded.
“So, to keep other animals from eating them while they grow, we put….things on them. Poison.”
“Poison?”
“They’re called pesticides.” She drew some purple drops on the plants. “These are special chemicals that hurt bugs that eat them, but don’t hurt humans.“
Thistle’s face scrunched up a little. He tightened his grip on the hem of his shirt.
“Does that upset you?”
It did, a little, but he supposed it shouldn’t…. It’s not like he didn’t kill bugs, or the hive didn’t harm predators who got too close. That was just nature. He shook his head. “We poi, ko… keep others from our food, too. But–I–I am…”
“Yes?”
“Worried, because…” He cringed. “I–ahm–took this food sometimes.” He ducked his head down, as though he expected her to be mad at him. “Not much very! Promises! Nobody ever notice it, that’s how small I took!”
“Relax,” said Colin. “Me and Marcy don’t care if you take food from farms. Like you said, it’s such a small amount.”
“But–But the bugs too take such a small amount, and you kill them.”
“That’s because there’s so very many of them,” said Marcy. “If we didn’t use pesticides, they would eat practically all of it. You understand how to share, and take in moderation. Like you said, nobody ever even noticed.”
“So…” He flicked his wings. “So you–you did not catch me from outside because I was stealing food?”
Marcy put her pencil down, reaching her hand out towards him. He finally, finally didn’t recoil from her touch, letting her take a hand with one gentle finger. “No. Of course not, sweetheart. And pesticides aren’t a punishment for ‘stealing.’ It’s just a matter of business. We need the food, so we keep bugs off of it. That’s just nature.”
“My family…” he said, eyes watery. “Cui ea seuaj? Mais citon? I take apples to them sometimes. I…” He made a chopping motion with his hands. “…cut for them to eat. The…babies. Is safe? I poison them? Safe?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marcy. “If they’ve never gotten sick, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s no way to know what effect it would have on them. But it could be harmless.”
"Harmless?”
“Safe.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“I know you’re worried about them, but please don’t blame yourself. It’s really not your fault.”
“It’s okay.” He was starting to seem a little more at ease, being pulled out of prey mode by the conversation and the concern Marcy was showing.
Marcy picked her pencil back up. “Okay, this is where I come in. So these big groups of humans are all growing all these different plants for us to eat, and using all these pesticides…And there are different kinds, and some work differently than others.” She drew some blue and red drops on the plants next to the purple ones. “Does that make sense?”
He shook his head uncomprehendingly.
“Hmm…What I’m trying to say is… Well, are there things your family avoids because they’re poison?”
“Yes.”
“Can you name some?”
He perked up at this. Marcy knew he’d spent quite some time poring over the encyclopedia entries about plants, trying to put English names to everything he knew. “Poison Ivy. Nightshade. Inkberry. Hemlock. Hogweed.”
“Right,” she said. “What happens when you eat these plants?”
“Poison Ivy….rash…and I can’t breathe. Nightshade, you can’t move yourself. Very sick. Inkberry, you shake.”
“So they do different things, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because they’re different kinds of poison.”
He nodded.
“It’s sort of the same thing. There are different kinds of poisons, different kinds of pesticides we use on our food. Get it now?”
He nodded.
“Right. Okay. So, we have different kinds of pesticides, and some people claim that the ones theyuse are better than the ones other people use. We have to have some way to test that.”
“Better how?”
“Well, for example, what we want a pesticide to do is kill bugs that eat the plants, but not harm other creatures. These poisons can persist in the environment–They can go into the bodies of other animals, and harm them. For example, if a caterpillar eats poison, then a dragonfly eats it, it can harm the dragonfly. That dragonfly gets eaten by a bird, and that bird is poisoned now.”
The gears in Thistle’s head were visibly turning. “But…Why…Why do you care that? Why do humans care if it kill birds and dragonflies? Isn’t it for the food?”
“You sound like a Republican,” Marcy muttered, before raising her voice and correcting quickly, “Well, that’s something that humans argue about a lot. Some of them think it’s fine if other creatures die, but a lot of humans–like me–think we need to make sure we aren’t harming the environment, and all the animals, and ecosystems and whatnot.”
Thistle blinked at her.
“Does that make sense? Don’t your people also want to minimize the harm–not destroy nature?”
“Well, yes,” said Thistle. “That is just common sense. If you destroy your home, you will have nothing.”
“Yes!”
“I just…didn’t think humans…would also feel that.” He broke eye contact, again as if expecting her to be mad at him.
“Why not?” she said gently.
Thistle looked over his shoulder, at the living room, at the fish tank. “I didn’t think humans…would care about others.”
“A lot of us do. We love nature, and animals.”
“But…You are killing these creatures to help them?”
“Ah! Okay! We’re almost there.” She scribbled out some other creatures, dragonflies, mantises, birds, lizards. “So the people making these poisons, and the ones using them, claim that they don’t hurt the environment and the other animals. Some people claim that they do. It’s my job to figure out who is right. Because if I prove that they’re poisoning the environment, that gives other humans the evidence they need to make them stop using them. But if it’s true that they’re harmless, then they can keep using them.”
“So you’re–You’re like a–Kind of a guardian of nature?”
Colin watched as Marcy’s pride swelled her head immediately. “Sort of,” Colin interrupted before she could get too many grandiose ideas about herself. “Marce, explain what exactly you were doing with the bugs.”
“Oh, right! Well, you see, we can tell whether pesticides are harming native ecosystems–see if they’re hurting the creatures around– by seeing if it’s accumulating in the guts of native species–seeing if it’s–If it’s in the bellies of the creatures around.”
Comprehension was dawning on Thistle’s face. “So you have to…”
“Remove the belly, and the organs, so I can test if there are pesticides in them. If all the bugs I’m catching are loaded with pesticides, that’s dangerous to the birds, and rodents, and even the people around.”
“Mie keas. No…You’re killing them to help them. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many?”
Marcy put her pencil down. “Does it at least make sense? So you know I don’t spend all day killing helpless animals because I think it’s fun? It’s not like I’m not sad about it–I wish there was a way to do it without hurting them. I don’t like hurting them. It’s just necessary to do what needs to be done.”
He looked up at her for a long while, then nodded. “Yes. It make sense.”
She let out a breath. “Good. Good, good. So, do you feel a little better about it, now?”
“Yes…but…”
“Go on.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
That caught her off guard. “Huh? Well, nothing I guess.”
“Then…ni ko…Why did you pick me up? And take me away from the field? It wasn’t because stealing food.” He put his hand on his stomach. “I still have my belly, so….you’re not interested in…pesticides in my belly. Why am I here? What do you want to do with me?”
Marcy tapped her pencil on the desk, chewing on her lip. “Ah… Well, well I…I didn’t expect to see anything like you in the field. I didn’t think you existed.”
“Right,” he said, face darkening. “Humans don’t really know we’re here.”
“Right. And well…I just got excited. I wanted to study you, too, before I realized you were a person and it would be wrong to do that to you. That’s when I took you home, because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Thistle curled up, his head in his knees.
“I’m sorry, Thistle. It was a careless, heartless decision. I was curious, and excited, and wanted to know more.”
It was all an accident. Somehow, he hadn’t considered that possibility. She’d ruined his life completely by accident, because she was just a bit careless. She had the ability to get a little too excited and completely change the course of his existence without even fully thinking through the consequences. Without even noticing that she was doing it. It really drove home just how powerless he was compared to the creatures whose hands he stood near. It made him feel smaller than ever.
His body started to tremble with sobs.
“Come on, bud, it’s okay,” said Colin. “This is all good for you, right?”
Marcy drew her hand around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could take it back, I would… I…I did try to take you back and let you go outside. Remember? But you didn’t want to go.”
Thistle sat up, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. He looked up at her, absolutely fuming, and pushed her hand back. “Yes, I remember! Reorun! Esimeoras, kai akorute nevolin predemi io! Liam didrasis ko ni ne ous ri, ke hoi vi ses mienilin! A ci mao, kiun i faas aci! Ko prie? They always say, ‘You can’t lead eanto…predator…back to us! You can’t have them follow you!’ Because of this! Because you can hurt so, so much even if you don’t want! What if you were trying? What could you do to my family?”
Marcy withdrew her hand, biting her lip.
Colin leaned over. “All right, buddy, I think you’re getting worked up again. You just had a lot dumped on you. Why don’t you take some more private time to process your thoughts?”
“Fuck you!” Thistle yelled, then his head swiveled towards Colin. “And fuck you, buddy!”
“Go,” snapped Colin. “Go to your castle.”
Thistle turned and dashed away, leaping down and sprinting across the living room floor into his house. The door slammed shut behind him.
Marcy lowered her head down onto the table, groaning. “Oh, Colin…”
Colin sighed and sat back in his chair.
“I fucked up.”
He patted her back. “We all fuck up sometimes.”
“Yes, but I’ve never fucked up this bad before.” She moaned again.
The chime on the front door sounded, indicating someone was coming in. Marcy propped herself up on her elbow.
Teddy walked into the room. She had a plastic bag in one hand. “Mm-hmm,” she said.
“What?” said Marcy.
“Yep, I knew my alarms were going off for a good reason. I had a premonition that we’d need some cheesecake on the way home.” She set the bags on the table and unwrapped several plastic takeout containers. “Nothing miserable people like more than cheesecake.”
****
Teddy and Colin eventually went upstairs to watch TV in their bedroom. Marcy stayed in the living room. Dusk settled on the room as the sun went down, the previously unneeded lights still sitting off. Marcy just sat outside the castle, head propped up on her curled-up knee, staring at the little door, the blinded windows. The quiet hum of the water filter was the only sound, the lights in the aquarium casting faint shadows in the room.
She so desperately wanted to lay eyes on him, but if she even once broke the sanctity of that space she’d promised was private, he’d never feel secure in it again.
She reached out a hand, hesitated, then moved it the rest of the way to the door. She tapped on it lightly. “Ardo? Will you please come out now?”
The blind in one of the windows went up. His face peered out from the darkness.
She brushed the tip of her finger against the little saucer she had by her knee, upon which was a piece of cheesecake she had painstakingly cut out from a regular-sized one and whittled down so it was appropriately sized for him. “I have something for you, if you feel like coming out.”
He gazed at her, then at the proffered food. Then he disappeared back into the castle, and the drawbridge came down. He came out, looking haggard and hunted. But he did have a tiny fork, taken from the set of miniature silverware replicas they’d gotten from the craft store, in one hand.
Marcy backed up a little to give him some space. He wordlessly crawled up onto the saucer, crossing his legs, and digging in. Tears filled his eyes after a few bites. “Oh…”
“Everything okay?” Marcy said softly.
He nodded. “This is…really good.” He put his fork down, lip wobbling.
Marcy held her hand out, and he rushed forward into it, hugging her palm. She gently closed her fingers around him, rubbing his back. “Shh…It’s all right. It’s OK. It’s gonna be OK.”
Thistle pulled back and wiped his eyes. “Th-thank you. This is very good.”
She crouched down, trying to get on eye level with him, trying to make herself as small as possible. “Are you feeling any better?”
He nodded. “A little. Yes. Thank you for telling me about it. Your work. It’s more sense now.”
She could still see the shiver up his spine, the fear in the words. She curled her fingers around him protectively. “Listen…I know we’ve…Well…I know you’d rather be with your family than with me. As much as it would pain me to see you leave, as much as I’d miss you….if there is any way I can make that happen, just say the word. I’ll take you back, I’ll– Whatever it is you need that would fix things for you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Iwant to understand. What is the actual danger? What do you think is going to happen?”
He swallowed. “We have always kept away from you. Humans. They can dangerous for us. So if we get seen, or handled, we can’t allowed to go back to the others, because someone could follow us.”
“But… Surely there must be a way to get around it, right? You know I’m not going to follow you back to your family.” Oh God, maybe that was too bold of an assertion to make. She trucked past it, ignoring the obvious discomfort on his face, not wanting to press it further. “What if I just put you back down where I found you? I could leave, and you could make your own way back there. They don’t need to know we ever interacted.”
“It’s too late, Marcy.”
“But–Butwhy?”
How to explain? He had more tools to do so now, but it was still hard. Even if he was sure it was perfectly safe…the guilt would be with him forever. He couldn’t keep something like that secret from his family. He had to put their security and safety above his own comfort. Not only that…but he wasn’t a good liar. “They will find out. I am…not good at secret. And they. Would upset.”
“But–But Thistle, please understand from my perspective this seems like such a non-issue to –to completely ruin your life about.”
He clenched his fists. “Just as before. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. That is our way.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does!” His chest heaved, his hands shook. “I would do anything to keep them safe! I would suffer anything! Torture, if I had to! I would die! I would live here forever even if I hated it and you were cruel! Any risk is…for me is…big no!”
Marcy sat in silence, watching the resolve on his tiny face, the anger, the dedication. She reached a finger out and placed it on his chest. “That’s very noble of you. And kind. And if that’s how you really feel, I won’t push it anymore. Just know if you change your mind, I’ll make it happen if I can.”
“Th…Thank you.”
She withdrew from him, laying down on her side, propping herself up. “Ardo, I… I understand completely why seeing what you saw me doing would upset you, but… I have to admit, it kind of hurts that even after all this time, you still won’t trust me. It’s hurtful that you see me as a big scary monster that would torture you just for fun, and hurt your family. I can’t believe you still think I would do that to you. I thought we were past that.”
He broke eye contact. He was still sitting on the saucer. He poked at the cheesecake. The kinds of monsters who would do that to him existed, and in numbers far too great for his comfort. His kind had to be quick to spot them. “It is…instinct. As you say. Bad things can happen to me. Very fastly. If I don’t careful.
“But… What more do you want me to do? I made a mistake, yes, but I’ve done everything I can to try and make it right. I saved your life, I gave you back the ability to fly, I would make the rest of your life here comfortable if that’s what you want–”
“What?”
“Assuming you wanted to stay here, that is…”
“No, what was that…saved your life?”
“I saved your life?”
“You think you saved my life?”
This one sentence smacked Marcy in the face like someone had just swung a sack of batteries at her. “Well…Yeah?”
“When?”
“When I found you in the field? You couldn’t fly? When we first met? I know I’m scary, but I thought you might at least be a little grateful for that…”
Thistle raised his hackles. She’d been congratulating herself this whole time on saving poor little Thistle from death in the cabbage field when they’d first met? That sent him into a rage he’d never experienced before, because she’d been the last thing standing between him and getting back to the hive. If she hadn’t scooped him up, he would have made it back to them as soon as he’d crossed the cabbage field and made it into the tall grass. And she was lecturing him on how he should be grateful for the wing? That was part of why he couldn’t go back! Because they’d take one look at him and know he’d been handled, or at the very least demand to know where he’d gotten it from!
“Kia dablo! Esimeoras, kai akorute nen pemi io! Lim diaie ko ni ne ous ri, kei vis mienilin! Aca, i faas aci kiu! Kai prie!”
Marcy stared at him, speechless.
Thistle’s anger boiled over. It was a struggle to string together sentences in English, while trembling with rage. “I was almost home! If you’d left me in the field, I wouldn’t die, I would have made it back!” He turned his shoulder, flickering his wings pointedly. “And this–these stupid wing you’re so proud of yourself–is why they will know! They will know you had me!”
“You…you mean I…”
“Kia dablo! You think you can ‘fix’ me and make everything better, but you know nothing! Who did you do this? For me? For yourself? Did you want helping me, or did you want to see if you could do it?”
The labyrinth of logic Marcy had put together to convince herself she wasn’t that terrible of a person–That sure she shouldn’t have scooped Thistle up from the field like that and taken him away, but hey, at least she’d saved his life! At least she’d given him back his ability to fly!–collapsed instantly at this revelation. She had nothing to defend herself, nothing to cushion the blow, the fall of who she thought she was to who she actually was. In this ego’s death throes, Marcy could only lash out in anger at what had hurt her.
If you hate your wing so much, then maybe I can just cut it off for you.
Shealmost said it. She came dangerously close to saying it out loud. She physically bit her tongue to swallow it, the smarter parts of her brain kicking in to tackle that thought to the ground before it left her mouth. If she said that,afterthis… They’d never come back from it.
Thistle watched her face journey, reading the dark cloud descend, the spasm of anger and panic. He took a step back, his own face laced with fear, as though he knew what she was thinking.
Marcy let out a shaky breath. “I need a minute. I need to walk away for a minute.”
Leaving him standing there unsurely, Marcy went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom. She took a few minutes to punch a pillow, let out her muffled screams into it.
She lay limply on the pillow she’d just unloaded on, sobbing. She was frustrated. She did want to study Thistle. She wanted it so badly it ached. She wanted to know everything about this amazing, impossible little creature she had found. But that very fact made Thistle uncomfortable and scared, so she’d worked so, so hard to reign it in just to make him feel better. And after that, he acted like she was careless and cruel and stupid?
From her perspective they’d be going agonizingly slowly, letting him set the pace. It was a far cry from their first day together, before she realized she needed to deny her scientific impulses, because her natural curiosity had led her to kidnapping and imprisoning him. Hell, the first day they met, she’d almost torn his clothes off just to see what he looked like. She’d come here from there, giving him all the room he needed, respecting his personal space, letting him rage and feel however he wanted, doing everything in her power to make it right. Could he really not see that? Did he really not realize the effort she was putting in, the progress she’d made?
But it still wasn’t enough. All it’d taken to destroy all their progress was for her to get just a bit careless while working, because she was stressed out and preoccupied. And it was frustrating, because it felt like nothing she did was good enough.
She let herself wallow for a while. She didn’t open the door again until she was sure she could interact with Thistle without hurting him.
When she shuffled across the room to open the door, her feet bumped the bracelet and anklet Thistle had dropped on the floor earlier. She bent down to pick them up, wiping her eyes and holding them gently in her hand, thumbing the beads and tassels.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, still holding them, when he came up a while later. She glanced up and saw Thistle on the floor by her dresser, partially behind it, watching her. His face was splotchy–evidently he’d been doing his own fair share of crying.
She sat up. Just as that first time when they’d finally come face to face and she didn’t know what to do, she just waited. Waited to see what he would do.
He cleared his throat. “Ah…Do you…like them?”
She nodded, already tearing up. “Yes. I love them. I don’t want to make any assumptions…Can…Can I still have them?”
He nodded.
Marcy slipped one on her wrist, then lifted her bare foot up to slide the other on her ankle. “Thank you. They’re beautiful. It’s obvious you put a lot of work into them.”
He stepped forwards. “Thank you. They’re copies of mine. My mother’s mother made them for me…for us…my family…from the tree where I was born.”
Marcy swallowed. “That’s so nice.”
“I couldn’t make the big ones from the same tree, but…”
He trailed off as Marcy opened her arms, holding her hands out to him. He hesitated for a moment before finishing the walk to the bed and leaping up, landing in her outstretched palm.
She drew him close to her chest, cradling him with both hands. “Don’t worry about that. It’s perfect.” She sniffled, trying not to let the tears overflow her eyes. “It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful gift that you’ve given me. I’m honored.”
“I’m sorry for being too hard on you,” said Thistle. He settled into her hand, snuggling up to her chest, right over her heart. “It’s only natural to be excited about new and interesting things. I too am. If I met someone this much smaller than me, I might mistake the same.”
Finally,finally Marcy had the ability to communicate Don’t be sorry without sounding like she was still mad at him. She brushed her finger against his jaw, tiling his head up to make eye contact.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Marcy. “Everything you’ve done and said has been a perfectly reasonable response to my actions from someone who’s lost and scared. I’msorry for how my carelessness has hurt you so deeply. I meant what I said about doing whatever I can to make things right. If you truly feel like you can’t go back to your family, I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life if that’s what you want. As long as I’m around, you won’t have to worry about your safety, or your comfort, or getting food to eat. I won’t let anyone question your personhood. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you can thrive as best as you can, however you want.”
Just when she’d started to think that his little body couldn’t produce any more tears, he started crying yet again. “It’s frustrating, but I–but I can happy that if anyone was going to pick up me, it’s you.”
She lifted him up and gave him a kiss on the top of his head. When she drew him back, he was wiping his face. “Even though I got upset…it is better it was accident. Because I… ko va…afraid of you having plans. Wanting to do things to me. Waiting for something. Now I know you’re not. It’s better. I don’t know if I can ever not afraid totally. But that’s…how I am. It is nature.
“I wish I knew how to comfort you. Yes, it’s true, I could kill you or do horrible things to you. But that’s also true of me with Teddy and Colin. We live in the same house, we sleep with our bedroom doors open. There’s nothing stopping me from grabbing the biggest knife in the kitchen and stabbing them in the middle of the night. There’s a certain point, for everyone, at which you have to just trust that the people in your life who care about you won’t do everything that they’re physically capable of doing.”
He nodded. “Right… You’re right. Thank you. And–And I’m sorry about–these wing is good. Not stupid.”
“Yeah?”
Marcy’s fix of his wing wasn’t perfect by any means…He couldn’t generate enough lift to fly the same way, because the shape was different. His muscles weren’t strong enough to keep it up for too long, because they had to work harder. The glue started to pull away if he flapped too much. And he still got occasional stabs of pain from the wing itself where it was torn. But all things considered…it was nice to be able to fly at least a little.
He leaned over and flared his wings, splaying out the two sub-pairs. “It’s…really cool that you were able to do that for me.”
She wiped her eye. “I’m glad.”
“And it can happen that something come and kill me in the field. Somaybe you did save my life. It could.”
She stroked his hair. “I’m glad. I’m glad that I could at least do something good for you.”
“You do many something goods for me. You make me safe. And…I miss my family, but…if you don’t pick me up, I would never meet you.”
She squeezed him against her chest, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You are–You are too–too fucking–too fucking–”
“Breathe, Marcy.”
She sucked in a breath. “Sorry… I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
“You’reoverwhelmed by me?”
“Yeah. You’re incredible.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Thistle was processing being called incredible. He had never thought of himself as incredible. He’d always been jealous of the other pixies who were good at magic, who were the incredible ones in his mind.
Marcy rubbed her nose. “Well–Well listen, I’m tired. It’s OK for you to sleep in your castle tonight, of course, but I’ll leave my door open if you want to sleep with me.”
He peered up at the wall. “I…would like…but there’s one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He pointed to the shelf on the wall, where her collection of preserved insects stood on display. “They…they make uncomfortable.”
“They…oh. Because they remind you of what you’re afraid will happen to you?”
He nodded.
She seemed to think for a moment. “I’ll take them off the shelf. But let’s take one last look at them together, and then you won’t have to look at them anymore, okay?”
He nodded.
Marcy set him on the pillow, then stood up and plucked the knickknacks off her shelf. She sat back down, and Thistle climbed onto her lap, sitting with his legs dangling off her thigh.
“My dad got me these for my sixteenth birthday.” She picked up the block of resin containing the millipede, its body frozen in a wave, hundreds of legs stopped in time mid-undulation. “He saw how much I was getting into this sort of thing. He also got me a subscription to the ESA. The Entomological Society of America. I couldn’t really use it for anything, of course, but it made me feel cool.” She ran her hand over the smooth surface of the cube containing the millipede.
“You did not make?” Thistle said. He cautiously touched the resin.
She shook her head. “No. Well, this one I did.” She brought over the mounted butterfly, the one that had so frightened Thistle for its wings’ similarities to his own. “I caught this one when I was an undergrad. I worked in a lab that studied reproductive evolution. The PI helped me mount it and everything.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Thistle.
“Yeah. I was…at first I was disappointed that I caught one with a chunk missing from its wing, because I thought it was an imperfect specimen…before I realized the little differences that make each individual unique are just as natural and real representations of what they are as what they’re ‘supposed’ to look like.”
Thistle could see the love in the delicate caress of her hands, her voice, her face. She cherished these creatures, so much so that she wanted to have them preserved forever. She spent all her time outside the house working to protect the small creatures around her, even if it meant doing difficult things like killing some of them. She had done all this out of respect, out of appreciation, because she could not forge relationships with individuals, only the species as a whole.
“A-anyway,” she said, setting the butterfly aside. “I always thought the scorpion was a little scary…something about the venom freaks me out…but looking at this one helped me get over the fear.”
“They are fearsome.”
“And the wasp…I got stung by a wasp on the way to the park when I was little…Good thing I’m not allergic.” She turned it over and took the next block. “And this stag beetle…it was always one of my favorites. I tried raising these guys from grubs one time…Didn’t work, unfortunately. I think I got the wrong kind of soil.”
“I like its pincers.”
She took out a set of three small blocks. “These ones I found in a thrift store. Which was really strange. They don’t normally sell that kind of stuff. And based on the quality, they look homemade. I’d be really curious how they ended up there.”
An odd sense of comfort overcame Thistle watching her handle these dead creatures gently, reverently. This was how she cared for them. She preserved their beauty forever to admire them. This was all she could really do to appreciate creatures that did not think, feel, or care about her, that would die in a cosmic heartbeat and decay instantly without even being able to conceive of her existence next to them.
And in her mind, it would be inappropriate for her to do this to Thistle, because that was not how she appreciated him.
No, she appreciated him by doing the things she’d already been doing. Caring for him, feeding him, keeping him safe, handling him. He’d been so scared the whole time she’d do something for her own satisfaction, but he’d so completely failed to notice she’d already been doing exactly what she wanted to do to him. The way she fawned over him was the equivalent of putting these bugs in resin and keeping them on the shelf. Because to her, they were different kinds of creatures, so they were to be treated differently, and she was simply giving both kinds the highest respect she knew how to.
The pieces clicked together as she set them in a pile off to the side. “I’ll put them in the trunk in my closet, okay?”
“Wait.”
She had been in the process of gathering them to stand up, but she stopped.
“You…You can keep them out.”
“Oh? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She put them back, brushing aside the dust, and settled back into bed. “Ready to go to sleep, then?”
“Yes.” He crawled under the covers, snuggling under her hand. Despite the loneliness, the upset, the hurt…he couldn’t help but feel the warmth in his chest, and think that all things considered, this was really not that bad of a place to end up for a creature like him.
The humans he found himself among might not be the family he was used to, but they were becoming family enough.
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