yeah u got ghosts in your blood, you should do cocaine about it

if i had rights before i sure as fuck don't anymore

this sucks, but it's technicanically a prequel to the last chapter and ive been sitting on it for forever so, Y'Know

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Paintbrush sidled up the bank away from the pond, flapping their coat at a particularly persistent mallard. "Does it look like I have a habit of carrying rye?" they were saying. "Seed cake carries a bouncy problem, and you, of all poultry, should know that."

"Hold on, Painty," Lightbulb cuts in, from the safety of being higher up on the hill. "Are you saying you don't keep extra cake in your pocket?"

"...what?" Paintbrush turns to briefly stare at her. The duck lunges for their shoes.

"Yeah! S' banana, if you wanna know," she shakes her jacket pocket as if to punctuate her point, "I got hungry after our picnic."

There's a look of dumbfoundedness on Paintbrush's face, and they probably would've said something akin to "Lightbulb what the hell" if the duck hadn't snapped at the cuff of their jeans. They grunt, shooing it off with the side of their foot, where it splashes back into the lake with an affronted squawk.

Lightbulb skitters down the hill, flapping her hand at the duck, and grins, "Cake's too good for em' anyway," she says, watching the duck turn tail and begin to paddle vigorously in the opposite direction. "I think cake's too good for even me. I'm more in the mood to carry on our surreptitious meeting, if that's alright with you."

"Oh, can we?" they say, satisfied, "I heard that sounds nice this time of year."

Lightbulb snorts, "'Course it does," she says, all amusement.

It's been several weeks after the newest episode aired, and clandestine meetings near the lake were all the rage these days. So much so, that MePad had become outnumbered by the sole number of contestants- eligible, eliminated and previous alike- that he'd given up on stopping them all. (Lightbulb had picked up the habit of waving cheerfully at him every time she walked outside the game's bounds.)

She was always cheerful when she slipped away into the trees, because it means she gets to see Paintbrush. She loved these little meetings they've set up, their own subtle kind of "Arrangement", with a capital A because it mattered to Lightbulb. When it came down to it, the "Arrangement" was mostly for Lightbulb's sake- breaking into the hotel was becoming quite tedious- so they moved it outside, and chatted casually, just like they used too. Like there was no two sides they'd been split too.

Lightbulb, as a habit, loved. Quite a bit actually. Some might tell her she loved too hard or too much but Lightbulb thought she loved quite right. Really there's no one right way to love, silly to think otherwise, because she loves in lots of different ways- all of them distinct and unique.

She loved Baxter, for one. She loved her friends, for another. She loved herself, quirks and doos and all, she loved her ideas, she loved the taste of oatmeal raisin cookies, bread, and any kind of bake, and she loved and loved until she was lovesick.

And of course she loved Paintbrush, just in general. It sounds like it should've been covered in the "loving her friends" section of her emotions, but of course Paintbrush was different. Her feelings for them were always different, as they tend to be.

Her feelings, as they tend to be, are everything. A lot of low grade levels, always brinking on the edge of her consciousness, always reminding her of her ineffable sentiments toward a certain tall kinda brush. Kind of like constantly being wrapped in a hand stitched quilt. Inconvenient at best, maddening at worst. Because her neat, cozy, unobtrusive little quilt is... occasionally ripped off of her, quite violently, and she'll be tossed into a raging wildfire. It runs through her like a cattle prod had been jammed into the base of her spine, slamming her heart full of massive, overwhelming bursts of raw emotion, filling her to the brim with beating affection until she spills over her edges, and her face and fingertips bleed with red.