Belladonna ran a thumb over the slightly scratched surface of the compass. The runes that broke and reformed themselves brought her some comfort but the constant movement made her bite her fingernails and she seemed unable to sit still, the constant tapping of her fingernails on the compass being proof of such.
The needle went still and she almost fell off the bed when she heard a faint tapping on the shutters. Her breath caught in her chest. She stalked toward the dark oak and closed her fingers around the edge of a shutter, the wood smooth under her fingertips.
Before her confidence disappeared, she hastily yanked the shutter open and was met with the face of her cousin. His amber eyes widened in shock and his mouth opened slightly.
Belladonna screeched and a couple of birds were startled from their perch, flying away to find somewhere quieter and preferably without any screaming twelve-year-olds. Their black silhouettes contrasted sharply with the orangey-golden rays the sun cast with its of dying light across the endless horizon.
"Oi!" The ginger waved his hands frantically as he swung his legs through the window. "Calm down, it's just me!"
"I know- but- who wha- how?" She sputtered, helping him through the window. "What are you doing here?"
"I followed the compass, idiot," he replied, glaring at her playfully before his face shifted dramatically. "You're lucky I found you first..."
He trailed off and Belladonna paled dramatically. "He set up a whole search party for you,"
"No way," she took a small step back. "You're joking,"
"No, there's my... Wilbur, Phil, Niki and Jack," he said closing the shutters behind him and leaning against them. "Everyone else is gonna join later, how do you think I managed to get here?"
"Oh Prime," She cursed pulling at her pink locks, some dark purple petals falling from her scalp. "Dad's going to kill the lady that's letting me stay here-"
"Who?" Fundy interrupted, gently pulling her hands away from her head and squinting slightly in a similar way her uncle would when he was trying to figure something out.
"Just this nice Avian-Elytran-Bird hybrid with red wings, I accidentally called her Aunt Terry once and she's never let me forget it," Fundy raised his eyebrows as Bella grimaced slightly before continuing.
"She makes good vegetable soup and she looked after me when I was sick a while ago," she explained, waving her hands around before flinching unnoticeably and holding her hands together. "She's blonde with blue eyes, there's this random white streak that goes through her hair - I think it's cool - and she swears a lot too,"
"Oh... Nice," he says hesitantly, his cognac-yellow eyes narrowing slightly.
He remembers his uncle had red wings but didn't like showing them, opting to have them bound to his torso and when his father had been revived it had left a white streak in his hair. The last time he had seen his uncle he wore a haunted expression and the same startling white pierced through his golden locks. Surely it couldn't be connected? They couldn't be the same people. However, the cryptic message one of Phil's crows had given him rang clearly in his head.
Belladonna growing awkward with the stretching silence, shuffled her feet while looking at the ground. "So how have you been?"
"Well... first off Wilbur's- as usual y'know? Phil's upped the time spent sparring and whatnot - absolute hell I tell you - and your dad's depressed -? I don't know how to describe it." he muttered, untangling Belladonna's fingers and holding her smaller hands in his and swinging them back and forth slowly. " He's worried about you n' stuff, not eating or sleeping often enough (not like he slept anyway). He's gotten colder, which we thought impossible, and he thinks he's a terrible father like he failed you or something. I'm glad I managed to give them the slip- Prime it was getting irritating,"
She scratched the bandages wrapped tightly around her arms and moved back to sit on the pale yellow bed sheets. He followed and sat beside her. He pulled her arms out and inspected the bandages, frowning slightly at how tight they were. He unwrapped them revealing thin, translucent hair-like spines along her pale skin, like the ones one could find on a plant, that stood up ramrod straight at the sudden exposure to air. He grumbled about how he had to fill in the older sibling role and that she should 'just photosynthesise like the plant gremlin she was' and she couldn't help but giggle quietly at that.
They sat in comfortable silence, Belladonna pressing the spines on her arms flat, watching as they stood up once again and Fundy watching fondly as she brought back one of her old habits.
"You could stay with us, y'know?" she said absentmindedly.
"You think she'd let me, Bella?" he asked, glancing at a cradle in the corner of the room. "Doesn't she have her own kids to look after?"
"Yeah, two, a slightly hyperactive eight-year-old and a very clever eight-month-old," She tilted her head to the side thoughtfully, her pink hair falling over her shoulder. "I mean she still managed to take me in and look after me... If I tell her you're my cousin she might be more inclined to let you stay,"
Fundy hummed noncommittally.
"I remember her mentioning she had a nephew," She pulled at one of the spines and Fundy pulled her hand away. She clutched his hand instead, opting to fiddle with his long fingers. "I swear she said that he was a fox hybrid too-"
"What?"
"Yeah, I know weird coincidence. It sounded like she cared about him a lot and she went on a full ramble, bragging that she was the first one he came out to as transgender, before his father."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Would I lie to you?" He raised his eyebrows quizzically in a look that said 'really?'. "Okay, be that way then but no, she sounded so proud of him, too! Imagine if we had an aunt like that,"
"One can only hope," Fundy said, staring off into nothing in a false contemplative look.
He cackled as Bella hit him with a pillow and he managed to roll backwards and fall onto the wooden floors. He landed on his side stopping himself from crushing the beaten leather travel bag. He sat up and looked at the bag, he glanced over at the pink-haired girl and she walked round to him. She pulled the bag from his grasp and she undid the straps. She rummaged around for a minute, hearing small clinks and various materials rustling against each other, before pulling out a small pouch.
She opened it, glancing quickly at the contents, and dumping them into the palm of her hand. The golden metal glowed slightly and the material swirled harshly into a sharp point with intricate designs. He jolted when she held out her hand for his. She held his hand and he marvelled at the metalwork as she slipped on the strange golden hand armour.
The armour fit onto his hands like rings and settled over his nails like elongated claws. The rings started at the first joint of his fingers and connected, with a delicate chain, to a separate section that wrapped around his middle phalanges. They complimented his pale complexion and he flexed his hand, watching the gold shine in the light as his cousin fixed the armour on his other hand.
"I found them in this archaic Bastion, there weren't even any Brutes there but that's not important," she hummed, turning his hands over to admire the accessory. "Moment I saw them, I thought of you,"
"Nice to know you were thinking of me," he smiled gently, the edges of his eyes crinkling.
"Yeah," She sighed, flopping back onto the yellow sheets. "It was mostly just me wishing I could have taken you with me,"
"So these do anything cool?" She shrugged in response, tilting her head to one side. "Great. You've given me something that could be potentially dangerous,"
Bella rolled her eyes and shifted herself so that her head was laid in the ginger's lap. As if it was muscle memory, Fundy fiddled with the younger girl's hair, braiding some sections of it and twisting it absentmindedly. He was careful not to scratch her scalp with the hand armour on. She was an idiot at times but she was an endearing idiot and he didn't want to injure her by accident.
"Do you think it was right of me to leave?" Bella's dark purple eyes stared into his own amber ones and Fundy froze. "I didn't necessarily need to run away - I mean - Dad and I could have just talked it out..."
"If I'm being honest," He trailed off, a contemplative look passed over his face and he brushed the stray strands of hair that were dangerously close to her eyes. "I think that you had every right to, Techno was basically trying to turn you into another version of himself and Philza's trying to parent you,"
Fundy scrunched his face in disgust. "I get the impression that he's trying to make up for how he was a horrible parent to Uncle Tommy,"
"Why did he even leave?"
"After he died in the prison, since Techno and he were on rough terms and Phil didn't want to talk to him, I guess he thought it would be best to leave," Fundy said slowly, testing the words in his mouth before saying them. "No one really had a good relationship with him anymore and he said that the fool in the prison would bring back Wilbur. I'm annoyed at myself for not believing him,"
She furrowed her brows and her eyes were pools of crying obsidian. "What was he like?"
"He swore like a sailor, wore the same damned shirt every day despite being gifted in the textiles department - she made my first binder, you know - and somehow managed to make everyone laugh, either with him or at him," His mouth curled up and he had a far off look in his eyes like he was reliving old memories. "Most importantly, he cared about the people around him, even if they seemed to turn their backs on him,"
She chuckled lightly. "That kinda sounds like Theresa,"
"What sounds like me?" The both of them flinched violently, Fundy facing toward the voice so quickly Bella feared he would suffer whiplash.
Standing in the tall doorway was a blonde woman with an identical-looking infant settled on her waist, her red wings fell to the back of her knees and her familiar tropical blue eyes bored into him. A black mop of hair peeked out from behind the woman's legs and the both of them could see the thought process behind the child's eyes on how this fourteen-year-old broke into his house.
"Fundy?" Belladonna's eyes darted between them in confusion and her eyebrows inched toward each other.
Fundy stared at her and his mind went blank.