#bergen_county

There are moldy crackers, and a tea set, unfilled currently, but she does eye the treats brought "Please tell your step mother I said thank you." A pause "is she a wicked step mother?" Hopeful

He leans in and whispers, "Oh, the wickedest. When we first met, she thought I needed to get more sunlight to stay healthy, and wanted to send me.... to the beach. All sand as far as the eye can see, and not even a cave to hide in!"

Zara brought a plate of crustless sandwiches - cucumber, watercress, and, delightfully, liverwurst. All aged carefully, with a freckling of green and grey mold on the white bread.

Hiss. "The beach?"

Slender fingers deftly unwrap a parcel and set the treats on the table where the, ah, aroma can waft out. Hopefully the Thomas's have an air freshener for later. Or, for Lilly's sake, they don't?

"No shade at all?" Horrorified

"Only a parasol - and it was patterned in flowers - not even dead ones!"

"yours is a tragic tale" Lily says a bit in awe of the suffering she's hearing about.

"Truly wicked. My mother is boggan kinain, and, a'times, over-protective..."

"Luckily, I avoided the terror, and she's much better these days. Hardly makes me wear color at all when I can help it, and lets me keep my books without trying to dust them."

An interested glance over to Zara at the tidbit he didn't know. "Oh, I wonder if maybe she'd like to share recipes with Ann Marie some time."

"They can co-write a cookbook, "Aged Recipes for Particular Children - The True Set it and Forget it Cookbook."

"my mother is very loud, she doesn't mean to be, but she's soooo dramatic now," Lily says, not wanting to be left out, "She's not wicked, but she her humors are at great odd with her vapors" SHe looks at Zara and Symon hoping she got the terms right

A soft chuff. "Mayhaps. Remind me to bring you some of her year-old-apple cake. I was six when I chrysalized, so she had some time to learn the tricks."

"It's okay. She'll learn. Do you have a basement?"

"Aye. Satyrs are a Sanguine lot. The blood rises fast."

"yes, a small one." The girl says "It's full of holiday decorations right now"

"Sluagh, as a rule, are Melancholy. Tis the black bile for us." A smile.

"There's full, and there's full. I bet if you squiggle back there just so, you can find a spot to shove a few boxes around - I can help, if you like - and make a nice little place to hide. The best part about Christmas decorations is that they only come out once a year, and that gives lots of time for the spiders to come visit and make decorations of their own." A thoughtful look. "I guess that's a plus for Ann Marie, we never celebrated Xmas before her, but she just wanted to so bad, it's become a thing."

"I was always fond of the dryer vent."

"You should have SEEN the standoff when Lovecraft - that's my shadowcat - saw the tree... and Ann Marie SAW her seeing the tree..."

"Black bile sounds fun," A hopeful smile "I shall be happy to be melancholy properly." Then a nod at the suggestions "Space behind decorations.. dryer vent"

"How does one avoid trolls? Father is quieter than mother in action, but so... " A sigh "THere"

"The dryer vent it good, especially if it vents upstairs. Sometimes you can hear voices from other rooms echoing down through them. When you're on the bottom, you gotta listen all the way up to the top."

The young chldling is breaking a few rules of older kith sibs by takiing so much knowledge without giving back, but she is still unsained, and a childling.

"Ah, trolls - they are a direct bunch. The trick is not to alert their defensive instincts."

Symon sets out tea cups and reaches for the kettle just before it comes to a boil - a habit, ready to flinch if it emits a cheerful TOOT!

Zara, it seems, has disabled the whistle!

she watches the tea making as they talk "Oh that's so much nicer than.." She makes a face, "Ms Tea."

"Aye. Proper tea is all about the ceremony. Miss Gerd is a troll, but has been a good student... perhaps she would be a good guest?"

"Perhaps." Hopeful, and a htought "Father might relax if I had a troll visiting."

He tenses up, and then is pleasantly surprised. "I should get a new tea kettle for her birthday..." He murmurs to himself - a gift for them both, two birds one stone. And carefully pours the tea, deliberately taking care - Zara may well guess that he'd be far sloppier if not trying to Set a Good Example. But he manages not to slosh.

"Gerd's cool. She does know her tea."

"I hear redcaps can eat anything." Lily says out of the blue.

"Aye! Even poisons or molten metal... tis quite a thing."

"True. That doesn't mean they want to, but anything can be eaten. Like - you can eat a pink sugar cookie, but do you want to? Just because you can? ...but they're always hungry. Even if they eat and eat until they're full, it still gnaws at them. We all got our shitty- uh. Our... crosses to bear."

"so, if , say a Ms Tea were to accidentally fall into a redcap's mouth, it would be gone forever?" A pause "Asking for a friend"

He coughs, covering up a snicker.

Zara's grey lips quirk into a smile.

"Why yes, I believe so."

"how ever so interesting," Lily's eyes sparkle with imagination, "Thank you."

"You've been to the lodge, right? Met everyone there?" He adds a touch of honey - it doesn't go bad, but what he brought has evaporated quite a bit until it's crystalized and dark, almost molassassy - to his tea, giving it a careful stir so that the spoon doesn't clink against the cup.

"Miss Lily, Symon, have you ever tried liverwurst?"

Zara also has a little carton of clumpy cream.

"I tried bratwurst once" she says "is liverwurst good?

"And yes, I have been to the lodge. the chairs are so tall I can walk under some of them"

He looks curious. "I've had pork liver, but not for a long time. There's a dish I had when I was a kid... you cook down all the bits of the pig no one else wants, like the trotters, until they get all jellied, and then boil it into a broth with ginger and onions..."

"Well, time to try for yourself." She serves a selection of tiny sandwiches.

The liverwurst is a pinky-brownish-grey paste, smelling old blood and offal.

"Uhm please, should I serve, or pull chairs out? This feels very important to get right" Lily squirms, and not the cool go through vents kind of way, but with a touch of anxiety