Glory's 21st Birthday

Characters in this scene: Glory, Silver, Jack

The van was filled with Silver's humming. It was a familiar sound, by now; Silver used her hums to express all sorts of things, emotions, to fill gaps, as a comfort along the lines of a cats' purr. Right now it was more the latter; a determined kind of happiness, rippling through the metal.

There was a simple black box, sitting on the table. Closed. Silver was in the kitchen, doing... something. As the door slid open, Silver glanced up and over; she grinned, and stepped aside.

"Did you actually think I'd forget?" she challenged. There was, indeed, a cake sitting on the bench; Silver had been pouring something over it.

"Presents first, or cake," Silver ponders, putting down the small saucepan. She leans into the fridge. "Dealers choice," she says, gesturing to Glory.

"Depends, is this thing going to squawk and squirt in my face as well?" Glory laughs, leaning down and examining the cake carefully.

"Maybe if you ask nicely," Silver says, straight-faced.

The bottom of the cake is chocolate cookie crumbs; the next layer is literally chocolate ice cream; an additional layer of chocolate cookie crumbs; a layer of vanilla ice cream; hot fudge sauce, and then whipped cream with cherries.

It does not, in fact, attempt to assault Glory. There doesn't seem to be any Glamour to it, either.

"If you want some Glamour in it, I can add that," Silver tells her brightly. "I've got some to spare. But you get twitchy about that at times, I think, so." Silver shrugs.

"I don't think I'd really like the taste of Glamour," She says, standing back up. "But if it's real, I'd like to save this sweet thing for last. Let's go see the presents!" She's practically jumping up and down now in excitement, waiting for Silver to show bring them out.

Silver snorts. "Think what you will, love." Silver pads over to the black box, and lays her hand on top of it. "So," she drawls, deliberately dragging out the moment. She smirks. "Where would you like to start, hmm? Magic or non-magic?"

"Hmmm," Glory wondered, putting a finger to her mouth. "Depends! Put them in order what is lamest to least lamest! Save the best for last, is my belief!"

Silver gives her a highly flat look. "Do you think I'd give you anything lame?" Silver sounds scandalised. She shakes her head. "Tch. But fine, we can start with the simplest thing, at least." Silver tips open the lid, deliberately angling it to block Glory's view; she reaches inside, pulling out something small, and tosses it at Glory.

It's a simple coil of silver wire, at first glance. A bit more attention, however, and Glory will notice that it's Silver; even more than any of the art that Silver's made, its not simply suffused with Self. It is, quite, quite, quite literally Silver wire. There are faint echoes that feel like iron and death, too, but they're nearly drowned out by everything else it is.

"Wow." Glory's eyes widen as she gasps, taking the work of Silver into her own hands and examines it all around. "It's you."

She's mesmerized by the amount of pure Silver that is running around and through her hands, as she brings it up to her mouth, and lightly runs the tip of her tongue across the work.

Silver laughs a little, leaning into the table. "Hammered it out of my own swords. I kind of wanted to just, well, give you my swords, but we've already got swords, and they're not really your thing, so, well, wire. I looked it up, and silver's a pretty good electrical conductor, so it might be useful for your technomancy stuff."

It's cold metal, and tastes so; it's nearly smooth, but not quite. A hint of iron. A hint of death. And then... a chill, like the bite of first frost. A sharp kind of hunger, a whisper of violence, a promise of blood. An insatiable urge to move.

"Will be quite interesting to see what I can work with this," She laughs, holding it up to see it through the light. "Something that will be you as much as it is me. Lot of cold and violence in this one."

Silver shrugs, a bit sheepish. "Wolf-shape's like that. And I pulled out those swords to kill the Knight while you weren't there, so. They're probably even more inclined to Winter and violence than the rest of me."

*Violence might be something we need for what's coming, even if we want to get away from it*, Glory thought to herself. She quickly pushed that thought out of her head, and smiled back at Silver.

"I love it. I really do," She leans in and gives Silver a bit of a lick too.

Silver yelps, drawing back in startlement; she flushes, watching Glory. "I, uh. Sure." She ducks her head, the bond filling with embarrassed pleasure and confusion.

Silver tastes like clean skin, which Glory should be well familiar with (well, the skin part, not the clean part) - but Glamour is part of that skin, so Glory does, in fact, get a slight taste of that. Of silky shadow laced with claws and cold and hunger.

"Um. Next present?"

"Sure!" Glory claps, placing the coil of Silver down by the side, and looking back over to Silver, sitting crosslegged. "What's next?"

Silver reaches into the box, and... Glory should recognise her own hoodie. Well, she should...

Silver tosses it over for Glory to catch. Closer, it's definitely changed; it feels more silken, and is covered in light, sparkling glimmers. As Glory grasps it she gets an external sensation of Silver's Love, the fiercely possessive desire that normally lives in the back of both their minds. There is also, again, a feeling of Silver woven into the cloth, a bit of Silver's darkness.

"Yes, that is your hoodie," Silver says, completely unashamed. "I wove in some shadow and silence and moonlight; while you wear it you should be harder to notice, as long as you're not anywhere really bright or doing anything too dramatic. Should muffle any sounds you make, and anyone looking at you should be inclined to look away. It's not really powerful, but I'm hoping I can improve it later, if I can find a source of some quality silence and moonlight. Or maybe better shadow, though that'd probably be harder."

"Oooooh." Glory immediately took off her own jacket and tank top, quickly putting the hoodie over herself. She then snapped her fingers, and the room quickly darkened. Not absolutely so, but enough it wouldn't be immediately easy for them to see one another.

"How do I look?" Glory asks, trying to quietly scuttle her way across the room.

Her silhouette is very faded out, the slight faint glimmers of moonlight breaking up her form even more; Silver doesn't have a hard time tracking Glory, but it's Silver's own shadow she's wearing. Glory's words are softened, her footsteps silent. "A bit like how I feel when I hide in the dark," Silver murmurs.

The hoodie is silky-soft, now, more than it was. It clings close, like a hug all over her torso and head.

"Hah ha! It'd be a nice change for us to do more sneaking than fighting this time around!" Glory laughs, bringing the lights back on. "Love the way it feels against my skin too. This is great!"

Silver smiles. "I'm glad. Thought it might be useful." Silver looks into the box, and she exhales; there's some tension rippling through the Bond. "Not sure which one to do next," she murmurs.

"How many more are left?" Glory asks.

"Two left," Silver says. "And before you tell me to order by which one's cooler, I... am genuinely not sure. One's magic. The other is not." Silver's smile quirks. "The art might be more meaningful to you, really. So."

Glory shrugged. "Whichever one it is, I know I'll like it!"

Silver exhales. "Alright then." Silver reaches in and pulls out a... watch. Unlike the other two, Silver moves to give it to her, instead of throwing it.

It's got a steampunk aesthetic, rough iron streaked with gold-that-could-be-brass. There are four buttons around the edge and a little scrolling wheel. Instead of numbers, hearts go around the watch face, from full to bleeding; at 12, there is instead a skull. This one exudes Love and Trust, Silver's affections and her faith and sureties, as well as Silver's changeability.

"I could tell you what it does," Silver tells her, grinning. Despite her surface, Silver's incredibly anxious about this one. "Or you could press the buttons and find out."

Jack slides his door open while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He walks past them toward the kitchen getting a glass of water to drink. "Neat watch." Is all he says as he passes.

"Hey." Glory raises and eyebrow, but nonetheless, she puts the watch on. With a curious look and smile on her face, she presses one of the buttons.

The kitchen is occupied by a massive fucking icecream fudge cake.

A cloud of sparkling rainbow bubbles sprays out from the watch - not at Glory, but towards - oops, towards Silver. Silver apparently forgot how her own damn present worked :person\_facepalming: ; they spray right in her face. "Cockalorum!" the bubbles call, lingering over the insult as if it's a delight to say.

Silver swears, waving them out of her face and taking a few steps back. "Fuck, oops."

Glory blinks in surprised, but chuckles. "Another prank thing?" She asks, as she presses another one of the buttons.

More bubbles come spewing out, complainingly muttering "Milksop." They join the other bubbles, forming an obscuring cloud of opaque rainbows around Glory.

"I don't see why prank and practical have to be separate concepts," Silver tells her, backing away further. She sounds amused.

She laughed, and pressed another one of the buttons again.

"NINNY!" the bubbles yell, more of them spewing out - and now they're basically filling the entire main room of the van, so none of them can really see amidst the rainbow bubbles, which are all still murmuring their insults.

"These should last a few minutes," Silver says. "You might wanna, uh, clean 'em out faster though. Don't have an undo button for 'em, aside from them naturally popping. Basically the point is, well, distraction and/or cover for you to use to get around, if you want."

"Huh, neat," She says, as she presses down on the last button, giggling.

"Y'all testing out new gadgets or something?" Jack calls from the kitchen between sips of his water.

Instead of more bubbles, a tiny little drawer pops out of the watch. Unfortunately, Glory can't exactly see what's inside amidst the bubble-fog :upside\_down: .

Glory waves and blows away the remaining bubbles around her, and looks inside at the tiny drawer.

The bubbles obey the owner of the demesne, as they obey no one else at all.

Glory should recognise these. Miniaturised versions of Glory's own trackers, snitched out of Glory's workshop. Nine in total.

"It's Glory's birthday," Silver tells Jack.

"My trackers? Wow, you've made them smaller too." Glory carefully picks up one of them and examines them closely between her fingers.

"How old?" He says with curiosity.

"You mind fucking off, please? We're kinda in the middle of something." She then points the watch and blasts him with several insulting bubble beams as well.

Glory has the distinct sense that the bubbles need to recharge; either she pushes some power in, or nothing's gonna happen, at least for the next few hours.

"Pretty basic Glamouring," Silver says, shifting anxiously. Glory can feel her reaching for the demesne, telling the previous bubbles to go away now. "Making stuff smaller isn't very hard for Dark Fall stuff. It, uh. Wouldn't do too well if they got too bumped, but they're not for combat, really, so."

The trackers have faint traces of gold on them now, like the gold on the watch proper. If Glory looks with Sight, or similar, then they have a deep Connection to the watch.

"So, uh. Not really easily demonstrable. But, basically, if you give the tracker to someone, and then they accept, then they should have a Connection to the watch. One of the watch hands tracks their direction from you, the other is... basically for tracking how healthy they are. You switch who you're tracking with the little wheel."

Jack shrugs, finishes his water, and then walks back toward his room stopping for a half second look at Glory before continuing out. The door closes quietly.

"Hmmm, neat," Glory says, examining them both carefully in her hands. She then looks at the Jack's door with and annoyed look on her face. She's going to remember his little interruption to their very intimate moment. Oh yes, she's going to remember this very well.

Silver ducks her head. "So, uh, yeah, that's that one." She glances in the box. "Last one, then?" Silver's anxiety heightens.

"Hmm, yeah?" Glory turns her attention back to her. "Oh, yeah, let's open it up."

Silver breathes, and then she pulls out of the box a single piece of paper, which she passes to Glory. It's a sketch; quite a detailed sketch.

The piece of paper which Silver hands over hums, very slightly, with Self; not Silver’s, but their mixed Self, from that place where their Bond winds them both together.

It’s a scene which Glory might, faintly, remember from being a Barney, rendered in lovingly photorealistic detail. The van is an absolute, horrifying mess, rubbish and shit and urine and worse covering the floor, walls and ceiling and being thrown through the air. Silver hasn’t glossed over a single detail of the snapshot of the goblin party, Glory herself at the centre of the chaos, the Barney laughing and delighted.

Every one of Glory’s goblins was depicted, even ones who weren’t – necessarily – in the exact scene which Silver was deriving this from.

Shatbraggart was, of course, at the forefront. Silver seems to have put the most effort into drawing him, more even than into Glory herself; the goblin looked to be laughing, typing something into his device, grin wicked and toothy. Shitshotter, off to the side, seemed to be devouring several mechanical and spiky things. Goryhole was perched on top of Bitchhiker, cheering, who seemed to be engaging in some kind of intimidation match with Nibbles – who, most assuredly, was winning the intimidation match, even though he didn’t seem to be doing anything. Cockshocker and Switchstain seemed to be engaged in something exceedingly crude – at this point Silver’s willingness to be thorough seems to waver, but nonetheless, all the details are present, right down to crackles of electricity and a lot of blood. If someone looks closely, Inchpinch appears to have taken up residence in Switchstains arse.

To the side Nitburrow and Shitpits appear to be having a wrestling match. Or possibly doing something crude. Silver doesn’t seem to be sure, and there’s too much fur to tell.  Ragglesnatch is busily placing down shit-bombs near Nitburrow and Shitpits, while Burnbums is giggling nearby and watching.  Rotrubber and Pisslord are engaged in a pissing match, the liquids spattering everywhere, while Spattergasm is just vomiting on Gutsuckler, who’s raising his fists as if to take offense at this. This seems guaranteed by the presence of 69, who’s clearly saying something rude to the brutish goblin.  Fatman and ShitDick are off to the side, laughing at the whole mess. ShitDick is surrounded by knives.

And scattered throughout the whole scene are piles and piles of little goblins, egging things on, drinking, eating, hanging off of Glory, hanging off the other goblins, pissing on each other, fighting each other, and overall celebrating. Pissgargler, Bongwater, Squirtfalls, Fapwater, Drooljaws, Slobbermaw, McLickBalls, Guzzlecums, Dogbelcher, Shitspitter, Fucksplatter, Ickersplit, Spleenspew… Each and every single one was depicted in detail, as if they were right there in front of her.

The entire thing was coloured in accurately, every line placed right. It was vivid and alive and disgusting, a bright celebration of everything goblin drawn by a part-Faerie.

Glory's face was frozen as she looked at the picture before her. It was like for a few seconds, before she seemed to be about to say something, her eyes flushed and her cheeks reddened, as she began wipe tears and snot away from her face.

Silver crouches next to her, reaching out to touch her arm; the anxiety heightens. Silver doesn't seem to know what to say.

"God... fucking hell." She stammers out, looking back at Silver with her puffy eyes. "I fucking love it. Thank you."

The anxiety pops, like a balloon stuck with a pin. Silver relaxes, and manages a bit of a smile. "I was, uh. If you want I could paint it? Like, on canvas? Doing that properly would probably take me a few weeks, which is why I didn't, well, do it this time, but I... could."

Glory nodded. "Yeah, yeah. Thank you. You do that, please. I'd also like to frame, on the wall too."

Silver smiles, properly, and sits herself next to her, curling up into Glory. She laughs. "I haven't done carpentry in a while, but I'm sure I can figure out something appropriate." She exhales. "So, ah, yeah. Your presents. Also cake." Silver gestures over to the kitchen. "Happy birthday, love."

"Thank you. I love you." Glory leans in and kisses Silver on the lips.

Silver kisses back, for a moment, before drawing away. "You're welcome," she tells her, completely sincere. "I loveyou."

She smiles back. "Now, let's go eat some cake, shall we?" Beginning to make her way over to the kitchen.

Silver grins, getting to her feet. "Oh, indeed. I do expect you to enjoy; fudge icecream cake with cherries and cream." There's still a bit of spare fudge in a saucepan off to the side.

Silver skips over at her side, pulling out a knife; she cuts in, plating the slice and offering it up to Glory. She doesn't bother to give her a spoon.

Glory opens her mouth wide, waiting for Silver to deliver it into her mouth.

Silver raises her eyebrows, then laughs. She puts down the plate momentarily, pulling off her gloves and setting them aside, and then she plucks up the slice and feeds it to Glory. Gently, this time; a far cry from the last thing she fed directly to Glory, this purely intended in affection and without a trace of actual magic.

Glory happily chewed on the cold creamy goodness of the cake, savoring its texture of flavor in her mouth, letting bits and crumbs fall down from her mouth and onto her clothes.

Silver rolls her eyes, affectionate, and pushes in the last of the slice.

Glory continues happily munching on the cake. "This is so good! C'mon, you try too!" She insists.

Silver hesitates, glancing at the cake. The rats, normally barely visible, barely noticeable, are suddenly very noticeable. Several run in circles on the countertop.

Silver flushes.

"Oh. Yeah. Keep forgetting that," Glory blushes in embarrassment. "Sorry."

Silver hesitates for another few moments... then with a sigh, she reaches out and cuts a slice of cake. Every single rat perks up as Silver picks up the slice.

Silver is very red. "Fucking hell," she mutters. She takes a bite.

The immediate rat onslaught necessitates Silver eat far faster and less neatly than Glory knows she is inclined towards; she's messier than Glory is, even. She gets through her slice very, very quickly, and when she's done she's smeared with cream and icecream. Silver doesn't try to get at it, but one rat perched on her shoulder is still attempting to nibble it.

Silver is very red. "That was nice," Silver admits.

"Yeah," Glory nodded. The things that were waiting ahead of them were still in her mind. "This is nice. Doing this, this is nice. Is your birthday coming up soon? Guess I should start planning for that now, don't I?"

Silver lifts a shoulder in half a shrug. "You've got some time. Don't worry yourself too much. I'm... pretty easy-going, on that kind of thing, I think."

Silver watches Glory, thoughtful. She tilts her head, observing her distraction. With another shrug Silver reaches up a finger, wiping cream and icecream off her cheek and mouth, and extends it to Glory.

"Want a taste?" Silver asks. She sounds utterly innocent. Somehow.

She smiles, and wraps her mouth Silver's finger, making sure to lick around a bit with her tongue as well.

Silver laughs, letting it happen, before drawing her finger back. She boops Glory's nose. "Flirt," she pronounces, not for the first time. She cuts Glory another slice of cake, offering it up.

She dives right into that one as well, happily eating away at the cake that Silver offered up to her, and laughing the whole night through with her.

A lot still waiting for them in the future. They weren't out of the woods yet. Danger was still ahead on their road.

But for, for today. This night, this moment, was all that Glory needed.