Much Of Muchness // Ophelia + Mally

"Just imagine it, Mally," Ophelia says, as she so often does, with the telltale muffled quality of a mouth half occupied by another task, and Malakai grins through a yawn. Once in a while she says—the first time, he remembers, by way of refusing to let an embarrassed apology stand after he passed out mid-conversation and woke up to a different conversation entirely—that his dreams seem like a second and perhaps rather more interesting life; as far as he's concerned, they have nothing on the airy, pleasant logic of Ophelia's own waking meanderings. After half their lives he's never quite learned to reliably guess where a trail of tangents will take her, but he always enjoys the journey. "An extra sock so one lost is never really lost—"

"Do you suppose the one left in the drawer would get lonely?" he asks as he shakes out his arms and feet to see how the fabric settles. "Or would we wear two on one foot?"

"—triple chocolate cake—"

That sounds like the best idea either of them has had all day. "Remind me to bug Murphy about that one."

Cora's dress is several steps fancier than any Ophelia has made for him, and of course a mostly but not quite finished piece made for someone similar but not quite alike in measurement won't make a perfect fit, but nothing pulls worryingly. A few steps and a turn set the much-described ruffles whispering, and Malakai nods approvingly—his own taste may run simpler, but Ophelia never does anything less than quality work; thought and planning, indeed, even if one could perhaps say she plans some things out more than others—before stretching to close the back. Or try, at least; the clasp slips his fingers twice, until he's biting his tongue to concentrate without losing track of Ophelia's words. Maybe an extra ear here or there really wouldn't go amiss. Or an extra hand.

"But still—"

"Gotcha," Malakai hisses as the clasp slides into place, then blinks in surprise when he realizes the room has lapsed into daytime silence—fuzzy around the edges with the twin hums of running lights and cycling air, but otherwise unbroken. "What—" rabbit trail are you down, he starts to ask, but a knock cuts him off. "Just a sec!"

Ophelia picks up where she left off ("—don't you think three is—") while Malakai, as gingerly as he can manage moving quickly, spins Dinah back around from where he'd turned her to face the wall before he changed. "Sorry," he mumbles as he arranges her feet into a more comfortable-looking position, feeling faintly silly about the entire thing. He's not nine, he doesn't expect a patchwork-and-fluff cat to eat him in his sleep anymore (no matter what he dreams about, thank you, Meltem), and it's not like he minds the multitude of other stuffed animals with equally unyielding button-and-string stares. But he's not about to undress in front of her, either, or stop doing things like politely thanking her when Ophelia says she helped make treacle. One never does know, and things that don't make sense have a way of deciding to make sense anyway around Ophelia.

Placating Dinah (hopefully) accomplished, he smoothes the dress and opens the door to Ophelia finishing, "just such a particularly nice number of ruffles to have?"

"You're the expert, Phee. Looks good, though—the red too, it does suit her." All this seems like an awful lot of effort to go to for someone who Malakai hadn't thought Ophelia particularly got along with, but her excitement about Cora's un-birthday party is infectious. He twists a little to flutter the ruffles again before moving out of the doorway for her. "Hey, do you remember you've got—" he taps the corner of his own mouth a few times with one pinky— "pins?"



"hold on, is this post six years la—" MAYBESO.GIF