Two Weeks Later
I yawned as I sat up, the doll bed I'd slept in the night before shaking slightly, rousing Missy from where she'd been sleeping next to me. She reached out and grabbed my thigh, making me wince as her fingers dug into the bruises she'd left on me last night. I flexed my leg, feeling them pulse lightly with a mild pain, and I pushed her hand away from my leg. I swept the hair off her face and looked down at her groggy, bleary face and grinned. It felt different, more important somehow, to see her like this, in my bed, at nearly my size.
"Whrblst..." she said eloquently, curling up to a sitting position, her legs under her chin
"Good morning, Missy, sleep well?" I asked
She yawned and shrugged "My arms hurt from last night. It's a lot more work than I expected roughhousing with someone bigger than yourself."
"It shouldn't have been that hard, I let you win." I said "Besides, you're the sporty one."
"Don't tell me you let me win, that takes the fun out of it." she said, punching my shoulder
I laughed and pushed her over, making her squawk indignantly "Think there's still any of those little flapjacks Mrs B made us left?" I asked
"I think you ate all those last night." she said "Besides, those made me sick."
"You'll get used to it, Kensey said she tried a little bit of Quince's quiche yesterday afternoon and was mostly fine." I said "I bet it's just a matter of your body learning how to process it."
"I still would rather have compressed food." Missy said "They say we're not supposed to eat the regular stuff you know."
"Yeah, yeah, I know." I said "I'm gonna go find breakfast then, see what Henri bought us."
"Uh, actually, no, you're not." Marissa said "I'm bringing you breakfast in bed, just chill out here, I'll heat something up. Flapjacks, if there's any left, one of those little meals if there's not."
"Aw, that's sweet of you, but I gotta pee, soooo I'm getting out of bed." I said
"Then get back in bed after." she said, glaring at me "I can't get you new clothes and toys for your birthday like I planned, at least let me get you breakfast in bed."
I felt my face flush and I smiled at her "Aw, ok... I'll get back in bed, I guess. I'm still bummed we didn't get to have that party you wanted for me."
"You would have hated it." she said "I was going to use you as a cake topper and get drunk and make fun of you the whole time."
"Even after we started dating?" I asked "That was still the plan?"
"Uh, yeah? It was a good plan. I don't know how the 'getting drunk' part would have worked with my issues, but I'd have made an exception." she said, rolling her eyes "Look, just go pee or whatever and I'll be back with food in no time."
She rolled off the bed and onto the dollhouse floor, pulling her woolen blanket with her as she shuffled out of the room to the stairs. We didn't have a custom home yet, just an old antique that had been in the estate since the late 1800s, but Henri's mom had hired a very famous craftsman to design something specifically for us. It'd be done in a month or two, and it'd have heated floors and running water when he was done. Until then, we'd have to make do with what we had.
It was fancy, but we had to step around the outer walls to get to the other rooms, which was precarious on the second floor, and we'd had to have little stairs build on the outside to get down to the bottom floor. Luckily, the Burkhart family gardener knew his stuff, and we'd had a mostly functional home a day or two after arriving. It was missing running water and most rooms didn't have electricity, but we had bottled water and one room with an us-sized electrical outlet for the TV, my game system, and our charger.
I carefully gripped the wall and swung around the edge of the house into the 'bathroom' and did my stuff in the mini chemical toilet Henri had gotten us until we got our regular house, and washed up a bit before heading back to bed. It wasn't bad so far, living here. Henri's father had been furious at her dropping out of school to run away with me and Missy, but after some explaining, and some calls to the school, he'd decided that if she could pass her current classes via proctored remote exams, he'd let her go to a local school to finish up the remaining year on her degree.
Mrs Burkhart was a harder sell, she was distraught that Henri would come home after spending so long on her own, and called herself a 'failure of a mother', or, at least that's what the translator on my tablet said. I think it had something to do with Henri's older brother being a jobless traveler; Henri was the golden child, and seeing her drop out had flashed Mrs Burkhart back to when her son had done the same. She'd even threatened to make Henri find another home for us if she didn't promise to find a job and start working full time until the next school year started, which seemed fair to me. Then again, I'd always had summer jobs growing up, Henri'd never worked a day before in her life.
It took me and Marissa making friends with Mrs B; dancing with her fingers, showing off our clothes and my little tv, and in general acting much more innocent and sweet than I'd ever seen Missy behave prior, to get her to settle down long enough to explain things properly. She still wanted Henri to get a job, but after getting to know us better, she dropped the threat of making Henri adopt us out completely.
I slid back into bed and wondered if she'd done anything for my birthday, she seemed to see us as a second chance at raising kids- despite us both being full grown adults- and was trying hard to be there for us in ways that make me slightly embarrassed. She'd try to clean our dollhouse, make us treats despite Marissa not being able to eat big food yet, and try and comfort us in broken english when we were homesick. I knew Henri was planning something, and I wouldn't be surprised if Mrs Burkhart was in on it too.
"Do you want fake eggs or fake rice?" Marissa yelled up at me, shaking me out of my thoughts "I'm making fake bacon and fake chopped steak, with cheese on it."
"Eggs, please!" I called down
Twenty one years old... I didn't feel twenty one, I felt somewhere between fourteen and forty. I'd had so many experiences and stress over the past five weeks that it was like I'd aged well past my years, but at the same time I felt so fragile it was as if I was a kid again. I made a nest in the bed, leaving room for Missy for when she came back up.
It was going to be a weird birthday, the first time I wouldn't have my special birthday soup for dinner. My mom had worked hard making sure she could make it vegetarian for me when I first stopped eating meat, substituting the beef for mushrooms and buying veggie broth. It wasn't my all time favorite dish, but the seaweed and kimchi were so good together, and the fact we only got it on birthdays made it feel so much more special.
I could still call my parents though, a video call, later in the day. It was nine here now, so for them it'd be... three in the morning? The call would have to wait. I know I was more than likely going to have another video call with the Quince and Kensey later, we'd had one every day since I'd gotten here. They'd been calling almost every day to give me updates on the situation back home and tell me how sad they were Marissa and I'd left.
The situation was... not good. Tracy had lived after all, but she hadn't woken up yet. She had broken her spine and suffered major clotting in her brain, so the doctors weren't hopeful that she'd wake up at all, and if she did, she'd have serious brain damage and more than likely be unable to walk. I couldn't feel too bad, she'd tried to keep me in a box and have her dad do experiments on me after all, but I did really wish things had gone differently. She was the most sane of the girls, or so it'd seemed before the incident.
Miss Lund was another story entirely. She'd managed to get her hands on the lab in the end, buying out the majority of the stocks and absorbing it into her own company. There was no word on if she'd stayed true to her word and kept the research going to help undo the compression for her daughter's sake, but she hadn't closed the lab, which was a good sign. In a surprising turn of events, she'd actually given up all rights of guardianship over Marissa, not even trying to get her back. Her legal claim would have been shaky as it was since Marissa was over eighteen, and Henri had been confident she'd win, but it was a relief to not have to go through the legal battle. It was still a sticky situation with Henri crossing borders with us before we were registered to her, but it looked like we'd officially be Henri's soon, as long as the paperwork went through.
I took a deep breath, smelling the breakfast before I saw Missy's head cresting the stairs, a half-lidded smirk on her beautiful face.
"Mm, I'm getting hungry." I said "I can smell it and it's making me want it."
"Yeah yeah, here it is, don't drop it." Marissa said, handing me one of the plates. The food looked, well, it looked compressed, but it was made with love, and that weighed out any amount of odd textures.
She climbed into bed next to me and curled up, her own plate on her knees and took a bite of her bacon, the flat, fake-marbled stick of protein crunching as she chewed. I ate some of my eggs and savored the syrup she'd put over them, just how I liked, and wondered how I'd gotten so lucky to have someone like her in my life, demanding to be in charge, but still willing to serve me breakfast like this...
"I love you, Marissa." I told her, kissing her cheek
"Ew, you got sticky on me..." she said, wiping her cheek, but she returned the kiss a moment later "I love you too, Stress Toy."
She took a bite of the steak, spearing some of her eggs with the fork at the same time, and chewed thoughtfully.
"Hey, you know how Henri is planning something for later?" she asked
"Yeah?"
"Can I spoil it?"
"No! That would be so mean!" I said, shaking my head "Let it be a surprise!"
"Laaaame..." she sighed, taking a sip of water from the cup on her nightstand
"If she wanted me to know, she'd have told me already." I said "I can wait."
As if we'd called her, the door to our room opened, and Henri walked in, fully dressed and awake, a rarity for this early in the morning. She dashed over to us and sat at the table we were on, a bright grin filling her face.
"Hello birthday girl!" she said "Breakfast in bed, huh? So fancy!"
"Hi Henri!" I said "I'm taking it easy today, Missy made it for me!"
"Well, try not to take it too easy..." she said "We need to be at the airport in two hours!"
"We- huh?" I looked at Marissa, confused. She smirked at me and poked her tongue out.
"Happy Birthday!" Henri said proudly "My parents got plane tickets for your parents and Quince! Kensey's coming too as a carry-on, even, they are landing here around eleven! They had a red eye flight, it was a struggle to get it all worked out in time, but they will be here for the party tonight!"
"Wh- uh, what?" I asked, my heart racing, barely believing what I'd heard "Henri, you beautiful blue eyed goddess! Thank you!"
"It was my idea, really." Marissa said, poking me
"No, you just asked if Quince could come, it was my idea to invite the Parks too, and my father's money that paid for it." Henri said, bopping her on the head
"I'm so happy..." I said, smiling and fighting off the tears "Thank you, both of you, I wasn't expecting to see any of them again for a long, long time..."
Henri smiled and leaned into the dollhouse, kissing my head gently "I want you to be happy, Klein Fee, I will do whatever I need to do to make that happen, I told you."
"You're doing a pretty good job so far..." Marissa begrudgingly admitted "She's a lot more relaxed here, and she's smiling more this week than I've ever seen her."
"That's because I'm starting to feel safe again." I said "I have you here every day with me, and Henri and her mom doing what they can to care for us, and Mr Burkhart doing his best to help us too, I just... I just feel loved."
As I smiled at the two girls smiling back at me, I knew there was nothing else to say, I did feel loved, I felt like I was important to them, like I made their lives better by being in it. I knew they certainly made my life better. I'd need to get up and get dressed soon to go see the rest of the people who loved me and cared about me, but for now I sat there, soaking up the warmth of Henri and Marissa's presence, basking in the feeling of being valued.
~
Fin