Unsociable
As was often the case in Oz, the persons referred to as the Skeezers were peaceable, amiable, and intelligent. To the effect that their Prime Minister found himself with very little to do.
The glass domed city in the center of the lake, though lovely, was horribly hot in the summertime. As the seasons only affected select portions of the land of Oz, it was always summertime and always horribly hot. Except on those rare occasions when it rained, then it was hot and stiflingly humid. It was a veritable greenhouse on any occasion. The citizenry all commented to one another how lovely the environment was for their famously lush gardens, while perspiration soaked the inner confines of their rich and multi-layered clothing.
As the Skeezers were good-humored and responsible, for the most part self-governing, Ervic often left them unattended by his presence so the wind and shade outside could refresh him from the oppressive warmth of the dome. He frequently went on ambassadorial jaunts to the Mountaineers, formerly known as the Flatheads, much more frequently than was required to maintain amicable relations between the two peoples. He enjoyed the cooler altitude.
He'd been telling the inhabitants of the city for years that it would be beneficial if they sank the dome again so the cool of the lake could leech away the heat, or at least get some openable windows to let in a breeze. Standing on the shore, gazing down at the distorted underwater image of the glass enclosed city, he reflected that it would have been wise if he'd informed the now only 100 Skeezers in residence that he'd planned to go for a walk that day.
Ervic was not especially worried, as he doubted anything pressing would arise that needed his attention. Queen Aurex still dwelt in the city anyway. There was a possibility that he would get uncomfortably hungry, but he was from one of the prevalent Oz factions that could not be killed, although they could experience discomfort. The worst that could happen would be becoming unappealingly skinny, and that could be rapidly reversed by a reinstatement of regular meals.
He considered taking the opportunity for going on a meeting of state to the Mountaineers. He'd been doing that a lot lately, though, and the ruling Adepts seemed to be picking up on the fact that he couldn't tell Audah from Aujah or either of them from Aurah.
Wandering around the eastern side of the lake, he happened upon a small but distinct trail he had resolutely not set foot on in quite some time. With the excuse of nothing better to do, and the assurance that he wouldn't continue to its ultimate destination, he meandered down it.
Through a meadow and down into a valley he dandered, and then reluctantly halted. He was still a few miles away from breaching the promise he'd made, but stopping now seemed like the least provoking course of action. Honorably obligated not to go on, and emotionally disinclined to go back, he sat down. He looked up at the almost perpetually blue sky, then back at the valley that looked almost the same as the last time he'd seen it. Fortunately for agriculture, Oz flora still developed and aged, and seeds would germinate and come to maturity rather than simply sitting in the dirt.
He flopped to his back, and turned his head into the tall-growing grass on the gentle slope of ground. Focusing on the shiny stiffness of a chrysalis, he reflected what a shame it was that the caterpillar turned butterfly inside had been trapped in the timelessness of Oz. The already formed wings he could see through the shell would never age to the point where they could break free. The creature's body would always remain at that instant, unable to develop enough to fly.
He was feeling rather melancholy until the chrysalis cracked as softly as a whisper. He didn't breathe, he was from one of the Oz factions that couldn't be killed, and watched intently. Damp wings and wispy thin legs very slowly escaped confinement. It had been...a very long time since he had seen something like that. As the little creature basked in the sunlight, Ervic contemplated the phenomenon. The passing of time that would allow a caterpillar to develop flight had not abounded in the land for quite awhile. Not since that band of fairies had enchanted the entire landscape and left Ozma to rule it. That was the version Ervic chose to endorse at any rate. The persistent rumor that Ozma was natural born of the monarch line from the Emerald City, and had once been a boy, was too absurd, and unsettling, to believe.
At first the unaging spell had settled sporadically over the fairy christened Oz. Now the imposed timelessness had a nearly uniform hold over the entire country. However, as the soon to fly tiny animal indicated, time still passed normally in at least one pocket of Oz. Which meant that Ervic had begun to physically age as soon as he'd entered the slip of land.
Like most everyone else in Oz, Ervic looked nowhere near his years. He had been...somewhere between 12 and 16 when agelessness had taken its hold in his region of the country. In any case, he'd long ago lost track of how long he'd been looking like someone still firmly in the throes of adolescence. His features and jawline, though clear cut, still maintained a sloping softness and similarity to the women of the Domed City that did very little to reinforce his sense of masculinity. It was nothing to what his high and light voice did to his pretensions of manhood though. At least that couldn't be recorded. One of the city artists had captured Ervic's likeness during one of the few and far between public speeches he had given. The fanfare of the time had been splendidly replicated. Ervic had been disturbed over how girlish he looked.
Now...there was an opportunity for genuine change. There was even a chance to pursue the longing that had started breathing in him when the Adepts had been restored and he and Lady Aurex had been installed as governing officials of the Domed City. He smiled broadly as dried wings lifted the brilliantly colored insect into the air.
The Land of Oz, where no one grows old and dies - except when they do - was conducive to long term plans. Promptly, Ervic set up camp. Which consisted of patting down an area of grass he thought would be most comfortable to sleep on and trekking the length and breadth of the valley to see if the bubble of normalcy extended beyond it or only to its edges. It was difficult to determine such signs, but he happened upon enough broken eggshells and shed reptile skins to approximate the area of interest. He strolled in cheerful anticipation through the remainder of the day and far into the night before retiring to his patted down patch of grass. Greeting the sunrise with an expectancy that he hadn't experienced in many, many years, he was content to simply watch the circle of light progress across the sky, knowing that this time it actually signified something.
Days had the potential of variety again, and he drank and devoured the experience like a feast. Like most metaphors, though, it was less than physically filling. Clothing that had started to flap loosely around his body whenever he moved was one of the principal motivators for eventually heading back to the Domed City. However sparse, he did have duties there, and if the population was above the waterline again he should probably attend to them.
Somewhat to his disappointment, the city had been raised. As he trod over the bridge to the island, he was slightly mollified at the prospect of eating again. His fellow Skeezers greeted him with compassionate disinterest. It was obvious he hadn't been maimed, and everyone knew he couldn't be killed, so the questions were polite and superficial. When he spoke of the valley, they were far less interested than he would have expected. One of his neighbors had been 8 months pregnant for longer than anybody liked to think about, and even her attention was cursory. Queen Aurex smiled while he explained what he'd found and handed him a handful of cross-pollination petitions that needed to be ratified.
Once all official formalities had been nodded at, he left his apartment in the palace and crossed the city to where he had lived with his parents when he actually was somewhere between 12 and 16. In his old room, he ran his hand over the frame of his door, searching for the nocks that had become all but invisible with age. He found the highest and confirmed, if only by the barest hair, what he'd suspected when his shoes had started to pinch. He'd gotten taller.
It was going to take an excruciating amount of time, but that was something he had in spades. He took daily constitutionals in the valley, and was occasionally an overnight lodger when the Domed City descended to the bottom of its lake. The strolls carried him slowly closer to the distant future, and he felt himself age and change until there was absolutely no chance that his voice and face could be be mistaken as feminine again. Though his jaw remained annoyingly smooth. The Shaggy Man seemed to have an almost exclusive monopoly on decent beards in Oz.
He was standing in the vale, debating whether he should hold out for even a 2 o' clock shadow, when he suddenly decided that the fullness of time had come. He strode out of the valley on the side he hadn't seen since he'd left it in the company of the Adepts a long, long while past.
The hill sloped down onto a level plain dotted with trees. He stopped where he couldn't see the cottage, but knew it was tucked behind a few trees and a bit of a swell. He had made a promise after all, and unless she lifted the sanctions on it, he couldn't break it himself.
"If it isn't Ervic the Surly Skeezer!"
He looked down to see a pale green hedgehog. One paw rested on an odd wicker bundle, and the little creature blinked dark, burning eyes at him. She looked nothing like he'd last seen her, but that amused, mocking tone was one he hadn't forgotten.
"Oh," he said disinterestedly. "It's you."
The hedgehog chuckled snufflingly, and seemed to completely disregard Ervic's presence after that. She rooted through the grass, plucking up dandelions, and other plants he didn't recognize, and poking them into the holes in her wicker sphere.
He watched this without seeming to, slouching, letting his eyes wander equally over the landscape and the little hedgehog. It might be hours before she acknowledged him again.
Presently, and much sooner than he'd hoped for, she trundled back toward his feet and looked up at him. "You smell almost exactly the same, and these eyes aren't the best, but you seem to look different than you used to. Are you under a spell?"
"No," he stated in the same unattached tone. He dropped into a lazy sprawl so she could get a better look at him. "I changed on my own."
She shuffled closer. "Shall I change you back?"
Ervic wouldn't terribly mind being turned older because he didn't think he'd ever get there on his own, but he internally blanched at the thought of returning to his earlier age and having to grow older all over again. Saying so would hardly help the situation, though.
He shrugged. "If you like."
Circling him with short steps, she sniffled thoughtfully. "You didn't come to be transformed. What do you want?"
"Nothing, Reera."
"You do remember me," she chortled. "With the way you hadn't named me, I thought you might not."
Ervic decided to risk a sliver of the sincerity he was feeling, and turned his face toward her dark, hedgehog eyes. "I didn't forget you."
"I haven't forgotten how you never admit when you want something. Why are you wandering so close to my cottage, Sly Skeezer?"
"Are we close to your cottage?" he queried laconically, thinking that this might've been easier if she still thought he was stupid, but then she wouldn't respect him.
"We are," she answered dryly. "Are you trying to discover how I work my transformation magic?"
"No. It can be useful," he said grudgingly. "But it would be too much trouble to learn."
"You're not a Yookoohoo, you couldn't learn anyway. Did you simply come to talk, to discuss how those Adepts are faring since I so graciously helped you?"
"No," he said scornfully, and truthfully.
"Well, I think I'd like to hear about it anyway." She nosed her little bundle of weeds in the direction of the cottage. "And it shouldn't be out here where it's about to get horribly hot."
Ervic watched her prickly form out of the corner of one narrowed eye. That had almost been an invitation, but if he accepted it too easily she could just as easily change her mind. He stubbornly stayed where he was, waiting for something more clear cut.
Her scuttling had gotten her a few yards away when she turned toward him with an impatient huff and a sweet voice. "I'm not going to stay out here, and I want to hear about the Adepts."
Grumbling, he rolled to his feet. He kicked at the ground while he followed after her, fighting back the smile that wanted to escape. She could still change her mind.
The cottage came into view, thickly surrounded by purple thistles and red sunflowers. The door opened for Reera and she padded inside. Ervic stopped on the threshold of his promise to never return, waiting to see if the vow would be upheld or released.
"Close the door behind you or the nasty noon day heat will warm up my house."
He breathed, he had a foot in the door.
Reera was barely interested in the Adepts and wouldn't have pressed for the information if Ervic hadn't seemed opposed to it. Whatever his real reason for being there was it could be just as uninteresting, but the last time she'd thought that she had been wrong.
Nudging her collected greens onto a shelf to be transformed into something much tastier, she then bumped against her cabinet until she could pry open one of the drawers. The hedgehog was a cunning little animal, but she missed having working hands. Without any of the fanfare or smoke necessary for lesser magic users, she enchanted herself into her normal form for the hottest portion of the day; a great grey ape.
Smoothing her befrilled apron and adjusting her cap, as her only two articles of clothing they should be in decent order, she turned round. Without being invited, Ervic had taken the same seat he'd had last he was in her cottage. He was sitting with elbows on knees and chin in hands, seeming only minimally impressed with her change. She grimaced an ape smile.
"You have changed," she remarked as she transformed the horned toads into bats and the crocodile into an enormous snake. The spiders detested being transformed and the rats and the lizard were sleeping. "Tell me about the Adepts."
His grey eyes rolled and in clipped words he described what had become of those three girls. She took up her knitting in her hairy hands and watched him over the flashing needles. He was still fair haired. Though fit, it wasn't the soft thinness of youth he'd possessed when she'd last seen him. Even seated, she could see that he was taller than he was.
"Enthralling," she drawled as he concluded with how the Adepts had taken over their rightful place as the rulers of the Flatheads, also known as the Mountaineers. "Has your own little kingdom been returned to peace as well?"
"Yes," he replied without investment.
"And are you now enjoying a dull, lovely life?"
He seemed to consider for a moment, and then said with slight inflection, "I'm the Prime Minister."
She regarded him, and then said in slow amusement, "That sounds even more boring."
"It is." There was an answering shade of amusement in his agreement as he stood. "It's also mildly demanding."
He was gone before she was anywhere close to getting tired of him. There hadn't been any demands, veiled or otherwise, and she puzzled over his presence and departure for a good hour after he left. Then she gave herself the form of the blonde Adept, she couldn't remember her name, transformed the rats into rabbits and tried to convince the chittering spiders to let her change them into woodpeckers.
Some days later, four to be precise, she had wondered about him three times and he was back.
"You were very rude when you were here last," she informed him, yanking up handfuls of grass with ape hands to transform into yarn.
"Was I?" he asked noncommittally.
"You didn't wait to see if I had any other questions for you."
"Did you?"
"Yes," she affirmed, without being certain of what they would have been.
"Then you have my apologies," he replied without a shred sympathy.
She chuckled and tramped back to her cottage. He didn't follow.
Two days after that, she was already outside, simply watching the clouds, when he came into view. She didn't call out to him, and she was wearing the form of a Winkie woman in traditional dress, one he hadn't seen her in before. He headed toward her regardless, and after giving her a searching look, seemed satisfied.
"Hello, Reera," he intoned calmly, as if he hadn't just proved something.
"Tedious as your life is," she spoke lightly. "There must have been something of interest that happened since I transformed those fishes for you. Tell me."
"Now?" He managed to fit an enormous amount of long suffering into the word.
"No, I'm thirsty. I'd like to hear about it in my cottage. Follow me there."
"Couldn't you transform something out here into a drink?"
"I could, but why should I do that just because you prefer to stay outside?"
"You're under no obligation whatsoever," agreed Ervic, and walked behind her into the cottage.
She learned of Lady Aurex turned queen, of the ponderous mechanical magic used to operate certain aspects of the Domed City, and of the duties of his position. There were just as many superficial ones as she'd though there would be, and two more important ones than she expected him to have. After she had laughed at many melancholy descriptions of affairs of state, he left without her prompting him to.
A week later she had transformed a hollow into a pond and herself into an otter. Ervic sat down on the bank but didn't let his feet dangle in the water or ask permission to do so, not that she would have given it.
She splashed to the shore. "It's a hot day, isn't it?"
"No," said Ervic, who had perspiration beaded around his hairline and streaming down his neck.
He flinched only a little when she shook herself off, showering him with watery droplets. She loped to her cottage but he didn't follow. She loped back.
"I remember the first day I met you. You marched right into my house without being invited. You didn't leave when I told you to get out."
"I also remember that I promised I would never come back."
"Did you? I don't recall."
"I -" He looked at her closely. The intelligence that he'd been able to conceal behind his former youth had much more trouble hiding in his more mature face and deeper eyes. "Perhaps I was mistaken."
"Perhaps so."
"Perhaps I'll come inside."
"Yes, but not today. Come back tomorrow."
She didn't answer the door when he knocked, but she enchanted it to open for him. The politeness of his gesture unsettled her. There was a frown growing on her face, but then he walked in with a blatant scowl a smile spread across her Gilikin lips. She tried again to get him to admit to wanting something, and ventured several guesses when he denied it.
"Everyone wants something," she asserted. "You did the last time you claimed you didn't. I want to be left alone and live by myself away from bothersome neighbors."
"I don't quite believe you," was his candid return.
"Because you're here?" she asked sharply, feeling her ire rise and on the verge of throwing him out.
"Because they are," contradicted Ervic with a nod at the enormous warthog and the assortment of owls and hyraxes.
Reera blinked in surprise. "They choose to be here," she explained, and then felt a twinge of humor as she realized that didn't really explain anything. "Animals are different."
"You've never given them the form of people?"
"Are you accusing a lady in her own home of lying?"
"A lady might be more inclined to lie in her own home than anywhere else."
She laughed. "If that's the case it should also be the place that she's most entitled to get away with it."
"Perhaps, but if you're honest with anyone it should be yourself."
There was a rejoinder, a good one, but he left before she could get it out. She remained with only herself and her companions to enjoy the clever retort.
Several days passed and he didn't return. She transformed the crocodile into Ervic's form, and though he sat silently against the wall and stared about sullenly, it wasn't quite the same. So she transformed him into a tortoise and went back to her knitting.
When he did come back, she didn't bother to see if he was in a cross mood before she smiled.
"The boy returns!"
For the first time in a long while, he looked somewhere close to genuinely offended. "Do I look like a boy?"
"Do I look like a pangolin?" she queried, which, at the moment, she did.
"I'm not sure what that is," he admitted as he sat down. "But I can say truly that this is my natural form."
It was a form slightly different from what she had very first seen him in, and he'd achieved it all on his own. Her current scaly form was not one she could rightfully claim. Usually, that was what the enjoyment of wearing various forms stemmed from. On the other hand, there was no standard to measure those changes by if she never returned to her true form. She lifted the enchantment on herself.
"It's beautiful."
"The dress?" she asked, to hear him say it again.
"Your hair."
She transformed her table top into a mirror and leaned over the surface, examining her natural, womanly form. "It's not the prettiest color. I think my chin is one of my better features."
"It's not a bad one," he confirmed. "But your hair is beautiful."
"I'm famished," she announced, transforming the mirror back to a table top with a noonday meal. She allowed him to partake of it with her, and a good portion of the next two hours were filled with silence. Her questions were idle and his answers were grudging, but she grew quite accustomed to it. She was two sentences in to an inquiry when she realized he had slipped out in the middle of the last bout of silence.
The rest of the day was spent gazing at her own dark eyes. Sometimes she would keep them through her transformations, but even they could change when her body would twist.
When next Ervic arrived, she wore her true self and he revealed a smidgen of his motivation.
"I'm tired of things that are always the same," he muttered after only being prodded once.
She grinned, and transformed the crocodile into an armadillo. If he had simply stated as much when he'd first returned, she wouldn't have felt nearly as inclined to acquiesce. Even so, though he seemed to appreciate the changes she sporadically enacted in and around her cottage, it also felt distinctly...unnecessary.
His random frequency and absentness didn't adjust at all after she decided to pull out some of her flashier enchantments to see if she could get a raised eyebrow out of him. Again, when she got tired of all the variety, and of her house being crowded with okapis, parrots, and giant salamanders, and didn't transform anything in his presence, his schedule of appearance didn't alter a bit.
Always being different could fall into its own routine, though. Perhaps ceasing in her transformations was its own kind of change. She knew the season of naturalness wouldn't last, that she would grow bored with it before Ervic ever did. Her impatience was much greater than his. Until then she would knit sweaters for all of her animal companions to give some different options for color. By the time she got to the spiders, the project would likely lose its appeal and she could think of another.
Reera had a low opinion of convention. The few persons who had tried to approach her in the past had been varying degrees of forcefully friendly, intrusively inquisitive, timorously terrified, and always polite. Ervic's brusqueness and hard won attention had been refreshing. Still, if he had persisted solely in that behavior it would have grown tedious, but he had moments of sincerity that shattered the pattern.
By the time transformations had become interesting again, a new, personal, trait had made itself known to her. Even during those times when she was moved to extravagantly and frequently enchant the surroundings and various wildlife in front of Ervic, she herself transformed less.
It was curious, and she asked him how he thought of her.
"As you are."
"As a crotchety ape who knits?"
"As you are, Reera the Red."
He looked at her, and he did look like he was seeing not her grey fur or long arms, but the dark eyes she sometimes forgot she had and the red hair he always told her was beautiful. She remembered the first time she had revealed herself; when she had broken the enchantment on the Adepts, or enchanted them into their true forms, and she had been the one his eyes had widened over. He'd tried to cover it quickly with a few conciliatory compliments to the others, but all of them had seen that Reera had been the one who had struck him.
Additionally, another anomalous detail had come to light. When Reera spent any amount of time looking at something, she started weighing its potential, deciding how it could be altered and shifted into something new, unusual, or simply different. Ervic had achieved physical transformation on his own, and she didn't want to change him.
When next he entered her cottage, he showed her how he had accomplished such a thing in Oz. It wasn't terribly far from where she lived, but it was close enough that she was mildly galled she hadn't discovered the little strip of land herself. Since she still got to enjoy it without doing any actual work to find it, her discontent was momentary.
As someone well acquainted with maintaining a certain shape, particularly her own, she felt the difference the moment she stepped into the area. There was no force in Oz that could wrest a transformation from her control, make her change, but this was a power beyond the borders of Oz. It wasn't a massive change. It was slow, polite, but it was insistent and it was still there.
It was thrilling.
There were things in that valley that couldn't be seen anywhere else in Oz without being forced by magic. Here, the power to change abounded. In small creatures and hidden away in little hollows it was shown. Developing, changing, new life.
Being next to it and seeing it made her smile and laugh. Ervic didn't try to hide the wonder and hope that seemed to jump out of him when he saw the life in the vale, and he laughed.
Then, with the sun settling into the horizon, she went back to her cottage and he went back to the Domed City.
It wasn't until the next time he left her house that she allowed herself to more deeply consider the situation. No matter how she phrased each of his arrivals, her home was only where he occasionally stopped, visited. It wasn't where he was returning.
It was something that could stand some adjusting.
The next time he was sitting on one of her elaborately enchanted chairs, she subtly pressed him to stay longer than he was planning to. It didn't work. The time after that, she asked him straight out.
"Why?" he wondered in annoyed confusion.
She wouldn't admit any of the real reasons, and, again, he left.
Even if she wasn't forthright about the cause, that wouldn't stop her from making an argument. The next time he was there, she had a fitting retort.
"Why not?"
Ervic seemed put out to be going over the topic again, and he glared for a good bit before answering. "What's different? What's changing that I should stay?"
It was more a matter of who was changing rather than what. "My home is not lovely, but it is fascinating. You said you tired of the same thing. Try something new, remain."
"Your cottage was already fascinating. New things aren't always enjoyable, sometimes they're merely troublesome. Remaining here wouldn't last, I still have an official job with the Skeezers."
"I didn't mean stay forever." The occasional necessity of leaving for business kept her from getting bored of him. "Only sometimes."
"I'm already here sometimes," he said, and left.
Twice more he refused to be convinced, ignoring the convenience of staying where he spent a good amount of time anyway. Admittedly, he was still a long way from spending most of his time in her company, but he had never seemed particularly attached to the Domed City. Circumspectly, she tried to discover if anything was holding him there.
"I am the Prime Minister," he answered, though it had never appeared to be a position he held dear to his heart. "What am I here?"
The topic was bandied about in varying degrees of detail through his next several appearances. Frequently, the arguments cycled, but sometimes they seemed to point to a workable solution.
"It's growing dark," she would say, and he would rise to leave without comment. "The way may be dangerous."
"Not in this portion of Oz," he would retort.
"Bureaucracy would benefit from a full night of sleep. Traveling for a few hours won't achieve that."
"I rest better in my own home."
"The place you spend the most time is your home."
"Indeed," he would say, and leave.
The place he would return was his home only, and her home was not his.
Her vexation was wry, but her determination was keen. Ervic and his odd, unpredictable ways were an engaging topic of thought. In fact, she had considered the matter with such diligence that when he next stopped by she was in the same true form she'd had on his last visit.
With his rare earnestness, he said her hair was beautiful. Long ago she had disclosed to Ervic and the Adepts that it grew tiresome admiring her own form, and it was much more pleasing to assume a different skin. As of yet, having Ervic admire her was in no way irksome.
"Stay?" she queried, with a lilt in her voice and a toss of the hair he appreciated.
"For awhile," he said easily, leaning against the crocodile turned zebra.
"Longer?"
"No."
The zebra snapped its teeth at him, and he patted its nose and took a seat.
"You enjoy it here," she stated.
"It passes the time."
"You keep coming back."
"It's different," he shrugged.
"It would be much more different to stay, stubborn Skeezer."
"There's no reason to stay." Irritation was beginning to seep into his voice.
"Stay," she said with a curl of amusement.
"As what? A friend? This still wouldn't be my home. Staying longer would not keep me from deciding to leave again. I have no right nor responsibility to be here and you're under no oath to allow me. Nothing has changed that you couldn't throw me out as soon as I ceased to be diverting."
"Stay," she repeated with a smile. "As a husband."
When he kissed her, she realized it was what he'd been aiming for all along.
"I knew I'd convince you eventually," he whispered.
She took his hand and laughed.
A/N: If you've ever read the original Oz series you'll know that it's full of continuity errors and nearly every depiction of a human male was either grotesquely skinny or disturbingly feminine. Although some aspects of the stories increasingly annoyed me as I grew up, the sequence between Reera and Ervic in "Glinda of Oz" held the longest interest and appreciation. Ervic shows up in essentially the third act of the book and plays an indispensable role. Reera was anti-social and uncooperative, and they actually seemed to get along pretty well. As Baum rewrote the origins of the story or key details every other book, I had no qualms about making my own adjustments while keeping some elements cheekily close to the original material.
Special thanks to the Twelve Shots of Summer challenge, which motivated me to finally finish this story!