Stronginthecuticle

I am bursting to say this: I went to a Thud! signing and someone asked, "Will Carrot and Angua ever marry?"

And Terry spake thus, "I don't know! Probably... yes!"

I am full of happy thoughts.

I finally read Guards! Guards! and I don't think Carrot's parents had to speak Morporkian; I think I can just get away with it. Anyway, for fanfiction's sake.

Logic goes out the window. All the fanfiction somehow ends up involving the girlfriend getting whacked on the head and swooning. And the boyfriend has to cradle her to his chest and run gallantly. (This is the only fandom where we run from moonlight rather than explosions!) Sorry for the drop in quality, fellas. I'm just happy I got to write a fic where people don't die after kissing... the two tend to go together somehow.

Note: I finished the plot of this before Thud! came out. Just so you know. Therefore no showers, and a bit of a surprise at the end...

--

Cheery flopped down on a chair and gulped her carrot beer down thirstily. Vimes was cutting the cake with surprising swordsmanship, and she'd seen Colon sneak an extra piece out. So the Protest Again Tax Cuts had another supporter, only one with less guts.

She sighed happily. The squishi had been a hit, and people had really taken to the carrot-on-a-stick. It was proof. Cheery Littlebottom could Cook. Now, finally, being in touch with your feminine side would be seen in a more positive light...

Two older, stout, stern-faced dwarves approached her. You could tell they were stern and respectable dwarves because of all the worry lines on their faces, but at the present they were beaming. The male dwarf was eating a carrot bagel. Those had been popular too.

"We saw what an excellent job you did with the party," the female dwarf smiled.

"Not at all," Cheery said with a modest smile.

"And humble too," the female said proudly, and the male nodded. "So kind of you to do this for our Carrot. We're Mr. and Mrs. Ironfoundersson. You must be Angua. Carrot's told us a lot about you."

Cheery spluttered into her beer and some went up her nose. Carrot beer on the brain!

"We thought Carrot might go for, you know, his own kind," Mrs. Ironfoundersson continued, "but you seem like a good dwarf for him. And he did say you were shorter than him.(1)"

"But I'm not Angua!" Cheery sputtered, dropping her mug on the floor. "Wait - we'll go see Angua now."

She tugged them through the throng and out the door, where Angua was mumbling about fish.

"This is Angua of a feminine nature," Cheery said loudly and slowly in Dwarvish. "She's your son's friend of a romantic nature." She glanced at Angua, who looked stunned, and muttered in Ankh-Morporkian, "Tell them you're Carrot's girlfriend!"

Angua appeared to concentrate. "Yes, I am a watermelon cupcake." (2)

There was silence.

"No, you're not!" Cheery squawked. "Nuances, Angua, Dwarvish is delicate! Say it again."

Angua managed it, barely.

"No, she's not," Mr. Ironfoundersson said worriedly. "She said she was a gooseberry tart just now."

Cheery struggled and said, "Her name translates badly. And her accent is of an Uberwald nature."

"Uberwald!" Mrs. Ironfoundersson gasped. "Does she then have a mind of a rock-solid nature?"

"Yes," Angua retorted angrily, "I do have blueberry muffins."

The dwarves gasped. Mr. Ironfoundersson choked on bagel crumbs.

"Anguathatisnotsomethingyousayinpublic!" Cheery whispered in a strangled voice.

"What?" Angua whispered back.

"Connotations, Angua! You definitely have blueberry muffins but you don't tell everyone in public!"

"I did not say blueberry muffins!"

"Yes, you did! Now, quick, say that you have performed an error of a most grave nature. Blusjdken yryt'umblws gum'wn'mwent'oki lufkd w'vancwpt."

Angua bit her lip. "Blusjdken... yryt, yryt'umbl-ws..."

Sweat beaded on Cheery's forehead. "Gum'wn'mwent'oki..." she repeated slowly.

--

Carrot drizzled some carrotsauce over a carrot in a bun and carried it out of the back room.

He was just in time to hear Angua announce, "I have performed a chocolate cheesecake."(4)

All heads turned to stare at him.

Carrot began to blush so hard that you could hear the ppshhhhhhh as the color steadily washed over his face and down his neck. His eyes began to cross slightly.

With a battle cry that would have impressed a might dwarf general of old(5), Mrs. Ironfoundersson snatched her husband's bagel and hurled it with deadly accuracy to its target, which was the middle of Angua's forehead. She toppled over quite neatly.

Carrot's adoptive parents craned their necks up – waaaay up. Mrs. Ironfoundersson dusted the crumbs off her hands and said in quite a motherly voice, "Hello, son. Look at you, you're such a son of a big big big nature now!"

Carrot dropped to his knees and gave his adoptive mother a hug. He gave his adoptive father a hug. Then he carefully arranged Angua on his shoulder.

"Mum, I love her," he said simply. "But I've tried everything and she still speaks terrible Dwarvish."

Mrs. Ironfoundersson dipped her head. "Very well," she said. "But I do not regret my actions. Your honor was at stake!"

Mr. Ironfoundersson looked sadly at his bagel, which was still rolling on the floor.

"I'll have to talk to you later, mum and dad," Carrot added, "And I'm sure you'll love Angua when you get to know her better."

The two older dwarves exchanged looks again. Finally Mrs. Ironfoundersson leaned forward and said something in Carrot's ear, pressing something Cheery couldn't see into his hand. He blushed somewhat more.

Then he stood up, cradling Angua to his chest.

"Not your room," Cheery said quickly. "Igor's sick bay at the present."

"The bathroom," said Carrot decisively. "We'll just have to run through the back room and we'll be safe upstairs."

"Why run?" asked Mr. Ironfoundersson.

"Oh, Angua's a werewolf," Carrot said casually. "But only three nights a month!"

Cheery threw open the door and they ran.

--

Carrot stood with his back to the solitary window along the corridor as Cheery pounded on the bathroom door.

"Open up, Nobby!"

"No!"

"Are you doing anything illegal or embarrassing, Nobby?" Carrot asked.

"No!"

"Then I declare this an emergency," Carrot said, and kicked the door open.

Nobby was squatting by the wooden washtub with a mug of cocoa and a slice of cake.

"You're not allowed- what happened to her?"

"Bagel injury," said Carrot. He dipped his hand in the sink and sprinkled a few drops of water on Angua's face, but nothing happened.

"Went down the wrong way?"

Carrot explained patiently, "Victims hit by a dwarf bagel don't usually like to be woken up. They just want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep."

"Ooh, I know what you can for that," Nobby said surprisingly. He stuck his hand into the washtub and pulled out a wriggling pigfish. Cheery peered into the tub. It was full of fish – wolffish, ghostfish, frogfish, snakefish...

"Oh, good thinking," Carrot said. "Just hold it under her nose, she's coming round already."

Nobby slipped the pigfish down the back of Angua's shirt.

There was a moment were time seemed to stop, just a moment.

And then Angua's eyes shot open and she leapt up.

And then she screamed, "I hate these fishing fish!"

And then she flung the pigfish at the door. It thumped, flopped down, and wriggled feebly.

Angua sat down and buried her face in her hands. Carrot rubbed her comfortingly on the back.

Nobby bent to retrieve the pigfish. "You made it choke!" he complained. "Look."

He held up something small and round and white.

"Is that its stomach?" Carrot gasped, horrified.

"It's a... pearl," Angua said. I smelled chocolate... Realization dawned on her. "Nobby, have you been in Flopwaddle's Fish Emporium stealing fish?"

"Well, they don't really belong to anyone now, do they? And Fred says these toadfish are really something..."

Angua snatched up a toadfish and threw it at the door, where it again thumped satisfactorily. Something small and hard skittered across the floor. Cheery picked it up and squinted at it.

"I don't know, they're not very pretty, are they?" she mused, true to her gold, gold, gold, golden roots. "And I thought oysters had shells?"

Angua, grinning delightedly, held a particularly fat ratfish by its tail and slapped it hard on the floor. A small gold ring rolled out. Cheery's eyes gleamed.

Carrot tentatively held a dogfish around its middle and tried to massage the lump out.

Thump, thump.

"Um, Angua, if you squeeze gently, it still comes ou- oh, uh, Nobby, what's this?"

Thump, thump, thump.

After two more fish Angua began laughing uncontrollably, especially watching Nobby try and return the fish to the washtub. He didn't realize she'd made a hole in the side.

--

(1) This is not an unkindness on Carrot's part as it often is with tall people. Dwarf etiquette dictates that the female should be shorter than the male, if possible. This is often hard to tell with dwarves, of course, but it is an interesting idea of how the race might have started off.

(2) Connotations. The cupcake is roughly equivalent to our lead musket ball, and vaguely alludes to violence.

(3) More bad connotations.

(4) Absolutely shocking connotations. Never, never, never to be repeated outside the bedroom.

(5) Except the one she was married to, who was quite used to it.