Chapter IV: The Curse Grows Stronger

Benny's dreams were, as usual, full of stone walls and shadows. Of billowing green robes, of lilies that glowed yellow and gold, and of painful memories.

Around him, above him, and even under him, the castle's walls were cracking and groaning. Tearing apart piece by piece until the ceiling had completely eroded away, leaving him exposed to the frigid night wind and cowering under the scrutiny of the sky's thousands of starry eyes. His ears could pick up the sound of wicked laughter; his eyes spotted glimpses of green, but everytime he searched for the source of the voice, he found nothing. He saw his parents run toward him, felt himself run to greet them, desperate to hear their laughs and see their smiles, but when he touched them, all he could feel was cold stone.

Despite this, all his physical body, the one mostly paralyzed by sleep, did was twitch once or twice. This was nothing new to him. He'd had dreams like this before, and he'd be fine.

That was before he saw the yellow cloak.

Luan stood in the middle of the wreckage, completely oblivious to the pieces of stone that broke off the walls and landed dangerously close to her small form. She looked straight ahead with a blank, glassy-eyed stare that Benny knew the real Luan would never possess. She didn't make a sound; her face was completely expressionless and she stood as still as the familiar stone statues that surrounded her.

Benny knew he was dreaming and that this was merely an apparition of his friend, because Luan would never stand that still. Her face was always doing something, reacting to something, and even when she thought she was sitting still, her foot would be tapping against the floor, or else her fingers would drum against the wall. However, the fact that she was just an illusion didn't stop him from turning away from the frozen forms of his parents and rushing over to her, trying to reach for her and pull her out of the rubble before she got hurt.

She didn't react as he approached. There was no recognition in her eyes, nor any hint of a smile on her face. She remained stock-still, her arms neatly pinned against her sides, her legs pressed tightly together.

He touched a hand to her narrow shoulder, trying to coax her out of this unsettling emotionless state and back into the plethora of funny and fascinating expressions he loved seeing her wear. She didn't budge, didn't even look at him. Her eyes were still fixed on something far off in the distance, her gaze so unwavering that Benny didn't think she was even blinking.

Not sure what else to try, Benny took her hand in his. She didn't even seem to feel the sensation, but he could. Her hand was small and smooth and…cold. Very cold. It was quickly taking on a rough, almost gravelly texture. He felt a jolt of icy fear and looked down at their joined hands, but he didn't need to see the color change to understand what was going on.

Luan was turning to stone.

Desperately, he tugged on her arm, trying to pull her out of there because truth be told, he was terrified of losing her the way he'd lost everything else. Her feet, having already fused to the floor, didn't move. Her face remained numb, unchanging. There was nothing he could do except watch as the stone travelled across her wrists, up her arms and around her shoulders before brushing against the pale outline of her collarbone.

All through this transformation, Luan was empty, unmoving, until the stony magic reached up to her neck. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to let out a panicked scream that tore his heart to shreds. The sounds of the ceiling cracking and the enchantress's laughter faded away. Her shouts were the only thing he could hear.

In that moment, Benny found his voice. "No!" he shouted as Luan's face was slowly encased in stone. The walls broke apart, raining down an avalanche of stones and glass shards. The broken pieces crushed him and buried her before he could even see what her frozen face looked like. Come to think of it, he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to.

There was no sunshine or warmth, only an icy chill that made him shiver. The stars glowered down on him, judging him and making him feel weak and helpless. The world was cold, cold, cold… and unforgiving.

A flicker of yellow light in the distance, beyond the completely-demolished walls, caught his attention, and for a moment he hoped it was Luan, alive and safe and preferably armed with an onslaught of puns. He dragged himself closer to the light, though it was incredibly difficult due to the suffocating weight of all the layers of rock on top of him, until he could make out a shape.

It was a gleaming golden lily. And one of the petals was starting to fall off.

…

Benny woke up in a cold sweat, panting hard. He realized immediately that he'd thrown off his blanket in his sleep, which helped to explain the shivering. His sheets were torn to the point where they were little more than frail, tattered scraps hanging loosely over his mattress. He must've been clawing at them in his sleep. The nightmare he'd just suffered had been a particularly bad one, for sure. He'd never done this much damage. He hadn't even been aware that he could do this much damage. That was not a comfortable thought.

He glanced out the window. The full moon was still high in the sky, glowing like a crystal ball coming to warn him of his doomed fate. He hadn't been asleep for long, and he definitely wouldn't be able to fall asleep again.

His first worried instinct was to check the attic, where he kept the special yellow lily which was tied to his curse, to see if it had really lost a petal like it had in his dream. His thoughts were interrupted when he heard someone scream. Apparently that hadn't just been a part of his nightmare.

His ears pricked at the sound, standing straight up on top of his head. He rushed to the door and threw it open, forgetting for a moment that he wasn't supposed to venture very far outside, for fear that someone would see him and, assuming the worst about him, attack him. Self-preservation and survival instincts seemed like an afterthought when someone else was clearly in danger.

He stood in the doorway, his eyes scanning the thornbushes surrounding the path to the castle, then skirting the hills that led into the village, before glancing in the other direction towards the spindly, twisted trees that made up what the locals called the Dark Woods. To say it lightly, this was not a place you wanted to get tangled up in. Even before the curse was thrust upon him, Benny had avoided going through it at all costs.

He was just about to give up searching for the source of the screams and admit that he'd been hallucinating and was more than likely going crazy when his gaze snagged on a faint streak of yellow. The familiar color shone under the full moon like a nightlight or a luminous phantom that still lingered in his mind even after his nightmares were over.

He had an unsettling, creeping suspicion about who this vibrant garment belonged to, Once again, staying alive was no longer a priority for him. He broke out into a run, sailing past the prickly thornbushes, over the wall surrounding his castle, and into the forbidden woods, his eyes never straying from the yellow light. As he drew closer, what he saw made him freeze in pure fear. He backed away slowly, his eyes wide, until he felt his back press up against the rough bark of a skinny tree trunk.

A small, yellow-clad figure that was most definitely Luan stood in a low crouch, trying to make herself look as small as possible. Which was a good idea because circling her, in between the narrow trees, were six snarling, very angry wolves, slowly striding closer. One of them, the biggest by far, had a face covered in cream, the color such a stark contrast from the rest of its black fur and from its intimidating, growling face that in a different circumstance Benny probably would've laughed. He noticed a gleaming, cast-away pie tin on the forest floor, still containing a few stuck-on crumbs of baked dessert. Benny could smell the failed comedic setup from a mile away.

"Howl are you doing?" Luan asked the cream-faced wolf as he glowered at her. Her tone was lighthearted, but Benny could see that her shoulders were shaking-she was obviously scared out of her mind. "G-Get it? Anyway, this was j-just an ill attempt at humor. Sorry, I didn't expect you to take it so p-pawsonally. Haha…ha?"

All this did was cause the wolf to lunge at her with a sharp, resounding bark. Luan screamed, losing her footing and tumbling backwards. She lay stunned on the ground for a moment, breathing hard, before sitting up and trying very awkwardly to crab-walk away on her hands and feet. She looked around, perhaps trying to locate the other five wolves, which had moved in closer, flanking the biggest wolf-their pack leader, no doubt. As she turned her neck to glance backward over her shoulder, her eyes located Benny. He could see the terror they held, and a glimpse of panicked tears in their corners that reflected the moonlight.

"Oh, h-hi, Benny!" Luan tried to smile. "I may have gotten myself into a little…situation here." She turned back to face the angry wolves, holding her hands out in front of her with the palms up. "See? I mean no harm, so please don't wolf me down for dinner." One of the smaller wolves snapped at her, its slavering jaws less than an inch from her pale, exposed fingers, and Luan flinched in response. Benny thought he might've flinched a little, too.

He wanted to yell at her and reprimand her for the absolutely moronic things she'd just done. Another part of him wanted to calm her down, pull her into his arms and tell her not to be scared, while still another wanted to hide behind her because the truth was, nobody who was in their right mind wouldn't be scared of half a dozen huge wolves. Yet another small, foolish part of him really wanted to make a few halfhearted wolf puns of his own, which he immediately shut down because this was clearly not the time for shenanigans.

The thing that tumbled out of his mouth, however, was "Did you seriously throw a pie at an angry alpha wolf?!"

"Yes. S-Seriously, I did. It s-seemed like a funny idea at the time, but in hindsight I can say with absolute c-certainty that it was really not." Luan couldn't seem to get the terrified stutter out of her voice.

"What am I going to do with you, Luan?"

"Um…s-save me from impending doom? I don't want to sound d-desperate here, but I'm really freaking out right now."

What was he meant to do? Sure, he was a big thing with teeth and claws, but so were they, and there were six of them! Going up against them would be a death sentence. But if he did nothing, Luan would surely die and then life would lose all meaning, so why was he hesitating?

The largest wolf barked a sudden order to its followers, cream spraying from its jowls. Moving as one, the wolves surrounded Luan, nipping at her arms and legs as though she was nothing more than a prey animal they were trying to take down. Their claws and teeth tugged at and tore into her cloak. The alpha wolf stared up at Benny, its eyes holding a challenging glare, before lunging for Luan's throat.

As he saw the wolf's exposed fangs, saw the swift black arc of its body and what it was headed for, something within Benny snapped. He may not have been exceptionally strong or incredibly smart, and maybe his sense of humor was more than a little terrible, but he knew one thing for certain: nobody messed with Luan.

Feeling a growl rise in his throat, Benny dove after the alpha wolf, picking it up easily by the scruff of its neck. He made sure to sink his claws a little extra-deep into its sensitive skin before throwing the creature headfirst into the biggest, thickest tree he could see. The wolf whined, staggering woozily around the base of the tree for a minute before rejoining the fight.

As soon as they saw Benny assault their leader, all of the other wolves' focus turned to him. A pair of them leapt at him, but he just picked them up and threw them aside to suffer the same fate as their alpha. The others, the concussed black leader included, surrounded him and he shifted to all fours, his pupils narrowing to slits. He bit and scratched crazily at anything he could reach that moved, tasting blood in his mouth and feeling his claws deliver scratches and rips to several of the wolves' bodies, feeling a strange sense of glee whenever he heard one of them yip or yelp in pain.

The wolves gave him quite a few scrapes as well, and once, a painful bite on the back of his neck. But he could barely feel any of them over the savage burst of adrenaline that surged through his body. Any human instincts he'd had left were completely gone.

Though Benny could never know it, in this moment, high up in the Stone Castle's attic, glowing gold under its protective glass casing, the first petal on that special yellow lily fell, brushing softly against the floor of its transparent prism. Leaving only five silky petals behind.

The wolves, now battered and bloody, turned away and fled, their tails tucked between their legs as they ran deeper into the woods. Benny saw this and raised his head towards the full moon. He let a triumphant howl escape his throat.

The moment was short-lived. His ears, detecting the light sound of footsteps, flattened against the sides of his head. A bright, yellow figure was walking over to him.

Who was this? She seemed small and delicate enough; he could probably take her down with much less difficulty than he had the wolves. She bent down to meet his eyes-she seemed to recognize him?-and he snarled, exposing his sharp teeth and letting his back arch as a warning telling the creature not to get any closer.

Had he seen her before? He felt like he had. Confused about his feelings, he barked, causing her to wince and step back a few paces. Good. He didn't actually want to hurt her, because an odd little part of him thought she was too pretty to destroy.

Where had that come from? Why did the sight of her mess up his instincts?

"Benny," she said. The word meant nothing to him. Why was she speaking to him at all? She had no reason to. Was she threatening him?

She moved in closer, saying that strange word again and reaching out a shaky hand to try to touch his face.

Okay, definitely threatening him. He took her wrist in his jaws and bit down-not hard, just enough to draw blood and let this weird animal know not to provoke him. He heard her shout and was reminded of how much he'd enjoyed the panicked yips the wolves had given when he'd torn into them. Excited at the idea of getting to experience that thrill again, he shoved her roughly to the ground, his claws pinning her in place as she stared up at him in fear and shock. His jaws moved closer to the pale, bare skin of the animal's neck, ready to finish the job.

"Benny!" she cried again, and he finally registered what that meant. She was referring to him. That was his name. "Benny, stop! It's me!"

He looked her in the eyes, flashes of jumbled-up memories running through his confused head. The reason he'd attacked the wolves in the first place was because of her. This beautiful, mysterious creature wasn't a threat. She was…everything?

How could he have tried to kill her? What had come over him?

He backed away as quickly as he could, still on all fours although now that position felt sort of unnatural to him, and whimpered softly. He looked at the creature in the yellow cloak lying still on the ground a few feet away. He watched her pick herself shakily off the ground, her eyes fixing themselves on him and never letting go.

He felt a foggy feeling lift from his head as his thoughts and memories returned, along with a sense of deep, deep guilt. He couldn't believe what had happened and what he'd almost done to her.

He groaned softly, brushing his hands against the bite wound on the back of his neck. Now he felt the scratches. And they hurt a lot.

"...Luan?" he whispered, just to make sure he still had a voice.

Hearing this, Luan's eyes lit up with a relieved spark. She got to her feet again and started running in a direction that, to Benny's surprise, wasn't away from him, but rather towards him.

There was so much he wanted to say to her, and he had little idea where to start. "Luan, you know I think you're the greatest, but that was an incredibly stupid thing to-"

His voice cut off in utter shock as she ran straight into his arms, hugging him tightly and burying her face in his chest. As he hesitantly placed his hands on her shoulders to return the gesture, he felt her shoulders tremble and heard a small sound. Luan was sobbing.

He'd never seen her do a thing like that before, and had absolutely no clue how to deal with it. He let himself hold her a moment longer, thinking of how odd it felt to be holding such a small, warm, and soft thing. He was afraid to hug her too tightly, though, in case he went feral again and tried to hurt her.

If it was up to him, nothing would ever harm her again. But it wasn't-the world was dangerous and the thing that had taken over his mind terrified him because it made him dangerous to her. It made him feel as though he shouldn't be allowed to be around her at all. Which also terrified him.

He lifted her off the ground, letting her cling as tightly as she wanted to his neck (which was pretty tightly; her grip was amazingly strong), and carried her out of the woods, not wanting to spend another minute in there. He thanked the stars that she was safe and that everything had turned out okay, but worried that this might not always be the case.

Wordlessly, he made his way back to the safety of the Stone Castle, stepping through the left-open doorway and shutting the door tightly behind him. If anything would protect Luan, he'd put his faith in layers and layers of stone walls.

She didn't stir as he walked up the spiral staircase and set her down in one of the vibrant red armchairs in the castle's parlor. Before Luan had arrived, the fabric chairs had been one of the only splashes of color in the entire palace, though now many of the walls were painted cheerful colors and adorned with murals depicting sunshine and trees.

The contrast between Luan's torn and dirty yellow cloak and the deep red chair was amusing and interesting, but he paid much more attention to how much she shivered, and how cold she was becoming. He thought briefly, painfully, about the nightmare he'd had earlier that evening, and as he looked down at her, he was genuinely afraid that she might turn to stone.

He'd never seen her expression in his dream when she became a statue. Would she have frozen in a position of fear the way everyone else had? Or would she have smiled, not wanting her last moments to be full of strife and sorrow? Because that would've been incredibly brave of her, and incredibly true to the Luan he knew and cared for.

He lit a fire in the large gray fireplace and scooted her chair closer to the warmth. He searched the room for a blanket, wanting to do everything he could to make her feel even safer and more comfortable. Finding nothing, he slid his arms out of the sleeves of his blue jacket and draped the cloth over her shoulders. Sure, the fact that he only had on a thin white tunic underneath left him shivering himself, but this was for Luan. If it came to that, he'd gladly let himself freeze to death for this sparkly little sunshine of a girl.

He touched his palm to her forehead, gently brushing a few pesky locks of light brown hair away from her face. Her head lifted and she blinked up at him, and then of course he had to drop his gaze because dang it, it was just too easy to get hopelessly lost in those big amber eyes.

Say something! his brain shouted, and so he searched desperately through his mind for something intelligent or funny to say, but words were kind of hard when she was staring at him like that.

"I…um…" He glanced down the hall at the iron stovetop in the kitchen. "I'm going to make soup." That was the first thing he could come up with, but come to think of it, a bowl of the steamy hot liquid would keep him nice and warm throughout the cold night. He could definitely use that after surrendering his jacket to his notably-less-fluffy friend.

Luan sat up and smiled. She looked down curiously at the jacket covering her back and shoulders before pulling her arms through the sleeves without hesitation. "That would be…souper great."

He winked at her. "Might I add that you look absolutely brothtaking?"

Jokes aside, she did look pretty cute all bundled up in his coat. Yellow might've been her color, but she didn't look half-bad in blue, either.

"Even though I nearly got killed by a pack of wolves ten minutes ago?"

"Yep. Pho real."

"Seriously. I probably look like death." She pulled up the hood of her cloak, hiding her eyes, which still betrayed that she'd been all but traumatized by what had happened earlier. Even in her scared, broken state, she playfully pretended to be the Grim Reaper, creepily holding out her arm and pointing an outstretched finger at Benny, as though she'd just come to reap his soul.

He let a small smile slip at her antics. "Luan, when I say you're the spice of my life, I mean it."

Was that just the flickering firelight, or did her cheeks really have a touch more color than they'd had before? It was funny how he could never really tell when it came to her, and funnier still how much he wanted to figure her out.

He left the room, walking down the hall into the kitchen and turning on the stove. A moment later, he heard the familiar sound of light footsteps. Luan had followed him, still wearing his blue jacket. He had to stifle a laugh; the garment was at least three sizes too big for her.

He filled a bowl with water from the kitchen faucet and pulled open the icebox to add in some chopped vegetables and herbs he'd gathered from his garden. As he set the mixture on the stovetop and started to stir with a wooden spoon, he was conscious of the fact that Luan's eyes were following him. Studying him.

"What?" he asked.

"You're hurt," she said simply.

"It's not that big a deal-"

"Hush." She put a hand on his arm. "I feel bad about what I put you through and I don't want the wounds to get infected. That's two good reasons, which is twice as many as you have, so just admit that I'm right. Now kneel down and let me take a look."

It was entirely pointless to argue with Luan. So he did what she asked, giving her a mock bow in the process. "Anything for you, my lady."

"Believe me, I'm no lady," Luan said as she pulled a cup out of the cupboard and filled it with warm water. "I've been called a royal pain before, but that's about as prestigious as my pedigree gets." She poured the warm water over every scratch and scrape she could see to clean them. "Tell me if I do something that hurts."

"Luan…" Benny tried to protest one last time, but Luan wasn't buying any of it.

"I know what I'm doing." She doused the back of his neck in water and Benny felt the painful sting of the bite wound as the liquid touched it. "You don't grow up with ten siblings without learning at least a little bit of first-aid."

"I know you're joking about the ten siblings thing. You can drop the act."

"I'm serious!" she cried.

"Uh-huh." He raised an unconvinced eyebrow.

Luan studied his scratches for a minute longer before reaching down to tear strips off the tattered hem of her cloak. She tied the pieces around the biggest wounds as makeshift bandages.

"Isn't that your favorite cloak?" Benny asked.

"What, this old thing? It'll be fine. I'll get my sister, Leni, to patch it up for me. She may be a complete ditz, but she's good with fabric." She tied a piece of cloth around the bite wound on her wrist-a mark that, Benny recalled painfully, he'd given her.

She caught him watching her and gave him a significant, sympathetic look. Despite what had happened, she was still beside him. He couldn't wrap his brain around why she didn't even seem to be scared. Luan was a puzzling enigma to him.

Wanting to direct the conversation away from himself, and wanting her eyes to do something other than screw up his head, he asked, "What were you doing up in the middle of the night, anyway?"

"Oh. Well, I couldn't sleep, so I decided to take a walk to clear my head. I figured I'd come here and bring you a pie. I saw the woods and thought I'd take a detour. And unfortunately, that led to one of the worst decisions I've ever made. And I've made a lot of terrible decisions."

He smiled wryly. "I know a thing or two about pranking the wrong people."

The look in her eyes indicated that she was curious about what he meant, but he didn't elaborate and she didn't try to make him. "I mean, if you want to be technical about it, I didn't prank a person. I pranked a wolf."

"That's even worse!"

"I know!" A sigh escaped her throat. "Sometimes I just forget to think, I guess. I see some setup that could be funny and I just… I have to do it. I don't think about the consequences that might happen after or even about if someone might get hurt. Or if I'll get hurt. My impulsiveness always seems to get the best of me." She looked up at him. "I'm sorry you had to bail me out."

Oh, Luan. He wondered just how many mistakes and regrets she had stuck in her head. Still, in a way, it was nice to know that she had messed up a lot in the past just like he had. Her insecurities and flaws made him realize that she wasn't perfect-she was a real person with depth and layers below the surface for him to uncover and try to understand.

Which only made him think she was even more beautiful. Dang it.

He left all of that unsaid. "I'm just glad you're safe."

"Not half as much as I am!" Luan said with a broad smile. She fiddled with one of the buttons on his jacket. "You really beat the tails off those wolves. Any idea what happened?"

"Not a clue," he answered truthfully. "It all feels kind of foggy. I saw you getting attacked and I… I don't know. I completely lost my mind. It was like my animal instincts just took over. I don't know if it's tied to my curse or if I really am a monster like everyone thinks, and I'm scared because I hurt you, and-"

He was cut off once again as Luan pulled him into another hug. The fire had made her skin so warm that it was almost like hugging a tiny piece of the sun.

"We'll figure this out. I'm not going anywhere," she assured him.

You should, he thought, and was just about to voice his concerns when she spoke again.

"Y'know, I like hugging you. It's sort of like hugging a big, warm, fluffy puppy. Except you can talk to me and you laugh at all my jokes and you're also insufferably cute, so it's even better."

His brow furrowed. "I'm beginning to think you don't know what the word cute means."

"I assure you, I know exactly what-"

"Luan, look at me!" He held out his claws for emphasis which were, of course, still sharp and coated in a layer of blood. "I don't know why you even stick around at all! I'm hideous and horrifying and dangerous and I almost killed you and I-"

"You're not seeing the things that I do, which is really a shame because there's cuteness written all over you. This is cute." Luan touched a finger to the tip of his pink nose, letting a smile slip as his tail started to wag, thumping against the stone floor.

She reached behind him and caught his tail mid-wag, running a warm hand through the fur before letting it go again. "This is cute." Then, she got to her feet, standing nimbly on her tiptoes in order to fluff up his mess of dark, curly hair. "And this is really cute."

He wasn't entirely sure he confided in her strange definition of adorableness, but he knew for sure that he loved having her around, loved feeling her soft touches and loved the way she always kept him guessing, never sure of what she'd do next. Besides, he'd believe anything she told him-he'd gladly admit that the sun was green and the clouds rained rainbow sprinkles if it meant he'd get to spend another moment with her. Or if it would keep her safe.

She shocked him yet again when she pulled back to take his clawed hands in hers, giving them a tight squeeze. He couldn't help but stare down at all the differences between their hands: his large and dark, covered in fur and bristling with sharp edges, while hers were small and pale with neat, rounded nails. And warm, incredibly warm…why were they so warm?

"These parts," she said, brushing her thumb across his black claws. "I could do without. But they have a purpose. They saved me. You saved me." She looked him straight in the eyes, her expression soft and compassionate. "That's why I stick around. Not just because you like my terrible puns, although, yeah, the puns are a pretty big part of it. There's a certain kindness, an extra-special something in you that makes me want to be around you. And I know you don't see it in yourself, but I see it, and it's there and you're just going to have to trust me."

She gave him a playful wink, giving his paws one final squeeze before letting go. "Besides, I know you love it when I call you cute, because your tail does this everytime I say it." She pointed at his still-wagging tail and smirked. "So shut up and let me do it, you big cutie."

For the first time in probably forever, Benny was grateful to be covered in so much dark fur, since it hid how deep and red his blush was. He ran his fingers shyly through the fur on his neck and wondered once again what he did to deserve this bright little ray of sunshine in his life.

"You are a bizarre and fascinating creature," he told her.

"I'm perfectly aware of that." She yawned, pulling his jacket tighter around her waist and shoulders before leaning into his side with a content little sigh.

"Luan?" he asked, and when he heard no reply, he realized that she'd fallen asleep, her body calm and still. Her face still held the faintest hint of a smile, as though she knew she was completely safe.

He scooped her up and carried her back to the parlor, placing her gently into the red armchair she'd sat in a while earlier.

He was just about to turn away when he heard a small voice mutter, "Where do fish sleep? In a riverbed."

Ha. Luan even made puns in her sleep.

As he added more wood to the dying flames in the fireplace, he saw smoke drifting in from the kitchen.

He'd forgotten all about the soup.

...

A/N: Another chapter gets thrown into the fanfiction void! Lots of puns, but I warned you about those in this story's description, so you're not legally allowed to complain. You wouldn't believe how many times I had to look up puns. If there's an FBI agent looking at my search history, he's probably like, "What the heck is this girl doing with this many puns?!"

Thanks again to all the lovely people reading this! Reading your reviews makes me melt into a puddle of sparkly, happy ooze. You'd think I'd be able to come up with a better way to describe my reaction, but nope. Happy ooze just about sums it up.

In a few weeks, I'll be going to college. Expect slower updates soon, especially since this is my first-ever year of college and I need to figure out how it works. I'm still young and have plenty of room to grow both as a writer and as a person.

Wishing you all nothing but sunshine in the weeks to come!