Personal Space

Felicia and Ivvrett walked side by side along a not-oft trodden path, the morning sun seeping through the trees above them, coming and going as cloud cover passed across the sky. Ivvrett was setting about his traps for the day. As usual, they would gather whatever else that caught their eye, or stop to eat then and there. What had, just weeks earlier, struck her as rugged and individualistic, she now realized was yet another routine… just one that had been novel to her, that was now anything but novel.

She did intend to move on from him. She had to.

Soon.

Somehow.

As soon as she could figure out how.

Felicia had succeeded at hiding her trepidation from Ivvrett. Or, at least he hadn't noticed. Or if he had, he didn't ask her about it. In any case, it hadn't come up, and that was just fine by her.

The traps successfully prepared for whatever unassuming woodland creatures happened upon them, and a healthy haul of insects and fungi each, the pair headed back home.

Ivvrett's home. His home. Not Felicia's. It wasn't her home, and she was not about to let herself fall into referring to it as such. Absolutely not.

As the two began walking, Ivvrett held out his hand for Felicia to hold, as he often did. She looked at it for half a second. She should take it. If she didn't, he'd ask what was wrong. But wasn't her goal to eventually tell him just that? Not yet. She didn't have a plan yet.

"Is everything all right?" Ivvrett asked simply, his hand still extended. His eyebrow raised quizzically, ever so slightly.

Ironically, her current hesitation had brought about his concern, anyway.

"Of course!" Felicia chirped automatically, putting a smile back on her face as her clammy hand grabbed his, but not quite meeting his eye.

"Are you sure?" Ivvrett asked. "You've seemed kind of, I don't know, spacey the last week or so–"

"Yes, I'm fine," she emphasized, squeezing his hand affectionately. She looked up at him, and kissed him lightly.

Ivvrett allowed himself to return the grin. "Okay, well, if there was anything, you could tell me. We're, you know… together."

Felicia's stomach flipped inside-out at his utterly casual observation, but her face maintained its pleasant facade. She squeezed his hand again and nodded, to save herself from having to say anything else.

She really needed to figure something out, and soon.

The pair soon enough came back upon the modest homestead, the thicket of trees thinning in the last dozen-yard stretch to the firepit in the "courtyard." Seeing the familiar front door brought Felicia a mix of relief, as well as a renewed anxiety about the predicament still looming over her head.

The churning in her mind was abruptly cut short, however, as Ivvrett gripped her hand tighter, pulling her back to where he'd frozen.

"Wha–" Felicia began to ask, but was quickly shushed as he pulled her with him behind a tree.

"Someone's been here," Ivvrett whispered to her. He listened, taking in any unusual stimuli around. Felicia attempted to as well, but she couldn't hear, or smell anything out of–

Snap. A twig, from around the back of the house, out of view. The two looked at each other, silently agreeing to continue forward toward the misguided intruder.

Ivvrett and Felicia crept closer toward the front door, and split as they approached the fire pit, ready to double-team from both sides whatever buffoon had encroached on an ogre's home. As they got closer, the faint sound of grass rustling behind the dwelling became clearer. Felicia was finally able to detect the scent profile of the uninvited interloper. She paused mid-stride, her eyes widening… there was no possible way that was–

"AGHT!" A dreadfully familiar voice choked out in panic, Ivvrett having made his move while Felicia had been preoccupied mentally. She hurried around the house's backside.

"What do you think you're doing–" Ivvrett grunted aggressively at the trespasser he'd caught in his inescapable headlock. Green hands feebly, futilely pawed at Ivvrett's thick forearms.

"Gus!?" Felicia stood immobilized from shock, eyes wide and alarmed, a few feet in front of the two ogres. Fergus opened an eye to look at her - if he wasn't nearing unconsciousness, he would've been just as shocked, given the situation he'd found her in.

Ivvrett looked at her in bewilderment, then at whoever his arm was currently cutting off the air supply of. Ivvrett released his chokehold, and Fergus fell forward onto the grass, gasping and coughing desperately. He wasn't allowed much reprieve, however, as Ivvrett flipped him onto his back, getting a better look as he knelt over him.

"Waitwait… Fergus? Your brother!?" Ivvrett looked up at Felicia, his face fading from ferocity to dumbfoundment. Fergus nodded with pained effort as he groaned in confirmation.

"What are you– how did–" Felicia's brain was a cacophony of alarm, fear, confusion, and just about any other emotion, rendering her speechless.

Fergus coughed some more as he sat up. He looked a moment at the formidable ogre who'd apprehended him, beginning to process his predicament. "...Ivvrett?" he exhaled, still more than a bit dazed, "Hey, dude… long time no… no see…"

Finally coherent enough to speak, Felicia's mind had settled on an old favorite state: indignation. "Why are you here!" Less a question, more of an accusation.

Fergus swung his head around to his sister. "We've gotta…" he pushed himself up to his knees, and finally to his feet, "Christmas… we're… going home."

Felicia's mind narrowed.

Oh no.

"I uh–" She had to think fast, and act faster. "Wow, I think you maybe had him in that headlock a little too long, Ivv!" Felicia chuckled heartily, looking at Ivvrett with insistent amusement. His brow was still knit in confusion, but a crooked smile began forming on his face, as he followed her convincing lead.

Fergus's own brow furrowed. "What're you talking about? We've only got a few weeks to track down Fark and head–"

"Okaaay!" Felicia joyously steamrolled Fergus's damning explanation, her heart pounding. She took her brother by the shoulders and began steering him back out from behind the house. "Let's get you some water, bro! You're in worse shape than I thought, your brain must be fried from the elements–"

"Look–" Fergus dug his heels into the earth, causing Felicia to stumble in her desperate attempt to neutralize him. "If you're still mad about Duloc, fine. But it's been like, almost two months and we need–"

"Felicia, what's he talking about?" Ivvrett stepped in front of the two siblings, his brow knit in doubt. "You said you hadn't seen your family since you Left…?"

"Yeah!" Felicia answered him, losing her ability to mask the agitation in her voice. "I haven't." She flashed Fergus a murderous glare.

Fergus glanced incredulously between the two ogres before him… before it dawned on him in perfect clarity exactly what was happening.

His face settled into a flat, sardonic smirk. "'Since you Left'? You mean two months ago?" He watched his sister shrivel.

Ivvrett stared at Fergus a moment, processing everything he'd just heard. He looked at Felicia again, his confused expression gradually dropping into something closer to resignation.

"It's not what it–" Felicia began, but Ivvrett held up a hand to stop her, which she obliged defeatedly.

"Look, I think, uh… you'd better go with your brother. It sounds like your family needs you." He met her desperate, apologetic eyes briefly, but averted his gaze again. He nodded curtly to Fergus without looking him in the eye, his hands finding their way into his pockets.

"No, I'm… I'm sorry, I–" Felicia readied herself to explain everything and beg his forgiveness, but then she realized… this was her ticket. She could just go. No strings attached.

Not at all the way she'd have liked to do so, of course; being humiliated by her overly earnest brother was not high on her list. She could have done it without Fergus; she was going to, after all.

Wait… was Ivvrett breaking up with her?

Over her dead body.

Her eyes alit with a fiery indignation again, but this time not directed at Fergus. "No, you know what? I'M breaking up with YOU." She stomped over to the clothesline and snatched off what remained of hers, continuing her tirade. "You're BORING! SAME thing EVERY DAY–" She burst into the house. "You're not even that good of a cook!" her voice bounced off the stone walls and carried out the paneless window. She grabbed her bag from the foot of the bed, shoving her arm inside to check Sir Squeakles was still safe at the very bottom.

Felicia blew back out the front door. "Have a nice life, bucko!" She saluted Ivvrett mockingly as she barreled off into the trees.

Fergus, having watched the entire uncomfortable exchange in silence, gave Ivvrett an apologetic grimace, before hurrying off after his sister.

"Fel!" Fergus shouted at her back as he ran to catch her, to the protest of his recently overworked respiratory system.

She turned to face him just as he reached out to tap her shoulder. "Thanks for that," sarcastic venom dripping from her teeth.

"For what!" he panted, "You could've been… chill about that, but no… you had to go nuclear, and–"

"What are you even doing here, anyway!?" Felicia spat, remembering her initial question. "How did you even find–"

"Tracked you from the cornfields."

Felicia paused, momentarily distracted by his impressive feat, before resuming her posturing. "So what, you've spent all these weeks just following me? Like a lost little–"

"And you've been spending it being a housewife?" Fergus matched her sneer. "What was that you said about being real ogres?"

"I wasNOT being a–" she tried to shoot back.

"Laundry on the line? Two table settings? Pretty blissfully domestic if you ask–"

Felicia rolled her eyes and stepped aside of Fergus, attempting to remove herself from what was quickly becoming an uphill battle. But he matched her dodge.

"Hey– hey. We got some personal space, time to cool off. Right? We needed it, clearly. But we're going home. For Christmas."

Felicia again considered him, a suspicious eyebrow cocked, but her eyes betrayed her outward resistance. She suddenly shook away her crumbling resolve, scoffing. "Yeah, right." She again attempted to evade him, but his arm blocked her once more.

"Felicia." Fergus dipped his head to look her in the eye, which she reflexively reciprocated, before breaking from his convicting stare. She took a deliberate step away from him, but remained.

"Look," he began. "We have our entire lives to get as lost as we want. This is the first Christmas on Leaving. Say what you want about 'real ogres,' I don't really care about any of that. We're different. Always have been. And that's not a bad thing. Really, lying about yourself to Ivvrett, well… that doesn't sound very ogre, to me."

Fergus noted his sister's posture shift, though her face and body remained turned away from him, and she folded her arms across her chest. That meant she was listening.

"This might be the last time we see Mom and Dad before the baby comes. It'll be the last Christmas, at the very least. For whatever that's worth to you." Fergus looked away himself, further down the path that curved off into the woods. He took a deep breath, satisfied with the hand he played.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Felicia's head finally turn back toward him. He met her gaze.

"And hey. If you don't come with me, I'll have to tell them that I did try, and that you actively refused. And kneed me in the gut. And called me a sorry excuse for an ogre." Fergus couldn't suppress the smirk that tugged at his mouth.

Felicia tried in vain to maintain her stoic expression, but similarly failed, chuckling in spite of herself as she looked at her feet.

"You're such a tattletale." She looked back up at her brother, the faint remnants of a smile still on her face.

Fergus shrugged. "Whatever works."

The siblings exhaled, looking down the path again. Fergus suddenly extended a grand arm, bowing with all of the royal training he could muster. "After you, since you know this area better than me."

Felicia's ears lowered slightly, unamused, her smirk turning into pursed lips. She obliged him, however, and took the lead.

Fergus was soon enough walking beside her again. "Time to track us a Farkle." He began straying further from Felicia as the path widened.

"Aht–" Felicia grabbed his knapsack and yanked him back toward her, away from the perfect patch of leaves he was about to step through. "Don't need you getting trapped in another net."


The first snow of their Leaving started as Fergus and Felicia walked across an impossibly vast, flat wasteland of a field. Stopping for a quick spell under one of the area's few trees for Fergus to retrieve his knit hat and Felicia her coat, what had been a light, almost pleasant snowfall had whipped up into a squall as they continued across the near-infinite winter desert, flying flakes in heavy winds obscuring their vision and slowing their pace. By the time the flurry had grown, they'd gotten too far out in the middle of the flatland, with no shelter and no reprieve, their only option to keep going.

Fergus hadn't anticipated snow so early in the season, nor so intense. The rapidly-growing white blanket that covered the earth severely hampered his tracking methods, making the landscape visually indistinct in both sight and scent, to his creeping concern.

The two siblings walked and wandered another two weeks, with no luck locating their missing piece as they entered December.

"What did he do, go home?" Felicia scoffed, considering their increasingly fruitless quest. Fergus offered his own snort in agreement.

They had a compass between them, sure, but that was only as useful as either ogre's ability to know which direction they needed to go, of which neither had the slightest clue. If they stayed in one direction, they started feeling anxious that they were straying off into oblivion. But what if that had been the right way, and diverting paths was what was actually their undoing?

If they were having difficulty finding their way, could they trust Farkle to do it solo?

They didn't want to show up at home without him. But they also didn't want to not make it home.

Assuming either party had half a chance of getting home, at all.

"Are you sure we're still going in the right direction?" Fergus called over the frozen frenzy around them.

"What even IS the right direction?" Felicia answered, continuing forward.

Fergus cupped his hands around his eyes, grateful for what little it helped his eyes not be completely inundated. There was little else except flat earth and snow as he scanned the bleak and blinding horizon - until a single figure, barely silhouetted against the white and gray, gradually came into focus. They were so distant and obscured, he couldn't tell what direction they'd come, let alone were heading in.

Nah. No way. What kind of crazy odds?

"Fel!" Fergus shouted, though luckily Felicia hadn't gotten too much further ahead of him. She turned back to him, and he pointed toward the far-off being. She looked to where he indicated, seeing the figure in question. She turned again to Fergus and shrugged, and continued on.

Fergus caught back up at her side, gesturing again to the figure. "Do you think– that could be–"

"Oh come on!" Felicia scoffed. "All this wandering, and we run into him in a tundra!?"

She was right, Fergus admitted. He looked out again to the figure - they had gotten a bit closer to him and Felicia, he could tell. Still not close enough to make out any discernible features, but they had likely seen them, too.

"They're getting closer," Fergus observed.

"Okay? Two against one," Felicia countered, "And two ogres? No contest. C'mon." She continued on in the same direction, away from the unfortunate soul stuck in the same storm they were.

Fergus took a step along with her, now up to their ankles in fresh snow, but he stopped again, unable to look away from the mystery figure. What could it hurt? Like Felicia had said, two ogres against one… whatever they were.

"HEY!" he bellowed as loud as he could with his hands cupped for amplification, unsure how far his voice would actually carry in the wind. Felicia whipped her head to him in alarm.

The distant figure stopped, as well.

Fergus saw their arms raise to their face, as he had just done. Fergus focused all his energy into listening for the figure to–

"Gus! What are you doing!?" Felicia shouted, after which the individual lowered their arms.

"Shh!" Fergus snapped. "Ugh, forget it!" He picked back up his pace, double-time, toward the inching-closer figure, away from his sister.

"What are you–" Felicia asked incredulously.

"HEY!... HEY!... HEY!..." Fergus repeated as he walked, almost as a mantra. He realized the figure had begun to mimic both his movement and vocalizations, and strained to make out their calls.

Felicia let out a frustrated huff, and turned to catch up to Fergus; for once, she'd rather have taken his lead, than be alone in the middle of a snowstorm.

As the distance between the parties slowly reduced, the lone rover's voice became clearer.

"Hey!"

Felicia froze. Fergus seized his callings.

The form had become clearer, as well. The dark blue coat and hat. The brown knapsack straps on their shoulders. The patched-up trousers.

Fergus and Felicia broke out into a run, clomping through the high snow toward the wanderer, as they did likewise.

The two tackled Farkle in a dual bear hug, causing him to fall backwards into the snow under them.

"Hey," he said, muffled into his siblings' shoulders as his own arms wrapped around them.

"Hey," Felicia and Fergus replied, their relief bursting out of their voices. They hadn't realized how much they'd missed him, how long they'd been looking for him, until he was in front of - well, under - them. By the way Farkle hugged them back, the feeling may have been mutual.

"Fel didn't wanna bother–" Fergus gushed.

"I know! I saw!" Farkle replied with a laugh.

"But I DID, didn't I!?" Felicia retorted, her smile audible.

"When did you realize it was us?" Fergus asked.

"How many dark red and brown coats are out in the middle of–" Farkle began, but stopped. He sat up, pushing the other two off him. "Why are you two together?"


"There was this one mountain that we should check out," Fergus said, rotating the muskrat impaled upon his stick over the fire, "I didn't, only cuz it looked like there was a storm brewing. Considering all this," he gestured around them, "I probably should've just gone for it, heh."

The three sat around a fire under a small copse of evergreens on the far edge of the wasteland they'd all found themselves in, the storm subsided. The sky had quickly darkened from white to black, clouds obscuring any sign of sunset.

Farkle and Felicia listened, their eyes glassy and tired as they tended to their own roasting rats.

"And then… yeah," Fergus continued, "I started tracking Fel, and… now we're here." He let himself trail off, the group comfortably silent for a moment.

Fergus yawned, his own exhaustion beginning to set in, before another topic popped into his mind.

"Remember Ivvrett?" Fergus offered casually, catching Farkle's eye across the fire.

Felicia's eyes widened at Fergus, her mouth pressing into a thin line and her ears lowering. He saw her out of her periphery, but did not acknowledge her.

Farkle nudged his head upward in the affirmative, an eyebrow cocked curiously, unaware of his sister's conspicuous reaction.

"Fel was playing house with him." Fergus eyed Felicia smugly as she simmered.

After a moment, Farkle's face broke out into a devious grin as well, as the revelation sunk in. "So soon after the last one?" he lobbed at his sister.

Felicia considered responding the way her brothers deserved, the way that the mortification burning in her bones was telling her to. But truth be told, she couldn't muster the required energy.

"So what've you been doing the last couple months then, Fark?" she challenged snippily.

Farkle's skewer stopped rotating methodically in his hands, his eyes still forward toward the fire. He looked up at Felicia, and then Fergus, trying to remember how to blink properly. "Oh, uh– you know, nothing really. Just… wandering, you know. Nothing." His attention shifted back toward cooking his dinner, resuming turning his skewer perhaps a bit faster than necessary.

The other two glanced suspiciously at each other.

"Whole lotta nothing, apparently," Fergus probed tauntingly.

"Nah," Felicia dismissed impatiently, "we both said what we did–" she shot another quick glare at Fergus, "Your turn."

"What!" he replied defensively, "Why's it so hard to believe?"

"Then why are you being so weird about it?" Fergus calmly cornered him.

"You're an awful liar," Felicia checkmated.

Farkle's eyes darted between his siblings, the futility slowly consuming him.

"Fine," he relented. "So… after awhile I realized I'd somehow ended up on the road to Far Far Away, and–"

"You went to Far Far Away?" Felicia interrupted, gobsmacked.

"No!" Farkle stopped her. "I was like, 'well I CAN'T go to Far Far Away. So…" The closer he got to saying it, the less confident he felt. "I… wentandsawRenna." He conveniently wiped his nose and mouth as he mumbled the last phrase.

"...You what?" Fergus asked, convincing himself that he hadn't fully understood his brother.

"You WHAT?" Felicia repeated, certain she had fully understood him.

"She didn't SEE me!" Farkle defended himself, gripping his skewer tighter, "I saw her from a distance, okay!"

"Come ON–" Felicia lambasted.

"There's NO rule against seeing NON-FAMILY! 'Kay!?" Farkle blurted. He looked away from either sibling.

The group was silent for a moment, temporarily lacking a response to his staggering admission.

"You're just lucky no one saw you," Fergus finally muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.

Farkle's eyes once again widened involuntarily.

"Farkle, don't tell me–" Felicia begged.

"No no no! Nothing happened. I was only… smelled…" he trailed off, hoping his siblings would assume he meant by Renna or someone else, anyone else, anything so they would stop looking at him.

They continued staring him down, his demeanor signaling his confession was not yet complete. He finished his thought as nonchalantly as he could. "...by Dad."

"DAD!?" Felicia and Fergus shouted, aghast. The two began to shout panicked questions of where and when and how he'd managed to get himself in such a situation, much less get himself out of it.

"But he didn't," Farkle finally quelled his siblings' interrogations. "He was out foraging and I hid in a hole. Covered myself in dirt, didn't move a muscle. Kind of incredible that he didn't, actually." He trailed off, more than a hint of pride in his voice, before coming back to reality. "But I can't even tell him or Mom any of that, anyway! So what was even the point, right?"

"I mean,none of us really can," Felicia added. "We've been apart for months."

"We can't even tell them about Duloc," Fergus expressed, "Well - not the real story."

Silence.

"Look… are we sure we even want to go back for Christmas?" Farkle asked, his voice betraying ambivalence but his inquiry serious. "It's just a lot… we'll have to get our stories straight–"

"Which we can do," Fergus interjected levelly, meeting his eye. Felicia and Farkle met their own gazes and, for once, did not immediately counter him.

"That's assuming we even find our way back in the next couple weeks," Felicia mumbled, her typical biting tone tinged with uncertainty.

"And we will," Fergus emphasized. He looked between the other two, before looking back down. "...We have to."

The siblings looked between one another, agreeing. They removed their skewered muskroasts from the fire, allowing them to cool in the winter night air.

"Wait, so…" Felicia began, "Were you looking for us, too?" She caught Farkle's eye.

"Uh, well–" he looked between the two. "I… wasn't not looking for you. Like if I did come across you, that would've been… y'know, fine."

"So you were," Fergus concluded with a small smirk.

"...Yeah."

The three fell into another natural lull in conversation.

As Farkle swallowed a bite, he smiled to himself, looking away as he exhaled a laugh.

"What?" Felicia asked with a curious suspicion.

"It's just funny, is all," Farkle reflected, "The two idiots who were on one about ogrehood–" he gestured between himself and Felicia, "went and did the two lamest things an ogre could. And the 'sorry excuse for an ogre'–" he met Fergus's suddenly-aware eyes, "did the thing." He took another sloppy bite of his dinner.

Felicia, too, looked at Fergus a moment from across the fire. "You'll have to teach me all that tracking stuff, sometime," she offered, in perhaps the most sincere tone she'd ever spoken to him.

Fergus chewed his bite slowly, reeling from the unexpected respect his siblings had so casually bestowed upon him. "Sure," he replied to his sister, "if you teach me to lockpick."

"Deal." She smirked, and went back to her charbroiled creature.

"And you're okay with being an embarrassing little trio again, Fel?" Farkle shattered the earnest atmosphere with a well-deserved jab.

Felicia's eyes narrowed at him. "Well, we're clearly just as embarrassing on our own, too, so why not?"

"Speak for yourselves," Fergus muttered. Both siblings' eyes snapped to him as he licked his fingers.

"We're going home for Christmas, after three months out," Felicia sighed as she dug the tattered blanket from her sack. "Can't get much more embarrassing than that." She laid it out on the ground, and positioned the sack itself to be her pillow.

"Wouldn't have it any other way!" Farkle crowed, following her lead along with Fergus.


AUTHOR'S NOTE:

Okay, so… the chapter got away from me, and I had to split it.

But hey! The band's back together!

Next chapter will be coming sooner than usual.

Big thanks as always to hanny spoon, fauxgre, Alethyia, TP_HONDS_24, and my anonymous readers and kudos-givers. Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated. :)