A Handful of Stardust

ALL MY FELLOW SKELETONS ADORE THE ARMY ANTS HERE!

CHARACTERS: Celia Starling, Bill Starling, Casper Oscuro, others in passing

TAGS & TRIGGERS: 2000s, parental issues, neoverse (maybe canon?), brief mention of drugs, death, running away

WORD COUNT: 1706

Celia emerges from her room, sleepless. Her mind is hazy and rotten, she might as well be buzzing with flies; an injured, lolloping beast of a girl with little room inside her skull for anything except apprehension at the voices she heard, a lulling murmur she isn't sure was real but still moves to investigate anyway.

Past the doorway to her room, the drooping frame curved with moisture and age so the door never shuts. The voices stop and resume, futile in their quietness as Celia slowly, slowly blinks herself awake, tries to run a hand through her hair until it is stayed by tangles, and performs to an audience of what she suspects is one in the empty corridor: "What the fuck is going on?"

Again the voices pause, and a familiar one arises, speaking words she can hear. "Come into the kitchen, would you?"

At this, it is decidedly clear that what she shouldn't do is go into the kitchen—he sounds oddly calm, the usual extremes that lace his voice pressured flat by placidity. Her first thought is he's high, because he sounds just like Sunny when she asks Celia to cover her shift on most Fridays (or most evenings, now); its at least funny when the older girl says it, and of course Celia doesn't mind it then, because she's then paid more and, the next day, gets some stories of aliens or something out of it. Regardless, she doubts this is what's happening to her father. And she heard two voices, even though she is almost certain he has no friends to smoke with.

So who is it, then? Possibilities cycle in her mind, and the only answer she can come up with is perhaps Maple's mum (though she'd never step foot inside their hovel, as she'd so eloquently put it to her son, and I don't know how that girl tolerates it) or a police officer. If its police, she can at least hope its one of Planchette's parents, sympathetic cops, and that they're coming to get rid of her dad. The thought of it makes her ribs curl with guilt, though he deserves it; she prods a bruise at her hip until the contrite hole at her stomach disappears and, wound up tight despite the overriding logic that she, of all people, has no reason to be scared, makes her way through her skeleton of a house to the kitchen.

At the kitchen table—still with scratchings in its surface like a cat's claws—sits her father, dressed, sitting up straight and smiling. Celia eyes him carefully, gaze not slipping until the second of the voices she heard pipes up and she realises there's another at the table.

"Sorry to intrude so early," it—he—says, in a voice clearly denoting how not-sorry he is. "Your father said it was urgent."

The stranger smiles. Though it is a gesture in itself reassuring, Celia wouldn't hesitate to call it mocking; yet his voice has a soothing kind of effect, as though he doesn't wish to alarm a stray before he picks it up and takes it home. His teeth fit into the immediate impression she had of him—skeletal, hidden under a bushel of soft hair, a thick coat draped over a chair, a faded, frequently-repaired suit. Not at all dangerous. Immediately, Celia's guard is up like hackles. She makes a non-committal noise in the back of her throat.

"Sit down," Bill says. A dog between two coyotes, Celia sits, scraping her chair backwards along the floor so both men sit in her peripherals. Apprehension burrows a reasonless hole deep into her gut. Her father, still smiling that shit-eating smile, continues, inclining his head between the two. The expression on his face does not match the heavy fog his words carry with them.

"This isn't an intervention," he begins. "Casper is an old friend. He knows about your condition—" Pause as he figures out what endearment he can choke out without hurling, "—kid." That gross smile dips from his face, a vague comfort. He looks far more natural, as Celia does, with his resting bitch face intact. Casper, by contrast, is still grinning. "He's gonna help us sort this shit out. Okay?"