Down To Ebott Lake

18 ~ Tea At High Noon

~ ❀Chara❀ ~

If nothing else, the fallen humans are astoundingly good at wasting time.

We have been out here in what I swear is 1,000°F weather for thirty minutes now. The only thing remotely business-y we've discussed is the town election literally no one gives a crap about, and awkward prods into each others' personal life that provided as much useful information about these humans as an anime would about its creators. Not that I wanted to learn anything about these cultish wastes of air in the first place, mind you. But, as per usual, I have zero choice in the matter.

Why couldn't Frisk just let me stay dead?! At least then I wouldn't be sweating my butt off and feeling nauseous, while everyone else borderline tortures me with Frisk's chocolate cup-cakes.

—On second thought, maybe they are torturing me. I wouldn't put it past Clover and his band of human nitwits.

"So, yours and Frisk's souls were connected?" Charley watched me expectantly, attempting to fan himself with an old foam plate he'd found. The other fallen humans watched me with varying degrees of interest, ranging from Clover, who I'd been mutually staring suspiciously at for the past half-hour, to Everett, who clearly couldn't care less about me—save for the occasional sideways remark to piss off Asriel.

Frisk was the one who responded, shifting to a straighter position in her weather-beaten lawn chair. It squeaked loudly, causing everyone to flinch as she smiled apologetically. "Yes! Although, we're, uh, still technically soul-bound..." Her perpetually narrowed eyes seemed to flick to mine. "It's complicated."

Understatement of the century.

"Your Determination bonded, didn't it?" Dad asked her, contently pouring himself yet another steaming cup of golden flower tea. Everyone around the table equally paled at the sight of it, likely finding it to be just as criminally out of place as I did. If it weren't for Asriel looking like he were three degrees away from turning into goat stew, I'd assume it's just a boss monster thing to be unbothered by the heat. Maybe it's just an Asgore and Toriel thing.

"Yes...? —Or, more like my Determination, er.... woke him up? Does that make sense?" Frisk fidgeted nervously, trying to keep an unbothered smile on her face. "I never really understood how it works, to be honest."

From what I remember of Frisk's thoughts, it was more that she just didn't care. She was too busy finding it cool that a ghost was following her around—which, of course, is only natural considering it was my amazingness~!

. . .

Heh... It's surprisingly hard keeping up the bravado after yesterday night. Even I'm cringing at that last bit.

Pulling at the t-shirt I was wearing to keep it from sticking to my skin (God knows I've got enough water in my system now to sweat profusely), I nodded half-heartedly. "When Frisk came across my body in the Underground, her Determination woke up mine. Then we got stuck together—but not in a weird way," I clarified, watching one of Everett's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. "Just in a 'perpetually-stuck-playing-follow-the-leader' kind of way."

"You know, that sounds like the plot to a romance story I read once," Joseph commented, wrapping his arm around his fiancée's shoulders. Grace's thick braids fell over his arm, but Joseph didn't seem to mind. I guess the heat doesn't bother him much, either—despite the pink in his cheeks suggesting otherwise. "The main couple were soul-bound, and could only go a few feet away from each other. It was definitely an enemies-to-lovers situation, but, boy, was it worth it."

...right. That's a thing.

Everett had to do a double-take at that. "You read romance books?!"