Pigment (Millard Nullings X Reader)

Party People

I learned five new facts when meeting the gypsy people.

Fact number one: Gypsies have the best parties. Enough said. Best food, best music, best people, best carpets to sit and spill said food on, etc. I mean, while they may seem threatening and scary at first, it takes a second impression for someone to truly be known.

Which was why one should never trust a book by its cover, metaphorically. Emilian had a butt ton of books with lovely covers, and I suddenly wished that I could read Romani. But the gesture was very kind.

Fact number two: Millard did not like parties. Or, at least, he did not like that I was enjoying this party with someone who wasn't him. I tried my best to include Millard in everything that I did with the others, but he became snarky and rude whenever Emilian would show me something new.

At one point, Emilian excused himself to go grab something from his tent, since he was asked to perform one of his circus acts for us. The sun had started going down by then, and with Emma's help, we built a fire that we all huddled around. Olive came running over to me, and knocked me over from the rock I was then sitting on.

She pointed towards her silver crown, which currently had yellow flowers braided in between the bars. "Look what they taught me to do!"

"It's absolutely gorgeous!" I told her, and I scooted over on the grass so she could sit next to me.

One of the women was currently telling a story about how she had a grandmother who rode across these very roads, and found out that whenever she whistled, it would always sound like a violin. Apparently she never knew how to whistle beforehand, and someone she was travelling with taught her how. She moved into the city to become part of an orchestra, where she would whistle along with the strong instruments until her voice got sore.

"(Y/N), I'm back!" Emilian called out. He ran over towards me, and placed a creepy looking puppet in my lap. "What do you think of her?"

I believed he had just handed me Satan's ex-wife. "She" was absolutely horrifying, with matted black hair and eyes that stared into my soul. Imagine a drag queen version of Pinocchio who did meth, cocaine, and weed all at the same time. Not a pretty site.

"I don't know what to think," I said, forcing a laugh. "Did you make this?"

"By hand," Emilian said proudly. "And it took over 30 hours to make, as well. She was modeled after my mother."

I hoped his mother didn't know that. But I didn't say anything else, and allowed Emilian to take back his puppet, and sat up a stool by the storyteller, who was just wrapping up her tale. The fire crackled, and Millard nudged my shoulder.

"I almost felt bad for the kid," he told me with a chuckle. "He would do a 30-hour carving of you next, if you ask."

"There's no need to be an ass about it, Mill," I told him. Olive gasped and covered her ears. "Oops, sorry!" I told Olive. "There's no need to be a butt, about it."

Fact number three: Emilian was a really great ventriloquist. It might have been because of his peculiar talent to make voices come from thin air, but he was amazing at it. The puppet, Nadia, had a raspy falsetto voice. Emilian knew how to keep an audience, and his thick Romani accent made the whole thing even funnier to me.

Sure, the fact that he kept glancing over to me was odd, but I just brushed it away. It almost seemed like he was flirting at first, but when people like Emma exist? The romantic gesutres were definitely not for me.

Emilian told Nadia about a pretty girl he met, while the puppet kept asking who she was. Supposedly, the girl Emili an was talking about had soft (E/C) eyes and a pretty, smile. He later revealed that it was just a sheep had seen seen along the way, after Emilian bashfully looked away from me.