So. I've been absolutely binging Welcome to Night Vale, whose fandom is so highly compatible with this one I'm surprised to have not yet seen a crossover fic.

So like, uhh, get ready for me to shift from Shakespeare to just plain weird? Not much of a shift tbh. It'll happen over the course of the next few chapters.

I've missed you.

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I woke up to incessant buzzing, which could have meant one of two things.

One: Wybie, blowing up my phone about something.

Two: Bug.

The first step in dealing with either was of course to bury myself deeply and securely under my blanket. Once there, I methodically calmed my breathing and tuned in to my body, paying close attention to feel for any tiny exoskeletal feet. None. And, come to think of it, the incessant buzzing was coming exclusively from the floor next to my bed. Thus: Wybie.

I reached out from under my blanket with one probing arm (still not entirely convinced that there were no unwelcome insects in my presence), to grab my phone. I groaned as I realized I'd forgotten to charge it while napping. I unlocked it, opened my texts, and promptly wished I'd stayed asleep.

Wybie doesn't have the attention span to learn to tie his shoes, how on earth has he managed to spam me with thirty-eight messages? All, in classic Wybie fashion, riddled with spelling mistakes and incorrect punctuation, which he usually did because he knew it irked me but seemingly this time out of genuine haste.

W: where r u???
W: gma said she asked u 2 come 4 dinner
W: shes rlly mad
W: stop ignroing meeee

And so on, and so forth.

I put an arm over my eyes and sighed. Of all the nights Grandma could have demanded the presence of her offspring's offspring, it just had to me the night I wanted to wallow in my woes. Naturally.

But then again, Wybie would be there, so it would at least be bearable. It hit me as I was struggling into a sweater that despite now living in the same town as him, I hadn't seen him as much as I could have been doing, and the thought of all the wasted hours had me shivering. Best not to think about how any moment with him could be my last.

Mrs. D, whose bedtime had gotten earlier since she was getting up at dawn to prep the store, was snoring away in her room as I crept into the hall. The stairs made their usual racket. I opened the front door slowly, so the bell didn't jingle too loud, and felt rather like a film-noir hero, slipping into the 8:30 darkening world.

~~~

The rain came down in freezing sheets, I was wearing my nice shoes instead of my rain boots, and I was thoroughly ticked off.

Not that my nice shoes hadn't been through worse. Oh, they'd been trudged through mud, slush, city streets, gross public bathroom floors, even blood once-

But. Yes. Ticked off.

I was told to come to dinner and there was no one even here. Only a damp note on the door that read, in Wybie's god-awful handwriting, Door to the left.

Not much to be done. I steeled myself, stepping backwards out from under the safety of the doorframe and immediately getting buckets of water dumped on my head. I flinched at the feeling, lurching away from the extra water coming off the roof, and because the gods hate me, I forgot about the four steps that brought people from the ground to the door. I fell.

After a dazed catching of breath, I laid there in the mud for a moment, getting rainwater in my eyes and just... being ticked off. Nothing like laying in cold, wet dirt and thinking about how much everything sucks.

That was how Wybie found me.

"Y/N, why."

I gestured vaguely at the sky. "Nothing was stopping me except societal expectations and my own cowardice."

Wybie made a noise that sounded like a sob but was more likely just his strange laugh. "You should get up. The slugs will be out when the rain stops, and I expect you to be dry enough to catch some."

Slugs did sound pretty good. "Fine. But only if I get to eat first."

"Right! You, uh, missed dinner, yeah, uh..."

I sat up to give Wybie the Deeply Suspicious Eyebrow. "What?"

"It's just that, ah-" he gestured behind himself, "er, we're eating at, um-"

"Coraline Jones, don't go out there without shoes!"

I whipped around with the speed of the horribly cursed. Coraline Jones, barefoot and already dripping, blinked at me with her stupid purple eyes.

I did not shriek, thank you very much.

"You're covered in mud," she said.

"An astute observation," I said back.

Wybie bounced on the balls of his feet as neither I nor Coraline looked away from each other. He cleared his throat, glanced around, shook the water from his hair. Coraline's eyes twitched. I blinked first.

Her face twisted into the world's most annoying smirk, and I did not think about punching her. On the mouth. With my mouth. No sir, I did not.

"My dad made dinner," she said, much to the relief of poor Wybie. "It's green and brown and smells like edible evil. Are you hungry?"

As much as I feared this concoction, I actually was pretty hungry. "Unfortunately."

Not without sadness, I abandoned my temporary home in the mud and stood up. Coraline choked on a laugh, and I rolled my eyes. The three of us walked to her stoop, where her mother immediately set about making sure we didn't get her precious linoleum floors wet.

"Let me get you each a towel! Don't move!" she exclaimed.

Mr. Jones was a calmer man, which I appreciated in this moment. His eyes were tired but he smiled at me. "Y/N, right?"

Oh! A reintroduction! "That is my name, my good sir, and by what appellation are you denominated?"

Mr. Jones paused. Then, "Charlie. Or Mister Jones, if that's easier for you. Those were some big words."

"I am a poet."

"...I am a gardening article author."

Coraline made a noise of dissent and without turning my head I knew what look she was giving me. I rolled my eyes. Mr. Jones looked between us, then gave a long-suffering sigh, shook his head, and muttered something about denial.

Well, my good man, denial is just a river in Egypt.

Mrs. Jones returned shortly with towels, white and horribly scratchy, and thoroughly dried our three heads. Wybie's hair looked even more like a bird nest than usual when she was finished with him, and Coraline-

Coraline's hair looked like the evening sky pulled loose into strings. I went a little breathless even as she scowled at her mother and tried to smooth it down. I covered my gasp with an amused huff, and did not meet her eyes when she glared at me.

"Now, Y/N, Wyborne here said you'd be eating with us. I'd be happy to reheat a plate of the sana... spanapo..."

"Spanakopita," Mr. Jones added helpfully.

Mrs. Jones smiled. "Yes."

"Orrr," Coraline drawled, "I could make jelly sandwiches, since you said if I had five bites of dad's food then I could make my own dinner. And Y/N is our guest and you're always saying to let guests pick stuff."

The Jones family, all at once, turned their eyes to me. On my good days I loved attention but today was no such day.

"Uh. Sure."

The air of expectation dropped, and I was relieved that Mr. Jones did not look upset. Presumably used to the refusal of his cooking. I had half a mind to be optimistic about his other dishes, but judging by the adult-ness of the spanakopita on the table, I admitted to myself that Coraline was justified in making her own food.

As she was now, holding a piece of bread up to her eye level to spread jelly on it in a precise, thin layer.

Wybie nudged me. "She's like an artist with this stuff. Don't worry, she's too absorbed in it to catch you staring."

I did not dump the nearby spanakopita on his annoying head.

Coraline made sandwiches at a snail pace, and Wybie and I stood there and observed her. Coraline Jones in her natural habitat. I noticed that she was more relaxed here in her cave than she had been in town, but not as carefree as in the woods. Her posture was rigidly loose. I wondered briefly if her parents had once tried to snuff that distinct, stubborn rebellion in her. If they had, she had apparently won.

The sandwiches were eventually finished and we were escorted to the yard to eat them, because jelly drips and Mrs. Jones was apparently deathly afraid of an infestation. Mr. Jones gave me a wave when I thanked him for the dinner I had not consumed.

The concrete steps were cold but not damp, and I sat. Wybie joined me on my right. Coraline tried to sit on his other side, but there wasn't room between him and the railing, so she made a begrudging noise and sat to my left. She jostled me with her shoulder as she settled. I scoffed.

We ate, and late evening became night, the stars slowly appearing as the clouds fell and settled into a layer of fog. A lone cricket picked up a song somewhere in the grass, and after a moment fell silent. A light wind rustled the trees as Wybie nearly dropped his empty plate, and I collected it to stack it with mine behind me.

Cutting through the calm like a particularly vicious letter opener, a scratching and scrabbling came from the space between the rotting planks of the house behind the stairs. Coraline, Wybie and I shot to our feet and stumbled into the grass with wide eyes.

The cat emerged, tail puffed and hackles raised. He looked at me, then at Coraline, and said, "She has found a way back, and she is very angry!"

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A chapter! Yay?

I had some Things going on for the last few months and hopefully they won't be making a return, and now that I have no school and steady romantic inspiration (aka boyfriend) and less depression symptoms, I'll be updating a little more often. The bar is very low, ofc, but a chapter every few weeks is better than every few years, right?

Anyway. It's time for some action in this story, and I'm excited to get into it.