Haunted Housing

[sliceitwithwind]

In any given town there is always at least one house with a Certain Reputation. In the case of their town the house had two reputations, making it an excellent place for teenagers of all kinds to go hang out.

Yup, the local abandoned house was a haunted brothel. Drab on the outside, but the tales of the inner furnishings promised over-abundant decadence, and it was something of a rite of passage to go there. Break in during the day for hanky-panky, stay overnight for courage.

The brothel had been abandoned a good thirty years before, but nobody could ever figure out, through the tangle of legal red tape, who even had the right to tear it down. So it sat out on the inland edges of town.

Which is of course why Braig decided that since he and Dilan were back from college for the first break, they needed to drag Aya along to the haunted brothel as a bonding activity to make sure she knew that they still were a trio.

Cue camping gear, dusk, and Dilan giggling nervously.

Comments

[mitochondriaaya]

"How did they manage to go picking without him finding out?" Dilan had SUPERNATURAL BERRY SENSING POWERS. No, really, he did.

[sliceitwithwind]

"I have no idea. But it'll be awesome to give him a chance to be surprised."

Braig picked out a couple of things that he knew would still be bothering Dilan and gave them a slightly better cleaning while Aya made the salad.

[mitochondriaaya]

"There is that!" She grinned and set to making the salad with a will. "We should keep them hidden so he doesn't guess about them until later." Because he tended to gravitate towards berries if he had even the slightest suspicion!

[sliceitwithwind]

"Mmmm, good idea, babe." Braig put his hands on his waist and turns to look around so that he can figure out a berry hiding place. Eventually he shrugs and says, "Gonna have to just keep them in the cooler. They're behind the muffin stuff, so he won't poke at it until after we're ready to give them to him anyway."

[mitochondriaaya]

"Although if we leave them there, we get huckleberry muffins." Decisions, decisions...

...yeah, Aya couldn't deprive Dilan of berries.

[sliceitwithwind]

"No, we get ten hours of pouting and sad kitty eyes." Braig is logical.

[mitochondriaaya]

"Well, if we're lucky those ten hours would be interrupted by 'But...muffins.'?" Yeah, even she wasn't buying it. "We should make huckleberry muffins sometimes this break though, because I have them stuck in my head now!" She finished putzing around for dinner and grabbed a clean dust rag for herself so she could keep dusting and polishing too.

"How are the muffins going over on campus? Are you guys feeding your classes or just passing them out to whichever starving college kids follow their noses to you?"

[sliceitwithwind]

"That would be awesome. We can go berry picking later today? Or tomorrow?" Braig thought about it for a while, moving plans around in his head. "People love them. They line up at our door in the morning."

[mitochondriaaya]

"Totally go picking later today...tomorrow. What time is it?" Hard to tell in the gloom of the haunted brothel. "It can't be midnight yet, so tomorrow."

Awww, muffin lines! "Careful, campus security may decide you're running an illicit bakery! They'd take the lions share in bribes!"

[sliceitwithwind]

"About ten?" Braig said after a moment of thought, "So, yeah, tomorrow. Campus security is usually first in line. Sometimes Dilan actually makes extra muffins to avoid the puppy eyes."

Dilan heads back in, finally, and holds up a couple of rabbits. "Dinner! I cleaned 'em outside and buried the offal, so we don't have to worry about that." It also let him lick off the blood without dealing with 'eww' faces.

[mitochondriaaya]

"Tomorrow," she confirmed. "Noonish, when it's hot and the berry smell is enough to make Dilan buzz just by breathing!" Because it was fun to see the goofy grin?

"Dinner!" Aya grinned and held up her hands in a classic 'victory' sign. "So, are we spitting them or slicing and grilling?" Braig was the meat cooking expert, she'd let him decide!

[sliceitwithwind]

"Heh, awesome." that was all he had time for before Dilan got back so he changed topics to, "Slice and grill. That way we can do them to taste without over-cooking Dilan's part or under-cooking ours. Knife?" that was to Dilan, who passed the knife over and flopped down near Aya.

"Rabbits are getting smarter around here. I am creating super-rabbits through my hunting skills."

[mitochondriaaya]

"Sounds good to me. I'll get a fire going in a minute then." Aya leeeeaned on Dilan for a moment then turned to start arranging wood in the fireplace. "Well, yeah, that's what happens when you introduce a foreign predator right? The prey population suffers...then adapts. I"ll worry when they decide to start tying up your friends or something."

[sliceitwithwind]

"Rabbits don't have thumbs, Aya, and it'd be a long, long time before they could evolve that kind of dexterity."

Dilan was half-dozing, not thinking enough to go "WAIT JOKE".

Braig, however, chuckled at both of them and started sticking rabbit strips on skewers.

[mitochondriaaya]

"But they are wiggly bastards! Get a rabbit on either end of a rope and have them jump through loops and tug tight..." Yes, she'd totally run with the idea of evil bunnies?

And no eye rolling allowed when she used flint and steel from a pack to light the fire! SHE COULDN'T DO MAGIC!

[sliceitwithwind]

"Aya, you're weird." it was, to be fair, said from a Dilan whose eyes were closed and in response to the rabbit conversation, not the fire.

Neither boy would roll their eyes, ever, at Aya's need to use flint and steel. It wasn't fair to her, and it was something Dilan fully planned on researching later. Dilan was a halfbreed, Braig was very short for an adult male, and Aya couldn't use magic. That's just how it was.

[mitochondriaaya]

"Yeah, but so are you guys so it's okay." She snorted and got a tiny spark. A bit of careful tending and there was a fire for the meat!

And eye-rolling was the new biggest thing in school. It was safer than snickering in her presence and didn't involve teacher interventions! "And we'd be boring if we were normal."

[sliceitwithwind]

"Yup." Dilan agreed, stretching and opening his eyes again when the warmth hit, "Mmmm, that feels good Aya. My bones have been hurting lately."

"Boring? As if. We'd die first."

[mitochondriaaya]

"Which is a roundabout way of saying you'd die before being normal?" Aya laughed and held a hand out for spits to lay over the fire.

Then? Then there was a worried look at Dilan! "Bones hurting? That isn't normal! We should go to the doctor right?" What if he had bone cancer or something?!

[sliceitwithwind]

"Yup." The spits were handed over to Aya as he finished them, hands moving quickly, but surely. Body habits, like cooking with Aya and Dilan, were comfortable.

Dilan nodded a little, "I did. He said I'm probably getting ready for a growth-spurt. I'm hoping for at least five-two, like Braig."

He'll be getting an inch shy of seven feet. Ooops?

[mitochondriaaya]

Aya laid the spits out properly just as mechanically as Braig assembled them, still looking Dilan over worriedly. "Well, it'll be cool if we all end up at Braig's height, but still. Your bones hurt. How can we help that?" Because that wasn't normal, or comfortable, or even close to 'okay'.

Some thought, some thought...

..."Maybe we could ask Elsy about a trip to a hotspring?"

[sliceitwithwind]

"Ooo, that'd be nice." Dilan agreed, "I love the hotsprings. Keeping warm helps a little? I think it's just something I'm gonna have to deal with until it's over."

Braig sighed, "I admit it. I'm, like, worried too. Mom says that it's normal for Dilan's clan-members to have some pain prior to growing, but..."

"I'm a half-breed, and we don't know how that's going to work."

[mitochondriaaya]

"Did we bring a cell phone? We can call home and ask now before we forget." And if they got Elsy on it, they wouldn't need to worry about putting it off too long...

Naturally she was going to ruffle Dilan's dreads then reach past him for a bag to dig through. She might be able to find one before the boys answered! "Normal or not, anything that helps is good."

[sliceitwithwind]

"Mom doesn't know either!" Dilan protested, "It's a guess, it's all a guess. I don't wanna talk about it today."

"Sheesh, okay." Braig held his hands up, shaking his head.

[mitochondriaaya]

"...fine." Aya held up her hands too, then pushed the bag away with her foot. "Won't then. REMIND ME LATER." to ask Elsy. She didn't think she'd forget but!

FRET.

"So, we're cooking meat in a haunted brothel. What else are we suppose to do tonight that leaves me unwilling to tell others about it and/or crawling out of my skin?"