This morning's prompt is 'bishop ring'.

Stuff!!!

This morning's prompt was 'grey goo'. I found a cartoon face for reference...

Stuff!

This morning's prompt is 'always interruptions'; Niska...

Stuff!!!

This morning's prompt is 'daring escape'.

I owe myself drabbles for the weekend. Daring escape can wait!

Back to points of light in spaaaaace!

Oops!

Let's splat out some stars!

This morning's prompt was 'cute baby'.

8-P

So, I lost a scrap of a drabble on Friday and proceeded to blow off the weekend. It was childish and I was childish and all I accomplished was to wallow in hurt and self-pity and I hope that I'm over it.

I've been neglecting the other stories, threads of drabbles and been a little more attached to this one for various reasons. The Mom and her son live, I'm not playing any cheap tricks with them and if you've been paying attention, her losing her foot is deeply meaningful to Ben and his fears, and my fears, too. Ben and I kind of need for Carol to 'walk again', whatever that entails, most likely some sort of prosthetic, which may be part of whatever Brenda is up to, looking for a solution, so a medical warehouse sounds like good loot...

This morning's prompt was 'eyebrows'.

Pretty freaky...

This morning's prompt is 'abandoned beauty'.

Which is very zpocalypse...

Blogger ate my words!!!

I wrote about Ben driving them 'to the mall' in the truck. They've got a cab, Tom and Carol are back there and all three adults have have the talk about quieting the dead for good. It was emotional and it was pretty damn good and I am pissed because I swear I saved it and looked at it after I saved it!!!!

'73 chevy pickup with three person bench seat.

I need to rewrite the truck scene where all three get into the truck. Four across is three plus Tom or Mom sitting in laps, which is funny...

***

Ben saw three incoming, in bad shape but still a clear threat. He heard the diesel engine turn over and saw Tom cheering behind the wheel. Brenda stepped forward between the 'company' and Carol. Ben got her into the pickup  and turned to see Brenda hop up over the tailgate into the bed.

"Let's go! We got more and I'm a little exposed back here!"

Ben ran around and hopped in sandwiching Tom between Carol. He looked a little uncomfortable at Brenda behind him in the bed. Then he stepped on it.

***

The abandoned beauty is the escalator in the flooded mall.

***

"So what are we looking for?"

Ben sighed. "I had a pretty dumb idea..."

"About looking for a medical supply store? Probably not, but not bad. We could have gotten lucky, didn't."

They were interrupted by a few mall rats and after they'd dealt with them they turned down a branching corridor where the grade sloped downhill enough that the food court beyond and an escalator to the upper level lay flooded. The late afternoon sun spotlighted a haunting abandoned beauty.

Ben was surprised to realize that he was crying and saw that Brenda was as well. He took her hand and they turned back.

This morning's prompt is 'lost letter'.

The mail carrier was no longer making his rounds. Somebody, sometime, had quieted him and neatly left him leaning back against a mailbox post, then had apparently stuffed the contents of his mailbag into the mailbox, it was full to bursting but still mostly safe from the elements.

"Shouldn't we bury him?" Tom asked.

Ben and Brenda shared a look and then each glanced at his mother, Carol, who looked completely wiped out. Again.

"There's way too many of them," Brenda told him after a little too long and Tom scowled.

"It's the decent thing to-"

"Tom," Ben interrupted. "Someone who knew him most likely saw to him, and this is what they decided to do. Or maybe they didn't, but a lot of thought went into this. This is a far better, more respectful, way to lay him to rest than anything we did this afternoon with that mob we went through-"

"And over," Brenda muttered and Tom glared at her.

"I.. I understand that. I had to do that, or they would have gotten Brenda for sure."

He knelt by the mailman for a minute. He and his mother were religious, quietly witnessing their faith, rather than loudly and obnoxiously. Carol worked her way over and laid a hand on his head.

Brenda reached into her pack and dug out an envelope.

"What's that?"

"Nothing," she answered gruffly and cleared her throat. "I, I just have something to post, and maybe he can get it where it needs to go..."

Brenda shoved it into the mailbox and they sacrificed a torn old tarp to add protection.

For himself, Ben quietly thanked the mailman for his service, and then they got back to the business of surviving.

This morning's prompt is 'car keys'.

Car keys are a zpocalypse prompt!

***

"They were kind enough to leave us the keys," Tom said, waving the truck keys.

"Does it have gas, is the gas still good and will it turn over?" Brenda responded.

"It's diesel," Ben said 

"That's hopeful, I think..." Brenda glanced at their fourth. Carol was present and aware of her surroundings, but still pale and drawn. She was leaning on her homemade crutches and against the passenger side of the pickup, on the front corner of the bed behind the door. The stump of her right leg was still a little touch and go, but clean and starting to heal. Ben was the best medic she had and a lot of what he knew was based on his diabetes and all of his... nightmares. About losing bits and pieces of himself, going blind or losing a foot.

Carol saw him looking, smiled and stuck her tongue at him. It occurred to him that they were a plucky little group of special rainbows... and he smiled wryly back. Then she looked sharply to her right. "We have company, people. Time to get going."

Ben saw three incoming, in bad shape but still a clear threat. He heard the diesel engine turn over and saw Tom cheering behind the wheel. Brenda stepped forward between the 'company' and Carol. Ben got her into the pickup  and turned to see Brenda hop up over the tailgate into the bed.

"Let's go! We got more and I'm a little exposed back here!"

Ben hopped in sandwiching Carol between Tom in the driver's seat and himself. He looked a little uncomfortable at Tom over there. The kid laughed and then he stepped on it.

I'm not going to get anywhere again tonight, although the drabble clocked in at almost five hundred words, so a page a day, nit nothing, but I will write my specifications for the page I should be coding:

• get something done and worry about improving it later!
• that means quick and dirty stars and worlds, point to point, star to star, terrain tile to terrain tile.
• go up from the world to the star, and down from the local interstellar volume to the system, the world, the regions to the smaller bits

This morning's prompt is 'sad little crab'.

"Sad little crab," Costigan muttered, waving a hand over it. Multiple eyestalks tracked (he counted seven) and the sad little not-crab backed sideways into the furthest corner of the enclosure.

"Sorry I was bothering you, little guy. Are you a pet, or dinner? Should I call you 'Lunch'?"

"She's not for eating, Dad," Alex said by his elbow. Frank didn't jump, but he did share a light elbow bump with his son.

"Not bad, you are definitely your mother's son, but she and your Grandma Boyle can sneak up on a ninja." He waved at the not-crab. "What about her?"

"Greebs graze and make greeb butter, of course."

"Of course. Is that edible?"

"Not exactly. We can get some nutrition out of it, but eat too much and you get sick. I'm working with some terraforming directorate bio wizards on tweeking the gut bacteria-"

"Too much information. I'm good." Costigan thought about things for a second and asked. "Working with?"

"Well, I'm their lab assistant/apprentice. Learning the covenants, which are mostly common sense protocols."

"Common sense isn't, especially when it comes to asking if you can when you should ask if you should."

"Trust me, Dad, these are all veterans of the atavist wars. They've been there, done that, have the tee-shirts..."

"Huh, plural?"

Alex looked uncomfortable. "There are a couple of Trike war criminals who've been through the wringer." He winced at the look on his Dad's ugly mug, broken nose and scars, he could do 'scary'.

"Does your mother know? More importantly... wait. This has your grandmother's prints all over it!"

"She's the one who took them into custody, originally. Saved their lives, probably."

"Alex, I know some of their victims. I know survivors. I remember three quarter tonne Markov showing me their bellies and pissing themselves to me and my friends after surviving the loving attention of the 'fallen angels'." Frank shuddered. He knew former, recovering, fallen. He remembered seeing 3D of the atrocities, like he'd been standing there, without the sounds or the smells.

"I'm sorry, but we're going to have a little family meeting about this tonight. You're a bright kid, but still a kid and this is not a good idea." He muttered to himself, "Sometimes I worry about Karen, she's always putting the Rangers and the Conservancy first!"

"Don't be mad, I asked to help!"

Costigan exhaled. "And there it is again. The price of 'you-topia' is always 'you'! You people cheerfully pull in the harness every day of your lives until you are spent, used up, tossing children at the problems of the previous generation."

Frank saw his little boy, still way too young for this, the family business of saving the Galaxy and making it a better place to be weird, staring wide eyed up at him and grabbed him into a bear hug. "Gods and Ancestors, molten heroes, every last one of you."

Bits and pieces

Go get Chrome!

Going to go with a weighted random hydrographic ratio of sea to land.

System Data Here

Please input a seed or click Random!

This morning's prompt is 'romance novel'.

Ben read the cover of the dog-eared romance novel Brenda was reading.

"'Love Theory'?"

Brenda made as if to hide the book away and thought the better of it, clearly. Ben took in her glare and asked her. "What?"

"I'm waiting."

"For?"

"The obvious."

"Look, you don't have to tell me about it, the name of the book was somewhat interesting, but you seem a little defensive." Ben shrugged. "Your business."

"Seriously? No questions?!"

"Brenda." Ben shook his head. "Some of my best friends are books." He caught her look. "Yes, seriously."

"What's your favorite then?"

"You have a few hours, while I-"

"First one you can think of!"

"'Citizen of the Galaxy'. Heinlein ripped off 'Kim' and some 1930's movies, but I didn't know that. I loved it and don't care about his sources. Or maybe 'Avatar'-"

"Wait, the movie, or novelization?"

"Not. Cameron's. Abomination."

"The cartoon, then?"

"A novel, from the 70's, by Poul Anderson. And if I had them, I'd drag them with me to the ends of the Earth."

Worldbuilding

I'm working on a solo game...

Future History

I'm working on a solo game...

 Back to planning for the game (for Relaxicon) which I'll never run!

My Big Damn Birthday Space Adventure Game
This is modern humans in spaaaace! No
Ok, this is about the 22nd Century No
This is about alien, no humans? No
So there are humans and this is in the next millennium? Yes
I need a specific date in the next millennium
Do a simple page with JS for some random number generation, around a hundred years between shocks, what each shock is and a snapshot of the solar system or known space

These were placeholders, I really need to get moving with a simple future history of the solar system over the next thousand years!

War in South America, 2026, if that, maybe 2024, this year, with Brazil interceding in the Venezuelan invasion of Guyana.

Flying monkeys in Indonesia, 2239
Clanking Replicator War, 2300
India takes over Northeast Asia, 2365
First Interstellar Expedition, 2416

This morning's prompt is 'aspen'.

"I miss the aspens," Cathy said. They were finishing up, putting away tools and supplies while the 'volunteers' had self sorted into the obvious groupings.

Wendy thought about it and asked, "Back in Colorado? Fort Collins?"

"Yeah. Up above the death zone, and, so I hear, down in the ruins now. Aspens are colony critters and hard to kill, if they have a decent chance."

"Like us."

"Yeah." Cathy looked over at Wendy. "Sorry cousin-"

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. I tried not to drag you into my messes, but I did it anyway."

"Hey, nobody here but us aspens, okay?"

"Okay."

This morning's prompt is 'blue whale'.

Stuff!

"I'm going to miss this falling down death trap of an old barn..." Brenda was looking through the nearly useless binoculars, held together with duct tape, west southwest where the river widened and met the sea. Half the town below had burned down when the only gas station had blown up during the early days according to Tom, so now there was a clear view of the ocean beyond.

"Why is that?" Ben asked absently, but she just handed him the broken things, so he got up to look for himself. He watched nothing for a few breaths, then as he was about to ask again, a whale breached, soaring completely and briefly out of the sea.

"Wow."

"Senseless beauty, spilling grace upon the world..."

"Hmm? Oh, definitely. And that was pretty good, by the way."

"I won't let it go to my head."

"Please do. We're all out of non-moldy bread just now, we can do with a little poetry, pretty please-" Ben had to clear the lump from his throat and started when Brenda wordlessly hugged him from behind, then relaxed. It felt good. There was grace and senseless beauty in the world, after all, and maybe a little courage and hope?

This morning's prompt is 'little ducklings'.

"Like little baby ducklings, or puppies, all huddled up snug and warm."

Ben started then froze. His hand was-

He extricated his very numb arm from under both mother and child and glared at Brenda.

"That looked sweet and wholesome." The smile disappeared and she lay a hand on the mother's forehead, warm, too warm. But at least not cold.

"How's our patient doing today? Did we ever get a name out of them, yesterday?"

"Carol, Carol and Tom." Something made him add, "and Ben, and Brenda, make four." 

Breaking down the landmass

Go get Chrome!

Going to go with a weighted random hydrographic ratio of sea to land.

System Data Here

Please input a seed or click Random!

This morning's prompt is 'bbq pork ribs'.

This takes me back to 'grace and courage' and the zpocalypse. I don't want to, although I'd like to check in with that thread. How about Frank? I'm sure he has very strong opinions about BBQ...

***

Costigan hoped the sauce was okay. It wasn't authentic by any means, but they had sourced vinegar and a little honey along with tomatoes pureed into a smooth paste, and it tasted just fine. There were no pigs for pork ribs but Alex had sourced a decent substitute. The critter was even uglier than a pig, Frank thought.

Adding gross human product

Time keeps slipping into the future.
I want to do time skips until I get to a good date, have put together something interesting, or both!

What's the next crisis?

This morning's prompt was 'stuffed turkey'.

Chief Petty Officer Banks followed the agitated spacer into the mess. The guilty looking young spacers held up one bulkhead and his eyes panned over them, covered in cake, and traversed the entire mess before falling on a trail of... stuffing?

There, by the slippers of Wendy and her cousin, Cathy, lay the wreck of a magnificent stuffed turkey. Banks whistled.

"A truly magnificent bird gave his all to feed us. Damn shame to waste it."

He picked up a turkey leg.

"You keep a spotless mess, Cookie."

There was no hesitation.

"Yes, Chief!"

"Good!" Banks took a big bite and was amused at the outrage and disgust. Good.

"Care for a bite, Montana?"

Wendy hid her reaction well, but the barest of smiles tugged at one corner of her mouth. She stooped and picked up part of the carcass, tore a chunk with now greasy fingers and popped it into her mouth.

"Tasty? Anyone else hungry?"

Cathy looked from her cousin to Banks and suppressed a giggle. Jake took a step and then another, and Wendy held the bit of turkey out to them. There were no other takers.

"I distinctly remember a time when there just wasn't enough food to go around, but I guess the rest of you are too young to remember bricks of kibble and food riots." Cold eyes roved from face to face.

"Good times, good times."

Banks turned to Cookie. "I think we have a few volunteers to help clean up."

Cookie nodded, as Wendy, Cathy and Jake jumped to it, and then the rest scrambled to not be the last 'volunteer'.

I want quick and dirty stars and worlds, and what i get is a mess. Every single time...

I'm going to go read some more 'Just Stab Me Now'

This morning's prompt is 'retirement cake'.

Stuff!!!

That knock down drag out fight has to involve a retirement cake, because now it *has* to! 8-P

I veered off into class warfare stuff, both what I knew about in the orbitals and what happened back on Earth after the second day of dragons.

So, what do I know about Wendy and her friend? Cathy is her cousin and they enlisted together in the Republic of Venus Navy via the old US Navy and the Pacific States from their home in Montana. Cathy is originally from Fort Collins on the edge of the Front Range Death Zone and her family are successful 'scavengers', reclaiming the ruins but definitely not 'ferals', basically the remnants of the cannibals who survived the dead zone. The Pacific States and the old Navy are dependent on the orbitals and work very closely with the RV as the RVN started out as remnants of the space assets of the old US Navy. NI are naval infantry, very decidedly not marines...

Wendy had trouble adjusting to 'being inside' similarly to habitat rats having trouble 'out in the open', and Jake helped her out with that. Cathy has had trouble in the RVN, 'scav' and that's how she landed in Aphrodite but it caught up with her almost immediately. So this is a story about acclimation and adjustment, and the troubles we carry around with us.

As a true blue pantser I usually manage to somehow find a way to a decent ending, sometimes even a great ending, if I do say so myself, but it's time to do some gardening. I need to start off with the cousins, at least have Cathy mentioned before she jumps into Aphrodite. Chief Petty Officer Banks sees qualities in Wendy on the acclimation exercise and 'you don't waste good'.

That and I need to paint a picture, of a planet, a habitat, and a starship, inanimate matter come alive, living and breathing

Back to that timeline maker

Time keeps slipping into the future.
I want to do time skips until I get to a good date, have put together something interesting, or both!

What's the next crisis?

Running out of time for today...

https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrigYom9cplZ70gVl02nIlQ;_ylu=c2xrA3RleHQEaXQDQWxzb1RyeV9OBHNlYwNyZWwEcG9zAzI-?p=Sketching+Prompts&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Ai%2Cm%3Ars-top%2Cct%3Abing%2Crgn%3Atop%2Cpos%3A2&fr=yhs-avg-fh_lsonsw&hsimp=yhs-fh_lsonsw&hspart=avg&type=ch.119.ot.hp._.us.avg._._#id=1&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fharunmudak.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F12%2Fdrawing-prompts-14.jpg&action=click

I found some more prompts!!!

Playing with the timeline utility again, such as it is...
(Time keeps slipping into the future)
I want to do time skips until I get to a good date, have put together something interesting, or both!

2137, 14 billion
Flying Monkey Plague
2314, 69.8 billion

The Flying Monkey Plague is just a placeholder, but now I want to make it a 'real' event. Literally was the way I meant it originally, but now I think it's something else, pretty obviously! 8-P

I tend to want to get the good bits out before I lose them and there are some throwaway bits from Costigan, but just now as I should be sleeping I need to at least get the bones of what I was musing on in the covenant of stars story;

Scavs

Ferals

Fuger

Wendy's friend was in a brawl

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Well you can take the girl out of Fort Collins, but you can't take Fort Collins out of the girl..." She winced and added. "One of you feral freaks *bit* me!"

She looked around at them, habitat rats one and all. "You think that you high and mighty space born bastards know about death zones and scavs and ferals, oh my! Well I don't care what fairy tales you fugees got told over your kibble, you don't know. You don't have any..."

"Stand down, en-eye. Stand down! Now!"

This morning's prompt is 'mortar'.

Stuff!

"What are you making, now?"

Alex set the pestle down in the mortar, and glared at Vera. Veracity was helping him, doing maintenance on the small army of bots he employed in his 'garden', but she would have done that for the bots anyway. There was a strange thing going on there, like she almost shared her soul with the inanimate matter turned animate. He sighed.

"Thanks for helping me."

Vera stared at him like he'd grown a horn in the middle of his forehead.

"Are you alright?!"

"Of course!" Alex said and changed the subject. "I'm making a traditional Markov sauce."

Vera made a face. "Bitterroot gives me gas, and it's in everything they like!"

"Not everything..."

This morning's prompt is 'cowbell'.

Stuff!

A face, a place, something good, something bad and something weird and wonderful!

Frank Costigan maintained that he had retired to being a bit of a bum, 'temporarily between wars as it were' was how his mother in law put it. He had actually been something of a stay at home dad with occasional adventures.

Alex's farm had seemingly grown out of control, certainly out of his understanding after the latest of his adventures, a little contract on behalf of the rangers. Home again, he had gone walkabout and found himself following a bell ringing behind the alien, orange scented hedge, a natural fence it seemed. Abruptly he heard a distressing (distressed?) sound and a perfectly good cowbell came flying over said hedge 

"Well this is going to be interesting..."

This morning's prompt was 'licorice'.

What to do with 'licorice'?

***

Marianne bit into the sweet tentatively, and arched an eyebrow at her strange little boy.

"How did you?"

Alex smiled, spun back and forth like a little boy, which he still very much was, his mother thought, caught himself and stood to attention like he'd seen her ranger recruits do. Her breath caught; so many rangers- She carefully put that away for later consideration. Know yourself, know your duty...

"Trade secret?" Alex told her, then he added anxiously, "How close did I get?"

Marianne laughed and mussed up his hair.

"Your Dad will love it. It tastes just like licorice!."

Alex beamed with incandescent pride, a pride reflected back as her Trike tattoos caught fire with strong emotion.

This morning's prompt is 'harvester'.

Stuff!

Running out time to get something written...

"So this is a harvester?" Frank had grown up on his grandparents farm, a very long time ago, but Grandpa Bob had been a John Deere man with a big green combine to turn a field of corn into golden kernels of corn.

"Among other things, Dad. It's whatever it needs to be from job to job. My design, though," Alex added with just a smidgen of pride.

Timeline

Time keeps slipping into the future.

What's the next crisis?

This morning's prompt is 'speedboat'.

I'll figure out how to use it, probably zpocalypse.

I was taking to Karen just now about the used plastic she wraps tightly into shapes. One was three rolls stacked and wrapped with a triangular cross section, which reminded of the chocolate melons from yesterday and I squished about the drabble.

Good times...

***

"You hear that?" Brenda asked and Ben nodded. The roar of a high powered engine, powerful and distant but dopplering, coming fast. From where?

Brenda went to other end of the barn, the rather scary and decrepit end.

"It's on the river. A speedboat!"

Planning for the game I'll never run!
My Big Damn Birthday Space Adventure Game
This is modern humans in spaaaace! No
Ok, this is about the 22nd Century No
This is about alien, no humans? No
So there are humans and this is in the next millennium? Yes
I need a specific date in the next millennium
Do a simple page with JS for some random number generation, around a hundred years between shocks, what each shock is and a snapshot of the solar system or known space

War in South America, 2106
Flying monkeys in Indonesia, 2239
Clanking Replicator War, 2300
India takes over Northeast Asia, 2365
First Interstellar Expedition, 2416

My Birthday Space Adventure Game

Where !

Ask a yes or no question:
% (Click to change the %)

This morning's prompt is 'melon'.

What can I do with 'melon'? Melon Lord leaps to mind of course, but I don't write fanfic anymore... 8-P

I want a break from zpocalypse and I will probably go with 'something else', unless I come back to Anderson and friends. Or Alex and the giant alien melon?

***

Costigan came down to breakfast and found his teenage daughter Faith considering weird football sized fruits in the handwoven basket on the kitchen table. The sides caved in a little, like some sort of triangular cross section. She waved a hand in the air and 'swiped' with a glance at her dad. The kitchen system generated handwritten text in the air before his eyes, the virtual note which nine year old Alex had left with the basket.

"New cultivar?"

"It's a variety of weird fruit he's growing in that over-grown botanical exhibition he calls a 'garden'."

Frank snorted. Three hectares and a dozen bots creeping around plants plus a few animals from who knew where in the Galaxy. Perhaps even beyond? The Scouts had discovered wormhole pairs connecting to systems outside of the Milky Way proper, he had heard.

"Well, the Melon Lord seems to want us to give it a try. No indications we can't eat and enjoy it..."

"Oh he raved about it. Says it's like chocolate. The twins had three for lunch yesterday."

"Three?" Costigan exchanged a grin with Faith and then they both took out their matching belt knives, the father and daughter project that they'd made when she was twelve turning thirteen, and fell upon the hapless melons like a pair of ravenous wolves.

***

I was just talking to my buddy Jake about Jake and I realized that while I know his role, that is Jake the character, is be an idiot, I feel guilty about clowning a decent human being...

***

Cathy hugged Wendy hard, 'atomic bearhugz' they  had said since they were kids. They'd signed up together, been separated and brought back together again and again, and then found themselves in different ships, same task force, until yet another transfer brought Cathy over to RVNS Aphrodite, Mighty Aphrodite or 'Dytee' and her crew were 'dites'.

Wendy waved at Jake who exchanged greetings and then wandered off with his friends.

"Is that the guy who tried to slab himself?"

Wendy nodded, looking annoyed. Cathy smiled.

"Chatter is you two are-"

"God no!" Wendy held up her hands palm out and Cathy laughed.

"So what's the spec, 'shipmate'?"

"Spec?"

"Specifications. Fleet has it's own way of speaking and I guess you've been slow to pick it up?"

"Maybe."

"How about definitely? Spill, cowgirl!"

"That first night in Venusberg habitat?"

"Yeah, when you bailed on me and never told me why? Not going to ever forget, core memory..."

"I went sight seeing and got in over my head."

This morning's prompt is 'comb', and I haven't drawn it yet, I was running late!

Tried again at lunchtime-

Vinnie hasn't run a game since long before that which will not be named and I will not be at Relaxicon yet again this year. I'm getting old and really wish I could, so against my better judgement I will prep a four hour space adventure with aliens and strange old worlds to explore for fun and profit, just for s#!@$ and giggles.

***

Ben made windrows out of eyesight and brought back some water. They were running low on disinfectant but spared a little extra for the washbasin after the mother and son had drunk their fill of the gallon with just a drop of bleach. She was awake and seemed to be aware of her surroundings, heart beat wasn't so alarming. Ben felt that bastard, hope.

She wanted to comb his hair but was too weak, so Tom brushed her hair instead while Brenda and Ben washed them up, and themselves as well, before Ben parted the tween's hair. Tom put up a hand to stop him, then dropped it.

"It's alright, I shouldn't have-" Ben said.

"No, I... I'll keep brushing her hair and you can- Mom?"

No one breathed until the mother took a shallow breath and then began to snore. Ben blinked and saw Brenda wipe at her face. Tom was openly crying and Ben mussed up his hair.

"Well now you'll just have to comb it all over again," Brenda said while over busying herself in her backpack, facing away from them.