The Bear and Barnacle

It was Dora's insistence that returns them to Margate with such a specific deadline. She's not going to miss spending Valentine's Day with Val, but not in the way most people would expect, unless they saw the two children last year, dressed in black and passing out black paper hearts labeled "Death".

She doesn't know when they got in, having fallen asleep draped over Iago's shoulder on the train from France and barely stirring as Iago hefted her and their backpacks, Teddy securely fastened to Dora's. She slept on through the car ride and even through Iago and Jack's hushed exchange at the door of the latter's house.

But she wakes up hot, and tangled with Val and his wings. Probably deafening Val with her squeal of joy, she latched onto him, heedless at first of the unseasonable heat.

Breakfast at the very full Harkness-Grayweir house on Valentine's Day was filled with Jack's pancakes and Dora rambling, and rambling, and rambling at length about all the places they visited, the lack of being arrested or put into a brothel in Morocco, the sisters they met in the Alps but the lack of goats to chase there, and the weeks spent in Venice where Dora talked Paulo the gondolier into letting her steer, resulting-- unsurprisingly-- in a fall into a canal and a subsequent-- potentially unrelated-- illness.

She's still babbling when Zel is volunteered to take Val and her-- both matching and dressed in black, Dora with fake black wings-- out into the sweltering heat of Margate to pass out their "anti-valentines"-- upgraded to include "agony", "putrescence", "sorrow", and "loneliness" this year-- to the unsuspecting populace. And she only stops talking when her voice gives out.

Dora wakes slowly- as usual, though the light is streaming around the edges of her curtains. The Minister's perch is empty and she hears nothing outside her room. Everyone must still be asleep. She's about to slide out of bed and make her sleepy way to the bathroom when she sees it. The large, rangy wolf curled on the end of her bed. She starts, eyes going wide. It's not Navarre- the colouring's all wrong. This one is grey and brown. Her hand curls into Teddy's back, closing on her wand, just as the wolf's eyes open- a familiar shade of gold that makes her heart turn warm. She reaches out for him, but her hand passes through him. His head inclines at this then he lowers it in a sage nod. Her expression flickers, hair along with it, and she breathes out a single name, "Moony". They stare at one another for a moment but when his tail picks up a quiet rhythm against her bed Dora giggles and the tension dissolves.

"I'm going to the loo! But you have to stay here! And when I come back we can play," she announces as her feet hit the floor. The wolf gives a soft yap of assent and Dora slips out the door.

Dora stretches slowly, relishing the once familiar aches in her body. Joints too strained, skin too sensitive, nipples sore, and bits- well, those are still pretty damn pleased. She puts a hand through her hair as she morphs the brown back into bright pink. She rolls carefully to her left side, hand reaching out to stroke down the back of the naked man next to her. He's sleeping but gives a quiet rumble of approval at the touch, nonetheless.

( He purrs the same as ever. )

Dora has gotten bored with the olives. No one seems to be ordering drinks that will give her the opportunity to spear them with the little plastic swords she talked Iago into getting. So for a while she tried slipping them into Iago's pockets but he caught her and sent her off to to make bugs out of the olives... He even joined her between customers to make her a caterpillar out of some toothpicks and olives. That lasted until The Minister swooped by and grabbed it, and proceeded to eat the caterpillar's olivey head.

So she drags out her box of markers and paper from behind the bar and decides it's time to draw something for Xellos. Her brow furrows as she tries to figure out what to draw him, but she can't decide on anything so she asks Iago for help. She likes his advice so she plops down at her table in the corner and draws.

When she's done, she adds a note then rolls them up and slips an elastic around the tube to hold it tight. She pulls an olive out of her pocket and throws it across the table at the back of the parrot who is still pulling olives from toothpicks. "Oi. There's post!"

The bird squawks indignantly at being pelted with food but he still obligingly turns around to stare at her while she waves the rolled up paper at him. He squawks again, "Rrrraack don't hit me, Iago!"

She giggles. "'m not Iago. And I'm not going to hit you."

He eyes her. "Traitor in the ranks!"

"I am not! You and Iago can keep fighting all on your own. I don't like wars." When the parrot says nothing, she pushes the rolled up drawing at him. "You have to take this to Xellos! And don't get it wet!"

The Minster reaches out to take it with one of his feet before taking flight. As he goes over Dora, he drops an olive onto her head. "OI!!!"

( Iago said to draw you some place warm! )

Dora sets Teddy on her chair and traipses up onto the small stage and waves enthusiastically to everyone.

"I'm going to sing now! You can sing with me if you want, but I'll have the microphone!"

She waits for the music to start up then lifts the small microphone up then sings.

"Raindrops on ponies and whiskers on Teddy!"

"Iaaaago?" Dora keens at him from the living room where she's been colouring while he's scrubbing the kitchen counters again.

"Yes, Tesorina?" He doesn't look up.

"Can I have a hundred pounds?"

Now he looks up at her. "What do you need a hundred pounds for?"

"For your birthday!" she reasons.

"You don't need to get me anything for my birthday and not something that big."

"But it's your birthday! And you're supposed to get gifts on your birthday."

Iago groans. "Can we pretend it's not my birthday?"

Dora puts her hands on her hips and looks at him. "Is this cause you think you're gonna be old??"

"Thirty is old, Dora."

( But McGonagall is old... and she's LOTS more than thirty! )

Dora had secrets. Lots of them. Most were other people's secrets though. Things they'd told her while they were playing with her- like Spike's real name which still makes her giggle. Sometimes it was the nature of the play itself. Like with Alex who didn't want anyone to know about his playing princely dress-up with her. Val told her secrets now- about Jack and Zelgadis, about Xellos, about his master, about dragons and monsters and magic. She thinks most of them are true secrets and not fake secrets too.

But for her own? They were harder to think about. She wouldn't tell Iago about how much she likes to sleep curled up with Val or where she hides the tube of shockingly pink lipstick that Sam the Tattooist's girlfriend gave her. He'd tell her she was staying in her room until she was thirty... Or maybe he'd change it to forty this time. Or send her to a convent. Or something like that. Even if he's not serious, she's not telling.

She expects these aren't important secrets. Some things were important but not quite secrets. Like she knows the lies she has to tell to keep from being taken away if anyone starts asking about of her life or her family. But no one had- at least no one that wanted to try to take her away.

But her nightmares... those are secret. The ones that are filled with angry people and wands, with being pushed away by a wolf with amber eyes, with watching her father disappearing into a map, with being unable to find Teddy who keeps turning different colours, with seeing him so tiny and so far away that no matter how much she runs she can't even get close to him. Those that leave her trembling in her bed, face and hair wet, and the world tinted green... those she keeps to herself.

Dora doesn't really need long to decide what she wanted to give Mr Holmes. He was always asking her questions and investigating... everything. Or so it seemed to Dora. And The Minister agreed with her; he had a very good sense about these things, given that he was a parrot.

So she trudged off to find Professor McGonagall and ask if her idea was allowed- she had no desire to be in trouble with her. Professor McGonagall knew everything and everyone. And for a few moments Dora wondered if Mr Holmes had investigated her but couldn't decide if he must have or if she would have refused such an invasion. The internal debate came to a draw as both seemed equally likely and The Minister wasn't helping. He only squawked "Birds of a Feather" and something rather rude about cats before flying off again.

Professor McGonagall had agreed that it couldn't hurt and she would owl Dora's order for her. She had even taken the paper money that Dora brought with her for the purchase (money that Dora had earned from charging tourists 2 pounds a piece for having their picture taken with The Minister).

And now she had the two packages, wrapped up in alarmingly cheery paper with pink striped giraffes and green spotted zebras on it. She found Mr Holmes at the pub and scurried over to him.

"Here! I got your name in the gift exchange! I would have had The Minister bring them to you, but Xellos doesn't like him being in the pub and I'm already in trouble for bein' cleverer that Iago e'en though Iago's proud of me- sort of.. mostly! He says I'm sposed to be smart e'en though it was naughty to try to trick him- though I didn't. I just got my ear pierced, and he and Xellos agreed I could pierce one ear once- they just didn't say it had to be my earlobe and I got it up here!"

She points to the top curve of her ear where there is indeed a piercing through it, complete with a sparkling stud that changes between black and purple in the light. "But that's not your gift. These are your gifts!"

Dora hands over the wrapped books to him, one copy of Hogwarts: A History and one of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Dora finally finishes up carving her pumpkin then giggles at a stray bit of pumpkin goo that's clinging to the surface.

"Eww, Teddy has a bogey," she giggles then she wipes it off with the arm of her shirt which is already heavily stained with orange bits and blobs.

She snatches the box of matches when Jack's attention is on Val and she easily strikes a match and lights her candle. Ignoring Jack's belated protests about how he should be doing that, she blows out the match and drops the candle into her pumpkin.

When it shows off the design with a warm orange glow, she grins then hollers, "IAGO! XELLOS! I'm DONE! COME SEEEEEE!"

The blue and gold macaw sitting on the back of her chair startles at the sudden yelling and flicks some pumpkin guts from one of his wings at the back of Dora's head.