How Green Becomes Wood

Milo gently moved one flap of the tent back, "Woah, she even has your sister with her. And a tiny crystal ball! It is like... A Goosebumps book! Like, if you upset your dad, he'd trap you in here, and you'd have to survive the carnival to escape. Or, no, it'd start out that it seems like you're in a normal carnival, but it ends up evil like this, only at the end, you'd realize you were just a miniature pawn on the board."

Dark's eyes sparkled. This kid understood the vision.

"Oh, Xander, I wonder, if you could make one of your scent things to smell like a carnival smell, so it could be hidden in amongst everything, and when you got close it even smelled real."
 
"Yep, that sounds about right," Xander agreed, vaguely annoyed that he'd never been able to put it in words like that. "It's exactly like that. And, I don't know. I guess I could, but how do you capture the scent of a carnival?" He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe if I made a couple of different ones and put them close together."
 
"I know what it smells like," Dark said slowly, running his tongue over his teeth, "but I do not know how it would clash with the smell of the wood. It smells like cotton candy and metal. Just a little too sweet." He spun his wedding ring around his finger, momentarily lost in thought, "No, if anything, I would hire Xander to make tiny saddles for the ponies, when I choose to have pony rides out. Leather fits in the petting zoo. I use real fabric for the tents, real leather makes sense for the ponies."
 
"I thought it also smelled a little bit like popcorn and machine oil," Xander pondered. "But I'd totally do saddles for the ponies. Never done anything that tiny. I'd have to figure out the thinnest material I could work with."
 
"There is some popcorn," Dark agreed, "but popcorn can be overwhelming. And the oil is part of the metal, and the clanking. I like how carnivals clank."

"The clanking scares me."

"That is the point." Dark replied immediately, but then redirected himself, "The carousel is a music box, so I can have the calliope. The calliope is more necessary than the clanking."
 
"Eh, maybe we'll figure something out later," Xander shrugged. "Something other than drowning out wood smell. Hey, Stitch, there's a fair thing happening sometime soon, I think. You could come with us and hang. No rides required."
 
"Really?" Milo asked, looking at Xander, "That sounds cool, but," he glanced at Dark, "Aren't there four of you? That is going to leave uneven numbers."

"Five, with Ivy," Dark said, stretching out his fingers on one hand, "We would be odd numbers if one of us had to sit with her while the rest went on rides."

Milo blinked, somehow thinking that they'd just leave the baby with a sitter, "Oh. That makes sense."
 
Xander nodded toward the carnival. "Do you really think the mini would get left out of experiencing one of her parent's absolute favorite things in the world?" he asked dryly, lightly teasing Milo. Figuring Milo had had enough time to look over the carnival - not that he'd have seen everything, not by a long shot - he turned toward the door. "Ready to go check out the paint job in our room?"
 
"Oh, well, I just thought, there aren't a lot of things for babies to do at a carnival, are there?" Milo asked, embarassed.

"There are some rides for very little kids, some Alec may have to take her on, but she can ride the carousel and Ferris wheel with us, and that is enough." Dark replied, thinking to himself how much he hoped the twins' bedroom was freshly cleaned if they were taking guests up there.

"Thank you for showing me your carnival, Mr. Dark," Milo said, standing up properly and stretching out before following Xander back inside the house.
 
"She'd probably enjoy the Ferris wheel," Xander remarked thoughtfully as they walked. "And he likes showing it off. When you come back, you'll have to look again and see what's changed. It's like one of those... whatdoyacallems.... Hidden object pictures, except it moves." He opened the door for Milo and pointed the way toward the stairs. "I kind of like your idea of adding scent. Not sure how, but it's cool. That door's ours, go right ahead."
 
"It reminds me of the Winchester house." Milo replied, "It's pretty cool. Do you know how long he's been working on it for?"

Milo opened the door and, despite knowing this room was going to be different from the rest of the house, he nonetheless stared in surprise, "I feel like I entered a portal. It's not even that colourful, it's just. The comparison."
 
"Ages and ages," Xander replied to Milo's question. Then he smiled at his friend's reaction. They had cleaned up their room, but it still looked very lived in and not quite up to Dark's standard. They tended to keep the door closed not for privacy or secrecy, but to keep Dark from having a facial twitch whenever he walked by. "Yeah, it's pretty different. Alec wanted it even brighter but bowed to my demands."
 
"Wow." He took a few more steps inside and turned to loom around the room, "It's actually really cool that they let you do something like that. There's not a gargoyle or a bat in sight, it's like a whole different house. I like your rainbow."
 
"I couldn't believe it, either, but it's been pretty sweet," Xander said, leaning against the wall and giving Milo plenty of space. "Went from expecting to make a mad dash for the exit at any second to waiting on a hand-carved wardrobe because someone has a million and one items of clothing. Not where I saw myself a year ago, that's for sure."
 
"You really lucked out." Milo said, laying one hand on the end of the nearest bed, "It's a pretty nice sized room, too. It's not as crowded as some shared bedrooms. Do you ever feel like, um, Little Orphan Annie when she goes to Daddy Warbuck's for the first time? I don't remember what the song was called. My grandma really likes the musical." He thought about it for a few moments, "I think I'm Gonna Like It Here? Something like that. I feel bad for all the Orphans who didn't get selected."
 
Xander looked at Milo blankly. "I have no idea what that means. I think I understood, 'musical,'" he admitted. "Other than that, nothing. But, yeah, it's a nice room. Better than anything we've ever had before. Works out well, I guess, for everyone. Especially us, but our parents, they thought they weren't going to be having any kids, couldn't, so then we came along to bring in all the drama."
 
"It's a musical about an orphan girl in the Great Depression, and there's this rich man everyone calls Daddy Warbucks, which is weird but I guess it makes sense in context, I still don't like it though, and for whatever reason he decides he's going to take an orphan back to his mansion for Christmas, and spoil her, and then chuck her back in the orphanage. Only that doesn't happen, because he falls in love with her, and wants to adopt her, except she doesn't want to be adopted, because she has a necklace from her parents that says they're going to come back for her some day, and they do this whole thing where they try to get in touch with her birth parents, and she meets the President, but her parents turn out to be dead, so she lets Daddy Warbucks adopt her. And also Daddy Warbucks marries a much younger woman and that was weird, too."

He went to look out the window, down at the garden below, "Did they not want kids or...?" He shook his head, "No, you don't have to answer that, I'm sorry. It's cool you have like... an actually happy family."
 
Xander hoped the musical would make more sense in context because he wasn't certain he followed. A guy takes in a kid during Christmas to marry a younger woman and then adopt... the kid with dead parents? And the president was involved. It probably made more sense, he just wasn't following because his head was getting increasingly fuzzier.

"They thought they couldn't, and Mini was a shocker to us all," Xander decided to tell Milo, moving to look out the window with him. "Alec and I thought that they'd be kicking us out once they found out they were having a little miracle child. Expected and waited for it to happen, but, clearly, it didn't. It took a while to figure out we weren't going anywhere."
 
"Come to think of it," Milo teased, "Annie was a redhead too. You'd probably have a lot to talk about." He looked at Xander just long enough to see how he reacted to this jest and then looked back outside, "That must have been scary for everyone. At least it looks like they don't regret it. I'd be afraid, you know, if I wasn't supposed to be able to have kids, and then had a kid, I'd end up holding that baby and thinking, 'oh no, this wasn't supposed to happen, I've made a huge mistake' and regretting it. So I hope I'm able to have kids because I think it'd be kinda fun to be a dad, but I'd get too in my head if I had a 'miracle baby' and convince myself it wasn't supposed to happen." He looked at Xander again, "How long do you think you'll all call her a miracle child? It sounds like something that'd get in her head, once she's old enough for things to get into her head."
 
Xander snorted in amusement at the jest and leaned against the wall, still turned so he could see out the window. "We're already starting to dial back on it. She's still going to be a bit spoiled, but not in the real nasty way, you know? They already know they're going to have to work against the desire to really spoil her, but being the youngest by over a decade and the only girl... kind of hard not to spoil a little." He looked down at the apple tree and its buds promising flowers. "I'm never having kids."
 
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