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You are Charlotte Fawkins, dashing heroine, detective, adventuress, heiress, sorceress, etcetera. Three years ago, you drowned yourself in a quest to find a long-lost family heirloom; nowadays, you're just nobly c̶a̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ solving problems with the help of trusty retainer Gil and snake/father(??) Richard. Inexplicably, many people tend to "dislike" you, though you've never done anything wrong in your life.
Right now, you are hugging Richard. Were hugging Richard. You're tugging yourself away now, feeling curiously... not "satisfied." That's the wrong word. But if there were, hypothetically, some sort of gaping hole inside of you, then it's a little bit like that hole were just plugged with ragged paper and a quarter-roll of cellu-tape.
>[+1 ID: 10/14]
If Richard— Nice Richard— feels at all uncertain, he doesn't show it. He lets you go easily; sits openly, knees spread; splays his white palms atop the red marble. As if scaling a great oak, the Snake twines around him. You curl your own palms in your lap.
The silence would be painful if Richard were angry, or indifferent, but he's radiating excruciating <span class="mu-i">benevolence,</span> and what are you supposed to do with that? You have already forgiven him. You have put the matter to bed. Mission accomplished: he can drop the act, which was confusing and got bad reviews, anyhow. What's that? It's no act? Richard is dead, and his flesh is inhabited by a thin mimeo of your father, who loves you? Who won't stop?
The issue is that you have never had a father. He died before you were born. You have known dimly other fathers, but never had occasion to interact, and you have had Richard, the snake. Aunt Ruby never bothered to instruct you in the topic. In the books, fathers perished left and right, if they were seen at all.
So what are you intended to do? Should you be feeling like scrap and tape? That doesn't seem right. What does one discuss with their father, and is it different if one's father can read one's mind? Is one permitted to boss one's own father around? That also doesn't seem right, which bothers you. What's the point of Richard turning nice if you can't boss him around?
You steal a glance at Nice Richard, who hasn't shifted. Perhaps you should ask Gil about the parameters? He can't be an expert (that would require multiple fathers, you'd imagine), but he must have a greater base of knowledge than you do. On the other hand, you have a powerful suspicion that normal daughters have no need to ask any questions, and after last night you can't have Gil seeing you as—
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