"EDWARD--" My indignation was hamstrung by the necessity of checking the back of his box. "--ANTHONY MASON CULLEN! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"





It was at this point that Edward discovered something I could have told him weeks ago: he is not, in fact, made of marble. Somehow, it wasn't the attempted bear exsanguination (explushination?) that woke the Shelf; it was the tiny, tiny screaming.










Yeah. You know the cliché about the villagers with the torches and pitchforks? Change that to "daggers and swords." This is not a group of people you want to piss off--most of them are trained soldiers, except for Elizabeth, who is a trained pirate. Even the Arwens have been known to cast Magic Missile now and then. So I'm trying to calm down the mob while Anna's stamping her foot and whacking The Littlest Edward and shouting gypsy curses (most of which translate, I imagine, to "I TOLD YOU SO"), and then, a light at the other end of The Shelf comes on.




I set him down on the little fold-up desk. He curled up into a ball. I pulled on the string that turns on the one light source in the room, a bare lightbulb. Yes, like a hard-boiled interrogation room. No, really, I'm not kidding, that's really what my attic's like.
We sat there a few moments.
"Edward--what were you thinking?" I said finally.

"Oh--for God's sake--don't--STOP THAT."

"Okay, now you're just making me uncomfortable."
He kept on with the head-banging, though, so finally I picked him up and set him back down on his feet. "What were you going to do? Finish Iorek and then go after Lyra? Or would you have to go through Pan first?"
"I would never hurt a child!" he cried, shocked.
"Oh, but you'll just eat her bear."

Oh. Uh. This had not occurred to me. That he would need to eat at some point. Because apparently I'm an idiot. A dozen different things flashed through my mind--all those times he didn't want to be around the girls, it wasn't just because they were annoying the hell out of him (although I'm sure they were, EOWYN); it was because he was afraid he would Lose Control Omg and attack them. Duh.
"Why didn't you say something?"

"So you just weren't going to eat anything at all? You were just going to starve to death? How did you even think you were going to--"

You know that icon I have? This one?
That's kind of what my face looked like just then.

That's right: the one time I clean, this happens.
When I regained my powers of speech, the first thing I asked was, "But--did they taste good? At all?"

Clearly, something would have to be done. I would have to go back in there and take the blame for everything--sincerely, because it really was all my fault. (What did I think he was eating? Stupid!) But what about future nourishment? Which stuffed animals would I have to sacrifice to the cause? Did we have anything boxed up in the attic, maybe? But what would we do after we ran out of those? Stuffed animals get expensive, you know, and what would I do with the--empty carcasses? It was all just--too weird--to contemplate.
And then I had an epiphany. You have to go through the bathroom to get to the attic, so I ducked back in, opened a drawer, and grabbed a handful of cotton balls.
"You know how they have blood banks?" I said. "Think of it as donated plush."

"How is it?"

"Well, yeah, you've had dust bunnies."
He stood there holding his cotton ball, and I stood there waiting, and he stood there, and I stood there.
"Well... I'll leave you to it, then."
But as I turned back to close the door behind me, I saw him wolfing down cotton as fast as he could go.
So... that's one problem solved. One.
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