A neighbor whom I've been somewhat acquainted-and-at-the-same-time-estranged with for years now passed just the other day, and in the shameless rummaging through her personal belongings that followed, I came to discover a treasure trove of some of the absolute greatest literary works ever put to paper by mankind, penned by her in a single-night delusional frenzy brought on by an unhealthy addiction to poorly-scanned scanlations of poorly-drawn fujoshi. A cache of twenty-one self-contained stories written before her demise, riddled to the brim with thousands and thousands of paragraphs of hot, sweaty, unadulterated antics between cute twink boys and their cute twink boy wieners, sloppily tonguing each other while frotting on the windowsill in positions I didn't even know were possible until this day. It was by far, literally one of the most beautiful things I had ever read in my entire meaningless existence.

And now, presented to you, in a completely one-hundred percent censored format made possible only with the power of Nintendo, is the only story of that golden batch that I did not immediately toss in the microwave for twenty-two uninterrupted minutes out of pure, unabashed jealousy.

Word Count: 1,323 words.

Up Late with Cowlick and Corrin

Shift, shift, shift..

Silas is asleep when he hears it, dreaming wistfully of calmer days, of scoring hot peasant beav on a beach somewhere off the coast of a tropical outrealm, with Lady Elise at his side in an adorable little two-piece, and Arthur's head on a pike.

"Ungh.. nngh.."

The noise rouses him. Silas stirs slightly and groans, shuffling in an effort to regain comfort. When he does, he tries to drift back to sleep, and for a moment recaptures solace in his twisted tropic trip.

Shift, shift, shift..

For a moment.

"Nngh.. mmgh..."

Silas furrows his brow, agitated and whatnot. Unconsciously, he extends his arm across the bed and reaches out for the source of the racket. "On... on my... ho... honor... as a kni—"

He freezes completely upon making physical contact with a nose. And what's worse, it's not Elise's.

"Aaaaagggh!"

The knight snaps awake in a heartbeat with a shriek that could wake the dead. He draws a series of heavy breaths, sweat dripping from his forehead, eyes bloodshot from shock and disorder, with a noodle as limp as they come. The cowlick cavalier is given little time to react to the horrors of the night before his aggressor chooses to speak in, of all things, the most abruptly casual way possible.

"Oh hey, you're awake after all."

Silas' heart skips a beat at the sight of his absent-minded best friend.

"Lucky for me too, you snore pretty loudly, you know."

"C-Corrin!?" he blurts out in-between breaths, his face hot and bothered. "What are you—How are you—Wh-Why are you in my bed?!"

The crown prince of nearly every loreless nation this side of Cheve is rather civil for someone on the verge of being accused for literal tent invasion. He lies quite comfortably in the spot next to his once-forgotten chum, hands locked behind his head, gawking blankly at the tent ceiling in nothing more than his pajamas.

Corrin lets out an oblivious hum, his lost thoughts fixated on anything but his friend's condition. "Sorry, it's just.. I had the strangest dream..." he mumbles. "I can't get my mind off of it.. I was wondering what you'd think."

"What do I think..? I-I think you're in my bed!"

The prince pauses to mull over the matter, lips pursed. ".. Oh. I suppose I am.. Oh well, it can't be helped."

Corrin is woefully unaware of the sacred values of personal space (and really any social cue for that matter), and it shows. His near-blissful ignorance combined with Silas' relatively lenient rate of tolerance go hand-in-hand for a recipe for shenanigans, tonight being no exception.

Silas emits a long sigh, grasping the realization that this is a losing battle and there is fuck all he can do about it. "Haaaagh... What did you want to talk about?"

It's a good five seconds before Corrin speaks again. "There are so many stars in the sky, you know?.." he begins, his gaze still trained on the ceiling as if something is there for him. "I wonder what would happen.. if one day they all disappeared, blew up or something.."

Silas thinks that he's never seen a more clear example of why sleep deprivation is so harmful.

"See, what I dreamed about.." the prince explains in an almost-lackadaisical manner. "There were all these stars in the sky.. and they all looked so beautiful.. I reached out to touch one, you know just to see if it would taste good.. but then Flora came out of nowhere and she blew them all up."

Corrin crosses his legs for extra comfort and Silas cocks a brow. "She did what?"

"Now now, I don't blame her," he confesses with a shake of the head. "She's always had her fair share of issues, but I never took the time to confront her on them. I'd have sent Jakob to go talk to her, but they never want to speak to each other for some reason.."

"Why aren't you discussing this with her then—?!"

"Because of the tangy coleslaw!" the prince barks back, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Try to keep up!"

"Th-The what?!"

Corrin offers no explanation, instead continuing to muse aloud. "Thinking back on it, I think she did it out of spiteful vengeance. I mean, don't tell her this but," he drops his tone and hisses in his ear. "I always feel like she thinks she's so much better than everyone else, you know? Like a subtle, passive-aggressive, 'everything has to be about me'-ish aura about how cool she is.. It really bothers me for some reason."

More befuddled than words could describe, Silas scratches his blushing cheek. "Well.. she is in the Ice Tribe, isn't she?"

Corrin moves to steal some of the covers. "That doesn't mean she should be so haughty about it," he mutters. "Anyway, where was I.. oh yeah! So Flora blew up all the stars in the sky, and I was all like 'oh no Flora why did you do that I was going to have brunch!' and she was all like 'brace for a chill'! Except, and here's the weird part, she didn't freeze anything, all she did was blow herself up, and the entire time she did that all I could think was 'who in the world is giving her all these explosives?'"

"That does sound like classic Flora."

"It does, it really does. That's what got to me the most, it was how real it felt! She couldn't bear to see her jealousy unfulfilled, so she opted to end it all by throwing herself into a blistering abyss embodying her petty emotions. I figured her reasoning was that if she can't enjoy the night sky, then no one can."

"And the coleslaw..?"

"Oh! That's why I came to you. See, right as Flora was holding her barbecue, flesh melting off her hot bod, she told me that in spite of everything, she still forgave me for all those times Jakob and I never paid attention to her, and that her dying wish was to serve me my favorite meal one last time, tangy coleslaw. And then she turned into a puddle."

"So.. what's the issue there?"

"You said my favorite food was surf and turf!"

"I said it was veggie chowder!"

"Well which is it!? I can't have multiple favorite foods! I thought you would be keeping track of all this stuff!"

Little did the prince know, his best friend's head is actually emptier than his own. Rather than come clean and admit his shortcomings however, Silas raises his hands to quell the quarreling. "Look, why don't we just agree to disagree and promise to keep Flora from flammable things from now on?"

"Hm... I'm terrible with commitments," Corrin concedes with a shrug. "But fine by me. I just hope she doesn't set any of my stuff ablaze."

Silas is—for all intents and purposes—all too happy to kick his best friend out the flap right at that moment, but his actions are cruelly interrupted as Corrin reaches to put out the lone candle lighting the tent. An awkward darkness subsequently engulfs the two, along with a silence that unsettles the knight until it is promptly broken by his bunkmate.

"Ahh," the prince drags out a long yawn. "That's all I wanted to talk about really. See you in the morning, we're going to go pick up my daughter!"

And just like that, Corrin steals all the covers and drops dead in a hastily-crafted cocoon of blankets, and Silas is no less bemused than he was five minutes ago.

Feeling a draft tickling his now-coverless legs, the cavalier hugs himself. "You're uh.. staying here?"

Corrin perks his pointed ears and wraps himself deeper in the cocoon. "Well I'm not going back out there, it's all dark and ominous."

Silas braces for a chill that lasts for the rest of the evening.

-that stuff in the beginning was a lie.