Aradia steps out onto the long limb of the tree, her bare feet careful on the bark and the noose in one hand. She’s smiling and beautiful in the moonlight, giggling under her breath as she scrambles higher. She moves fast and overzealous, the movements of a girl who knows she could plummet from this tree at any moment but who also knows she could catch herself an instant afterward. Terezi steps out behind her, the scalemate clutched in one hand. She doesn’t have the same luxury as fancy psychic powers. She moves like a cat, like a gecko, feet placed precisely like she’s scaled this limb a thousand times before (because she has). She slips the yellow peaks of Secretary Cornsyrup’s ears between her teeth and clambers with all four limbs up through the little handholds and footholds that aren’t obvious to the untrained eye. She knows her tree inside and out. She could climb to the canopy blind and she would gamble her life on that.
She disappears into the pink jungle of leaves, the branches shivering with weight of two troll girls in two different places, and Terezi grins around her mouthful of scalemate because she’s beaten Aradia to the execution site, but still the other girl hasn’t cheated and simply flown here. Aradia plays by the rules every time, and she loves that through and through.
Uh, hey. So it’s been like two years right? Haha woops. Good news though! Casperstuck is back, and is not in any immediate danger of being abandoned!
Future updates might still be slow (not as slow as the last one!) but now you, the readers, have the chance to speed them up! I’ve made a Patreon, that you can go check out right now if you want to! If monthly payments aren’t really your thing but you’d still like to support me and speed up updates, there’s a Buy Me a Coffee link on my sidebar where you can send me $3 just for fun.
Regarding this update, I’m so happy to finally have it done! Believe it or not, I actually started work on it last summer, but due to a ton of setbacks over the last year, have not finished it until… just now.
By the way, this is chapter 4.1. Chapter 4 as a whole got too long and I had to cut it in half. To new readers or those who want a refresher, here’s where you can read it chronologically.
Thanks so much to everyone who’s expressed their interest in it continuing! I’ll try to live up to your expectations. If you have any questions or want to talk about the future chapters, my ask box is open.
queerhomestuck 