[crow]

And the question he had asked, such as it was, wasn't a particularly difficult one to answer if he wasn't meaning it rhetorically.

"Well, think about it, how long have you been around?" she said, pulling the gloves over her own hands and picking up the dishcloth from the sink. She grabbed a bowl and started scrubbing. "A day--- twenty four hours, give or take a couple, at this point. Or, well, I guess your cake's been around a little longer than that. We can call it two days, if you like."

[crow]

Rinsing off the bowl she had finished scrubbing, Peach set it aside before she continued. "Neo, he's been around for... a few months now, I'd say. And me, I've been here nine months, maybe ten. I haven't kept track super well, but it's been a while."

"So you don't just... expire?" said Confetti. Contrary to how he usually sounded, his manner now was almost... awkward, as if he was feeling out a question that he'd been thinking about for a while but hadn't had the guts to ask until now.

[crow]

Maybe this was what he had been thinking about during the time he'd laid on the floor yesterday, or maybe when he had been holed up in his room. Peach didn't blame him for that one. Their existence was pretty confusing, and she'd had plenty of questions too when she'd first manifested.

Unlike Confetti, back then there hadn't been anyone else around to answer them for her. Ferdinand... sure, he was a thing, but the phenomenon had been new to him at the time too, and he didn't know much more than she did.

[crow]

And even for the things that he could answer, often he was flippant or vague on the details, so in the end she still had to figure out a lot of it for herself. She didn't begrudge Confetti his advantage there, however. As much as she didn't like his manners, he was still a cake, and still family, more or less. She'd help where she could, as far as that went.

"We don't expire, no," she said, "at least not as far as we've experience. But we also don't try to starve ourselves like you did earlier."

[crow]

"I wasn't starving myself," said Confetti, a little of that stubborn tone sneaking back into his voice.  "I just didn't feel like eating yet." He was, she noted, not unlike a petulant child, especially with his diminutive appearance. He wasn't actually a child--- none of them were--- but he did look fairly dainty and fine-framed, from being a jumbo cupcake rather than a full-sized cake.

"Well, whatever it was. We don't know what happens to us when we don't eat, but it's better not to chance it," Peach said.

[crow]

"Oh," said Confetti quietly, as though it hadn't actually occurred to him before. And, to be fair, maybe it hadn't. He hadn't been around for very long, and it wasn't like he knew any of this, so who knew what he had and hadn't thought about?

"If you have questions, you know, Neo and I are around to answer them. I know this is a pretty weird predicament to find yourself in," she said, pausing from her dish washing for a moment to motion to herself.

[crow]

"Is it?" said Confetti. That wasn't sarcastic either. Hey, if he could make a habit of this, maybe she could come around to not disliking him after all. Right now, at least, he felt more like a little brother and less like a nuisance that had come into her life without so much as a by-your-leave.

"Hmm, well, if it isn't for you, then all the better," Peach said. "It's always nice if you can be yourself without worrying about the rest. Though you should still learn some proper self-care."

[crow]

Confetti had nothing else to say to that, so Peach focused on finishing the rest of the dishes. There weren't very many, and without questions to distract her, it didn't take her long at all to finish up her work. She let the sink drain, then scrubbed it down for good measure and gave everything a spray down before taking off her gloves and hanging them on the little hook where they usually stayed.

"How's it coming with your stuff?" she called out to Neo, making her way towards the closet.

[crow]

"U-um... Yeah, sort of!" said Neo. Boy, that was encouraging to hear. Peach quickened her pace. Maybe if this wasn't Neo they were talking about, she wouldn't be so concerned, but every time she thought that, all the little accidents he'd had since he had gotten here flashed through her mind.

However, his problems, as they turned out, were perfectly mundane. All she found when she came to the closet was him struggling with an ungainly armful of stuff, his chin holding down a book precariously balanced on a bunch of other things.

[crow]

Peach laughed a little, taking in the sight of him like that, looking at her plaintively for assistance. "Here, put that stuff down," she said. "If you needed a bin or something, you could have just said so."

"Ah, um. Do you have one then?" he said hopefully.

"Just a minute," she said. She went into her own room and dumped one out, figuring she'd just put everything back in when she was done. "Here," she said, handing it over to him. "And it's right over there anyway, so what's a few more trips anyway?"

[crow]

“I… I guess that’s true,” Neo said. He really hadn’t put very much thought into the whole process of transferring his stuff over. He hadn't thought, to be fair, that there'd be much to think about. The most he’d considered was whether he had any fragile items that ought to have been transported carefully. To that end, he had separated these and put them on a small shelf in the closet-room, to be dealt with once he had taken care of anything else.

[crow]

The vast majority of what he owned was pretty durable though, as far as just being jostled around went. Neo would have said it was because he didn’t own very much to begin with, but Peach’s more conservative opinion was that they didn’t trust him with anything fragile if they could help it.

As it was, the ‘fragile objects’ shelf held exclusively little knick-knacks and souvenirs from the short trips they’d taken for fun--- shells from the beach, a snowglobe from Christmas, things like that.

[crow]

It was endearing, in a way, that he’d kept them. They weren’t the sort of things Peach would have thought to keep herself, but it was nice to see that someone else had mementos of the time they’d spent together. Peach found herself smiling as she looked up at them.

Neo caught her gaze, and followed it to his shelf, at which point he laughed sheepishly. “I put them there because I was afraid they might break if I threw them in with everything else,” he said.

[crow]

“That’s smart. It would have been a real pain if the snowglobe cracked,” she said. She didn’t know what exactly they put in those things… Was it really water? But the glitter moved so slowly through it, she couldn’t help but think it had to be something more viscous.

Not that she was eager to find out, by any means. “You know, we’ll be moving around in here a lot, so maybe I’ll put these in my room for now. Nice and out of the way.”

[crow]

“Yeah, I guess that would be better, wouldn’t it?” said Neo. Peach, moving to take the snowglobe, glanced at him, and Neo nodded his permission for her to take it. She deftly gathered the lot of things into her arms, and bustled off to her room.

That left Neo to pack his less easily damaged things into the bin she’d given him. There were a few books, some stuffed animals… The stuffed animals had been souvenirs too, though privately Neo had merely used that as an excuse.