Having been homebound throughout her pregnancy, Bibi Crumplesteam decided it was time to get out on the town. Her first stop was the Lonely Literary Café. It was her favorite place to enjoy a quiet coffee beverage and perhaps a book.
Of course, given her task, it didn't hurt that it was also a decent place to meet men.
As she sat sipping at her double cinnamon non-fat frothiccino with caramel sprinkles, she noticed a man approaching her. She kept her gaze focused ahead to let him make the first move, but she was taking him in with her peripheral vision.
"Another suitor," she thought, "and he's not bad looking either."
"Excuse me, miss," he began, "but I can't help notice you look like an old friend of my father's."
She gave a slight laugh before replying with, "An
old friend of your father's, eh? You must be new to flirting. That may be the worst line I've ever heard. However, you are rather cute, so let's pretend you were a bit more smooth and that it inclined me to invite you to join me."
"I...yes, I suppose that didn't sound very good," he responded, as he moved to take a seat at her table. "I wasn't trying to flirt, by the way," he added. "I just...you really do resemble someone my father used to know."
"Well, enough about your father," Bibi replied, taking charge of the conversation, "let's talk more about you and me. I'm Bibi."
"Chance," he replied. "I'm actually new to town."
"We're fairly new here ourselves," she replied.
"We?" Chance responded.
"Oh, my sisters and I moved here along with our cousin," she clarified. "We live in the weird-looking, gear-shaped house."
"Sisters?" he replied, seeming to have missed the reference to the house completely. "How many sisters? Two?"
"Umm, yes," she replied, a bit uncomfortable with his seeming fixation on them. "Is that significant?"
"It's just..." he began, then stopped as if looking for how to express his thoughts. "My father's friend, the one you resemble, she also had two sisters. They went missing and...I'm sorry, what did you say your last name was?"
At this point, Bibi was staring at the stranger and regretting having invited him to join her. Cute or no, he seemed to be an oddly fixated stalker and that sort of distraction was the last thing she needed.
"I didn't say," she responded, "and I think this conversation is just about over." With that, she got up and left the table.
"Okay then. I'll be seeing you around, Bibi," he said as she walked away.
"Not if I see you first," she replied. Taking it as a joke, he laughed in response.
Bibi needed something to take her mind off that weird encounter, so she took Nathan up on his invitation to come to his costume party.
Nathan, as it turns out, was not pleased with her.
"Oh, you just go silent on me for weeks at a time and then pop up as if nothing happened?" he asked, obviously bitter.
"Wow, clingly much?" she replied.
"And on top of that," he persisted, "I hear you've been seen around town snuggling with that pasty, ginger, fairy boy!"
"Cedrick?" she replied. "Oh, absolutely I've been snuggling with him," she answered. "he's more of a man than you've ever been."
As luck would have it, Cedrick happened to be at the party and overheard the exchange.
"Hey, pasty ginger fairy boy," she greeted him with a smile.
"Hey yourself, witchy woman," he responded. "What say we skip out on this party? Maybe go catch a movie?"
"Sound great," she replied.
After ditching their costumes, they set off for the theater.
As it turns out, no one else was in the theater with them. Since they had the whole place to themselves, they did something other than watching the movie. When it was all over, they came strutting out.
"Heck of a show, don't you think?" Cedrick asked with a wink.
"It was pretty good," Bibi replied, "though I thought the middle part, where they were on the boat, seemed a bit contrived and unbelievable. Maybe better script-writing would have helped."
"Wait, you actually watched the movie?"
"Yep," Bibi said with a smile, "it's called multi-tasking."
"You are truly a fascinating woman," Cedrick responded, shaking his head.
"And you," she replied, "have excellent taste in women."
A short while after that date, Bibi found herself feeling nauseous.
"I don't think Aggie's cooking is to blame," she thought.
Speaking of Aggie, she was thoroughly enjoying her role as the caretaker of young Thanos. Young Thanos who was now a toddler.
"You match my hair, little one," she told him. "You might be the best fashion accessory ever!"
It turns out that Aggie's favorite "accessory" was going to have some competition.
It was confirmed that Bibi was pregnant with her second child. Given that Cedrick was the only fairy Bibi had encountered in town, she was rather seriously hoping the baby would take after him.
When the labor pains struck, Aggie was there for her to freak out and be no real help whatsoever.
Finally, after what seemed to Bibi like an eternity of waiting,
her baby girl arrived. While the baby girl had Cedrick's coloring, it seemed she had inherited her mother's witchcraft rather than being a fairy.
"Eh, at least that's one more box checked off," Bibi said as she left young on the floor for Aggie to take care of. "I'm
so changing out of these maternity clothes!"
