How Green Becomes Wood

Dark forgot the joy of the moment and looked steadily at Alec, "Wear whatever colours you like, Alec. Red and purple are complimentary colours, the right shades of purple suit red hair wonderfully, but even if they did not: Do not let people tell you what you should or should not wear. I would not look as I do if I listened to the opinions of what others believe looks best." Then he relaxed into the moment again and lifted Ivy above his head, kissing her little tummy, "Thank you for helping Baba, sweet girl! Mama is so clever, is she not? Yes she is, terribly clever."

Ivy giggled and reached out for his hair, but Dark settled her back down again by his side, picking up the box and unlocking it with the 'Purple Heart' key. Inside, was one of the puzzle pieces he had been collecting, and four animals which fit into the board: a deer, a tree, a mushroom, and a bear. Also included, was a letter:

I told you already, Goose, how much being a parent with you has made me fall even more deeply in love with you. Stirring awake in the dead of night to the sound of your footsteps pacing across our bedroom floor, bouncing and singing to our daughter, only serves to make me adore you. Coming downstairs and finding you calming or teasing our sons, depending on their mood, makes me have faith in our future. What sort of person would I be if I kept you from them all day, knowing how much you love them? I wonder if they know how much you talk about them. I suppose if you're reading this aloud, they do now.

Enjoy your time with them, and remember how many wonders there hidden behind what is obvious.

After reading it, he set the letter into his bag, and picked up one of the puzzle pieces and turned it over in his hands, "Okay, Hummingbird, do you want to help Baba? Where do you think the pieces go?" He looked at his sons with a glint in his eyes, and then said, "It's much too difficult for your brothers, so Baba really needs you."

~~

"I put my shortest petticoat to fluff it up," Daizi said, pulling up the skirt just enough to show the crinoline beneath, "I like how it moves that way." She sat down at the vanity table and put on her headband to keep her hair from her face, which meant it no longer covered her ears. "What do you mean 'lighter'? I mean, I know what lighter and darker mean, I know what those words refer to, but I don't understand what that refers to in this context."
 
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Alec looked at Dark a little shocked and confused by the sudden seriousness, but then it was gone. He decided to ignore it for now and focus on the fun bits.

Xander leaned back on the grass to watch. "Let's see how smoothly she gets this."

~~

Sally considered how to explain. "Do you want your natural skin tone, which is already light, or would you like for it to contrast even more with the darkness of your delightfully fluffy dress?"
 
Admittedly, Ivy was a smidgen too young for the puzzle, and her response to being handed a puzzle piece was to eat it, wave it, and drop it. But Dark was patient and did his best to guide her to get the pegs into their correct slots without doing it for her.

Success didn't seem assured. Yet, every time Ivy managed to tap a piece to the board, Dark praised her and tried to guide her hand to where the piece belonged.

"Look, see Baba," He told her, picking up his own piece and setting it into the slot to demonstrate it, "Can Ivy put her piece here?" He tapped the empty deer space, "Like this, see?"

Ivy watched this carefully, and the adorable look of concentration on her tiny face suggested she had some understanding there was something she should be doing, and then she hit her piece against Dark's.

A brief look of i am going to be here all day flashed across Dark's face, but in the same supportive voice he had been using the whole time said, "So close, Ivy! Great job!"

~~

"Is my skintone light?" Daizi asked, touching her cheek from genuine surprise, "I thought it was a darker one. Is Dark light too? And Ivy? I had guessed you were... like Noon, and---people like... you know... Idris Elba were like... Midnight, and I was sort of like... Dusk. Or Sunset, maybe?"
 
The twins waited patiently, watching Dark with some amusement. They were willing to wait as long as needed, and as far as they knew, they were just here to drop off the puzzle. Besides, how many people did it take to put together a baby puzzle? Not three, that was for sure.

~~

Sally considered how to explain. "Yes, you have gist of it. If I may compare skin tone to heat, the twins would be nearly like ice cubes." She decided not to try to explain the light freckles they had. "I am just a little warmer than an ice cube, so... cold water? Dark is more like... tea. Hot tea, but still comfortable to drink, and with more richness in flavor than water. Ivy is like slightly cooler tea, and you are just a little cooler, still. So, for your type of skin tone, it is on the light end, but perhaps I should not say 'light-light.' You are tea light while I am water light."
 
Eventually, after giving Ivy plenty of tries, Dark carefully guided the pieces into place while they were still in Ivy's hands, praising her as if she had really done it herself. This was her first time having a go at it, and she had, in her own way, done well--once even managing to tap the deer against it's spot on the board, but at the wrong angle!--so Dark did accept it as a fair try. She was only ten months old, after all.

And then, they had... a wooden board with pieces set into it. Dark set it just outside of Ivy's reach and furrowed his eyebrows slightly at it, pressing one of Ivy's toys into her hands so she didn't undo all of their 'hard' work. That couldn't be it. There was no further clue. He opened up the letter from Daizi again, made a small noise of understanding, and then, out of curiosity, looked at his sons, "And what would you suggest I do next?"

~~

"Oh..." Daizi replied, thinking that through for a few moments to make sense of that analogy, "Okay, I understand that, I think..." She took a breath, "I think... I think I should stay my usual complexion. I want to look like myself. Just, you know... I don't want to say 'nicer,' because I may not be... you know, but I don't look bad, exactly. You can look like I do but still look nice. I want to look more..." She frowned, struggling desperately for the right word, "Suited, I guess. I just want to emphasize the parts of myself that will make his knees week. And he appreciates things like lipstick and eyeliner. He likes the artistry of it."
 
"Have you tried looking at the back of the board?" Alec suggested.

"At the bottom of the pieces?" was Xander's mild reply.

"Seeing if the board fits in another board!"

"Or, you know, squinting at the board."

"Read the board animals out loud!"

~~

"Daizi, Darling," Sally said in her gentlest voice as she touched Daizi's chin, "When Dark goes weak in the knees most often, do you know what he is looking at? Your face. And not because it has been artsied up. He sees you as being the most gorgeous person on this planet. Everything you put on top is, as they say, icing on the cake. I am quite happy to ice this cake any way you want, and I know exactly how to make his knees go even weaker, but what good is fabulous icing if the cake is awful?" She rubbed her thumb briefly on Daizi's cheek and stepped aside to start looking over her makeup options. "Besides. The thing that makes a man or a woman most attractive no what else they might look like is confidence! And you have confidence in spades, my darling."
 
Although he was pretty sure he had the correct answer, Dark still looked beneath the pieces and underneath it. Then he said, "There is another option we can try," and went into his bag to pull out the tiny blacklight, which he shone on the board, illuminating carefully painted words:

You thought this was easy,
but we're just getting started;
To leap from my height
Is not for the fool-hearted.

Dark's eyes gleamed. There was more puzzling to be done, of course there was. This was brilliant. A riddle. "There is more," He said, holding the blacklight steady over it, "I suppose the question is, what would frighten people to jump from?"

~~

Raising her face when Sally touched her chin, and she lasted as long as she could, knowing her friend was looking at her, before turning her face away. "You can find someone attractive without them being beautiful." She took a shallow breath, touching her wedding ring lightly, "I don't doubt how he feels for me, and I know I can show up in anything or nothing and he will love it the same. I've seldomly been afraid of what he'd think about the sight of me, and I don't want to look like someone who I'm not, but I know. I've made my peace with it decades ago."
 
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"A cliff," Alec said instantly.

"A pool diving board," Xander said.

"Any kind of safety, really," Alec mused.

Xander nodded toward the playground. "How about a swing?"

~~

"And you can find someone beautiful without finding them attractive," Sally remarked lightly. She set up the items she wanted in front of her. "It is hardly my place to say, my dear, but I sometimes wonder if you really have made your peace." She sat in front of Daizi and quickly and efficiently cleaned her face with a wipe before starting with the foundation. "There is a show that my father loved. It was the one thing we truly agreed on, and I think there was a reason he tried to expose me to it. It was an old show known as 'The Twilight Zone.' I would not be surprised if you did not know it as while it is suitably strange and unusual enough to align with your interests, it does rely on a lot of visualization. There is a radio drama version of it, though, for many of the episodes. In one called 'Eye of the Beholder,' there is a young woman in a hospital wrapped in bandages. The doctors and nurses are working very hard for her with all sorts of cosmetic procedures to try to help her with how hideous she is. They pity her and are trying to help her, and she is desperate to fix what is wrong with her. When the bandages finally come off, she is revealed to be a lovely looking young woman, but she believes all of the procedures have failed. She starts running, and the hospital people try to help her, and it is only then that we see them. Every person other than the young woman looks how we might describe a monster. They are all horrendous, but the young woman is convinced that she is the ugly one."

Sally paused as she lightly applied a smoky eye to Daizi's lids, darkening it just a little more than she normally might. "In another episode, I believe it was called 'Number Twelve Looks Just Like You,' all of society has limited the number of... models... for their beauty standards. When they come of age, every woman and man in that society must choose which model they desire to look like. They speak as if it is a choice, but there is no choice. They mention issues in days past of people regretting their decisions to 'agree' to the procedure, but it has since been fixed. When our main character - despite her desperate attempts to escape and avoid the procedure - reemerges to show that she has been transformed into one of the model options, and, what is more, her personality has been transformed, as well, and she is happy to be exactly like how she 'should' be."

A very light brushing of blush came next along Daizi's cheeks, just enough to define her features. "In many places in Africa, fat women are considered the height of beauty and families will even go so far as to send their daughters to camps to be deliberately fattened. Foot binding was not too long ago. Many Asian cultures use whitening creams to get their skin tones far lighter than what is natural. Neck lengthening, lip enlargements, pading for certain body parts... body modifications and clothing illusions are ancient and varied and have been throughout time, and the ideal beauty type changes from decade to decade. There is even a very sad tribe where their women were considered to be so beautiful that neighboring tribes constantly tried to steal them away, so they developed methods to deliberately make themselves less attractive to avoid that fate. Some still hold to that tradition today, though being stolen is, thankfully, a thing of the past for them."

She carefully applied Daizi's lipstick. "Women who look, if I am allowed to say this, far more 'normal' than you, Daizi, are constantly told every day that they are not good enough." A tiny note of pain crept into her voice. "That if they had a surgery to fix their nose, or lost weight, or had a different surgery to plump up other areas, or if they dyed their hair or cut it a certain way or learned to do so much makeup they might as well be makeup artists for the movies, then maybe, just maybe they might achieve... acceptability. Never beyond that, of course, but they could learn to at least be acceptable."

She finished Daizi's makeup and stood back to get a better look. Then she gave a slight nod. "You, Darling, are far beyond acceptable. If your lovely husband is standing when he sees you, he will hit his knees, and if he doe not... I will eat my grandmother's stole."
 
Tipping his head back, Dark looked at the swingset, "Given the absence of either a cliff or a diving board, it seems the next most likely, that or the top of the slide. Come on." He stood, holding Ivy on his hip, and walked over to the swings. The seats themselves were empty, but that made sense: Anything left there was likely to be stolen or knocked off. But the frame of the swingset was taller than him. He looked up at it, and knew he could probably reach up ingloriously and bat around with one hand like he was a cat knocking things off a table, but there was an easier way.

"Xander," He said, "If I set Ivy down on the blanket, are you able to keep an eye on her?"

~~

"I know what the Twilight Zone is..." Daizi replied, wanting to tell Sally she'd rather they have this conversation another day, if they had to have it at all, but it felt inescapable, especially with how still she needed to sit. So she sat, doing her best to listen to what Sally said, ignoring the squeeze in her chest, doubting her friend really understood what it was like for her to walk in the world.

"Sally..." She said softly, "Why is it we give regular reminders about how beauty doesn't matter, and that beauty is only skin deep, but when someone is open about the fact they are not beautiful, it is such a taboo people need to halt everything and try to convince them that they are? I grew up being told exactly how I looked, and how it measured up. I've been used as the example for why children shouldn't make silly faces. Just last year I was given the card for a plastic surgeon. I developed incorrectly. I was the worst thing a father could ever have, at least in the estimation of my relatives: an ugly daughter. And it hurt, for years it hurt. I still wish I had been treated more kindly. But beauty wasn't supposed to matter, it was supposed to be what's on the inside that counts, so I worked hard, and made myself into a person I could love and be proud of. It's that person, more than anything else, that my husband loves. And that you love. I can still be attractive--I know I'm still attractive. And love smoothes out the rest. And I'm delighted to be loved, and I'm delighted to be desired. But I'm never going to be pretty, and that's okay. I don't need to be. I've only ever felt truly beautiful twice."
 
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"Sure," Xander agreed readily. "What are you doing?" He moved to the blanket to do his best to corral Ivy and keep her out of the way.

Alec squinted at the top of the swing set. "You really think it's up there? That's a good spot!"

~~

"Hmm," Sally murmured quietly. "Many people have told you that they and the world see you in a specific way, often times cruelly, and you decided that they were right and true. So, you fought against that in the only way you could, and you fought magnificently. You accomplished so much to make yourself an astounding woman. One to be admired. And you are admirable, Daizi, in many ways. But, Daizi, you are refusing to allow people to see you and express how they see you honestly because you do not believe that they can be saying the truth. You are putting conditions on their love and expressions that may not even exist. If beauty does not matter and is only skin deep, then why do you fight so hard against it to the point of hurting those who love you? What if someone could or did see you as pretty or even beautiful? What if they passed by you and thought you were attractive without knowing anything about you? Does that thought frighten you? That after so many cruel people have defined you, someone kind might see you in another light, and that is why you refuse to allow other people to express an honest opinion of how they see you? You do not have to see yourself as beautiful or pretty, but maybe, maybe others do."

She touched Daizi's chin with one finger lightly. It would have been her lips, but she didn't want to smear her lipstick. "I don't want you to argue with me right now, darling, I just want you to think about it. I know you are already formulating arguments in your mind, but not this time, darling. This time, I want you to focus on the fact that no matter how much you protest and believe otherwise and put up a fuss when he might say it, you are about to face a man who believes you are the most ethereal creature to have walked the earth. You are about to ask him who believes you hung the sun, the moon, and the stars to marry you. A man who sees you as beautiful, but, yes, more than that, loves you more than any other thing on this planet. You are going to knock him off his feet, and he is about to grovel at yours because you are a goddess."
 
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"I do not know how she would have gotten up there, but I do not know how she managed most of this without attracting my notice, so it is worth looking. But even I cannot see up there," He touched his chest and then pointed with one finger to the top of the swing set, "Alec, I suspect I will need to put you on my shoulders."

~~

Of course, Daizi had opened her mouth to argue back, and express her belief that people who love her should respect her enough not to describe her by terms she is made uncomfortable by, and that the thought of it didn't scare her, but that she didn't believe it was possible, either. The only one who had was Dark, but they were soulmates, they had been together before, so he knew her without knowing he knew her. But she failed to say any of it, and sat wide eyed, wondering, perhaps, how it would feel if she could believe what Sally and Alec said, and what Dark fought hard not to say.

It wasn't until Sally began to describe how Dark viewed her that her large eyes pricked with tears, because if there was one thing she did know, was how deeply her husband loved her, and how much she loved him in return. "Well that's not good," she whimpered, throat tight, "I'm going to ruin your hard work."
 
Alec grinned broadly. "Sweet!" He quickly climbed up on the stairs to the slide to gain some height before carefully maneuvering onto Dark's shoulders with his help. "This is awesome!" he crowed. He wanted to wave his hands excitedly, but he maintained a steady seat instead, not wanting to put any extra strain on Dark.

~~

"Then I will just do it again!" Sally said cheerfully. She dabbed lightly at Daizi's eyes. "There you are. No harm done." She rubbed Daizi's shoulder very gently. "I just had a thought. Do you know what would be marvelous? A bachelorette party! Except for the fact that many of us would not be bachelorettes," she chuckled.
 
Having a perhaps surprising amount of experience with someone on his shoulders, Dark navigated fairly easily back to the swing set, standing so Alec would have a good vantage point. As expected, tied to the top of the frame, towards the middle, was a folded and sealed envelope.

"Do you see anything?"

~~

It took Daizi a few moments to settle herself back down and, then, still blinking, said, "I think I'm still recovering from my last Bachelorette party."
 
"Left a bit," Alec told him, and when Dark moved, he quickly and carefully removed the envelope. He checked to make sure he hadn't missed anything before saying, "Got it! I can come down now."

~~

Sally chuckled. "Mine was incredibly boring and dull until someone spiked the punch. My aunt got more than a bit tipsy, and... well, I am sure you know how aunts are when they have had a filter removed. Oddly, while the rest of us were buzzed, she was only one who was affected that badly." Her tone said she suspected shenanigans.
 
Dark moved over to the slide so Alec could more safely get down and then stretched before taking the envelope and going back over to Xander so he could know what the clue said, too:

You've scaled my mountain
But now you must hurry
Go where the amount in
Effort loops and circles

~~

"I didn't technically have a bachelorette party at my own wedding," Daizi said, taking off her headband and brushing out her long hair before it was styled, "I mean, I sort of did, but my wedding was fairly traditional, even with the shabkha, so we had a Henna night. It's not quite the same thing. But my friend, Spencer, she's getting married in just a few weeks, and I went to her bachelorette party last weekend."
 
"Whay does that mean?" Alec frowned.

"How about the walking trail?" Xander asked, still keeping Ivy corralled.

"You're not supposed to solve it!"

"You asked."

~~

"Then another one might be a little too much," Sally chuckled as she began diligently styling Daizi's hair. "I hope she enjoys herself!"
 
"I was also thinking the walking trail," Dark agreed, scooping Ivy back up and beginning to pack up Ivy's toys and the baby puzzle supplies with one hand, "We should head that way. The difficult thing, with it being a loop, is where to start."


~~

"Maybe closer to my anniversary, after I've had time to settle," Daizi replied with a little laugh, "Don't put all of my hair up, okay? I like to leave part of it down. And--I absolutely believe Spence is going to have a very happy relationship with Mittz. They balance each other well."
 
"Does the amount have to do with anything?" Alec asked, staying close to Dark while Xander snagged the diaper bag to carry.

~~

"It is always good to-" Sally paused and looked closer at Daizi's ear. "Oh my. Do I spy with my little eye new hardware?"
 
"It might," Dark said, bouncing Ivy as he walked towards the trail. These were problems she couldn't help with, but she was really, really happy to be with her Baba again, and was happily snuggled with her head on his shoulder and her fingers twirled around his beard. "I am a bit worried it was said to make it rhyme. But the trail at this park is just a loop, and there tend to be joggers on it, so I thought it had to do with laps." He glanced over at the two of them, "Is there a specific starting point on the trail, do you think?"

~~

Daizi grinned, having decided there was no reason to feel shame about her drunken decision, because she liked the piercing and she liked the story she had to tell, "I actually got it done at the Bachelorette party, but I had been wanting it for awhile. Once it's healed, I'm going to replace it with a delicate chain, but it won't be for at least five months. Which is annoying, but at least I was able to get a gold bar, so it fits the rest of what I wear."
 
"I think," Xander said slowly, "that maybe it has to do with the most common spot for joggers to mark their laps. It's not a perfect circle. There are two trails that join it. So maybe one of those? Maybe at a bench near one of them?"

Alec just shrugged, having no idea one way or the other.

~~

"The chain will suit you more than the bar, but the bar certainly lends an aesthetic," Sally said in amusement. "I just hope you are very good at dodging tiny hands!" She picked up where she left off with Daizi's hair, sweeping two thick strands on either side and making a loose raid with each so that it looked more like loops rather than a tight braid. She secured it in the back with a black bow clip (with a pink heart in the center of the bow) and began curling the down part of Daizi's hair, making large, looping curls that fell loosely around her shoulders.
 
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