“FINALLY!”

Kenzi cried out in exasperation as she waved her iPad around. It had taken her many, many tries to get that dumb quiz to 100%.

“This is nowhere near as good as that Create Your Own Adventure for Gilly.”

She shook her head and walked out the door of the room she and Sarah shared and immediately started to growl. She hated Lacklanland. Yes, it was her wife’s ancestral homeland, and yes they had some fantastic memories created there, but all the simpering from various political dignitaries, and bowing and scraping from employees who were no more than servants, annoyed her to no end. She scowled as she moved through the twisting halls of the manor, doing her best to ignore all the over-the-top garish goth furnishings as she did so. So many busts! Just bust after bust of various members of the family from the past couple hundred years. She didn’t need some dumb piece of marble in her likeness, no way! That dumb portrait of her hanging in the drawing room was bad enough. She hated posing for that dumb thing, with her wearing that dumb puffy dress Sarah made her wear…even if her boobs looked great in it…it was all dumb!

DUMB! DUMB! DUMB!

“Dutchess, we-”

She ignored whatever dumb thing the dumb employee/servant wanted from her. Ever since they got here, it had been a neverending display of groveling and thanking them for being there. Does the Dutchess need something organic to eat? Would the Dutchess like some purified water from the river? Would the Dutchess like a shawl to cover her shoulders from the chill?

Why was it always so freakin’ COLD in Maine?!

IT’S SO DUMB!

She growled as she pushed into the drawing room, where Sarah said she would be, waving her iPad.

“Hey Babe, this test is du-”

She looked up to see four women staring at her, all seated in puffy yet ugly chairs.

Sarah, wearing one of her dumb dresses that covered every inch of her beautiful skin…she missed seeing Sarah’s skin outside of the bedroom…and her dumb jeweled veil over her face because she was home.

Angie, also wearing a dumb puffy dress, with a dumb little crown along her brow.

Mary, Angie’s mom, ALSO wearing some dumb dress she’s never seen her in before.

Ava, Sarah’s dumb bitch of a stepmom, wearing one of her dumb dresses that showed all the dumb scars on her dumb arms and her head wrapped up in a dumb scarf.

“Nope.”

Sarah’s eyes took in every inch of Kenzi’s infamous rear end as she retreated from the room, hating yet loving every moment of her departure. The awkward silence within the room resettled as the door shut again, the four women, members of the House of Lacklan, had been in this situation numerous times since the unexpected arrival of the STA Ranch.

“So, my daughter’s a gypsy, now. I’m ever so proud, obvs.”

More awkward silence as she sipped from her cup…the wine was perfectly mulled, thankfully…and she caught Angie’s eyes twitch ever so slightly at a reference to Dolly Waters. She needed to work on that relationship.

“No match this week, sweetie?”

Angie suddenly found herself sipping from her own cup of wine…likely, spiked with a shot of vodka, knowing the lush...and avoiding her mother’s gaze.

“I...may...have forgotten to file my paperwork...again...”

Beside her, Mary sighed and shook her head, sending her blonde locks flowing.

“Angie, we’ve been through this. You need to-”

Sarah stifled a giggle as Mary...the dumb servant whore...began to do her version of admonishment…which was full of glowing, flowery language, because heaven forbid Angie axly receive some real criticism from her…but then her eyes caught another sight: Her own mother’s flashing fingers.

She is holding you back, Daughter.

As a young girl, Sarah had developed a complicated series of hand signals for her servants and guards, something which had proven invaluable over and again across the years, and as a teenager, she had happily taught it to the then Ava Quinn. She occasionally regretted it now, but at least her stepmother was being discreet and had her hands low and out of sight of Angie and Mary. She had taught Angie a number of phrases, but for some reason, her sister had an odd “accent” to her sign language. Anything that ended in -ern, for some reason, sounded like -wren. It was annoying.

We lift each other up.

Sarah’s own fingers flashed nearly too fast to follow, even with the annoying sticky Red and Black Mist mixture on her hand gumming up her fingers, but her mother’s green eyes never missed anything.

You lift her up, she pulls you down.

Sarah’s eyes glared.

First of all-

Lies make Baby Jesus cry.

Sarah looked away, unable to find either the words or signs to argue further.