I AM NOT A GOOD THING
[color=white](i am barely a thing at all)

She's a mess, rightfully so. She's standing in the middle of their new livingroom, humming quietly to herself, hair thrown in a half assed bun to keep it from getting into anything, sweating from shoving couches and such out of the way in her haste to do this before Talia comes home. There are large plastic sheets on the floor, Malkyn digging her toes into it as she chews on her nail, frowning slightly. Malkyn whirls around then, scooting over to the radio on the other side of the room and skipping through her playlist until it landed on 'Down' by Jay Sean, the Alpha scooting and sliding around on slippery socks, humming along with it and dancing as she returned to her spot.

There's paint sprawled out in front of her, different colors, bright colors, pastel, darker colors. Whatever she could get her hands that stood out against an off white wall. "I'm fightin' for this girl on the battlefield of love got me lookin' like baby cupid sending arrows from above-" The redhaired woman gets distracted in her dancing, holding a paint brush to her mouth like a microphone. That is, until she's smearing pastel blue paint on her face on accident, and gasping, cutting herself off as the song keeps going and looking around the room like she wasn't alone and laughing a little. "Fuck."Malkyn pulls up the bottom of her baggy sweater, wiping what she could off her before it dried, taking the opportunity to pull her calf high socks up further.

When she's done, she turns back to her project, glancing towards the front door. She's beginning to run out of time. A dark pastel purple is splattered on a picture frame, mint-green, canary yellow, pastel peach and pastel baby blue sitting nearby it. The hellhound grabs the purple frame, grabbing one of the pictures settled on the stand nearby, choosing a picture Talia had taken of her when she'd been in the middle of telling a story about her brothers, a faint smile tugging at her lips. Gently, she puts it in the frame, and puts it on the wall.

The next one she grabs is mint-green and she shuffles through the pictures until she's finding the picture of her wife, running a thumb against it and grinning a little. It's not the best picture of Talia, she's in the middle of laughing so hard she couldn't breathe, but it makes Malkyn smile, it captures who Talia is. The carefree party girl she met so many years ago was long gone with everything they've gone through, but Malkyn remembers, and that's all that matters. The picture goes inside and the frame on the wall.

She goes through the next few hastily, bittersweet and grief-ridden all at the same time. Her fingers brush softly against the picture of Kari hugging her stuffed bear in the hospital in yellow, a picture of teenaged Adelaide sprawled dramatically across Malkyn's lap in orange, a picture of their wild-haired and chaotic daughter Hazel in blue. Malkyn reaches for the vinyl she's prepared on the floor, trying to stop her shaking and keep things.. neat. But if it's a little chaotic and messy, that was just as good too. Anything to get away from the implications of the ward. She presses the messy and shaky letters into the wall to stick, lifting away the plastic cover before stepping back, shaky smile pulling at her lips.

Beneath Malkyn's own picture was her painted on signature, Talia's blank (as the surprise), and Kari's? The handwriting of a seven year old proud of her drawing of her family that the pair of them kept on the fridge. Adelaide and Hazel were both from their later years, papers from school that Malkyn still held on to for some semblance of normalcy. She has more pictures and frames to do, but for now, she's gotten enough up there that she could be ready for Talia to come home.

The hound then grabs the left over paint, pouring it in a small flat container, dipping her hand in it, feeling the purple paint drip down her arm as she reaches up to press her wet hand print on to the wall beneath her signature. An old copy of Kari's tiny hands at her birth replace the.. absence of a current handprint. Repeating the process with Addy and Hazel, little streaks of paint dripping down from the prints, but it adds to the.. character and keeps everything disheveled.

It's then that she hears the door creak open, Talia starting out with 'Babe, they were out of--' before Malkyn is screaming and shrieking, tripping and slipping on the floor in her socks as she runs for the front door, yelling 'get out' repeatedly and shoving the startled blonde out of the house again. "Wait here," tumbles out of her mouth as she shuts the door in Talia's face and her heavy footsteps are heard against the floorboards as she runs back into their bedroom to grab a blindfold. A few seconds later and Malkyn's cheeks are flushed red as she opens the door a little, offering Talia a cheeky grin. "Put this on. We can get the groceries in a second."

Once the blonde does as Malkyn asks, she opens the door all the way, grabbing her hand and squeezing gently, leading her into the house and letting her hand drop at about the middle, standing in front of the primary wall. She grabs the flat container with mint-green in it, dipping Talia's hand in it and feeling the other hound try to yank it back, a small 'euch' coming from her mouth. And then she's pressing Talia's hand against the wall underneath her picture. Once she does that, she wipes the other woman's hand off on the old sweater. Her hand brushes against Talia's shoulders and neck as she reaches behind her to untie the blindfold, her stomach twisting with the savage tug of anxiety as she laughs softly, a bittersweet sound as the hound quickly pads away, almost hopping on her feet. "Ta-da.."

MALKYN RHODES — ALPHA HELLHOUND — TANGLEWOOD CHASER — TAGS