Five Things: Five Other Ways Howl Expressed His Displeasure with Sophie

[caiusbackup]

strangepowers asked for Five Other Ways Howl Expressed His Displeasure with Sophie (Being Only Slightly Less Awful Than the Incident with the Green Slime:

1. One of the priviledges of marriage was that Sophie was allowed access to Howl's--now *their*--bedroom, which included the ability to clean it.

Some things, however, were *still* off limits, and one day when the place was getting altogether *too* clean, Howl invited all of their friends and families and friends' families over for a dinner party without telling Sophie (since the house was already clean enough, after all) and locking himself in the bathroom for three hours in advance of the guests' arrival, so that Sophie herself could not wash up properly after cleaning.

*Calcifer* was none too pleased about all the company, either, but fortunately Martha had pastries brought in to make up for the total lack of food.

Sophie's discomfiture, alas, did not make up for the loss of generations of magical dust bunnies from under their bed.

2. Sophie swore she didn't animate Howl's best jacket on *purpose*, but when he spent their entire household savings on a new wardrobe, she took out a separate bank account. Clearly keeping coins under the hearthstone was no longer enough.

3. When Sophie left town for a week (she couldn't *help* it if her sister was sick!), abandoning Howl and Calcifer to take care of the shop, the wizardry, and a less-than-year-old Morgan, Howl turned his son back into a cat.

Howl regretted the screaming argument that ensued once Sophie came back rather less than the weeks it took Morgan to reconcile himself to being a human baby again.

4. Sophie woke up with a headache one day and wound up swearing a blue streak in the general direction of Howl's beauty products.

When Howl came out of the bathroom that morning, she couldn't help laughing--and neither could Calcifer or Michael.

He stomped out the back door in a (quite literal) black cloud, and ten minutes later, *all* of the girls whose hearts he'd broken started showing up at the castle doors.

It took all day to get rid of them.

5. Sophie, rather an expert on cleaning up by that point, asserted that the blue slime was marginally less umpleasent than the green slime, although Calcifer said it was worse on *him*.

They both agreed that the orange slime was the very worst.


This is my third use of the "not comics" tag, although I think there's a fourth post out there somewhere in the ether of my LJ. I vaguely feel like I should be throwing in a comics scan "for legality" as they say over in scans_daily these days. But Diana Wynne Jones is my first fandom ever, so these were kinda fun to do.