And as you feel the notes build you will see

Happy New Year!

Listen to the song XD

^{I really should have finished this piece hours and hours ago, but I got distracted reading Chronicles of Darkness books and suggesting to the kids that we try a short run to test the system out and see if we like it enough to switch.  And so I don't have a story for this one because it's 1am.}

I feel bad for poor Dak, I have trouble figuring out how to shade dark skin at the best of times and dark scenes are the worst x_x I did actually start a different version of this piece on Christmas Eve but it was very sadsack (the theme song for that was Blow Up the Pokies by The Whitlams) and was basically Zara staring up at the stars being depresso (she gets depressed every Intercalary which contains AER's New Year as she misses her mother more then) and Juan in the near background trying to work out how to deal with things (he kind of got thrown violently in at the deep end with the parenting gig) while I wallowed about how much Christmas sucked this year.

Spoiler: it was alright in the end.  We had Solstice at a friend's place, we were meant to go on a road trip for Christmas but didn't because it was going to be 46C where we were going and the dogs aren't allowed inside there either so we noped out.  To make up we decided to take up the Solstice friend's invitation to come back for Christmas, but 14yo, her boyfriend and one of their other friends had been at an exposure site and the friend had developed symptoms so we decided not to go out just in case while waiting for friend's test results (14yo and boyfriend otherwise felt perfectly fine).  The test came back negative so we toddled off to J's sister's place for a pool party the following day and then to Solstice friend's house for a repeat of the Solstice party this time with our other friend's kids and partner in tow (the friend came without them the first time).

I was then in a much better headspace and changed the original image to be Juan and Zara sitting together after he'd successfully figured out how to comfort her, and then decided to throw Dak in (I guess he came out either with Juan or after they'd been gone a while, like I said I don't really have a story for this one x_x) so their entire little family was all present.

Also had to do some serious negotiations with my brain which wanted to do it rendered and I was like NO it's a Silly Season SKETCHY it NEEDS to alliterate! So the compromise was a songpic and the more annoying colouring style which looks better but takes longer.

Anyway celebrate safely and happily and hopefully this year we'll have our transcendent awakenings and situation improvements and all those good things :)