Delivery from the Ministry

"The things that count don't always announce themselves. Sometimes they're just marshmallows and a blanket and knowing when to leave before the moment gets too heavy to carry."

The house had gone quiet in that particular way it did on winter evenings when everyone had retreated to their separate corners. Not silent — never truly silent with this many people under one roof — but settled. The television in the living room had finally been switched off, its absence leaving a stillness that felt almost physical after hours of competing with its noise. Charles had apparently exhausted his appetite for manufactured drama and migrated to his bedroom, where the faint pulse of music leaked under his door like a heartbeat the house had grown used to ignoring.

I was in my room, laptop open on the desk, the cursor blinking on a half-written paragraph about population dynamics in threatened grassland species. The research project that Aiden and I were supposed to present next week. The work I'd been meaning to focus on all day but kept finding reasons to avoid.

The screen's glow was the only light in the room, casting everything in that particular blue-white wash that made ordinary objects look slightly unreal. Millie had claimed the foot of my bed at some point, her fur now mostly dry, her breathing slow and regular. She'd forgiven me for the bath, apparently. Or at least she'd decided that proximity to me was preferable to sleeping on the floor.

I read the same sentence three times without absorbing it.

The past two days had blurred together into something that felt longer than forty-eight hours had any right to feel. Yesterday at the Haven — Pip and the eagle and Margaret's quiet words about the kind of person who stays — already felt like it belonged to a different week. And then today, the phone call I'd overheard, Mum's voice saying Luke's name like it cost her something to form the syllables. The bath, Charles and his commentary about emotional complexity, the ordinary chaos of a Friday evening that was supposed to feel normal but somehow didn't.

I closed the laptop and sat in the darkness for a moment, letting my eyes adjust.

My stomach growled. Dinner had been hours ago, and the restless energy of the evening had left me wanting something — not a meal, just something to occupy my hands and mouth while my brain refused to cooperate with population dynamics.

I stood, stretched, and headed for the kitchen.

The hallway was dark, lit only by the faint glow from under Charles's door and the distant light from the kitchen that someone had left on. My socks were silent on the tiles — the ones I'd changed into after Millie’s bath, dry and warm, a small luxury after the soggy disaster of earlier.

The kitchen felt different at this hour. Quieter. The overhead light cast its familiar yellow glow across surfaces that held the residue of the evening — a cutting board not yet put away, a tea towel draped over the oven handle, the faint smell of the lamb chops Mum had grilled still lingering in the air. The dishwasher hummed its quiet cycle, a sound so familiar it registered as silence.

I opened the fridge and surveyed the contents with the unfocused attention of someone not really looking for anything specific. Milk. Leftover vegetables in a container. Orange juice, nearly empty. The remnants of a household that had eaten dinner separately and in stages, everyone orbiting the kitchen at different times without quite converging.

I grabbed the juice and poured what remained into a glass, drinking it standing at the counter. From here I could see through to the living room, the glass sliding door dark against the night beyond — and past it, the vibrant glow of the fire pit.

Mum and Dad were still out there. Still in their chairs, their silhouettes distinguishable against the deeper dark of the garden. They hadn't moved — or if they had, they'd returned to the same positions, the same stillness, the same quiet communion that seemed to require nothing but proximity.

I watched them for a moment, then set the glass in the sink and turned toward the pantry.

Inside, the shelves held their usual assortment of staples and forgotten purchases. Weet-Bix, the box that lasted approximately one week in this household. The muesli Mum kept buying despite the fact that nobody ate it, its presence on the shelf a triumph of optimism over evidence. Half-empty jars of things. Pasta in three different shapes because nobody could remember what we already had when they went shopping.

And there, pushed to the back behind a bag of rolled oats, a packet I'd forgotten existed.

Marshmallows.

I pulled them out, turning the packet over in my hands. The good ones — big, cylindrical, perfectly shaped for toasting. The kind that held together over flames instead of collapsing into char at the first hint of heat. Mum had bought them weeks ago, back when the weather had briefly warmed and she'd suggested a family evening around the fire pit. Hot chocolate, marshmallows, maybe some actual conversation that didn't revolve around schedules and logistics.

It hadn't happened. The weather had turned, rain settling in for days, and then there'd been other things — work and school and the thousand small demands that ate up time without leaving anything to show for it. The marshmallows had migrated to the back of the pantry, forgotten, waiting for an occasion that never arrived.

Until now.

The fire was still going. Barely, but still. And here were the marshmallows, patient as saints, ready for their moment.

The idea arrived without ceremony. Charles was in his room, probably bored out of his mind, scrolling through the same feeds he'd been scrolling through for hours. The fire was dying but not dead. And I had marshmallows.

It wasn't complicated. Brothers. Fire. Sugar. The kind of Friday night activity that didn't require planning or emotional investment — just proximity and a shared appreciation for toasted confectionery.

I grabbed the old wool blanket from the back of the couch on my way through the living room. It lived there permanently, more decoration than function most of the time, but it was cold out. If we were going to stand around a fire pit, we'd want it.

Marshmallows in one hand, blanket tucked under my arm, I headed for Charles's room.

His door was closed, music still pulsing faintly from within — something with bass and electronic beats that I couldn't identify and didn't particularly want to. I knocked once, more announcement than request, and pushed the door open.

Charles was on his bed, phone held above his face, the screen's glow washing out his features and making him look vaguely spectral. He didn't look up at my entrance, which was either a deliberate slight or genuine absorption in whatever he was scrolling through. With Charles, it was hard to tell.

"Ever heard of privacy?" he asked, still not looking.

"Fire's still going. Found marshmallows. You in?"

That got his attention. He lowered the phone fractionally, one eye visible over its edge, regarding me with sudden interest. "The good ones?"

"The toasting ones."

"Mum bought those ages ago."

"And now they're being liberated for their intended purpose." I leaned against the doorframe, holding up the packet as evidence. "You coming or not? Fire's not going to last forever."

His expression cycled through consideration, interest, and something approaching enthusiasm in the space of about two seconds. The weighing of getting up against the appeal of toasted marshmallows and breaking the monotony of a Friday night spent horizontal.

"Fine." He swung his legs off the bed. "But if they're stale, I'm blaming you."

"Noted."

He grabbed his hoodie from where it had been abandoned on the floor and pulled it on, zipping it halfway before apparently deciding that was sufficient commitment to warmth.

His eyes landed on the blanket under my arm. "Why do you have that?"

"Because it's freezing outside and I'm not an idiot."

"Debatable."

"Are you coming or are you going to critique my cold-weather preparations all night?"

He rolled his eyes but followed me out of the room, leaving his phone on the bed — a minor miracle in itself. In the hallway, Millie had appeared from my bedroom, roused by the activity and unwilling to miss whatever was happening. She fell into step behind us, her claws clicking softly on the floor, still slightly sleepy but determined to be included.

The kitchen was as I'd left it — empty glass in the sink, pantry door slightly ajar. Through the living room, the sliding door framed the faint glow of the fire. Mum and Dad's silhouettes hadn't moved, still occupying their chairs, still present in that quiet way that asked nothing and offered everything.

I paused, marshmallows in hand.

"They've been out there for ages," Charles said, stopping beside me.

"I know."

"Mum's probably freezing."

"I know."

We stood there for a moment, both looking at the same thing. The fire, barely holding on. The parents, wrapped in nothing but their own stubbornness, neither willing to be the first to admit the cold or suggest going inside.

Charles glanced at the marshmallows, then back at the sliding door. Something shifted in his expression — not quite serious, not quite joking, somewhere in the space between.

"We should give them to Mum and Dad."

I looked at him. He shrugged, something almost defensive in the gesture.

"What? They're the ones sitting out in the cold. We can toast marshmallows another time."

He wasn't wrong. And there was something in the way he'd said it — offhand, like it didn't matter, when clearly some part of it did.

"Sugar diplomacy," I said.

"What?"

"Nothing. Come on."

I crossed to the sliding door and pulled it open, the familiar rumble and scrape cutting through the quiet of the evening. The cold hit immediately — that particular bite of a winter night that found every gap in your clothing and settled there with intent.

"Oi — heads up."

The marshmallows left my hand before Mum had time to react, arcing through the cool night air in what I considered a perfectly calibrated underarm toss. They landed in her lap with a soft thud — gentle enough, in my opinion, though from her startled expression you'd think I'd lobbed a grenade.

Charles appeared behind me in the doorway, slouching with practised nonchalance. "Delivery from the ministry of sugar."

Mum looked down at the packet, then back up at us. Her face cycled through surprise, suspicion, and something warmer that she was clearly trying not to show too obviously. The Mum Look — refined through years of exposure to exactly this kind of behaviour — settled into its familiar configuration of fond exasperation.

"Was that meant to be gentle?"

"I threw underarm," I said, spreading my hands in the universal gesture of injured innocence. "That's restraint."

Dad was watching from his chair, his face carefully neutral in that way that meant he was amused but didn't want to undermine Mum's authority by showing it. The firelight — what remained of it — caught the edges of his expression, the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth that he couldn't quite suppress.

I moved past them and draped the blanket over the back of Mum's chair — casual, unhurried, like it had only just occurred to me.

"We figured you'd be cold."

"You just realised this now?"

I shrugged, aiming for casual, landing somewhere in the vicinity of almost-sincere. "You looked like those pensioners who sit outside cafés in winter. Brave but slightly tragic."

"Charming," she said, but her hands were already reaching back for the blanket, pulling it around her shoulders, and her voice had that particular quality it got when she was touched but didn't want to make a thing of it. "Thank you."

The firelight caught her face as she looked up at me — softer now, the sharpness of earlier dissolved into something more open. For a moment I thought she might say something else, something about the day or the phone call or the weight that had been sitting behind her eyes since I'd found her in the kitchen that afternoon. But the moment passed, and she turned her attention to the marshmallows instead, turning the packet over in her hands like she was reacquainting herself with something she'd forgotten she'd wanted.

Charles had remained in the doorway, occupying that space between inside and out with the particular talent teenagers had for being present without fully committing. Millie had settled beside him, her tail giving an occasional wag as she watched the proceedings with sleepy interest.

"Don't burn them too black," Charles offered finally, his voice pitched with the authority of someone delivering essential guidance. "That's gross."

I glanced back at him. "And yet you eat burnt toast without blinking."

"Not on purpose."

The familiar rhythm of it — the back and forth, the reflexive contradiction — settled something that had been unsettled all day. This was how we worked, Charles and I. This was the shape of us. Not deep conversations or shared confidences, but this — the banter, the small antagonisms, the way we could occupy the same space without ever having to acknowledge that we actually liked each other.

Dad had taken the marshmallow packet from Mum and was examining it with the focused attention he brought to most things. "These are the good ones," he observed.

"Only the best for the ministry's clients," Charles replied.

Mum laughed — a small sound, almost surprised, like she hadn't expected to find it in herself tonight. It was enough. More than enough, really.

The retreat began without any explicit signal — just the natural sense that we'd done what we came to do and lingering would only invite the kind of sincerity none of us were equipped to handle. We shuffled backward toward the door, the choreography of departure as familiar as everything else about this family. Shoulder bumps, someone stepping on someone else's heel, the mutual pretence that we were leaving because we had somewhere else to be rather than because staying would mean acknowledging that this had meant something.

"Next time, we bring kebabs," I called back, just loud enough to carry across the garden.

Charles didn't miss a beat. "Next time, don't bring your face."

Classic.

The door slid shut behind us with its familiar weight and clunk, sealing the night outside and the image of our parents with it. Through the glass, I could see Mum saying something to Dad, her face animated now in a way it hadn't been all evening. He was nodding, already working open the marshmallow packet.

Millie had trotted back toward the warmth of the house, her contribution to the evening apparently complete. Charles lingered beside me for a moment, both of us watching through the glass as Dad found a stick and began the serious business of marshmallow preparation.

"That was weird," Charles said.

"That was nice."

"Same thing, basically." He shrugged — a mirror of the gesture I'd used outside. "We could have toasted some ourselves, you know."

"Next time."

"Yeah." He was quiet for a moment, then: "Night."

"Night."

He disappeared down the hallway, his door closing a moment later with a soft click. The music resumed almost immediately — same bass, same electronic pulse — as though the interruption had never happened.

I stood in the space between kitchen and living room, letting the quiet settle. Through the sliding door, I could still make out my parents — Dad had a marshmallow on a stick now, holding it over the embers with the patient attention he brought to everything. Mum was watching him, the blanket pulled around her shoulders, saying something I couldn't hear.

It wasn't a grand gesture. It wasn't going to fix anything — not the phone call, not the weight that had been sitting behind Mum's eyes all day, not the fractures that ran through our family like fault lines nobody talked about. But it was something. A small thing that landed softly and mattered more than it probably should.

Millie appeared at my side, nudging my hand with her nose. I crouched down and scratched behind her ears, feeling her lean into my touch with the uncomplicated trust of a creature who didn't need to understand anything to know that proximity was its own kind of comfort.

"Good girl," I murmured.

She thumped her tail once against the floor.

I straightened, took one more look through the sliding door — at the figures of my parents in their chairs, at the last light of the fire in the garden.

Millie was already padding down the hallway toward my room. I followed her, and closed the door behind us.