Lacuna wrote:
Pet's name: Kalliope
Kalliope put the finishing touches on the day's offerings, dropping rainbow sprinkles onto her perfect desserts and setting up her hand-painted list of prices. Other vendors prepared around her as well, everyone excited for the day's festivities. Arts, crafts, flags, facepaint, and food--anything one could want on a beautiful fall day of celebration. Kalliope herself wore a pastel pink, blue, and white flowered apron over her clothes to protect them from wayward frosting, while others wore a myriad of color combinations to show their joy. She saw someone walking by in a purple, blue, and pink cape that she especially liked.
It hadn't always been like this, Kalliope reflected as she smiled at her customers and the day really got going. The way that some of them looked nervous, or very young, brought back her own memories. She saw them hold hands in corners, even though no one would have questioned their actions in this place. If a few cupcakes left the table without her opening the cash box, well, that was just the way it had to be sometimes, right? This was a time of happiness, and Kalliope would do anything to spread more to those who weren't quite sure if they were feeling it.
Once upon a time, Kalliope had been one of those teenagers, though she hadn't attended an event like this until just a few years ago. She had hidden fashion magazines under her bed, taking time to look at the pictures and admire the women in them. When her brother had found them he didn't understand; he told her that there were plenty of girls around their high school, asked her why didn't she just date one of them? She didn't know how to tell him that, more than anything, she just wanted to be one of those women. Instead, she just shrugged and tried to fit in. She was clearly a boy, so she dated one girl and then another, played soccer, but still joined the art club. Plenty of boys went to culinary school, so no one questioned it when she went chose that career.
Her girlfriend Alice helped her pack when she was leaving for school, but she didn't have the same reaction that Kalliope's brother had when finding the magazines. Alice had gotten very serious, looking her in the eye and holding up the much dog-eared collection. Kalliope expected the worst. Even though she had just been dating to be "normal," Alice was a wonderful girl and she liked her a lot. In fact, it was her realization that she truly could love Alice that made her question her interests even more. Maybe she had just needed a girlfriend, like her brother had said.
When Alice asked her what was going on, Kalliope told the truth for the first time. And Alice laughed. Kalliope wanted to run, to rip up the magazines and never look at them again. But then she felt Alice's soft hand take hers, and they sat down together. Kalliope realized that the laughter had been joy, as Alice told her that no one wanted to be a girl the way Kalliope did without actually being one. She had been a girl all along, Alice told her. And Kalliope felt the truth of her words.
"I finally found a parking spot," a voice startled Kalliope from her reflections. She smiled as she turned around, taking one of the boxes of extra cupcakes from Alice's arms. Her wife was wearing a bright pink top, cyan shorts, and ridiculous yellow rain boots to combat the dewy morning grass. "How's everything going?" Alice asked.
The whole story ran through Kalliope's head again in a split second, making her smile even wider as she set the box down next to her booth and leaned over to kiss Alice on the cheek. "Perfect," she said. "Everything is perfect."Hint Answers: (for the more confusing ones)
Ingredients:Find the ones I spurned: letters hidden on my previous staff pups names' in my pound hoard group "Lacuna's Rejects Ltd." spelled out growing, referring to her hair growing (but were meant to make you think about flowers on mine and other pups as well).
- Egg whites: This has always referred to how her tail looks like meringue, but her tail was a little tuft of hair the whole time!
- 666H43: color code FFF8DC "cornsilk" to make a food reference to her long hair as an adult.
- "don't forget me": the blue forget me not flower (which is edible and also a pun on "flour").
- cocoa pods image: the sprinklings of "cocoa" (brown markings) on her body.
The hidden hint: When I "repackaged" my hints, I used invisible text to tell you that there was a new, not so obvious hint in the mix. The choice to show you a screenshot of Microsoft Word was deliberate, as was the choice of a font named "Kalinga." The font merely gave you a starting point for her name, while the fact that I was showing you a word processor was supposed to finish up with the meaning. Kalliope is the chief of all muses, and the muse of epic poetry. I chose this name for my own love of poetry and writing, though I like to think that the character loves it for its beauty and strength.
- Go back to a place you've already been: After I gave the hint above, I added some staff pets I adopted from the pound that might match my hints to the rejects group. These were meant to be options for you to choose from, but no one picked up on it to my knowledge.
Other helpful asides (for next year): I do try to make my outcomes very different each year and I don't really have a consistent art style, but I feel there are definitely some clues that you can come up with just because I'm me. I always use the default white 100% opacity CS tag, I always edit the smiles of adult dogs, my pups aren't plain and often show a lot of the final design, and I love gradients. I made an effort to have a more subtle gradient this year, but I couldn't do away with it entirely.
One more note: I chose to suggest this palette both because I love pink and we've never used it before, and because of its use of colors very close to the trans pride colors. I was overjoyed that a majority of the rest of the staff liked it, and that we ended up using it this year. Though the story above is not that of my own family, and many things about them are different, the characters do have some basis in real life as myself (Alice) and my wife (Kalliope). I'm incredibly proud of my wife's journey and wanted to celebrate it!
Kalliope is very pretty <3
I guess with both her and the flowery pup claimed, the only possibility left for Simon's pup is the flower butt
imagination 
