Our debut as Larkin and Adelia had gone great. Rafe and Debs were perfect in their roles as villains and we loved the back story Rafe had brought to life with Uncle George's letters. Uncle Morbid added a few touches of his own, like the hanging roulette game with the cheesy pun puzzle. The game was well received by the general attendees, though when they played it they actually did face a random outcome. Maise and I wrote up our in-character journal entries, included a few plot ideas of our own, and e-mailed them to Rafe and Debs.

Work was continuing nicely on the Hungry Garden. We had the designs for all the plants we wanted to include and had built small scale prototypes for most of them. We'd completed a couple more munchers and tanglers and made a start on the pitcher plantation, essentially a row of deep tubs decorated with big leaves placed at the bottom of a deep pit with steep sides. The eggs for the egg hunt would be suspended in batches above the pitcher plants, so players would have to get them without losing their footing and sliding into the liquid traps. Getting the losers out to take them off to Limbo would be messy and awkward, but nothing that couldn't be accomplished with a carefully placed ladder.

Uncle Morbid let us call upon more staff from the office to help us in the workshop and promised a large team to assist with the egg hunt when the garden was opened. Most people working at Morior were connected with the Masquerade in some way and acted as angels and stagehands as part of their duties, we also had angels that did not work at Morior but just came for the Masquerades, spirits who took on duties in lieu of subscription fees or who were employed for token wages, at Uncle Morbid's discretion. Some of these would become our shamblers, others would be deployed to tend to players who had been eaten by plants, collecting them up when the coast was clear and taking them over to Limbo. Most of those players would have to wait inside the plants until the end of the game – it wouldn't do to have dead avatars wandering off in full view while play was still in progress and they were meant to be being slowly digested anyway.

Mid afternoon a message came through from the kitchen: Craig and Rebecca had something to show us. Chris and Wilco carried on work while I went down to the house to check it out.

When I got to the kitchen, I couldn't see Craig and Rebecca anywhere. There were beakers on the worktops containing a light green translucent liquid with little fizzy bubbles, but no sign of the two of them. I called out a greeting, there was no answer. When I went back to the door to look outside, I heard a quiet smirk from somewhere in the room behind me. I turned around and started looking behind the shelves around the edge of the room – silly games of hide and seek were very much Craig and Rebecca's sense of humour. Then I heard a little splashing noise, followed by another little chuckle, which seemed to be coming from the corner over by the door.

There I found a large vat like you'd find beneath a carnival dunk tank, with a see-through perspex window fitted into the front. The tank looked like it was filled up with the same light green fluid I'd seen in the beakers on the worktop. And sat inside were Craig and Rebecca, neck deep in the liquid. They gave me a wave through the window of the tank and called me over.

"Hi Lexie," said Craig. "Come and stick your hand in this."

I leaned over the side of the tank and dipped my hand into the liquid they were bathing in. It felt a little like thick soapy water, but with a fizzy tingle. It had an acrid smell of rotting food.

"We're being digested," said Rebecca. "At least, that's the idea. This tank is basically a prototype for your pitcher plants, we've been in here for about an hour to test it for safety and both feel fine. We put in a bit of fizz and a hint of acidity, but it won't actually burn you. You can get in with us if you like."

"I'll take your word for it," I said, "that stuff smells rancid. It looks good, though."

Craig laughed.

"The smell's intentional. It's supposed to be eating people, so it ought to smell of death and rotting flesh. You get used to it after a while. In fact, watch this."

The two chemists looked at each other, smiled and pitched down under the surface of the liquid. I heard them tapping at the front of the tank and looked down to see them waving at me through the window like swimmers at a mermaid show. Then they came back up and stood up together, their faces, hair and clothes dripping with watery green slime.

"Ok, help us out," said Craig.

They clambered up out of the tank, dripping evil smelling goop on to the floor as they went. I passed them towels and robes from a hook on the wall and we went to sit on folding chairs to talk.

"How much of that stuff can you make?" I asked.

"As much as you need," said Rebecca. "It doesn't need much thickener, it's mostly water with a few chemicals, colourings and fizzing agents. This is a 3000 litre tank, how does it compare to your pitcher plants?"

"It looks about the right size," I said. "We're going to have a row of four or five of them at the bottom of a slope, so that's how much we'll need."

Craig did a little mental arithmetic.

"That's fine," he said. "You get the plants ready, we'll come and fill them up. Here, let us show you something else."

They got up from their chairs and walked wetly across the lab to the workbench. Craig took out two more sealed jars, lifted them on to the bench and opened the first one. The liquid inside was reddish brown and smelled just as revolting as the tank across the room.

"This is another version of the digestive juice you found us in," explained Craig. "The difference is, we designed this to pipe through the inside of munchers and tanglers. This is your basic plant viscera, the stuff that seeps out when someone's being eaten. And just so you know we can do nice smells as well, check this out."

He opened the second jar, containing a syrupy golden liquid. A sweet floral fragrance drifted out.

"This is the nectar for the top of the Sacrifice Tree, and anywhere else you want something sweet smelling," said Craig. "Go ahead and dip your hand in."

The orange liquid felt smooth and silky, like a bubble bath.

"That's a bit nicer," I said. "You should have had your bath in that instead."

"Where's the fun in that?" chuckled Rebecca. "Anyway, we've already tested that one. It was the digestive juice we needed to check for safety."

"Thanks for all your effort, this all looks fantastic," I said. "I guess I'd better leave you two to and shower off and get changed. You must get messy a lot down here."

"Testing's our favourite part of the job," said Rebecca. "Stop by anytime you want to get messy with us."

When I got back to the workshop, Wilco was there on his own.

"Scott finished digging out and flooding the quicksand pools, so Chris went to help him finish them off, we'll go and check in on them in a minute," Wilco explained. "But first, is it OK if we talk for a moment?"

I pulled up a chair and we sat down at the table.

"You've known Chris a long time, right?" asked Wilco.

"Since we were kids," I replied. "He's my best friend, after Maise."

Wilco swallowed a little, thinking about his next question. In the end, he just blurted it out.

"Is Chris into guys?"

I held in a little chuckle. I bloody knew it.

"Honestly? I never knew for sure. We were never more than friends and I've never known him with a partner of either sex, he could be asexual for all I know. But I will say, I've definitely noticed a spark between the two of you. Why don't you ask him?"

Wilco thought about this and nodded.

"Do you know why I encouraged him to come out and dress girlie if he wanted?" he asked.

"Because you wanted him to express himself," I said. "It was a lovely thing to do, it's really helped his confidence."

"Actually that was only one of the reasons," Wilco confessed. "Part of it was to see if it put me off him. I'd noticed him before we started working together, but didn't feel comfortable moving on from Phillip. When I saw Chris in his little schoolgirl outfit getting buried in cement, I can't describe the feeling... it was like glimpsing an angel and watching them fade away. And then I found out he was going to come and work here with me... well, you know how this place works. Things happen for a reason.

"Anyway, here's the dressing thing; I like guys. And I like Chris as a guy, femme and drag isn't really my thing. I tell you, if he'd been dressed as a boy in that cement tank I don't know what I would have done, but I still wasn't looking for love, I actually felt guilty even thinking that way, like I was cheating on Phillip. So I encouraged Chris to be herself. I thought, she obviously wants to come out of some kind of closet, maybe I just need to let her do her thing and then we can be friends without sexual tension getting in the way."

"Did it work?"

"Not at all. I'm fucking besotted with Chris whatever way she dresses. That's how I know it's love."

I noted how the gender pronoun had changed over the course of our conversation.

"Do you want me to talk to Chris?" I asked.

"No, I'll do it," he replied. "If she says no it'll be awkward either way and I'd rather know I'd taken responsibility from the outset. I just needed to talk it through with someone I trusted. Seriously, what do you think I should do?"

"Honestly? I think it's time for Will Cobold to go get the girl".

Wilco sputtered a laugh.

"Ah-eeaheeah!" he said, in a weak Tarzan call.

We grabbed a couple of towels and headed over to where Scott had been digging out the quicksand pools. Wilco explained the process as we went.

The deep mud on one side of the stream was natural, a bog with water flowing down from the stream. The quicksand pools on the other side weren't actually quicksand, but Hollywood's idea of it. Scott had used the backhoe to dig out a series of deep holes which he filled in with pond liner, these were then flooded with water from the stream. This was covered with a large amount of fine woodchips and sawdust with a layer of dirt and sand over the top, creating an area that looked exactly like the ground around it, except that it rolled and undulated like a waterbed. There were a few "Warning: Quicksand!" signs dotted about and some subtle markers showing the edge of the pools – enough for us to see when we needed to, but easy to miss if you weren't looking for them.

Scott was stood by one of the freshly made quicksand pools. We asked him where Chris was.

"Where do you think?" said Scott.

Suddenly there was a movement in the middle of the quicksand and a hand broke the surface. This was followed by a rising dome of ooze which broke out into a face as Chris made her way back up to the surface. She wiped the muck from her eyes and grinned as she saw us.

"Hi guys!" she yelled. "The quicksand's good to go. Lexie, you have to try this!"

What was it with people wanting me to dive into pools of gunk today? Actually I would have in a heartbeat, were it not for other matters that needed tending to first. Matters of the heart.

With the aid of an overhanging tree branch, Wilco reached for Chris's hand and helped to pull her up and out of the quicksand. I handed Chris a towel, then pretended to go off to check on something so the two of them could be alone to talk.

I stopped a discrete distance away, somewhere I could still see them without blatantly staring. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but their body language told the whole story.

I saw them sit on a log to make small talk, which suddenly became more serious. I could see Wilco pouring his heart out, while Chris listened carefully. There was a break in the conversation as both of them paused for thought. Chris looked up at Wilco, her hair and face still covered in mud. Then she threw off her towel, reached up and kissed Wilco full on the lips, both of them embracing in a tight, passionate squeeze that went on for ages with little breaks for air. Finally Chris said something excitedly to Wilco, who nodded. They stood up and Wilco picked up Chris in his arms like Tarzan rescuing Jane. They kissed again in this position, before Wilco set her down so they could make their way back over to where I was standing.

As they approached they were holding hands and looking like the perfect couple I knew they were.

Our little sister was all grown up.