Dustbunny limped down the street where Titmouse lived. He came to a stop in front of her apartment. Two little girls were sitting on the cement steps in front of her apartment. Both looked down at his weak leg, one whispered to the other and they both giggled. Securely holding on to the rail, Dustbunny executed the painful and embarrassing climb up to Titmouse's front door and rang the bell.
He could hear Titmouse coming to the door.
"Hi," she said, a little out of breath.

"Hey... I haven't heard from you in a while so I thought I would walk over and see how you are doing."
"I'm fine," replied Titmouse, "I've kinda been busy."
"Would you like to go get an ice cream or something?" Dustbunny shifted weight onto his bad leg for a moment. He could hear the little girls giggling again. He flushed.
"Yeah. Let me get ready, I'll be right out." Titmouse left Dustbunny with the porch, the handrail, his bad leg and the giggling girls.
She came back to the door quickly, however, with a sweater draped over her arm. She took Dustbunny's hand softly in hers, shooed the girls from off the porch and they walked slowly down to the road.

Dustbunny spent the idle, late summer evening smoking opium from a small wooden pipe, the lazy, gray-white smoke wafting over the already still hive within his head. His thoughts remained unchanged, frozen from progress or decay. Progressive decay.

Decay for progress, or the soft lack of it. Or something. Or as he recalled, nothing. Curling rising. Lift shift dissipate.

The universe resized itself to fit only the contents of his one room cottage. Basking in the half-space of things, the marching of time also became lost in thoughts.

But then he remembered his pipe and remembered not remembering and the things he chose not to remember came back sweetly and gently, cushioned and without malice -- each thought in its time, lifted from the hive within his mind, dancing unthreateningly in the smoke filled space that was he and that he occupied.

Dustbunny practiced walking back and forth in his small one room cottage. The room was a bit too small to full stretch out his steps and Dustbunny found himself too preoccupied with reaching the opposite wall, but this was the only place he could rehearse his gait. He concentrated on his weak right leg, trying hard to make it look similar to to his healthy left leg rather than dragging behind and stiffly swinging too far out when taking a step. He also discovered while looking into his full length mirror that by leaving his right arm close to his side and his right hand in his vest pocket, it helped to conceal their withered appearance.

Titmouse sat in front of her dressing mirror staring at her feet. "They are so tiny. Such terribly, terribly tiny, feet. I will never be able to accomplish anything significant -- nothing even adequate -- with such frighteningly worthless, tiny, tiny, clawed, scaly feet."

Dustbunny, sitting behind her on the bed blurted out, "I've always liked your feet. The size of your feet. I like the way they feel too."

"Ughhh. That is so disgusting," replied Titmouse quickly hiding her feet under her chair, "How can you even say that?" She began to cry silently.

Dustbunny went out to make Titmouse a sandwich.

Tweebly and Titmouse came to a stop in front of Titmouse's apartment, Tweebly flexed his muscular tube body more than was necessary as he was setting down Titmouse's bag of groceries.

"So are you still seeing Dustbunny?" he asked.

"It's not really like that," she said, grabbing her groceries, turning and running up the stairs. "Um, thanks for carrying my stuff."

"Maybe I'll see you next week at the gym?"

Titmouse mumbled something as she was closing the door.

Titmouse worked desperately to flatten her tuft, as a smooth head was all the fashion. Regardless of how hard her wings and and feet smoothed down her stubborn head feathers, they refused to lie obediently -- they sprang back to their original shape as soon as she moved her wing.

"This will never work," she said, looking into the mirror. She covered her beak with her wings and began to cry softly.

When she looked back into the mirror, Dustbunny was standing behind her.

Dustbunny scooped up a large glob of feather goop from the dresser. Working slowly from behind, he built up Titmouse's head feathers into the tallest crest she had ever seen.

As Titmouse and Dustbunny were looking up at the nighttime sky, the Moon flickered. Once. Twice. And then disappeared.

"Oh dear," said Titmouse.

Dustbunny smiled. "This is your first time, isn't it? Don't worry, it will come back on in a bit."

"My stomach hurts, and I've lost my bag of seeds," Titmouse blurted out, then realized that Dustbunny was about to speak, "I'm sorry, what did you want to tell me?"

Dustbunny held Titmouse's head between his palm and his cheek, "Nevermind," he said.

titmouse gets her heart broken, but soon recovers

"I thought love would be less gnarly," Titmouse wept.

"Would you like a piece of my pie?" asked dust bunny, scooping up a large gooey mass from the center of the pie with his finger.

Titmouse blushed. "Only if you feed it to me," she replied, mostly forgetting her troubles.

from Exploring Titmouse's Personality Disorder - Marcus' Collection of Fractured Tales For Kids

dust bunny freaks out again

"Why are your lines not straight?" asked the titmouse, looking over Dustbunny's shoulder.

"Because... Well, because...," replied the confused Dustbunny, unable to think of anything else to say.

And thus returned - in the center of Dustbunny - doubt and apprehension.

from Dust Bunny Has a Freakout - Marcus' Collection of Fractured Tales For Kids

titmouse and dust bunny

‎"But why is it taking so long?" asked the titmouse, impatiently grooming it's tuft.

"Because there is a vast, ugly and horrible chasm between concept and execution," replied the exhausted dust bunny.

from Dust Bunny Has a Freakout - Marcus' Collection of Fractured Tales For Kids