Lily

From Candypedia
Lily
GenderFemale
BirthdayDecember 20 (Sagittarius)
SpeciesHedgehog
FamilyLucy (Owner)
DebutSimple Pleasures, page 2
November 2, 2009 (2009-11-02)

Lily is a small, sharp-tongued hedgehog and the resident grown-up of Lucy’s menagerie, alongside Yashy, Chirpy and Blur. She arrived in Roseville during a storm, tried to drag an unconscious bird away from a burning tree, asked Lucy for a place to rest her feet and turned a pit stop at Lucy’s house into a home. Smug, formal and fond of a good cup of cocoa, she spends most of her time needling Mike and Lucy about their feelings and quietly steering the two of them toward each other. The hedgehog who swore to protect the castle with her life is also the one who ends up showing Mike the door. She now lives with Yashy and Blur at Lucy’s aunt’s house.[1]

Personality

Lily is the adult of Lucy’s household, or at least the one who acts like it. She is a tiny, self-assured hedgehog with a fondness for full names and a -dear tacked onto the end. She prefers a quiet couch to a party, thrashes Blur at Uno, and hands out relationship advice nobody asked for. For all that, she takes Mike and Lucy’s love lives rather more seriously than either of them does.

Lily admits that being a smartass is simply part of the service.

Teasing is her default setting, and she will tell you so herself. When Mike calls her a smartass in Unfulfilled Fantasy, she answers that it’s in her nature, and Veronica’s commentary on the same page says that assertive, taunting version is “pretty much how she’s meant to be.”[2] In Blurry Memories she explains that she stayed in town because Mike and Lucy are a walking teenage melodrama and far too easy to mess with, then suggests marriage counseling and has to dodge a thrown book.[3] She wins card games with a flourish and waves goodbye to the losers in Hot Pursuit,[4] and when Lucy calls her babyish in Crash and Burn she asks whether all of Lucy’s love triangles aren’t. Lucy’s private verdict is that Lily is always winding her up.[5]

Lily is also the person the teenagers actually talk to. She coaxes the whole Sandy story out of a glum Mike by telling him that bottling problems up won’t make them go away.[2] She talks Lucy out of the house on Christmas Eve in Feline Festivities,[6] and uses the flight home in Return to press Lucy to say what she feels.[7] Whether the advice sticks is another matter. Mike hears her out about Sandy and then sprints off after a glimpse of her on television in Hot Pursuit, with Lily asking whether he forgot everything they talked about.[8]

Lily sends Blur and Chirpy for help while the search continues.

When something actually goes wrong, the smirk drops and Lily takes charge. Mike first meets her trying to haul a bird away from a lightning-struck tree by herself, yelling at him to stop standing there and help.[9] She rates herself a “pretty lousy” firefighter afterwards.[10] The instinct is the same on the hike in Search and Rescue, where she is the one telling a screaming Tess and Sue to calm down, sending Blur and Chirpy for help, and insisting the group push on after Mike.[11][12] The same streak shows in smaller ways. She promises to guard the house with her life in Simple Pleasures,[13] and stays home on Halloween to nurse two flu-ridden pets in Mischief Night.[14] By the winter of sophomore year she is planting herself in Mike’s path to keep him away from Lucy altogether.[15]

She is also, by temperament, an old lady. Lily skips Tess’s Christmas Eve party to sip cocoa on the couch, which prompts Yashy to guess she’s about fifty.[6] According to Lucy she is always going on about the importance of symbols in dreams,[16] and her idea of a good time is a movie with Blur and a bag of popcorn.[17] Veronica has said Lily “feels like she’s an old pet,” not a child like the others.[18] Her formal diction fits the picture: Mike, Tess and Sue become Michael, Tessa and Susan.[10][11] And yet the same hedgehog will hunt a cereal-box prize with total dedication and dive headfirst into the box to get it, insisting that collecting all the pieces is a huge part of the fun.[5]

Appearance

Lily is a small hedgehog, and small is the operative word. Her light face and belly are framed by a coat of dark spines.[19] A bag of popcorn or a box of cereal is about as big as she is.[17][5] Tess has to peer down to find her on the trail,[12] and when she confronts Mike she does it from in front of his feet.[15] Reaching a doorknob takes her a moment, as she apologetically tells a locked-out Tess in Arrival.[20] She raises her little hands in appeal when trying to calm the others.[11] Being a hedgehog, she can curl into a ball and launch herself at the back of somebody’s head at speed.[21]

She wears nothing at all, not even a Halloween costume, though in fairness she stays home that night.[14] On the plane she rides buckled into her own seat next to Lucy, which at least gives her a whole piece of furniture to herself.[7] At home, she curls up on Lucy’s blanket instead.[22]

Significant events

Lucy gives the traveler permission to turn a visit into a home.

Lily turns up in Roseville during the autumn of Lucy’s seventh grade, in the flashback that makes up most of Blurry Memories.[23] Mike finds her in the rain, straining to drag an unconscious bird away from a tree that lightning has set alight.[9] Back at Lucy’s, she introduces herself as a traveler, gently corrects the word “hobo”, and asks whether she might stay for a “pit stop” since she has only just arrived in town. Lucy doesn’t mind, and Mike promptly claims the bird in return.[10][24] The pit stop becomes a stay of several years.

Through eighth grade she is a fixture at both houses. She sees Lucy off from the front step in Simple Pleasures, teasing her about another date,[13] and in Unfulfilled Fantasy she is over at Mike’s, thrashing Blur at Uno and hearing him out about Sandy.[2] In the summer before high school she admits why she never moved on,[3] and in Hot Pursuit she fails to stop Mike tearing off across town after a glimpse of Sandy on the news.[8] Freshman year is quieter. She stays home from Tess’s Christmas party,[6] and hunts a cereal-box prize in Crash and Burn.[5]

She spends the start of the summer after freshman year on Tess’s island trip in Invitation, though not before she rams the back of Tess’s head for kidnapping Lucy.[21] Once she hears Tess’s side she switches teams and helps wear down Lucy’s resistance.[25][26] On the hike in Search and Rescue, Mike falls from the trail and Lily takes command of the panicking group, dispatching Blur and Chirpy for the help that eventually arrives in the form of Zachary.[12][27] She spends the last night of the trip playing cards in Mike’s room, and the flight home lobbying Lucy.[28][7]

In sophomore year, Lily watches Lucy with concern at home after Mike’s rejection in A Distance Apart.[29] She keeps busy through the autumn, nursing the sick pets on Halloween,[14] bullying an exhausted Lucy into a pink dress to rehearse her play in Rehearsal,[30] and fetching the kitchen timer for Lucy’s mom in Dinner Time.[31] In Piece of Cake she tries to keep Paulo and his box of cake on the doorstep. Yashy hits her with a snowball, she storms off after her, and the door is left wide open for him.[32][33]

Lily reassures Lucy that Mike is leaving, to Yashy’s dismay.

Then, in Just Beautiful, Mike approaches Lucy in the snow, and Lily turns him away, which earns her a furious argument with Yashy.[19][34] At the Hospital in Breaking Up, she blocks Mike a second time and says a formal goodbye before returning to comfort Yashy and Chirpy.[35][36][37] Lily leaves Roseville with Lucy, and by Witch Hunt she is looking after Yashy and Blur at Lucy’s aunt’s place.[1]

Major relationships

Lucy

Lily picked Lucy, and she has been Lucy’s conscience ever since. She could have gone home with Mike after the fire, as Veronica’s commentary points out, but she asks Lucy for the pit stop instead.[24] From then on she treats her owner with affectionate disrespect. She greets her as Lucy-dear, calling her a pampered princess when she flops on the bed in Rehearsal,[30] and answering a complaint about her own childishness by pointing to Lucy’s love life.[5] Despite the teasing, Lily knows a side of Lucy that strangers can miss. When Zachary can’t square the frightened girl on the trail with the one who was picking fights earlier, Lily just tells him Lucy can be very emotional, believe it or not.[38]

Lily keeps pushing Lucy to be honest about Mike. In Feline Festivities Lily talks her into Tess’s party by asking whether she really wants Mike spending Christmas Eve alone, then sends her out with the advice “Just don’t overthink things.”[6] In Invitation she goes further. She conspires with Tess, then paints Lucy a picture of an empty summer, everybody gone halfway across the country, “even him”.[25][39] Lucy still refuses; she only agrees once Mike’s proposed visit to Sandy falls through and he accepts the island trip instead.[26] Veronica’s commentary notes that when Augustus pulls strings like this it’s villainous, and wonders aloud why Lily gets a pass.[40] On the flight home she is still at it, asking Lucy outright whether she is going to tell him how she feels.[7]

By the winter of sophomore year, Lily is standing between Lucy and Mike rather than pushing them together. She turns him away in Just Beautiful, reassuring Lucy behind the snowbank that he’s leaving,[19] and does it again at the hospital in Breaking Up.[36] When Lucy moves away, Lily goes too. Lucy tells Sue in Witch Hunt that Lily is watching over Yashy and Blur at her aunt’s, and that she misses them every day.[1] Veronica describes Lily enjoying the chance to have adult conversations with Lucy’s aunt.[41]

Mike

Lily has three words for Mike’s latest attempt to fix things.

Lily spends much of their friendship trying, with little success, to talk Mike into the right decision. She asks when they meet whether “Michael” is alright,[10] and from then on he is “Michael-dear”.[2] In Unfulfilled Fantasy she sits him down and gets the whole Sandy history out of him. She teases him for being too easy to embarrass, and tells him that if he wants a resolution he’ll have to speak to Sandy himself.[2][42][43] In Hot Pursuit she grabs his scarf to stop him running off after a television sighting, loses, and is left privately hoping Sandy remembers her side of the childhood promise, for Michael’s sake.[8] She even apologizes to him at the end of that day for doubting the search.[44]

By the winter of sophomore year, she no longer welcomes his attempts to talk to Lucy. When Mike arrives in the snow in Just Beautiful, Lily plants herself in front of his feet and turns him away in three short pleas, ending with “You’ve done enough.”[15][19] Veronica’s commentary frames the visit as Mike acting only because Sandy told him to, rather than out of genuine remorse.[15] At the hospital in Breaking Up she tells him Lucy will be fine, that she isn’t coming back, and asks whether that isn’t what he wanted. Her goodbye is as formal as everything else about her: “It was a pleasure to know you, Michael.”[45][35] Veronica has confirmed that Lily never told Mike outright about Lucy’s suicide attempt, and that his suspicion was only fully confirmed much later, in Unspoken Rule.[46]

Yashy

Yashy’s bravado finally gives way in Just Beautiful.

Lily handles Yashy the way a grandmother handles a toddler, with scolding, an eye on her manners, and a lap to cry in. Lily tells her off for picking on Mike and Lucy in Blurry Memories,[47] and Yashy fires back that the “boring hedgehog” was supposed to go back to hobo life.[3] Yashy is the one who decides Lily is “like fifty” for skipping a party,[6] and the one who answers a lecture about fragile gifts with a snowball to the face in Piece of Cake.[33] Underneath it Lily keeps a maternal eye on her. She quizzes Yashy about her birth mother in Unfulfilled Fantasy, apparently to make a point to Mike, and comes away pleased that Yashy is doing well.[43]

The argument in Just Beautiful is far more serious than their usual sparring. Yashy screams at Lily for shooing away the boy she believes could have fixed everything, and Lily just tells her to leave it.[34] When Yashy refuses to believe Mike has a girlfriend, Lily’s solemn shake of the head is what finally breaks her, and Yashy ends up sobbing in Lily’s arms in the snow.[48][49] Lily rests a hand on her shoulder on the hospital floor in Breaking Up,[37] and afterwards she is the one who stays with Yashy at Lucy’s aunt’s when Yashy can’t face coming back to Roseville.[1]

Minor relationships

Blur

Lily has the last card, as usual.

Lily saved Blur’s life, and she has been beating him at cards ever since. He is the bird she dragged from the burning tree,[9] and by eighth grade he is complaining that he has lost about a thousand games of Uno to her,[2] a streak she keeps up in Hot Pursuit to shrieks of protest.[4] She calls him Blurry-dear,[4] plans a movie with him,[17] and nurses him through the flu on Halloween.[14] When she gets a bit sentimental in Blurry Memories about the home and memories he’s made, she gets an “Aww..” before he laughs and calls her weird.[3]

Tess

Lily’s patience with Tess’s holiday drinking has its limits.

Tess becomes Lily’s ally when Lucy digs in her heels. Lily curls up and slams into the back of Tess’s head when Tess kidnaps Lucy in Invitation,[21] but once she hears Tess out she becomes her co-conspirator, prompting Tess to offer Mike a flight to see Sandy.[50] On the flight Lily disapproves of Tess’s drinking;[51] in their shared hotel room she shushes her so they can both listen to Lucy singing after her shower.[52]

Quotes

And these two idiots.. I adore them. They’re a walking teenage melodrama. Lily, explaining why she stayed in Roseville in Blurry Memories

I’m just a traveler who got stuck playing firefighter. Pretty lousy one, I gotta admit. Lily, introducing herself after saving Blur in Blurry Memories

Bottling these problems up won’t make them go away. Talk can help. Lily, coaxing the Sandy story out of Mike in Unfulfilled Fantasy

This is a difficult situation, but crying won’t solve anything! These next few minutes are crucial! We need to get help! Lily, taking charge of a screaming Tess and Sue in Search and Rescue

And all your endless love triangles aren’t? Lily, when Lucy calls cereal prizes babyish in Crash and Burn

It was a pleasure to know you, Michael. Lily, saying goodbye to Mike at the hospital in Breaking Up

Trivia

  • Lily’s debut is a bit of a tangle. She joins the pet chorus in Catty Remarks, a chapter first published in 2006;[53] the redrawn Simple Pleasures retroactively gave her a proper first chapter,[13] and her in-story introduction is the Blurry Memories flashback. Veronica’s commentary there says she has no specific past, “Quite a mystery.”[10]
  • In Veronica’s teenage side-story, Lily “was the bloody QUEEN of” dramatic one-liners that made Lucy quiver in realisation. In the published comic, Veronica describes her more modestly as “someone who is good at talking to and hopefully giving advice.”[2]
  • Veronica has explained that the pets were phased out partly because of Lily, who raised the awkward question of whether a grandma had simply invaded someone’s home.[18] She has since said the pets are unlikely to return but are doing well with Lucy’s aunt.[41]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 105: Witch Hunt, page 8
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 3
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 8
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 1
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Chapter 36: Crash and Burn, page 1
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 4
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Chapter 45: Return, page 15
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 2
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 4
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 5
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 11
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 12
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 2
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Chapter 57: Mischief Night, page 4
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 29
  16. ↑ Chapter 28: Feline Festivities, page 3
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 5
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 “Ask response on why the pets were phased out”. 2021-02-21.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 30
  20. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 9
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 6
  22. ↑ Chapter 49: Wonderland, page 6
  23. ↑ Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 2
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 6
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 8
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Chapter 41: Invitation, page 14
  27. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 17
  28. ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 10
  29. ↑ Chapter 50: A Distance Apart, page 14
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 59: Rehearsal, page 2
  31. ↑ Chapter 65: Dinner Time, page 1
  32. ↑ Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 4
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Chapter 70: Piece of Cake, page 5
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 31
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 20
  36. ↑ 36.0 36.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 18
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 21
  38. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 20
  39. ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 11
  40. ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 10
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 “Ask response on whether Yashy and the pets will return”. 2026-03-07.
  42. ↑ Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 9
  43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Chapter 17: Unfulfilled Fantasy, page 11
  44. ↑ Chapter 20: Hot Pursuit, page 13
  45. ↑ Chapter 75: Breaking Up, page 19
  46. ↑ “Ask response on who knows what Mike did to Lucy”. 2019-03-14.
  47. ↑ Chapter 19: Blurry Memories, page 1
  48. ↑ Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 32
  49. ↑ Chapter 71: Just Beautiful, page 33
  50. ↑ Chapter 41: Invitation, page 9
  51. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 4
  52. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 8
  53. ↑ Catty Remarks, page 2
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