MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Some dreams
WHEN: Harvestmere 9:45–Wintersend 9:46
WHERE: The Fade
NOTES: OOC post!

Comments

[sulahnan]

"I won't tell him. Won't tell anyone. I promise." In this, she's dead serious. Laura is the first person she's ever told about Devigny, about what he did to her and what happened after. She'll guard Laura's past the same way.

Still, it's...freeing, in a way, for one other person to know. Carrying such a burden alone all these years takes its toll. She smiles with her next exhalation of smoke.

"He really likes you, ya know."

[justashotaway]

"I won't, either." It needs to be said, this much. Athessa has shared much more with her than Laura would want others to know--and she promises to keep Laura's story quiet too readily for Laura to think she'd like her own past told. She knows how to keep secrets, and this is one she's determined to hold tight to her chest.

And then they can talk about Matthias without concern.

"I know," she says, and when she's all huddled up now, it's in the interest of curling around a secret--a pleasant one. "I made him tell me how he felt. And then I kissed him."

[sulahnan]

Her face lights up with delight at that, and she can't help but bump her shoulder against Laura's amicably.

"And? Did he kiss you back? Of course he did he thinks you're magnificent."

[justashotaway]

"Yes," she says, with just a hint of a smile. And then, hesitant--"He thinks I am magnificent?"

That doesn't sound like Matthias. Brilliant, maybe, she would believe.

[sulahnan]

"Mmhmm," she nods, looking like the cat that got the cream. Or whatever the fuck that idiom is. "He said magnificent. And brilliant, and plenty of other nice things."

[justashotaway]

"Oh," she says, entirely unsure what to do with this information. Her cheeks feel too warm, and she can't bring herself to look directly at Athessa again. "He is...I did not know that."

[sulahnan]

"It's good to know, though," she ventures, tipping her head to the side. "Right? You don't have to worry about whether or not your feelings are one-sided."

Which is pretty much the extent of Athessa's ability to comment on feelings and relationships, really. She's been avoiding both for so long and focusing just on keeping things casual that she's probably on equal footing with Laura as far as experience.

[justashotaway]

"Yes." She hadn't believed Derrica when she'd said it would be better to know, but Derrica had been right. But that does not make it easy to talk about.

And that is why she asks, after a moment, "Did they really call you Tessa?"

[sulahnan]

She blinks, taken aback by the question. It's not at all what she expected.

"Yeah," she says. It feels like a much longer pause than it is, the haze making her perception of time unreliable. "I guess they didn't think Athessa had enough... appeal."

[justashotaway]

She thinks about that, looking over at Athessa for a quiet stretch of time. Athessa, who smells comfortingly of plants and lingering sadness, who makes nicknames for people and owns an enormous bat, who isn't human and doesn't need a human name. "They were wrong."

[sulahnan]

Something about that strikes a chord within her, the reverberations of that note shaking loose a fresh stream of tears. But she smiles, too. Laura has stumbled onto what Athessa needed to hear, what Athessa herself never knew she needed to hear. The name her parents gave her is good enough. She is good enough. She sniffs, wiping at her face with her sleeve.

"Thanks."