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activatingaggro · 6 months ago

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j'ai la boule au ventre

WORDCOUNT: 4998

SUMMARY:

Nanako peered up at her. “Ah,” she said. “No? No drinks lah.” The violet’s eyebrows furrowed. “Oh, are you out?” “No,” Nanako said again. “Ah. No, no - drinks not out, but, um -” Oh, she hated talking to strangers. And of course, the waitstaff had disappeared into the crowd around her - as she looked, she caught a brief glimpse of red just in time for it to disappear behind what appeared to be an indigo in feathers. There were tables off in the distance, where the staff might’ve been lingering, but nearer to Nanako and the troll there were trolls actually dancing, stirred by some invisible boundary of a dance floor. “Um -” What was she supposed to say? The violet was getting thin-lipped, her patience fraying like the embroidery at Nana’s wrist. “Drinking bad lah,” Nanako managed. “Terrible for skin, yeah? Make you too pai kiah --”

Nanako attends the 12th Perigee Ball stag.. but at least her anxiety disorder is always with her, yeah?

Fic for 2024’s Ball. Featuring Nanako, Melete, Glitch, Vadaya, Tomie, Saevus, and special guest appearances from an implied Tykhae, and Kua’s Calico predecessor.

+++

Of all the things Nanako had anticipated at the ball, being trapped in the bathroom hadn't been very high on the list.

Nanako Bonjou was a trained imperial agent, she reminded herself, trained from Ascension to serve in one of the Empire's greatest programs. Once, she had taken down an entire cell of rebels in the city of Mirador. Just last sweep, she'd ripped the amplifiers off of the skull of dust-peddling subjuggulators. Her nights were spent solving situations that the Empire had deemed problems, for one reason or another.

Her work was stressful. But the bi-annual yule ball, in comparison, had always been a place to relax. What was going to happen there? Clowns kidnapping the host? That'd already happened last sweep, and the little brownblood hadn't even fussed. Once, the thought of a cerulean trying to chat off her ear would have worried her. But just last sweep, an indigo had tried to rip off both ears. As Vadaya had told her afterwards, how could she worry about socialising after that?

"There you are, little priest," a familiar voice drawled, and Nanako buried her face in her hands as Glitch's voice echoed through the bathroom. (Not on purpose, she reminded herself, because Glitch didn't know she was in here.) "Looking good enough to pray to yourself, yes?"

"As you are aware, that is theologically implausible," Melete said, and Nanako didn't have to see her to know the expression she was making. That was the problem with exes! She didn't have to see either of them to know exactly the scene that was outside.

The scene that she'd have to walk past - with the two trolls she wanted to see here the least - if she wanted to escape the bathroom and get back to the rest of the ball.

Someone's hand tugged on her coat. Once, then twice, growing ever more insistent until Nanako finally peered out from between her fingers. "Ma'am," a yellowblood said, with the slow, careful tones of someone who'd already repeated themself twice, "you're still blocking the commodes. Can you just.." They made a twirling gesture with one gloved hand. ".. on the couch, maybe?"

Maybe she could just die in the corner instead, Nana thought, but - no, no, the little yellowblood looked judgemental enough already. So instead she took a deep breath. "Mais, mais, so sorry leh? Am so~oo sorry," she said, taking a step back, and then another. The bathroom was large, with a long row of stalls and sinks, and it was beautiful in the way that the Empire rarely bothered. There were vines on the stone walls, twinned around the frosted windows and with just enough gloss on their leaves to reflect the light softly back towards the mirrors. There was a couch in the corner, just the right size for her to curl up on and die.

Maybe she should thank the yellowblood, she thought. Because outside of the bathroom stood two of her most recent exes, flirting, together. But inside of the bathroom, there was a couch, and.. oh, there was even a little pitcher on the end table, full of what Nanako hoped was water. Walking outside would mean a confrontation, or perhaps worse, just the silent, unbearable judgement of two trolls who knew her best. But if she stayed inside, who could judge her, except for herself? Well. And Vadaya, but she thought he might understand.

It’d be worth a try, anyway.

Behind her, one of the stalls flushed. The yellowblood slipped out, striding over to the sink, and then lifted their gaze. Their eyebrows knit as they made eye contact. "Oh," they said slowly. "I didn't think you'd still.. be here.."

In the mirror, Nanako watched her own face turn an awful, blotchy jade.

Squaring her shoulders, she took a deep breath. She shrugged off her coat, folding it neatly over one arm. Zavare had bought it for her, as a gift, and as she watched, a strand of embroidery snapped free of the fabric.

The lights on the wall twinkled at her, the ivy stirring under the quiet breeze of the fans as she strode over to the windows. One of them pointed out to the rest of the castle, she thought, as she searched for the lock. To her relief, there was none.

Good. If it'd been locked, then she'd have looked like an awful idiot to the yellowblood. But - no, no, she assured herself. The yellowblood wasn't watching. She'd left, and as Zavare had told her just that evening, the only person judging her right now was herself. She just needed to remember that.

Luck was on her side. The window barely even stuck as she pulled it open, and the room that it faced was thankfully, beautifully, empty. Off in the distance, she could see a sliver of light through the crack of a door, and hear the gentle hush of the ball past it. Glitch and Melete wouldn't notice her at the ball at all. And with that thought to calm her heart, Nanako slipped over the windowframe.

When she turned around to close it, the yellowblood was watching her.

Nanako snapped the window shut, and fled.

+++

Every sweep, Nanako reminded herself that she just needed to find Vadaya.

Every sweep, Nanako realised, too late, that it might be hard.

She wasn’t entirely sure what the building the ball was hosted in was. A castle perhaps? The nature of the building had never really mattered. When the host had been kidnapped, her battery hadn’t been the one called to potentially retrieve him, and every other time.. well, Nanako didn’t come to the ball because she was there to admire the architecture. She came because it was expected of her, as a soldier, and because getting quadrants hadn’t stopped Vadaya’s firm conviction that any event was better with Nanako nearby.

But she almost wished she was the sort of troll to pay attention to architecture. Because whatever it was, the ball was the sort of building that her communication device loathed.

NO BARS, it flashed in fluorescent lime, and beside the words, the little logo with the imperial horns wept neon. TOO MANY CONNECTION ATTEMPTS. PLEASE CONTACT SECURITY DRONES IF EMERGENCY…

“Drones no help meh,” she murmured, and defeated, she peered off towards the crowd.

Nanako wasn’t the smallest troll of her generation, but sometimes it felt like it. Even in a side room from the ballroom proper, there were simply too many trolls, and they were simply too large. Everyone knew that blues and indigoes grew taller than the greens on the whole, whether they blamed it on nutrition or on genetics. But few mentioned that seadwellers shared that undesirable tendency to tower.

She didn’t deal much with highbloods, whether they were blue or violet. This wasn’t a problem that Nanako usually had to think about! If she walked into a room where her face was firmly shoulder height, and orange horns were stretching as far as her eyes could see.. well, she’d just leave, and that’d be that. Vadaya had been legally listed as a high indigo when he’d first joined her battery, and it’d taken sweeps for him to hit his first molt and show how cuspy he actually was. And even as an indigo, he’d been the highest troll anyone in Scimitar had ever dealt with.

Nanako worked with teals, mostly, and sometimes ceruleans. Both of those castes liked to stay under six foot. Here..

A troll rushed past her, her face flushed maroon and her arms full of precariously stacked trays. Nanako could see other waitstaff like her, most on the lower end of things, all at her own eye level and below cerulean. As she looked into the crowd, towards the colours splashed on dresses and costumes, she realised: aside from them, everyone was above cerulean. It wasn’t just that there were a great deal of highbloods. It was all highbloods, purples and violets and fuchsias as far as her eye could see.

Except for her, and the waitstaff.

This was the kind of place that Vadaya would be, though. So squaring her shoulders, Nanako pushed into the crowd, looking up high - but not too high - for her commander. There were faces she’d seen before, but she’d never been terribly good at recognising faces. Horns, though..

Some of the horns, she recognised readily, even if she didn’t know the trolls they belonged to. It was one of the things she’d learned young, and then had been cemented over the sweeps by experience. The Hanhai caverns produced large, curling racks, heavy on the bottom and hooked towards the end. The Preuskan caverns were known for the thin, long horns that could be found on nearly every subjuggulator. The Terquian caverns, where Vadaya came from, tended towards smaller, subtler horns, made all the more distinct on a troll for their evident lack.

It was hard to miss them. There were Terquian trolls all throughout the section, and although Vadaya’s horns were larger, more characteristic of Hanhai’s, Nanako’s gaze kept catching on them. There were trolls from her program in the crowd here, she found to her surprise. Faces that she did recognise, and whom she could stop, maybe, ask if they’d seen her commander. Especially because some of the faces were trolls that she knew --

Oh, no.

Leaning against a column, chatting away with a glass in his hand, was Tomois Rinoca.

Another fucking ex.

Tomois Rinoca had been her best friend for most of her career.. and her commanders’ one-sided mortal enemy. Even the sight of him made her stomach twist, bile biting at the back of her throat in a very familiar, unhappy kind of pain. Nanako and Tomie had been tied at the hip for sweeps, almost as long as she’d been with her battery. And after Vadaya had joined..

Socialising was hard. Trolls were hard, and while Vadaya had fit into her life like a missing piece, Tomie had been the one troll who’d truly felt easy. The only troll who’d ever felt easy. So she had ignored the way that he’d tormented Vadaya, looking away up until the point that she could not. It hadn’t gone well. She didn’t think there was a way it could have.

So she’d done her best to avoid him in the sweeps since, and it’d always worked well, up until it didn’t.

If she’d noticed him, Nanako knew, that meant he was going to notice her. So she took a step back, then spun on her heel and darted off into the thickest part of the crowd. The colours here were violet, in more shades than she’d ever seen, and everywhere she looked, the faces had fins.

She’d wandered into the VIP section, Nanako realised, just as a troll leaned down to her. “Miss, I’d like another drink,” the troll told her. Violet-eyed, with gold around them. “But I don’t know the name. It had an umbrella -”

Nanako peered up at her. “Ah,” she said. “No? No drinks lah.”

The violet’s eyebrows furrowed. “Oh, are you out?”

“No,” Nanako said again. “Ah. No, no - drinks not out, but, um -” Oh, she hated talking to strangers. And of course, the waitstaff had disappeared into the crowd around her - as she looked, she caught a brief glimpse of red just in time for it to disappear behind what appeared to be an indigo in feathers. There were tables off in the distance, where the staff might’ve been lingering, but nearer to Nanako and the troll there were trolls actually dancing, stirred by some invisible boundary of a dance floor. “Um -”

What was she supposed to say? The violet was getting thin-lipped, her patience fraying like the embroidery at Nana’s wrist.

“Drinking bad lah,” Nanako managed. “Terrible for skin, yeah? Make you too pai kiah --”

She shouldn’t have said that.

Around them, the crowd shifted and milled. Nanako was watching it, her gaze torn between some sign of salvation, and the violet’s slowly darkening features. If Vadaya would pop out between the faces, she would have called it one of the Mirthfuls miracles. Maybe she'd even have lit a candle for their twin messiahs.

But there was no sign of her commander, with his bright eyes and his brighter fins. Vadaya had been classified as indigo when she'd first met him, but his blood had always looked ruddier- a violet hue higher than most of the trolls in this crowd, held back only by his lack of fin and gills. His first adult molt had revealed both of those. Nanako had adjusted to the surprise, to the sudden prevalence of a colour she'd never thought much of before. She'd grown used to finding it in a crowd by now, of sorting it out immediately from the lower chrome.

There was only one troll higher than a violet in the crowd.

At first glance, Nanako thought it was a statue off in the distance, draped in a fuchsia that looked near garish in this crowd. But no - it was a troll, his skin nearly as white as the pillars behind him, his expression thoroughly, dully placid. He was ill-sized for the table in front of him, with his legs stretched out under it and with some room to still spare, but he must’ve had more standard sized tablemates at one point. There were plates stacked on the edge of the table, with one still resting, half-eaten roll on top, near an askew chair. Was he waiting for them to come back, then?

“What is your name? Aren’t you staff? I am going to speak to Barbasabout this --”

“Oh, haha, not staff! But, see friends, bye now!”

The violet opened her mouth, but Nanako was already racing over to the table.

Nanako had seen fluked trolls before in her cavern texts. They had been more common in the long sweeps prior to the Empire, but even in a more civilized age, they still happened on occasion. A lusus would bring back food for its charge, and the meat would be contaminated - the flesh of another guardian, or sometimes of a troll itself. The pupa wouldn’t know better. It would eat, guileless, and it might not even know what it meant when it began to pale, losing pigmentation as the parasite in its core grew.

Prior to the Empire, there had been uses for fluked trolls, in the caverns and in smaller societies. They were larger than their peers, and more placid, less prone to the constant aggression that haunted their species. It was always a risk that a troll might see another wounded, and view it as a weakness to exploit, rather than one to fix - but fluked trolls were often stripped of that ambition. They made for good doctors. A fluked stranger could be safer than many of the people a desperate troll might know.

Nanako slid into the chair readily, keeping the violet firmly in the corner of her eye. The woman was watching them both still, but she wasn’t approaching. Good! “Must pretend to know you lah,” Nanako told the fluked troll, finally ripping her gaze from the violet. “Sorry! So sorry! Play along please?”

She clasped her hands together in front of her, and put on her sunniest smile. His eyes were tyrian, but even they were pale. “Only for a moment?”

The tyrian looked at her sidelong. “Oh,” he said, and.. he was amused, she thought. It was hard to tell. Some of the trolls at the ball were tall, but this seadweller was just absurd. “Sure, lady. We’re the best of friends.”

“Bestest orreddy? So nice leh. Hate fais do-do, lor, people so -” She started to gesture, then stopped. It was a very Hanhai thing to speak with your hands, but some adult trolls found it off-putting. And wasn't she managing that enough on her own today already? “Too many people,” she said instead with a laugh she hoped didn't sound too awkward. He wasn't frowning, at least. “Ah.. but talking too much.. what’s your costume? Very nautical yeah?”

She wasn't entirely sure where the strands of white pearls ended, and where skin began. But Nanako refused to look closely enough to tell. There were pearls, and glitter, and shimmering something - that was all that really mattered.

“What do you think it is?” he asked. From another highblood, Nanako would’ve thought of the question as a trap. But he sounded like Vadaya - pensive, thoughtful, but without the earnest intensity that underlined so many of her commanders’ words. The fluked troll just sounded.. curious.

So she paused, looking at his costume again. He was a seadweller. He sounded like he might’ve come from one of the northern provinces of the Empire, with the almost thick layer to his speech. He was the highest caste, and his outfit was clearly rich. And when she looked at it closer, there wasn't nearly as much fabric as she thought - it was pearls, layer upon layer, as the only thing between him and public indecency.

Gross, she thought. “A clam,” she said, earnest. “Because, ah.. pearls, yes? Have pearls, pearls inside clam - skin all shimmery, so -” There was a dawning awareness in the back of her mind that she wasn’t entirely sure what a clam was. She’d seen Vadaya eat them before, but the experience had left her certain she hadn’t wanted to partake. “Like clam shell? Skin clam shell, pearl - clam pearl?”

He blinked at her. “I’m not a clam.” She couldn’t quite read his expression, but he wasn’t entirely offended, she thought, not going by his voice. “Do I look like a bottomdweller to you?”

He was fluked. Maybe he wasn’t really offended at all. “Look like a seaweller,” she hazarded, and was rewarded with a.. oh, he was confused, she decided. A confused, amused kind of smile.

“I’m the snakefuck pearl thing,” he said, like that meant anything at all. “Don’t you know that story? I’m the pearl. It comes from Hanhai. You’re from Hanhai, aren’t you?”

“Snake doing what to pearl no.. oh! Oh lah, I get it - but -” She squinted at him, leaning forward on the table despite herself. “Huh. Where the glow?”

It was one of the old pupa tales that she’d heard while growing up. If Vadaya was around, she thought, he would have called it a morality lesson, but she’d never quite agreed. The story said that, once upon a time, in the nights long before the Empire, a jadeblood had gone on a journey for enlightenment. And on her journey, she had discovered a beast of nearly a half mile long, with scales that shone, and who’s spine had been severed neatly in half.

Many trolls would have killed it, and stripped the scales from its body to create armour for their wars. But the jade had thought it a manifestation of her ancestors. She closed its wounds with feather and drugs, and she tended it for a full half-sweep, and she called the place that it laid the Mound of the Serpent. When it had healed enough to live, she had left it, and gone on her way.

When she had completed her journey, and returned to her hive, she found the serpent waiting. It brought her a pearl, bright as the high noon’s sun, and although it burned her enemies, the glow never harmed her flesh. Vadaya had said it was to teach the virtue of helping others. Nanako had always thought it was more just a way to keep pupas from being eaten by serpents, but she’d never been much good at those kind of stories.

But at least she wasn’t the only one. Because - oh, it would’ve been so easy for him to take offense at her question. She was regretting it as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

But he didn’t get offended. “Someone at this table is the right colour for glowing,” he said. “And it ain’t me.”

She liked him, she decided. “Rude!” she scolded, but she smiled, too, so he’d know she wasn’t serious. “No jade glow lah. Not enough worms up top for that! Not for me.” Could she tease him back? “Definitely not for you.”

The tyrian gave a little half-laugh, and Nanako beamed. “Do you know what I am meh?”

“Hm.” He didn’t have to lean forward to look at her. He was so tall, absurdly so, and it must’ve been uncomfortable for him to sit in the chair like that, for all he wasn’t showing it. “A background military grunt?” he tried, pulling his mouth to the side. “But.. like, a historical one. Like the sort you see in drama shows.”

“Good guess! But not sure lah! Was not coming to ball leh,” she admitted, “but ah, friend said no, no, must, must, must, and picked outfit, and -”

Behind him, she saw a flicker of a familiar colour in the crowd. “Must go!” she cried. “Will be back lah!” Whatever the tyrian said, she didn’t wait to hear. She could see Vadaya’s cloak disappearing ahead of her already, and the idea of shouting out to him was nearly as distressing as the thought of losing him. All she had to do was get close to him, and she could grab him.

It wasn’t as if the crowd was that thick. He had left the tables, and he was weaving through the area where trolls were dancing. Every time a troll stepped between the two of them, she would see his cape or the familiar flash of his armour a moment later, just long enough to keep her on his trail. Even if he kept moving, she thought, she’d catch up. She just had to keep moving, and not get distracted, and -

A hand grabbed hers, and tugged her into a dance.

Nanako had always told everyone that she had two left feet. It wasn’t wrong, exactly! Dancing was just another form of acrobatics, almost, and she’d always been good at that, back when she was still a pupa. The older trolls had always fawned that she should join comballet, before she’d gotten worried enough to join up with the Corps instead. So as soon as she heard the beat of the orchestra, far off in the distance, she knew what steps she needed to take.

It was just that all of her concentration was on not decking the troll who’d grabbed her, instead.

“Poor little soldier drone,” the troll said, amused, and Nana wrenched her gaze up from her grip, to the woman’s face. Against the black of her mask, her eyes were a brilliant, sparkling blue. “Sorry to be forward, darling, but you looked so lost. Did you lose your commander in the crowd? Or..”

The music shifted. She lifted her hand, and Nana spun, falling into steps that she remembered only faintly. She’d lost Vadaya in the crowd, she realised with growing despair. All it had taken was a moment for this troll to distract her, and he was gone. “Ah,” she said. “Um.” Would she be able to find him at all today, or was she just going to keep getting led astray?

“Nnnno, leh --” Nanako tried, then stopped.

There was a certain kind of familiar patronising look on the womans’ face. Nanako had heard it from Zavare, and Longhaul, and a hundred different trolls all older and higher-ranking than her. More pressingly, she had seen that little shift in expression before, just as the ‘leh’ escaped her tongue.

“I’m looking for my commanding officer,” Nanako tried again, wrangling her thoughts back into the most common dialect. She spoke like she’d been hatched out in Temasek, the capital of her province, but her battery was used to it. Her friends were used to it, despite the fact they’d all come from Terquia, or places more in-land. Most trolls learned to adjust their language over time, and tuck away the signs of where they’d hatched.

Nanako wasn’t good at languages. She wasn’t good at words, really, and she only really remembered that at times like this, when she managed to force her words straight, and the womans’ smile deepened in response.

“Are they looking for you? Bad crowd for your little ass to get lost in.” The troll knew the steps better than she did. She moved with a well-practiced ease that Nanako, guiltily, thought the troll didn’t exactly deserve. There were just so many layers to her outfit! A hat of blue silks patched with every shade of the colour she could imagine, on top of what might’ve been whites that had seen better nights. Black fabric scratchy enough that Nana’s mind murmured calico, the sort of cheap thing she might’ve bought from the seashore as a pupa, under the skirts and yet still over the loose pants. Golds and creams and oranges, as fabric scraps and trinkets, hanging from her wrists, on her fingers, even on the edge of the hat.

It was good that the other woman was tall. When she leaned in, coins rattled towards Nanako in a shimmering veil, but none were long enough to actually reach. “But don’t worry, pupa,” she said, warm, “I’ll help you find them. What’s your name? There can’t be too many jadebloods here.”

“Ah.. he.. isn’t a jadeblood. Indigo?” Nanako bit her lip. “Violet,” she amended quickly. “Violet! With, ah, big - he has big fluffy fins - and armour. Golden armour.” Oh, the troll had asked her name. “My name is Nanako. Nanako Bonjou. With the Imperial Psionics Corps.” This dialect stuck in her mouth like gum. Why did they always want so many words?

She was terrible at words, and the awareness was sinking into her deeper and deeper with every attempt. It was unkind, Nanako knew, but she wished the troll would stop smiling at her. She already knew that she sounded like a fool. She didn’t need this kind-hearted, maternal confirmation. “He’s with them too,” she said belatedly, desperately wishing she could shut up, and not entirely sure how. Maybe this was how she’d save the day. This troll, like so many of the highbloods, was taller than her. Nanako was having to search through the crowd. Perhaps this woman could just look over it.

Or perhaps Nanako would just eat her own foot. “The Psionics Corps. Ah, le -- we. We’re both with them. As.. soldiers..?”

Why had she ever left the bathroom?

“Oh, darling, forgive me, but - has anyone told you that you’re adorable?” The troll laughed. “I could just eat you up,” she said, like it was some kind of a joke, and she winked right at her.

The tyrian had been dressed as a pearl. Nanako was dressed as a soldier. The ball was full of trolls, dressed as their ancestors and mythological figures and everything in-between, and..

Oh, she realised with a lurch. Oh no, that wasn’t a mask at all.

Alternia had a thousand different types of trolls, all pulled together uneasily under the wide skirts of the Empire. Once you were in the Fleet, the place that you’d hatched out no longer really mattered. When there was only a thin layer of steel and the strength of one’s psionics to keep you from space, relatively few things mattered, beyond making sure you were doing your job - and that you could do it well. But that was in the Fleet.

Here, at the ball, it was easier to remember that everyone had come from the planet initially. And while Nanako had joined the Psionics Corporation - embraced the rigid roles of the Empire’s military so that she could cast off the roles she’d taken prior - there were plenty of trolls who hadn’t. There was so much leniency given to the young, so many things they could do that would be forgiven if they lived to adulthood.

All trolls killed. But only pupas had lusii, and only pupas needed to kill other trolls as food, to sustain their monstrous guardians. Only pupas, and adults who never left their lusii behind. Trolls like those who lived on the Rickshaws, and who were known for the distinctive piebaldism that marred their skin.

A troll became fluked through accident. But the Rickshaw trolls made that choice, time and time again.

The woman smiled at her, just wide enough to show the edge of her fangs. What Nanako had thought of as lipstick was just black skin, impossibly, perfectly crisp against the gray. “Oops,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart. “Did I say the wrong thing?”

Nanako dropped her hand. She took a step back. “I --” she said, faltering. “Um -”

Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. “Oh,” Vadaya said. “There you are. I’ve been looking for --”

W!hirling around, Nanako looked up into Vadaya’s bemused, familiar face.

With a cry, Nana wrapped her arms around his waist, buried her face in his chest and lifted him right into the air. Maybe she’d spent too much time on the ballroom floor before! Maybe she was just all nervous energy, because if Vadaya was tense at first, he was practically stone in her arms when she spun him in a circle. Maybe -

“Oh,” he said, mystified. Maybe she was being too much.

But a moment later, he was awkwardly patting her on the head, right between her horns. And his tone wasn’t judgemental. “Are you alright?” When she set him down, her face hot, he just looked pleased, and confused, and fond. Vadaya judged her sometimes, but right now, there was none of that.

He always told her that every event was better if she was at it. And how could she not believe it, when he looked like that? “I’m fine lah,” she told him. He was looking over her head towards the blueblood, his fins lifting, and - oh, it was such a relief to finally have found him. “Perfect lah. Have never been better, now that finally here.”

#art #wrote this while my pancreas was being pressed through a meatgrinder so I'm pretty pleased it turned out alright #12th perigee ball 2024 #reba remains my fave in that I told her cheerily that this would be 4300 words max I was sure!#and then it was 5100 and she slashed out at least three fourths of nana's filler words and rambling to make this work while I sobbed #the mvp!

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