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Petra Soroka     A month ago, on Petra's birthday, Lilian had entrusted her with a uniquely precious and dangerous gift. The fabled coupon for 'one free request', rarely seen outside of cheap porny fanfiction, fell into the hands of the girl most likely to misuse it, with the subject being the girl who the most people would like that power over. In one timeline, this is a greyscale shot at the beginning of an NCIS episode. But in this one....

    In this one, Petra has no need for such petty tricks. When a day comes for her to cash in the debt she's owed, her price is as simple, direct, and shamelessly affectionate as possible: a date in every way but using the word, planned and paid for by Petra, for just the two of them. The absence of ulterior motive is practically unsettling in of itself.

    She's even gone so far as to make *wardrobe* requests of Lilian when she's preparing to meet her at-location, but only for practical reasons. A split skirt, or wearing something underneath that covers at least down to her knees, is strongly recommended-- there's a suggestion to be prepared to spend a bunch of time outdoors, too.

    The destination is at the very end of a rural road in some other world's France, where the flattened dirt of the side road eventually dissipates into the forest floor as plants push up through it. When Lilian gets out after being dropped off, in addition to the scent of the slightly-damp woods, there's another smell wafting off of the one building that's out here, like sweat and hay and mud. If she's familiar, it's instantly identifiable; if she's not, then it's a little gross until she gets used to it.

    Petra's already here, vibratingly waiting in the fields of tamped-down grass and straw that surround the barn. She's leaning up against a fence, restlessly climbing up onto the bottom bar and then back down, until she notices Lilian and scampers over. She's cleaned up, wolf cut glossy and freshly trimmed, light makeup on, even some jewelry, so there's no mistaking her intentions, but she's a little bit more 'rugged' than 'classy'.

    The best description for her outfit would be 'boho-granola-chic', and it's both made up entirely of clothes Lilian's seen on her before, and a striking aesthetic for her. A washed-out green linen button-down is unbuttoned fully besides the bottom two, sleeves rolled up and droopy oversized collar lounging almost to her shoulders. Underneath it is a black camisole, and both are tucked into her wide-legged brown canvas pants, held by a chunky belt looped so it rides slightly high. Coming out of her pocket is a golden chain, securing the wooden compact mirror case, and around her neck is an assortment of layered black cords and understated gold chains. On one wrist is a set of beaded wooden tchotchke bracelets, on the other is a little bracelet made out of flowers with their stems tied together, and over her shoulder is a wide-strapped saddle purse that's stuffed to the brim.

    The saddle bag weighs her down when she bounces around in unbridled excitement. "Lilian! Lilian! Hi!"

    She sticks out her arms, wiggling them towards the barn. Around it, Lilian can see now, are some fenced-off fields and stables, and some horses ambling out in view with farmhands nearby. "It's horseback riding! You, um-- mentioned once that you were sorta interested in it!"
Lilian Rook     Lilian did, at the time, worry just a bit that Petra would be a greasy little pervert about it. But for some reason neither god nor science could explain, she felt pretty sure it would be fine. Getting her another denigrating-yet-sincere present this year just felt strange, and now that she's in the Concord, there's not very much that she can't just buy for herself. And besides, Lilian gets to take diagnostics by whatever Petra chooses.

    Both the specificity and ostensible innocence of the result is, admittedly, unnerving. But Lilian is a woman of her word. More or less.

    The wardrobe request is so mild that Lilian assumes it has to be for practical reasons, and so she takes it seriously, choosing a near-knee length canvas skirt unbuttoned down one side, grey-green over a cream-coloured linen underskirt that ends up surprisingly outdoorsy. She has on her chestnut leather knee boots with black socks, and a light-knit summer pullover in off-white fastened down by the belt and hanging off her shoulders enough to expose the neck of an only somewhat rugged sleeveless sienna button-up under.

    She looks like she plans to go for a six hour stroll down by the Irish seaside, which is really close enough. It's more surprising that she altered her makeup; going back to more traditional, summery colours, wearing a little more blush and glossier lipstick than usual for the hyperattentive, put next to silver earrings and a matching unjewelled necklace. She even changed her bag for a buckle-up that's very pretty and utterly unsuited to Elite work. It's called taking the assignment seriously.

    Rural France wasn't exactly her guess. As she walks off the road and follows the obvious path, Lilian finds some amusement in ruminating on how much she takes Tamamo to cities and how much Petra wants to go out into the country, despite their more or less inverted upbringings.

    'Lilian! Lilian! Hi!'

    "Oh thank god. You look normal." Lilian says, fingers to her chest, too performative to even stop smiling from earlier. "Beg pardon. I meant to say surprisingly cute." It's fine. There's nobody around. And this is the purpose of the whole thing anyways.

    'It's horseback riding! You, um-- mentioned once that you were sorta interested in it!'

    Looking around by habit, Lilian figures it out slightly before Petra announces it, so the look of excited comprehension dawns on her face at just the right moment. She holds her hand to her lips, trying to subdue her reaction, but her eyes really say it all. "You really still remember that?" she says, laughing in gentle incredulity by the end of the sentence. "Well now I'm glad I didn't go divining ahead! This is . . ." She bounces her weight with a spurt of restless energy. "Petra you are so sweet."
Petra Soroka "I meant to say surprisingly cute."

    "*And* normal!"

    Petra agrees a little too enthusiastically for her own good, hyped up enough that even backhanded compliments are like a drug. And, frankly, 'normal' is maybe an even more important bar to reach than 'cute' is! There's no hesitation, but a little bit of vibrating overinflated-balloon-pressure, when she gushes back. "And you're *so* pretty!"

"You really still remember that?"

    "Well, you see!" Petra pivots around on her boot from her flouncing over to the barn, finger raised up. "It's important to remember! 'Cause it's something you said would make you happy!"

    This has really been a perfect slam dunk to start off her masterful scheme, which is a huge boost to Petra's morale. She could imagine-- and fretfully did-- that actually calling in the coupon to monopolize a whole day of Lilian's would be begrudgingly accepted at best, and interpreted as pervertedly manipulative at worst, making a sort of resentful hostage situation where she dragged Lilian away from her very important work to play around in a sandbox for her own childish enjoyment. But-!!! Not the case! Her eyes are *sparkling*!

    And so, Petra is renewed with energy that hadn't even begun to deplete yet. Having already familiarized herself with the place and introduced herself to the guides, practicing the cut one thousand times before drawing the blade, she confidently scampers over to the stables. There waiting are some of the ranchers helping younger kids up onto ponies, or talking families through the process of riding, or caring for the horses, and there's also a line-up of horses there already saddled up.

    "Ah! So, we've gotta introduce ourselves to the horses! To see how they vibe!"

    The rancher there introduces them by name and temperament, but of the handful there, two of them are pretty taken with the two of Lilian and Petra. There's a brown and white splotched horse named Mary Jane with a big heart-shaped patch on her flank, that Petra immediately starts fawning over how pretty she is to the horse's clear contentment. The other, a black horse named Nova who was described as a 'proper elegant lady', shoves her nose into Lilian's hands when she shows them to greet her.

    During this process, Petra is happily babbling about everything that comes to mind. "Oh, so-- so! I found this place 'cause of when I was wandering around for places to sleep with the Beauty of Ash, you know, like I do. I mean, I found the woods at least, but--! But there's actually something else too! So-- thanksss! Thanks, I'll make sure the girls get back here safelyyyy!"

    Once they're saddled up and sat stably on top at the guide's directions-- Petra is extremely pleased with herself when she manages to properly clip her purse to the saddle before she's shown how-- it'll be just the two of them heading out on the trail. Petra, of course, has gone horseback riding a couple times many years ago, and doesn't want some weirdo third wheel around anyways! So, with the instructions given, the hilly forested trail is all theirs, and the horses'.
Lilian Rook     '*And* normal!'

    "And cute." Lilian titters.

    'And you're *so* pretty!'

    "Naturally~" There is the hair toss. The traces of bashfulness that had hung around her a moment ago are noticeable for their sudden absence after the fact.

    'It's important to remember! 'Cause it's something you said would make you happy!'

    All Lilian can muster at that moment is an inarticulate noise somewhere between her throat and her nose, and squeezing the strap of her bag. The fact that there are other people here is utterly irrelevant now, even compared to how little she'd even processed it before. Her own worries as to what Petra would choose, bravely set aside on the day of delivery, and occasionally resurfacing along the course of the month inbetween, are inverted and magnified into a stunning sense of appreciation for Petra's . . . being Petra.

    That she'd used an only implicitly negotiated blank cheque on something 'because it'd make her happy', called in as an obligation only to ensure an uninterrupted day and the atmosphere of special occasion, is momentarily overwhelming. Lilian keeps her hand firmly balled up against her lips as her eyes heat up, waiting until the warmth drains down to her cheeks instead.

    So this is what 'a date' is like.

    'Ah! So, we've gotta introduce ourselves to the horses! To see how they vibe!'

    Lilian is overcome by a wave of nostalgic excitement. For a few seconds, she gets an unusual, misty sort of look in her eyes, and then trots along after Petra with a reverent hush to her tone. "I forgot that they actually do that in real life. Or I just assumed they didn't? There's always a moment like that in books, like I'm certain you know and all, but-- I don't know, it's just--! Oh my goodness I can't even guess how long it's been since I thought about that. Ten . . . thirteen years?"

    Of course, the gravitas of such an absurd little childhood dream (a normal one) coming true makes Lilian immediately skittish that none of the horses will like her, but she wills herself to ride on the fairy tale momentum of the moment, and bounces for joy when Nova comes straight to her, barely even keeping it below the average level for Petra. She even giggles at the rancher's description, taking something closer to her usual tone just so she can be soooo smooth by saying 'Then I suppose like attracts like.'

    . . . . . . . .

    Lilian has . . . never gone horseback riding before! Horses are difficult to find, now, back home, and she was never 'on good enough behaviour' for anyone to go out of the way for her, and Nova Heliosanctus isn't a cultural school; much to her secret disappointment at age thirteen. Petra gets told all of these facts and more while she beholds an incredibly rare sight:
Lilian Rook     Lilian sitting still and raptly absorbing new instruction from someone else, then taking to a physical task in an awkward and slightly strugglesome fashion, and largely only staying within the bounds of actually making a mistake sheerly by generalized athletic prowess before the confidence of 'having the hang of it' starts to build up.

    Regaling Petra about the failed petition by the older students during her first year to have horseback activities added to the curriculum, including a tangential swerve into the surreality of the fact that there was once a time she was expected to play sports, and a partial retelling of another completely different book wherein the protagonist and her mysterious mentor must cross days of wilderness on horseback on some solemn quest that is also a journey of discovery, Lilian caps off her thought-spiral on the subject of how perfect Mary Jane and Nova are (again) and their relevance to the idea of revisiting the suggestion as famous alumna now.

    With a heady sigh and an incredibly absent-minded tone of voice, she says "I wish I could have met you back then."
Petra Soroka PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Show her a good time, okay~? I'll expect a *full report* after. And if it sounds like you were a mediocre date, I'll have to start *seriously reconsidering* my future plans involving you."

    Three years ago, Petra called Lilian in a panic after putting Cinder on hold, having been asked on a date by a woman for the first time. The flower bracelet on her wrist is the same as back then. Now, Petra's exuberant, shameless public affection is the result of a string of events that could only have followed from that first conversation, training her for this very moment.

    It could be said that Lilian orchestrated the means of her own downfall. It could also be said that Petra has changed a lot since way back then, because of being around Lilian, and even if it's subtler, Lilian's changed a lot from being around Petra in return.

"I forgot that they actually do that in real life."

    "Yeah! Yeah, yeah!"

    Petra bounces up and down, slowing only to feed Mary Jane a sugar cube to acclimate her enough that Petra can stroke her snout. While looking into the horse's eyes, Petra says fondly, "I mean, they've all got personalities and everything. They're such smart animals. You know, smart enough to have friends, and preferences, and personal boundaries and everything, and to know how to communicate them. These guys here are probably the ones that're already vetted for being gentle and patient for first time riders."

    When Nova takes to Lilian so well, Petra tries to psychically beam the horse with her approval and gratitude. She can't do that, so instead she pat-pats Nova to introduce herself too, and then hands Lilian a couple sugar cubes from the little baggie to dole out as treats. At Lilian's comment, she leaves absolutely no ambiguity about their relationship with the flirtily confirmatory way she says, "True~"

    The trail is empty of human-sounds besides whatever the two of them make, with other groups presumably on the same circuit but far enough apart to be invisible and inaudible. They're in the foothills here, covered in thick grass and eroded smooth, every color within the range of 'green' suffusing the air with the warm mixture of sweet and earthy smells, birds and little rustling animals all around. It's a little silly how the two horses interact with each other so recognizably-- Mary Jane is more excitable, and the way Nova snorts when she trots too far up ahead sounds exactly like she's being scolded and slinking back to fall in line.

    "I'm actually, like, *so* surprised they didn't do horseback riding there. I mean, that's the classic, like-- hoity toity British equestrian thing, right? It's not just cute and fun, it's a *class* signifier too! -- I mean, that's probably how you'd be able to sell it as a petition, right?"
Petra Soroka     Petra's only got one story to the contrary of 'no experience at all'; a horse named Daisy that she rode a few times as a young kid, who she mostly remembers as scattered affectionate vignettes. Her memories might be over a decade out of date, but the kinesthetics of riding are ingrained enough in her that she can clumsily explain-- or more accurately mime out physically-- to give Lilian the baseline necessary for her own athleticism to carry her.

    "It's like if a motorcycle was a boat and a dog," is her completely useless comparison. "Or-- it's honestly kinda similar to the Beauty of Ash, but only like *this*, and not when sitting up," she elaborates while leaning way forwards to be practically hugging Mary Jane's neck.

"I wish I could have met you back then."

    "Yeah...." Petra lets that sit for a bit, hesitating briefly on pushing it, then slows Mary Jane down until they're walking side by side. "I totally would've glued onto you instantly even back then. And that would've been pretty great for both of us, I think."

    "But!" Excited by the tone of Petra's voice, Mary Jane kicks up into a trot again, wobbling Petra in the saddle and making her giggle in surprise until she gets her back under control. "Ah-- er, but it's not like there isn't still forever after this anyways! So!"

    The trail's about forty minutes of quiet walking around, until the bend back widens a bit and gets more well-trodden. The forest opens up, and off to the side, still far away from any centers of civilization, is a cutesy rustic stone-and-wood restaurant. There's an outdoor patio where only a few scattered parties are eating at carved tables that overlook a forested valley, lit with little oil lamps at each table while the sun starts setting. There's a dirt area for cars to park, but there's also posts to tie horses to, where a few are already patiently hanging out.

    "Ah!!! Yes! Here it is! It's, um-- got pretty, basically normal food, I think. Like rabbit and pork and stuff? Yeah! But it's here!"
Lilian Rook     'I mean, they've all got personalities and everything. They're such smart animals. You know, smart enough to have friends, and preferences, and personal boundaries and everything, and to know how to communicate them.'

    "It's wild, isn't it? Humans have so much to learn from horses. They could really help bring up the average." Even a remark on the deplorable state of assumed human nature is pretty much toothless. Lilian thinks it's funny, and it's a common point of shared language between them, so she laughs.

    'I'm actually, like, *so* surprised they didn't do horseback riding there. I mean, that's the classic, like-- hoity toity British equestrian thing, right?'

    "Well, that's sort of just it, isn't it?" Lilian says. She waits for Mary Jane to complete another puppylike lap back to Nova's side with patient fondness, resuming her conversation when Petra is carried back into comfortable earshot. Of course her favourite horse ever (probably for a long while) earns a little treat. After some time on the trail, her confidence has increased to the point of being able to learn forward for that; and even stroke the back of her neck!

    "The school is old. Way back when, you'd either move to live nearby, or already have a horse to travel there. Horses became more of a class symbol 'and nothing else' when cars caught on. By the time that any of the students could experience anything on horseback as a prestige exercise, they were already fashionable amongst the Unenlightened at the height of global hostility towards them; after the two World Wars. Most of the faculty are old enough to remember that, and you know how conservatives are."

    'It's like if a motorcycle was a boat and a dog'

    "Well, I still haven't tried that motorcycle idea." Lilian says, already drenched in tones of affectionate recollection of another conversation entirely. "Having a dog turned out pretty well~ So let's give it a shot, hm?" is so shameless that it could only come from the privacy of the trail.

    'Yeah....'

    "Yeah."

    Lilian sits, and thinks, and stares at the sky, and thinks, and listens to the calming trot of both horses on the trail, and thinks a little more, and decides that this isn't really a sad subject. She looks back down at Petra without a hint of anything more complicated than contentment. "I've had to tell people a million times that I had boyfriends before I met Tamamo-- actually a girlfriend too-- but none of those experiences were useful for learning anything about people."

    "When you're that age, at that calibre of school, under that much pressure, stupid teenagers just get stupid about the status and ceremony of it all. They don't have room in their heads to get stupid about crushing on someone. It's hard to find the time to go dating, and the classes are too small to get away with fraternizing, and everything you do reflects on someone you want to keep happy, so it's all sort of . . ." Lilian tilts her head, searching Petra's face like what she wants to say is written on it. "I feel like I learned everything about having a girlfriend from you."
Lilian Rook     She may as well say it. Regardless of whether it's appropriate, Petra is the arena of all her stupid mistakes and messy feelings and bad communication; of fighting, breaking up, making up, fucking up, doing better, getting better, getting comfortable, getting weird, and improving as a human being at the entire concept of intimacy. In an incredibly strange, morally indefensible way, Petra may genuinely be the crash course that's responsible for her reaching marriage.

    "Plus the girl was like, five years older than me."

    . . . . . . . .

    'Ah!!! Yes! Here it is! It's, um-- got pretty, basically normal food, I think. Like rabbit and pork and stuff? Yeah! But it's here!'

    "Oh you are just--!"

    Lilian feels herself getting breathless at Petra's step-by-step planning making everything fall into place like one continuous wandering flight of whimsy. Being the itinerary type herself, the magical feeling of picking a direction and just going, and then having a very good day, sinks deeply into active memory, where it will likely be turned over and studied for years.

    "Your timing is impeccable." Lilian decides; facetiously, in the sense that none of this was timed down to the minute, but appreciatively all the same. "Goodness. It must be an age and half since I've had rabbit, actually. Just for the sake of the experience, I'll have to see if it's any good." Already overflowing with anticipation, Lilian leans as far as she dares to try and see inside even a second earlier.

    "I thought I'd suggest eating outside, with the horses, but if there's a cozy corner available . . ." Visions of Hallmark slop and even worse YA musicals dance through her head. There are truly two wolves.
Petra Soroka "Horses became more of a class symbol 'and nothing else' when cars caught on."

    "Oh my god. Yeah, you're right; I didn't even think about that." Petra pats Mary Jane's mane and burbles something about what a sweet and pretty status symbol she is. "Though I kinda thought, even back then, they were kinda class symbols? Though, I guess, they were class symbols of a class that's, like, still significantly below the minimum necessary to be at Nova Heliosanctis at *all*, and then thirteen is already way past the point where anyone would be expected to already know how."

    Really, the only world Petra is familiar enough with in horse-times to make a mental comparison to is Elibe, which is about five to eight hundred years off of the industrial conversion to cars. But the much more important part of that thought is imagining Lilian in her Lycian army getup on top of a horse, which fills her mind for the next few minutes.

    "Then the argument that should convince the staff is that a single picture of you on a horse would boost their reputation more than literally anything else they could do. Oh my god. Lady Guinivere would lose her *mind*. I-- can I take a picture? Er-- for, just for me, I mean."

"I feel like I learned everything about having a girlfriend from you."

    Petra attentively swings her legs off either side of Mary Jane's saddle, eventually leaning down to lounge against her neck while she's successfully coaxed into a steady walk. She watches Lilian to drink in every word, eyes never leaving her face and the way it's framed by the greenery spilling downhill beyond it. She's nodding along, and the gradual build towards Lilian's eventual point accumulates in Petra like the tension of a coiled spring, reducing the wavelength of her squirming but increasing the frequency.

    The word doesn't result in either of Petra's usual explosions of emotion, either an outpouring of bubbly energy or teary-eyed sentimentality. Instead she sort of wriggles in the saddle, pink-faced, wrapping her arms around Mary Jane's neck tightly as a temporary stand-in. She's struck incoherent for a little bit besides an awkward flustered giggle before she finds her words.

    "Eheheh-- um, er, then, I guess it's my responsibility to keep teaching you as much as I can."

    After wiggling around a bit to settle her breath-stealing emotions, Petra eventually finds the presence of mind to reflect on Lilian's age. It's pretty difficult to imagine pre-Tamamo Lilian at all, but she was nineteen when she became an Elite, and the window before that was presumably taken up by a lot of Immunes training, so...

    "-- Who were you dating that was *five years* older than you?!" Petra blurts out, aghast. Lilian is only a responsible four years older (five if you count Kamar-Taj)! Tamamo is literally god's gift to the world! Sakura-- in every single timeline actually-- "Er, not that that's a bad thing usually."
Petra Soroka "Your timing is impeccable."

    "Hm-hm~"

    Petra swivels and hops off of Mary Jane's saddle while she's still trotting towards the post like she's disembarking a moving train, stumbling just a little when she lands on the ground. She scritches the base of Mary Jane's neck when she looks back at her in confusion, unstrapping her purse from the buckles on her saddle. Then in a moment of unadulterated indulgence, she scampers over to offer *Lilian* a hand down from Nova.

    "Oh!!! Yeah! Let's see inside, then!" All too happy to encourage any whim of Lilian's, and not knowing what the inside of the restaurant looks like herself either, Petra leans this way and that to try and ascertain whether they're allowed to enter from the horse side of things or if they have to circle around to the front. "Oh, but, we'll be saying bye to the horses after dinner either way."

    She slaps the side of her bag, which makes an unyielding *thwack*. "We can't kidnap them overnight! And I've got camping stuff! Er, they're fine to get picked up here, since this is like a super normal trail for them."

    The inside of the cafe is a bit more run-down than the outside made it look, in a sort of 'eighty years since the last renovation' kind of way. It's all heavy solid wood, warmly yellow-lit, with trophies of, seemingly, generations of whatever accomplishment any member of the family achieved. There's hunting trophies mounted on the walls, but also distinctly not-famous paintings with little plaques detailing how they won some competition or another thirty years ago, and one elaborate knit quilt hanging over one wall.

    "Really really cute actually...." Petra marvels as they go in, and then peeks her head around corners until one of the wait staff notices her. "Er-- Petra, party of two?"

    There's a cozy booth with a window looking out into the forest for them to claim. Petra, deftly, sits down first in order to avoid a moral dilemma that would otherwise instantly kill her-- having to decide between sitting across from Lilian (inoffensive but tragic) or sitting beside her (extremely bold!). By the time the meals are brought to the table, the sun's nearly set outside, shedding a diffuse twilight glow over the vista outside the window but not brightening the inside at all.

    "You know, like-- um, I was thinking of the view, and then I was thinking of travel, and then I was thinking about how much travel there is to do so it's impossible to do all of it, then I was thinking about how, at school, there's tons of news and stuff that people bring in to talk about that's totally crazy even to me. But I just can't get over how so often, for the stuff that we all do, there's just no record of it besides *mission reports*. Even when it's not *secretive*."

    Petra hold up her fork with a little bit of duck skewered on it. "I should, like, get a voice memo thing. And take notes. Or hire someone to just, like, follow me around and document things? Like a bard, I guess? Except then, *I* should be doing it for *you*."
Lilian Rook     'Oh my god. Yeah, you're right; I didn't even think about that.'

    Away from other Elites, from anyone at work, without the separation of a radio, Lilian shuts her eyes, smiles like she's going to either giggle or smirk, and drinks in the sound of Petra's sparkle-eyed realization with all the self satisfaction of having shared a life-changing secret. "Nobody ever talks about these things, right? They don't think about it, or they don't bother to learn, but I think it's so interesting to know why things aren't just exactly the same."

    She isn't reading her mind, but she doesn't need to be. The thought originates within Lilian's own girlish heart to say "I should get in a little more practice before we go back to Elibe, then ride at least one day there. They were asking where my horse was on the first day, remember?"

    'I-- can I take a picture? Er-- for, just for me, I mean.'

    "Imagine using that as the photograph."

    Allowing herself to drink deeply of imagination's indulgent ambrosia, Lilian accidentally says it at the same time as Petra, by leaving too-long a break between sentences. When she realizes, she lapses into a fit of giggling ten seconds long, before saying "The Petra-only special director's cut, hm? Only if I look good in it~"

    'Eheheh-- um, er, then, I guess it's my responsibility to keep teaching you as much as I can.'

    Lilian can't really swap Petra on the shoulder from the gap between horses, so she settles for raising her hand in faux-menace. "Be careful about taking credit." Her face is a little bit red from having attention called to her own absent-minded sentiment. "Especially for something no one will believe!"

    '-- Who were you dating that was *five years* older than you?!'

    "Oh god." Lilian sighs and rolls her eyes, like it's an old and tacky story. "Alyssa from ninth year. I'd had no issues with her for two years by then, and she was pretty, well-regarded, and graduating straight into employment, so giving her a chance seemed like a good idea at the time. But . . ." Lilian sticks out her tongue, and makes a sound like 'bleck'. "She was a bit of a creep." Lilian Rook says to Petra Soroka.

    'Oh, but, we'll be saying bye to the horses after dinner either way.'

    Lilian first seems stricken by the thought, shuffling a little closer to Nova with her hands still on the saddle. Then she feels a little embarrassed for not assuming that was obvious, and bunches up the edge of her sleeve under her fingers. Then she takes a deep breath, says "Well of course I wouldn't expect to keep her overnight." and then "Could you check if there's room? I'll be along in a moment."

    She waits until she's pretty sure Petra is too far, but she can definitely still overhear Lilian saying something to the horse that involves a clumsily constructed non-existent idiom that comes across to casual processing as something like §very valuable/important/good company§ in the middle.

    'Er-- Petra, party of two?'

    She catches up just in time to hear that, and give a deer-in-the-headlights look to the staff just past Petra's head.
Lilian Rook     . . . . . . . .

    Lilian, presented with the terrible moral dilemma in Petra's place, resolves it very quickly by sitting beside her with an extra hand of space between. All pretense at polite space dissolves over the course of having five minutes to stare out the window at the sunset over the forest; which takes her table manners with it after her third round of nearly putting her elbows on the tabletop, succumbing on the fourth automatic loop of trying to prop her chin up in her palms. This breach of manners, itself, lasts only until there's food, at which point Lilian abruptly straightens up, and ends up closing her extra distance buffer just by wiggling in her seat to fix her posture.

    'You know, like-- um, I was thinking of the view...'

    "No, I totally understand. I don't think I told you, but I've started making it a purposeful policy to try and talk about something going on in my own world every so often, because I'd begun to feel like I was forgetting where I'm even from."

    Eating with Lilian, in a private context like this, is a little bit surreal. She talks so much, and carries on conversation without any adjustment to pacing whatsoever, because she only ever appears to use her knife and fork when Petra is speaking instead; the rest of the time, her food just vanishes in little bits and pieces between blinks, dwindling away long before it has time to get cold despite Petra only seeing her eat a quarter of it. Her knife ends up purposed as a gestural prop more often than not, mildly elucidating of otherwise ambiguous meaning by its tilt and point and movement.

    "Elite social groups make me sort of crazy because I never feel like I'm speaking to anyone 'foreign', you know? And it used to be in fashion to just drone on about your special little export or whatever and explain your world like you're a travel brochure! It's not as if I got into the Immunes just to travel, but-- you know, I don't say it, but the Paladins sort of were so I could. It started off just wanting very badly to see what Earth used to be like, but somewhere along the way I got a little obsessed with the enormity of it all."

    'I should, like, get a voice memo thing. And take notes. Or hire someone to just, like, follow me around and document things? Like a bard, I guess? Except then, *I* should be doing it for *you*.'

    "That's what I'm on about with, you know, getting different clothes for every country we visit in Elibe, or allowing people from all over the City to bring their things into Trídéag. I still wear the bracelet Carpathia got me most of the time. I visit Apple Tree Island once a month with some pretense about imports. I try to always take Tamamo somewhere together when we have the time. I even moved my equipment into Laplace instead of Saoirse HTO because one of those is a world I'm in and the other is just my mother's."

    Lilian pauses to think, looking out the window. The perfect triangle still impaled on her fork vanishes after a while. "Hmm. You know, I'd never stopped to question it. Do people think I'm just being quaintly multicultural? That I'm being childish and indulging? Or conformist and trying to blend in?" Turning back to Petra, Lilian speaks in a way that's far more thoughtful than necessary for the information. "I've been taking my sketchpad around with me for more than a year now, just so I can draw things I want to remember. A wearable recorder just doesn't do it justice. We know that places exist by the moments we were really alive in them."
Petra Soroka "Only if I look good in it~"

    "As if there's any other possibility!~"

    Petra suddenly gains several levels of proficiency in horseback riding when motivated by this specific thing. Mary Jane circles around Lilian while Petra guides her with her thighs alone, holding her phone to snap a couple pictures, bouncing and gossiping as she does.

    "You're *so* suited to having a horse. You deserve to have the whole look going on. Like, come on, you should be scooping people up onto the horse behind you to rescue them in the middle of the battlefield. You should be posing in front of an army. You deserve it!"

    "There's so much art of you on or being a horse that a real photograph would send people into heat." But also, Petra can be counted among those numbers, except better because she *has* photos now and they're *hers*! With a satisfied look, she tucks her phone back into her pocket, and idly twists her hands back and forth, observing how well Mary Jane follows without using them.

    "Man, now I want *so* bad to play guitar on horseback. Like, proper cowboy type shit. You know? But it'd probably spook her, since she doesn't know...."

"Be careful about taking credit."

    "I'm not taking credit!" Petra holds up her hands appeasingly. The thought comes to her, and it's already moving on the assembly line towards her mouth, but even before it fully engages she makes a self-consciously-goofy giggle. "I'm taking *responsibility*."

"Alyssa from ninth year."

QUICK MATH:
> 9th year
> 1st year is age 13
> Add 8 to that
> Subtract five for Lilian
> 21 vs 16 ?!

    Petra's lips part silently, wincing a bit, before blurting out, "Yeah I bet she was." Further contemplations on the nature of sixteen year old Lilian ensue, but she can't vocalize the words 'like if Audrey was a pedophile' without doing Lilian severe unneeded harm. "Er, can see why that one didn't teach you much, though."

. . .

    Obviously Petra is *profoundly* gratified by Lilian sitting right next to her. Within a blink of an eye, she's relocated both of their bags to the opposite bench to remove all obstacles, and constantly bobs in her seat to an inaudible rhythm. The Silver, when it brushes nearby Lilian to scoop up her bag, is radiating the fizzy heat of Petra's shameless tail-wagging delight.

"No, I totally understand."

    "Mhm, mhm, yeah; otherwise it's kinda like drowning? That sort of, um-- rootlessness, I think, is super uncomfortable." A couple seconds pass, where Petra connects chains of association that don't even need to be elaborated on out loud. "You know I don't even know the names of any of my cousins? Or, like, three out of four of my grandparents."

    Really, they can both eat in bizarre ways. Petra eats her roast duck salad like a sped up timelapse of rust chewing away at metal, picking at it in rapid tiny slices from the outer edges to steadily reduce the surface area of the plate that it covers. When she's talking, she thoughtlessly settles droplets of Silver onto the bread, which gnaws corrosive holes spreading throughout it while her mouth is occupied.

    At some point, Petra decides that looking either at the window or at the food is a waste of her time on this beautiful green Earth, so she just props her chin between her palms and turns her cheek-squished face towards Lilian fully. Despite sleeping together for over three years now, letting her knee touch Lilian's under the table and then not pulling it away makes her heart rate dizzyingly spike.
Petra Soroka "It's not as if I got into the Immunes just to travel, but-- you know, I don't say it, but the Paladins sort of were so I could."

    "Right! I mean, in terms of sheer volume of work, there's always enough to keep any of us busy on any one world, right? Like, there's tons of stuff that only Elites can handle and all, the *system* makes sense, but the main *perk* of this is to travel! There's a reason I hardly ever sleep in the same place twice! Like, besides the obvious."

    Petra waves her hand back and forth, and the floating blob of Silver that her fingers pass through absentmindedly morphs between rings wrapped around them, to chopsticks, to disparate crystalline shapes. "I'm always trying to egg people on into talking about their worlds, even when they're boring. That's how you learn about places *and* people! They don't even stop to think whether it's weird to just rapid fire questions at them, they just sometimes get, like, ornery."

"Do people think I'm just being quaintly multicultural?"

    "Do people think..." Petra echoes, half-condescending and half-serious. "Whatever Elites think, I'm pretty sure everyone actually *involved* feels, like, recognized and better off for it. If anything, it's the second option, but I don't even think that's a bad thing at all. It's all a little bit of a game, isn't it?"

    Petra doesn't have her magic outfit-changing guitar case with her, but she twists her wrist around with a flourish as if theatrically summoning a clothing swap. "It's like an anthology play. We've got all these little vignettes that we're going between, and why would anyone even pay close enough attention to notice the end of one act and the beginning of another if there's no *costume change*? It's, like, degrading to the subject matter to not put a little flair on yourself for it. Anyone who treats being an Elite as a purely functional thing, and not, like, embodying a symbol artistically, is sort of missing the point."

"I've been taking my sketchpad around with me for more than a year now, just so I can draw things I want to remember."

    "Oh! Yeah!" Petra claps her hands together enthusiastically. "I mean, that's like, even better than photography, for you! No, no, I love that!"

    The food's cleaned up and the check comes around. The waitress passes it over Lilian's head, to Petra, who chatters while dealing with it. "I mean, every moment of our lives happens and then passes. I feel like we've got an obligation to at least try our best to be able to remember every day, or else it's like stuff didn't happen at all. But you've gotta compress information from 'the entirety of existence' into a medium that evokes as much of it as possible."

    Petra motions to stand up, still overflowing with energy. "Okay! Now, um, hopefully MJ and Nova are still there so we can say bye before heading out into the woods!"
Lilian Rook     'As if there's any other possibility!'

    Lilian needn't even say it. When Petra gets out her phone, she is already assuming her most noble horseback posture; then one of overwhelming lazy contentment, brought on naturally by a surge of oxytocin, and then finallya pose where she holds her hand over her mouth and laughs, because now it's really funny and Petra looks adorable together with Mary Jane like this.

    'There's so much art of you on or being a horse that a real photograph would send people into heat.'

    "Well I'm not going to be responsible for that. They should have prepared in advance for the possibility." Lilian says. She snickers at her own lame little barely-even-coy acknowledgement, flicks back her hair, wipes the corners of her eyes, and breathes out at a giggle. "But the sort of things I get up to, I'd never be able to stomach bringing a poor innocent horse to." She means it, but her mood is too good to think about horses coming to harm. "I mean, the people we deal with could never be normal about the poor thing."

    'Man, now I want *so* bad to play guitar on horseback. Like, proper cowboy type shit. You know?'

    "Let's find an excuse. Somewhere, someday. It sounds nice."

    'I'm taking *responsibility*.'

    "Come onnnnn! You're impossible!"

    . . . . . . . .

    Despite experiencing the urge to chase Petra around outside, and then a bout of blank-out social confusion at the door, the eventual decision to sit next to Petra at the booth unexpectedly summons up such feelings of warmth in Lilian; for the place, the person she shares it with, and the reason they're both here; that she fails to find any words to name them, and then to think it must be important.

    Because in its sheer mundanity, in its meditative distance from everything else in her life, the experience of 'being, here' captures her imagination before she knows it. She is taken in by the transformation of a hundred familiar little things; how they're rendered so new and quietly exciting between the two of them, in sunset glow and tender proximity. The feeling of having nowhere to be and nothing to do gives such space in her heart to so many things seldom said that she is endeared to it at first meeting; of being no one for anyone, except herself for this one girl. Immersed so completely into this gentle love that felt so uncharacteristic of Petra until today, she finds the idle silliness intoxicating, and every humble gesture exhilirating.

    By the time they're wrapping up their meal, Lilian has moved on from allowing Petra's leg to touch hers under the table to resting her shoulder against her arm, leaning to one side on the tabletop, cheek in hand, so that it becomes politely unavoidable.

    'I'm always trying to egg people on into talking about their worlds, even when they're boring. That's how you learn about places *and* people!'

    "It should be a law." Lilian says. Drunk on an unassumingly gorgeous sunset, the companion she assigns the words is a lazily self-satisfied smile. "Mixers for new hires aren't enough. People trying to be brochures in the wild has to be a sort of . . . spiritual demand, mustn't it? It's something your brain needs even when seed of 'why' never got to set down roots. They don't stop to think about why I believe or say any of the things I do either; they soak it up like rain and sunlight, because in a way, I'm bringing something viscerally, aesthetically real to them where they are."
Lilian Rook     'It's all a little bit of a game, isn't it?'

    "It is! It should be! Look at us!" Lilian wiggles for emphasis, achieving nothing. "I know we pick up a paycheque, but that doesn't mean we all have to act like it's work! We don't have to talk about things like it's water cooler chat! We're knights and wizards and psychics and super scientists and magical girls roaming around the universe righting wrongs and hanging out!" Lightly pounding her fist on the table, for the gentlest of emphasis, she raises her voice by a glowing hair. "Elibe still understands! Return to nature!"

    'It's like an anthology play. We've got all these little vignettes that we're going between, and why would anyone even pay close enough attention to notice the end of one act and the beginning of another if there's no *costume change*? It's, like, degrading to the subject matter to not put a little flair on yourself for it.'

    "Exactlyyyyy!" Petra can feel Lilian's leg kicking under the table, even though her face doesn't leave her palm. "People get so twisted up in knots about how blindly they're fumbling through the whole political aspect when it's like, hello, have you noticed the girls in charge just think they're really really cool? Why don't you think you're really cool?! It's all so cool if you think about it!"

    Using the word 'cool' three times in quick succession makes her giggle. The tip of her dinner knife, held like a pen, twirls a little glittering circle for artistic punctuation. "How are you going to figure out any deeper meaning if you cringe at the door?! Out! No subversion for you! No surprisingly mature whatever! There are no secret themes actually! Begone!" She laughs.

    'I mean, that's like, even better than photography, for you! No, no, I love that!'

    Lilian nods, communicated more by repetitive 'mhm mhm' and her shut-eyed satisfied expression than by her limited range of motion. "You understand. Actually, I have a whole thing about that. My entire style is like, informed by how everything looks when it's completely still without actually being flattened down into an iconographic derivative." She rattles it all off as if she and Petra were talking about a movie they just saw. Her weight shifts a little further. "I don't really know why, but it's so much easier to imagine how it always looks the rest of the time when you can just--" The motion she makes is indecipherable, except that it conveys invasiveness, precision, touchiness, and delicate care. "Lampport wasn't a good example. That was an evil fairy wish box. I wanna show you for real sometime."

    'But you've gotta compress information from 'the entirety of existence' into a medium that evokes as much of it as possible.'

    "That's what I'm hoping. So once I get it right, I can evoke as much as I can in all the people who'll never be here, through the tiny little pinhole of what we can share."

    'Okay! Now, um, hopefully MJ and Nova are still there so we can say bye before heading out into the woods!'

    Lilian almost jumps out of her seat. "Yes! I love themmm! We need to!"
Petra Soroka ". . . They soak it up like rain and sunlight, because in a way, I'm bringing something viscerally, aesthetically real to them where they are."

    "Well, anyone with taste understands that you *are* rain and sunlight."

    Petra nods approvingly along with Lilian as she talks, but her ability to form more coherent sentences than 'yessss bitch exactlyyyyy' is temporarily disabled, as her mental processing is fully occupied by something else. At this cozy little private-ish booth in an adorable rural cafe, watching the sunset over the hills in front of them, Lilian has placed her *head* on Petra's *shoulder*! The fact that they've had frequent bodily contact of various levels of intimacy for most of the time they've known each other hasn't prepared her at all for handling this!

    Petra's arm is, naturally, completely out of order because of this. If her shoulder shifts one milimeter in a way that disrupts Lilian's comfort, then the entire world will go up in flames. As a handicap, she has magic telekinetically controlled Silverware, which she uses with her left hand as unobtrusively as possible so Lilian doesn't realize how attentive Petra's being to this and then decide to change something.

    "I don't remember if you heard about this, actually, but I kind of hijacked Regulus's idea a bit. When she gets that radio station set up, I'm gonna funnel Elites into it for *interviews*, you know, like UTTU does. Really, and I actually do think this, it, um, can only really be good for the Watch's image to do something like that, but also, put people into a room and tell them to talk about themselves and they *will*. And then we've got that info forever, like a button to press to make people talk."

"We don't have to talk about things like it's water cooler chat!"

    "Right! Yeah! Exactly!" Oh god, Lilian wiggling like that almost made Petra pass out. Her heart is beating so loudly that she's certain that Lilian can hear it (especially at this distance!!! Which is, relevantly, little!) and breathing too deeply feels like it would dispel whatever oxygen deprived haze created this situation. Even having been the one to make explicit how much of a *date* this is, the intensity of Petra's own feelings takes her by surprise.

    "It's all just so *cool*! Even the rest of the staff, you know, for the Concord and Paladins, who actually are in offices and at water coolers and everything-- they talk about *us*! The fact that we *exist* is exciting! We have *fans*! We can *perform*, and have fun with it!"

    The urge to put her arm around Lilian's shoulders so urgently grips her that the visualization for the action flashes in her mind's eye like it must for White Dwarf. Will Petra die if she does this? But everything's so nice right now! She can't die! She likes living!
Petra Soroka "Actually, I have a whole thing about that."

    "Mhm, mhm, I totally do get it. It's like, um, still life painting with people."

    She has to go for it. She can barely talk in this state otherwise. Petra's arm, where it was comfortably pinned between them, flickers and relocates without disrupting Lilian by moving. In the same moment, it settles across her back, Petra's hand on Lilian's opposite shoulder, weight implying pulling her close without actually daring to commit to that. Petra's breath hitches between sentences, cheeks pink, and her embarrassment causes her to ramble.

    "L-like, you know, how still life as an artistic movement represented the broader scope of a person's life, and also the cultural era of the society, by a handful of belongings in space. In Italian they called it, um, 'natura morta', I'm pretty sure, as a comparison to the kind of grandiose motion that was always in those big religious paintings, because-- rather than being symbols in a, like, celestial arc, the objects were narratives in stasis and in of themselves. Like the way people stand and smile and speak, and every detail on their whole body and all of their clothes, and-- yeah. I get it."

"Yes! I love themmm!"

    "Yes! Yeah!"

    Having worked that out of her system, Petra becomes much more normal once the check is taken and they can bounce from the restaurant. She can be clingy later, but right now, there's much more stuff to do and places to see! Swinging by the horses out back, Petra gives Mary Jane another sugar cube and a little kiss on the mane, and says bye to Nova too, who she very quietly thanks for 'helping make sure it worked out alright'.

    Then it's off into the woods! It really is that simple, just veering confidently straight off the path down the hill from the cafe, as Petra prances ahead to lead the way. The woods here, heading down altitude, are damp and mossy, tall trees sticking straight up, with a thick carpet of short and soft undergrowth at nearly every step. By now, the sunlight's barely a blue glow in the sky, and so Petra has flashlights to scamper safely.

    Soon enough, other lights start blinking to life all around both of them. Dozens of fireflies are lit up at any given second, drifting in loops in the air from down by their feet to up near the canopy, and the sound of owls, insects, digging and flying things, is a constant backdrop.

    Petra spins around excitedly, attention glued to Lilian to drink in every motion and word she makes, on this vanishingly rare occasion that they're all for *her*. "Oh! Oh! So we'll be at the camping place I found soon, but! Maybe it'd be fun to draw a bit once we're there, right, right? Or something like that?"

    Along the way, Petra gathers up broken off branches and twigs that are dry enough to use. The forest doesn't end; rather it sinks partway into a crystal clear lake that fills from a creek that trickles down from further up the mountains, before spilling downriver into the valley below. There's a small clearing to be found, where the incline below them is steep enough to see over the tops of the trees and past the lake, where the rest of the mountain range is distantly silhouetted by the sun.

    Petra drops her bag and springs open a tent, then scuttles the wood piled up on a platter of Silver into a heap to be used for making a campfire. Once it's all set up, she pulls her classical guitar out of her saddle purse (which couldn't possibly have fit), and gets to tuning it.
Lilian Rook     Whether or not she notices the particulars of Petra's demeanour is something of a mystery-for-later, even to Lilian herself.

    Body to body, in the corner of a quiet little restaurant, far away from town, it's a foregone conclusion that she would hear the thudding of Petra's heart and feel the minute adjustments of her arm. With one look to gauge the fond attentiveness of her gaze, the idea that she could miss Petra's effusive, blushing excitement becomes unthinkable.

    And yet, with the day so full of other things to think about, with the sunset irresistibly urging to reexamine and appreciate the old, those little things, as markers that Lilian would use to read Petra's intent, fade so smoothly into the warm tapestry of the moment that Lilian doesn't change a thing. Not up until Petra places her hand on her shoulder, where she glances over at her face instead, evaluating something half-thought for a fraction of a second; and then in absence of pulling force, that, too, passes.

    'I don't remember if you heard about this, actually, but I kind of hijacked Regulus's idea a bit. When she gets that radio station set up, I'm gonna funnel Elites into it for *interviews*, you know, like UTTU does.'

    "Honestly, their columnists are so smart for that." Lilian says. "Even despite the state everything is in, the sort of, you know, 'spark of awareness' of what I've been on about, isn't entirely gone yet. Like, people fundamentally want to see for themselves, from time to time, that everything about a person isn't determined by nurture, you know? Little reminders that people really can be anything, and looks into the other kinds of lives that they can lead, are sort of like little affirmations of faith in a way."

    'The fact that we *exist* is exciting! We have *fans*! We can *perform*, and have fun with it'

    Contemplating very little, and rolling around a contented noise without words, Lilian closes her eyes and smiles at something. She carries on as a smooth continuation of both thoughts. "It's natural. You know? We should love the people who chose to be themselves. And every world knows that, so they're quick to convince people to hate them instead. 'Elites' are sort of above all that for now. They haven't been around long enough. So I think you could do it."

    When she opens her eyes again, she finds she has to look up just slightly. "It's more than just 'smart'. It's almost, I don't know, enlightened? I want there to be every reason for Elites to want to work to be loved. Not just to win, or to get their job done, or to be respected by their peers; I think our mandate is to be someone extraordinary, for the people who aren't."

    'Like the way people stand and smile and speak, and every detail on their whole body and all of their clothes, and-- yeah. I get it.'

    "I figured you would~" she says, teasing-fond. Seeing the empty plates and the fading light, Lilian senses the opportunity she has to test Petra's cardiac health by rolling her head to lazily press her cheek on her shoulder. "I used to think it made people look dead. Now I think it's . . ." A strange analogy comes to her, and yet she doesn't think twice before using it. "Like those games of Nika's where the plastic shell is tinted see-through?"
Lilian Rook     And yet, in that posture, she still has the gall to look on in open-mouthed shock as the waiter passes the cheque to Petra. She ends up hustling outside in a moment of red-faced confusion; one that mercifully sublimates on contact with their beloved duo.

    . . . . . . . .

    The path straight from the front doors and into the trees catches Lilian by surprise. It should be no surprise to Petra that she is the kind of woman to instantly become enamoured with the destination, but it's something new altogether to see her sleepy post-meal energy become so electrified within minutes of ditching the path and walking almost impulsively into the trees.

    Lilian's quiet anticipation gives way to a running commentary identifying trees and groundcover plants along the way, building a case for guessing which part of the country they're in by what she can quiz herself on habitat alone. She gasps at the first sign of fireflies, and swerves course with her running pseudo-lecture to revisit the idea of introducing crows back to her land, now including fireflies, owls, and nearly every other creature she can hear before long.

    Something about being handed a flashlight is so endearingly exotic that she chooses not to use magic, twirling it around as an excitement-management tool as often as using it to see. When Petra mentions drawing, all she has to do is pat the side of her bag and say "Well if you're saying you don't mind~"

    When they get there, though, Lilian's tune changes at one wide-eyed stare across the treetops and over to the mountains. "You just found this place?" she says, sounding less incredulous than she tried, with so much of her breath withheld in bubbly-soft astonishment. "Is this the sort of thing that you save up all your luck for? Because it'd certainly explain a lot." The sound of giddy approval is inescapable.

    For a minute, though, she ends up only puttering in circles about the chosen 'campsite', looking around as if something she's obviously supposed to do will simply pop out of the brush at her. Doing the campfire for Petra is obviously against the whole idea, and she didn't bring anything else to set up, so . . .

    But the hem of the day slipping beneath the surface of night settles her in before any longer. As Petra begins to tune her guitar, Lilian puts her bag to her back, braces her shoulders against a mossy log, and pulls up her knees to brace her sketchbook against her thighs. When Petra is done, Lilian's fond-expectant stare has been resting on her for long enough that her drawing hand has fallen to thoughtful tapping.
Petra Soroka     Not only does Petra live, but she's even *encouraged* to, wordlessly. Arm across Lilian's shoulders, she's able to feel for herself the shiver that races its way up and down Petra's spine, then meditatively dispersed into the seat below them. Every breath she takes, with Lilian's weight, her smell, the night-cool breeze of her presence, sends her head over heels in vertigo, and she must be so so deliberate about remaining gentle and slow despite that.

"I think our mandate is to be someone extraordinary, for the people who aren't."

    "Right. Right? I've thought about that a lot, the, um, iconography of yourself, living." Petra's fingers move rhythmically against Lilian's shoulder, focused on the topic and absentmindedly indulging in physicality, rather than being a greasonous pervert. Lilian can tell, because Petra looks less like she's about to explode rather than more.

    "Like... it's sort of the same as what we were talking about before, a bit, isn't it? Not totally, but... because you're right, we are kind of above it all. And some of being a symbol, I think, means... like, choosing who it is you're working to be loved by. I mean, I'm doing that all that time."

    Petra's hand twists palm-upwards as if to gesture at the framing of its own position relative to Lilian as an example. This calls Petra's attention back in full force to not just having her hand on Lilian, but *moving* it so casually, and then it scrunches up a bit in self-consciousness.

    "Y-you know. There's people who want to see a reason to love magic, and heroism, and knights, and then, in terms of being extraordinary, you saw the whole wall at your wedding." Petra freezes for a couple seconds after that, wondering whether any of the staff wandered by to hear her mentioning the wedding of the woman she is here chatting up on a date. "It's an affirmation of faith. Yeah."

    Easing off of the messier topics, Petra leans back against the bench and waves her other hand. "And, um, for the interviews! Like, I can't really imagine, like, Odette being an inspiration to anyone, but put Calvin or someone in the right circumstances? And who knows, maybe there really is some loser dead-end retail worker out there who'd put on the radio, and if Odette tried harder and worked on herself and talking about where she came from and stuff, maybe that'd get to them."

    "There's really only so many of us. It's like, uh, sports guys! People love those fucking guys! Ever think about how many little girls might have seen a video of you and then started wanting to play knight?" Petra twirls her fork around in a gesture that's meant to somehow communicate something a long time in the past. "I still remember those, um, kids at the orphanage that were all so excited to draw pictures of you."
Petra Soroka "Like those games of Nika's where the plastic shell is tinted see-through?"

    Petra has thoughts about this, in the ways that nearly every Bloom's perspective of the world can shift from 'death' to 'games'-- or at least, she would usually have thoughts and eagerly voice them. Instead, Lilian's technique scores a direct hit on the heart rate monitor in Petra's HUD. She has to look *down* at Lilian's eyes, looking up at her, in this posture. Awkwardly, Petra closes the gap between her knees tight while blushing.

    Distracted by the sensation of one inch of soft skin against her shoulder, Petra confidently mixes up her thought and speech bubbles. Instead of saying any of that thematically dense analysis, she blurts out, "You're *unbelievably* pretty."

    Her scheme with the check was concocted the moment she spotted the waitress coming around the corner holding it. Petra was always going to be paying-- as if money is any object at all-- but she was quietly hoping that it'd be handed to her implicitly and gets a little thrill when it is. The reasons for that are surely myriad and difficult to contemplate in the moment, but the simplest is that the promise made by the coupon was that Petra would *take care of* Lilian on a date. The other is a flash of self-satisfaction when Lilian gets flustered by an act that feels like solidifying the inarguable nature of today as a 'date'.

. . .

    Petra hasn't actually walked this path before, so the eagerness with which she swerves off to tromp into the unmarked forest is mostly unfounded. She's enamoured by every detail, leaping around to gently capture as many fireflies in her palm to show off to Lilian before they fly away, and hanging onto every word of her explanations. The circle of her flashlight veers around wildly to spotlight anything that catches her interest, rocks or trees or decaying stumps and the tiny sea of bugs inhabiting them.

"You just found this place?"

    Petra's instant spike of pride causes her to bounce to her feet and abandon the campfire that she's diligently constructing half-done. "Yeah! Well," Her hand swings out to point down the direction of the valley, off in the distance. "There's, like, a warpgate thirty minutes that way? So seeing this kinda place while flying around looking for a place to sleep actually happens all the time!"

"Is this the sort of thing that you save up all your luck for?"

    "Well--" Petra pivots smoothly, plopping down to sit again by the firepit and holding split logs out to either side. "*This* sure is."
Petra Soroka     Once the fire's lit, it's dark enough that the firelight is the only way to see around the ground. The stars reflect off of the lake, and much further below, the slow-moving surface of the river it drains into, floating points in the half-moon night. Petra sits as close as she can to Lilian without bumping elbows, tucked up in the warmth of the campfire with her guitar in her lap.

    Once she notices that Lilian's watching in anticipation, Petra's chin ducks a bit in embarrassment, but she keeps focusing on the guitar. Done with tuning now, she slowly ramps up to showing off without a word, jumping into arpeggios that steadily speed up and change interval, warm and mellow on the nylon strings, and then transitioning into strumming chords for an intro so seamlessly that it takes a few repeated measures to notice.

    The melody is cheery and uplifting, but high enough on the frets that the low register still sounds mature. She changes the key twenty seconds in, and a bit of Silver coils around the third fret to form a capo, and then humming turns into soft singing while her foot waggles back and forth to the beat.

o/` "Kiss me, out of the bearded barley / Nightly, beside the green, green grass / Swing, swing, swing the spinning step / You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress oh-h," o/`
o/` "Kiss me, beneath the milky twilight / Lead me, out on the moonlit floor / Lift your open hand, strike up the band / and make the fireflies dance, silver moon's sparkling . . . / So kiss me..." o/`

    Her fingernails keep drumming out the percussive accompaniment on the body of the guitar and she keeps strumming, as her lyrics trail off into humming, and then that goes quiet too. The sweetly romantic chords continue in the background, as she lifts up her face partway to look at Lilian out of the corner of her eyes.

    "Um, any requests?"
Lilian Rook     'I think, means... like, choosing who it is you're working to be loved by. I mean, I'm doing that all that time.'

    It isn't quite 'for the second time since escaping the Storm', but it might perhaps just be close enough, when Lilian says, body against Petra's arm, "Well. You're succeeding." and smiles about it.

    'you saw the whole wall at your wedding.'

    Lilian doesn't think about what that must sound like for a second. Ordinarily, she'd be the first one to look around, and quicker to tell Petra to shut up and choose her words better; and not even out of frustration. Vigilance against the world around her, or at least sensitivity to its vicisssitudes, has been her way since long before 'Petra Soroka' was a name anywhere in her life.

    It's just that she can't imagine the world intruding even a little on a day like this one. Everything about it is cast in such different lighting, and so far away from everything else, that it's impossible to see 'the usual' under the softly glowing 'new'.

    "I'm proud of it, you know. Not just 'getting married', but the thing that the wedding itself proves." she says. "'Being an Elite' shouldn't be a burden you take on at the cost of having your place on God's green Earth. It should be an extra responsibility to carry a community with you. If you don't keep hold of the bonds you make along the way, if you don't try hard to stay connected to the places you've been, then the extraordinary opportunity to have 'a village' like no one else is just gone."

    "It's not even out of a sense that everyone is doing everything wrong. I just want the others to not have to be ghosts in their own lives. It's a little bit sad. I want to go to other people's weddings too."

    'put Calvin or someone in the right circumstances? And who knows, maybe there really is some loser dead-end retail worker out there who'd put on the radio, and if Odette tried harder and worked on herself and talking about where she came from and stuff, maybe that'd get to them.'

    It's hard to place Lilian's smile. Faraway, thinking about something old. "It'd be nice if there were more of us. In their proper roles, mind you, not trying to do the same things as you and I. It's less work for everyone, and less of being alone. If it inspires people to get into even the small roles, there isn't so much of an air of 'if I don't do it, who will?'. And that'd be really nice. So. I'm completely behind you."

    'I still remember those, um, kids at the orphanage that were all so excited to draw pictures of you.'

    Some irrepressible upwelling of emotion causes Lilian to rapidly readjust her weight in her seat, in a way suspiciously reminiscent of 'getting the wiggles out'. "That was so nice. You're so sweet for going there. And you're so good with kids. Being mean to you about that should be a federal crime."

    'You're *unbelievably* pretty.'

    Lilian blinks back at Petra, slightly stunned, in a way that just wide-eyed emphasizes a curious and innocent expression as a side effect. "Honestly, you're really not bad yourself." she says, almost studying. "You've really come a long way. I can't blame the girls for being all over you now." She will never know.
Lilian Rook     . . . . . . . .

    'There's, like, a warpgate thirty minutes that way? So seeing this kinda place while flying around looking for a place to sleep actually happens all the time!'

    Lilian . . . eventually accepts this explanation. Petra can see the exact moment that she decides she's satisfied with it. No Bloom is any good at concealing anything about their thoughts, if you know what to look for. Not without preventative steps. And right now, her thoughts are something she wants to share all day. "I finally understand that insistence of yours on sleeping in different places every day." Lilian says. She doesn't even call it strange. "I'd call it a carefree life, but, well . . ." She casts her gaze out over the lake, and lets loose the deepest, fullest breath she has. "This is a wonderful thing to save up all your luck for. No complaints~"

    There couldn't be. Not under the moon, surrounded by fireflies, watching the former gleam off the crystal pristine water and the latter wink like glittering stars. Not in the perfect air of a perfect night in a perfect place, inside the glow of a campfire meant for her. There's nothing to do but dissolve into the moment. Like this, even the moss feels like a pillow. The crackling warmth like a blanket. The thought of hot drinks strikes her, and fondly rests to the side of her tranquil thoughts.

    Lilian's pencil moves over the paper as Petra works through her chords, graphite blooming in steps of growth from the center of the page, like the rings of a tree, out from her blushing face and down the strings to the earth beneath her and the green behind, flowing towards the slice of sky in the leftmost third. A kneaded eraser dots out fireflies in the places they must have been, distinct from the swirling streak of the odd spark from the fire, bleaching the bottom quarter, and rendering the silver white on its edges.

    All of it stops when Petra begins to play, because to keep going would interrupt her. And Lilian would love nothing more than to listen for a while, without a care for anything else, until the warm thrumming of the guitar fades itself out.

    'Um, any requests?'

    "Yours first." Lilian says, and in the same moment, plants her lips on Petra's cheek.
Petra Soroka "If you don't keep hold of the bonds you make along the way, if you don't try hard to stay connected to the places you've been, then the extraordinary opportunity to have 'a village' like no one else is just gone."

    "I think about it, sometimes, how, like, there's literally not a single other person who's been to all the places I have. Like, you know, there's connections between worlds that no one can conceptualize but me, and that's kind of lonely sometimes, but it's also..."

    Petra wiggles her hand in front of her to mime out three points, as if triangulating the metaphorical locations of Earth, space, and now. "They're all representative of people in of themselves. So each moment is a location, and each location is a person, and as long as there's another person, it's real and it matters. There's a web connecting people from insanely different situations, thousands of worlds apart, entirely because of me."

    "You looked so happy at the wedding. And you should, since you've worked harder than anyone." Petra wriggles deeper into the physical contact, leaning her head on top of Lilian's. Then she suddenly snorts, turning her head away and covering her mouth. "Oh my god, TTon would have a heart attack if she knew she was a *recurring* topic of conversation."

    "Besides," Petra's mood after recovering from that giggling fit takes a brief dip, pensively lowering her voice. "It's not like we're soldiers. We've gotta make a life out of this. And, like, even soldiers do that anyways."

    After one sentence, she recovers to be goofy again. "Actually, if I *was* a soldier, I'd be, like, the oldest unmarried soldier ever. Maybe the key to getting more Elite weddings is having the Paladins offer salary and housing benefits if you are?"

"And you're so good with kids."

    "Gotta be. I'm planning for the future now, right?" This is so blatantly misinterpretable that the reaction of the imaginary waitress in Petra's head that's crouching behind the wall to listen in on their conversation makes Petra silently shake with laughter for a second.

"Honestly, you're really not bad yourself."

    "Well-- eheh, it's only right for a master artisan to take a moment to admire her own work."

    Flustered smiles compel Petra to close her eyes, but the transcendental ephemerality of the moment insists that she keep them open. Both urges fall secondary to trying not to shift her seating too much, as the overwhelming cuteness of the expression on Lilian's face causes another blow to Petra's psyche. Studying her, as she simultaneously squeezes Lilian's shoulders and averts her eyes, is the image of a girl just confident enough that her fear of her own irrepressible overeagerness can be barreled through by more eagerness. Somehow, this has become a girl who would hold up promposal signs and stick her head through the door every thirty minutes to ask if you need any chocolates or a heating pad while you're on your period.
Petra Soroka . . .

"This is a wonderful thing to save up all your luck for. No complaints~"

    What Petra meant by saving her luck for 'this' was, rather than the location, the person she's enjoying it with. It's likely that Lilian's still misinterpreted it, but... even the other meaning still holds up perfectly well. It's easy to believe, for once, that Lilian doesn't have any complaints about being here with Petra and Petra solely and specifically, and that the entire edifice of their relationship is something that she treasures without-- too much-- qualification.

    Petra's head droops to one side, humming happily as she sways in the night breeze. "Well, I've got too many things I care about to be carefree. One way or another, the big ones all come back to you."

"Yours first."

    Petra breaks out into breathy giggles, needily turning her face towards Lilian after the kiss. Balancing the guitar between her lap and her knee, she runs her fingers along the neck to strum the taut strings as an automatic backing sound to the two of them. With an amount of smugness that, through her pink face, can only be at least partly a joke, she says, "Ehehehe-- so, that works. Good to know."

    To seriously consider music, though, Petra scoots a little closer to Lilian, elbow to elbow, and picks at chords as part of her externalized thought process. Eventually she settles, and the Silver wrapped around the neck dissolves back into metal that puddles on the grass. Unlike the first song, this one is less of a technical demonstration, simple and sweet and perfect for the campfire when transposed to guitar.

    Over the wistful strumming of the long intro, Petra can comfortably chatter without losing focus to the instrument. "This is, um... one of my favorite songs, though there's a lot to choose from there. It's probably not all that hard to guess why, but... it's sort of embarrassingly literal, really. But that's just sort of how I was was I was younger. ... This isn't really a 'talk about it' sort of thing, but it's been on my mind since you said that before, that I need to be more open to you too, and I haven't always been."

    "But, yeah. I was kind of a sappy loser in high school, which was when I fell in love with this song. Anyways, um, this song always makes me think of you."

o/` "Now that she's back in the atmosphere / with drops of Jupiter in her hair / She acts like summer and walks like rain / Reminds me that there's time to change, hey-ey-ey-y, mmm-mmm..." o/`

o/` "Since the return of her stay on the Moon / She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey-ey-ey-ey-eh, yeah" o/`

o/` "But tell me, did you sail across the Sun?/ Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded / And that Heaven is overrated? / Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star? / One without a permanent scar? / And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?" o/`

o/` "Now, that she's back from that soul vacation / Tracin' her way through the constellation, hey-y, mmmmhmmm... / She checks out Mozart while she does Tae-Bo / Reminds me that there's room to grow, hey-ey-ey-ey-eh, yeah" o/`

o/` "Now, that she's back in the atmosphere / I'm afraid that she might think of me as / Plain ol' Jane told a story about a man / Who was too afraid to fly, so he never did land . . ." o/`
Penumbra     'Ehehehe-- so, that works. Good to know.'

    "Careful. Don't push it too far, or I'll start calling you names again~" Perhaps the warning is real, but Lilian nearly laughs about it all the same. 'Fuckboy' is too vulgar a word for the moment; Petra's blushing is far too precious for it. She's doing it a little bit herself, too. The gesture was impulsive and a little bit saccharine. But it's fine. Because the night is young and full of promise.

    'This is, um... one of my favorite songs, though there's a lot to choose from there. It's probably not all that hard to guess why, but... it's sort of embarrassingly literal, really.'

    Lilian allows Petra to scoot closer with poise and serenity, but she perks up a little bit. "I've heard of your likes, but now I realize, seldom your favourites." she says. "So what if it's literal? I'd love a few things to be more plain, you know." Her posture remains the same, but she 'leans in', in a sense, intrigued by the bold claim that a song could constitute 'openness'.

    'Anyways, um, this song always makes me think of you.'

    "Oh my god." Lilian giggles, only nearly under her breath. "How often do you get to say that corny line?" she says, with a big, stupidly flattered smile anyways.

    This time, she closes her eyes to listen. The page sits three-quarters full in her lap, warmly awaiting the moment to soak deeper into her, down to the core, to grasp the fleeting essence of this warmth that gently compels her to finish it in just the right way.

    And she smiles, and laughs, just a little, midway through, because it really is stupidly literal, and it really is stupidly, stupidly sweet.

    Before long, she finds herself gently rocking from side to side with the chorus. Petra hasn't quite finished when she speaks, so she keeps her voice low; a private murmur just between the two of them. "Is it crazy to say that you remind me that there's room as well, from time to time? You've done such a magnificent job of growing, after all. There are all sorts of things you do that I'd never think of on my own. So . . ."

    "Let's keep doing it. Together. I never want to stop."