“Was that so hard to admit?” Mona teased her, and put her hands on her hips. After a decently long time trying to appeal to her, Thalia gave into Desdemona and admitted the truth, but even then she did not seem to fully confront it.
Thalia went for Mona’s weakness, and fixed her hair with a gentle hand. She pulled her closer to kiss her forehead, and Mona gave her a mushy smile like she was too warm that she melted. It became harder to stay focused on the objective when the girl placed their foreheads together. Thalia’s eyes looked huge, and she saw all of her features in great detail, feeling the slight breath she emitted from her nose before Mona giggled at the feeling. She took her own nose and aligned it with Thalia’s, but instead of doing something like bringing their lips together, she rubbed her nose on Thalia’s. She liked to call that a butterfly kiss. It may have been a bit silly, but she liked it anyway.
“My head feels fine,” Mona continued the conversation, completely forgetting her earlier point. “I’m sorry yours doesn’t, though,” She pouted, and then pulled back, not letting go of the girl’s hands. “I should have been with you.”
She sounded guilty. It was her job to look out for Thalia after all.
“It is a ballroom after all,”
Mona feigned a frown, and continued talking about her experiences.
She wondered if Thalia knew any of the people she had mentioned before. For the time being, Desdemona had yet to dislike any of the people that she met. They had not given her reason to, and she did not think they would, but that was also just her way of being. If Desdemona could befriend farm animals and reptiles, it seemed highly unlikely that she struggle with mere mortals.
Perhaps she would dislike those that Thalia disliked, though. Her best friend was surely capable of making mistakes, but Desdemona doubted she could ever perceive the girl as being an issue for anyone else. Even if she was, she wouldn’t hold it against her.
"She fainted?’
Thalia interrupted her monologue, and Desdemona nodded, continuing the minute gossip. “Yeah, pretty much everyone turned when they saw. Did you not?” Mona asked, trying to explain to herself how Thalia could have not noticed her heroic action. It was possible that Thalia had not been present for the event, but where else could she have gone? Surely not to someone else’s room, or at least not in that kissing, taking-off-clothes context she had only heard about in stories.
Sometimes it was hard for Desdemona to wrap her head around the way those things happened in real life; the scandal, the parties, the sex. Twenty two years of life, and she had never once observed the events unfolding. She had always lived in her own idyllic world, with grass and sheep ba-ing in the fields outside. It was quaint, and simple, but sometimes she had wondered if she was meant for more.
At wyndham, it felt like all of it was a snowflake on her nose, and she craved to stick out her tongue, seeing if she could playfully reach it.
But it was only a thought. In real time, she was still very far from it. At least now, she put the thought back away where it had come from. It was then she realized she was spacing out as Thalia started responding to the rest of her story, her chin nodding aimlessly before she blinked back into reality.
“You think so?” She asked innocently. “I wouldn’t know, I’m not sure how a lot of the people here live their lives,” she brushed her hair behind her ear sheepishly. “But I mean, I don’t know, they were dancing together after all.”
Reflecting out loud, Desdemona became lost in her wonder of what may have been the truth. Already, it was becoming hard to set herself apart from the storming herd of people in this new setting. It was the first thing her parents had warned her about; “people will try to stir you away from what matters,” they had said. “Don’t lose sight of it.”
In accordance to their advice, Desdemona chose to forget Atlas. He must have been joking.
Listening to her worries, Thalia was quick to comfort her. Even if she didn’t fully need it, Thalia still seemed to smooth pavement over those dents in her self-esteem, especially the ones she did not even detect.
Desdemona decided to focus on the second half of Thalia’s response, because it was the part that still plagued her mind.
“I didn’t want to use my magic!!” She exclaimed, knowing that she could release her little angers with Thalia listening to soothe her. “But I couldn’t not use my magic… That girl needed help!”
“That wasn’t the issue, though…” She paused.
“The main issue was the side effect it gave me for a bit,” Mona flashed a guilt-ridden smile, and she scratched her arm at her side. It wasn’t the first time she had gotten one of those visions, so she might just have had to deal with it, and ignore the pain. Perhaps she was stupid for bringing it up at all.
“It was nothing, really.” She lied, her voice smooth like honey.
In Desdemona’s dormitory, Thalia and her fed Kiki together after getting her snacks. Their kitchen interaction had been as bittersweet as all the rest, but Desdemona could not help but think of Thalia’s discomfort seeing her beets, what a disturbing way it was to percieve a vegetable.
On the bright side, she had Thalia’s jokes to ground her still in the present, causing her to snicker.
She just unfortunately had to ruin the fun by asking about her wellbeing, which caused Mona to be a bit embarassed. She did not intend for her distress to be noticeable by Thalia.
“Oh, nothing,” she smiled unconvincingly. “I was just nervous about my first day at school!”
Mentioned:
@idiot.exe Atlas
@Mouschi Esther
