in_sidon_we_trust | Tabantha Frontier, Hyrule. [12/26].

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Tabantha Frontier, Hyrule. [12/26].

Early the next morning, after breakfast and arranging horses to make the trip far easier and swifter, the group set off across the Hyrule Field, to the northwest, toward the sweeping plains and steep mountains of the Tabantha Frontier, home of the Rito, Hyrule's proud and musical bird race.

It would be another long journey, but hopefully one well-worth the travel, with more than enough to captivate the visitors on the scenic and exciting path.

[[Day Three has really gone to the birds! *clears throat* OCD ~~on the way~~ is up!]]

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"This is why I didn't want to talk about it!!!!!!!!!!!" Nina complained. "You didn't do anything wrong, but I'm still mad!!!!!!!!!! He trust you more than me and then you spend all that time with him and I have to find out on the radio!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"It's not like I'm interested in him or anything," Vette shot back. "I mean, I'm dating Sidon!"

And that was apparently a crime too, if the way Tula and Tona had gone on was any indication.

"I know that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Nina wailed, tangling her hands in her hair because oh, my, gosh, this was giving her such a headache. "But it's, like, he doesn't even think of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He'll think of you!!!!!!!!!!! And it's not even--even just as friends we're, like, so far apart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And it hurt.

It was stupid and it was unreasonable and it hurt.

"Then tell him that!" Vette pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, her lekku around her shoulders. "I'm... I'm sorry your feelings were hurt, but you can't just..."

She huffed out a breath, pressing her face into her lek.

"I mean, you can, obvously. You are. But it's not fair."

"Because it's stupid!!!!!!!!!!

Nina was, in fact, self-aware enough to know that.

"All of this is stupid!!!!! It's all in my head!!!!!!!! Who, like, cares if other people are better friends with each other!!!!! Who cares if other people get it more???????????"

Except that she did care. An awful lot.

"You get things more," Vette muttered into her lek. "There's a reason you're my best friend. You get me. But I... I can't not be friends with people, either. I don't have anyone if I don't have my friends here."

She swallowed hard, and then shook her head.

"I can go. I don't know what else to do."

"Don't go," Nina said, though she didn't really know how to fix, like, any of this. "It's not you, okay????? Or even that you have friends that aren't me??????"

She blew out a breath.

"Like, I don't even know????? I'm just mad, so I didn't want to--you guys just, like, I don't know... no one really needs me??????"

"I need you," Vette yelled, still... into her lek, yes. "You're my best friend here! Prompto is an amazing friend too and Sidon is perfect but you were the first person to learn Ryl for me. You share your clothes with me you helped me learn to read I told you about my family we stole a ship together, how could you think I don't need you!?"

Nina flinched.

"How am I supposed to know????????" she said, her voice small. "Like, no one ever has."

So seeing other people make bonds and be friends and become irreplaceable to each other was something she was used too.

But this was... this was the first time she'd ever made bonds like that, and she didn't know what to do with them.

"I'm telling you," Vette protested, balling into herself a little more. "So... so now you know, okay? I don't know what else I'm supposed to do."

The answer was probably not 'cry,' but there was a hitch in her breath anyway. That was fun. That was a great time she really wished she wasn't having right then.

"This is stupid. We asked you to come along because we wanted you along. If you're going to avoid us, what are we supposed to do? If you tell me to go away, am I a better or a worse friend if I don't?! It feels... like... like there's no right answer to that, Nina. It feels like a trap."

And... and Nina was sort of resenting that Vette had come up to her, when Nina hadn't wanted to talk, and was making it all about herself, when the whole reason Nina hadn't wanted to talk was because this was all in her head and stupid.

She hadn't wanted to upset anyone; she'd just wanted to be mad for a bit.

"Don't cry," she said, more softly, in Ryl. "Vette, you didn't do anything wrong. You're my best friend too. I'm just stupid."

And giving up on her issues to make Vette feel better. Sure.

"You aren't stupid," Vette barked out, in Basic. "Stop that! You're scary smart. You learned a language in weeks. You took an entire new world and you're understanding it, better than I am, and... I mean, I'm not stupid."

She was... pretty sure.

"If you needed space you could have said something, though," she added, a little resentfully. "Don't just... just leave me wondering what I did. For days. That's cruel, Nina."

Nina shrugged a little, looking down.

"I didn't think you'd notice," she admitted, honestly, since... yeah. "Like, with this trip and all..."

"It's my first trip ever to my boyfriend's world," Vette muttered. "It's big and new and it's full of adventure and it's beautiful and of course I wanted to share that with you. I mean... duh."

"Nothing 'duh' about it to me," Nina said defensively.

At that, Vette did finally look up.

"How is that so--" She paused. And then she pulled in a breath.

And then she glowered down at her knees.

"Oh."

Of course.

"I thought... maybe... since you... you seem unstoppable," she ventured. "Like a hurricane. And I thought that meant you understood. That you knew how great you are." She blew out a breath. "Not seeing it, that's my problem. You're all confidence and plans, you're sharp, you see everything. I thought you saw this, too."

"Well, I mean..."

Vette wasn't wrong for thinking that. That was what Nina wanted people to see.

"When you're loud, like, people can't ignore you."

Vette coughed out a small laugh, because if she was laughing, she wasn't crying or yelling or breaking into a fit of pleading or any one of a million other things she didn't want to be doing right then.

"I was complaining to those girls the other day. Well. Not complaining. Kind of complaining? They wanted to know what Sidon saw in this girl he picked up and I couldn't tell them. I can't tell them. And that's a me problem. It's such a me problem. It's not a problem you're supposed to have. You're too you to have it. Of course you're great, right?" She exhaled. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Nina shook her head.

"It's not, like, it's not the same problem," Nina said, trying to think of ways to put it that made sense. "It's... you don't believe in yourself and your awesome. I, like, know my strengths and weaknesses but I've never... I don't..."

She shrugged a little.

"You guys here are my first friends," Nina admitted. "No one really wants to be besties with the school's charity orphan back home."

Vette glanced up. Looked quietly at her for a few long moments.

"You know... that's not what you are here, right? You're... you're in the same position as the rest of us, kind of. The school put us on equal ground, anyway."

Not completely equal. Some of them still couldn't get home. Couldn't hope to take their friends on trips like this, for example. But so far as their place as students went?

"We're not friends because you're an orphan or in spite of it. That doesn't matter. We're friends because you're Nina."

Nina laughed, though there wasn't anything happy about it, not really.

"I mean, I guess????? I just... never thought about it????"

"Well..." Vette swayed a little, to bump her shoulder against Nina's lightly. "Start thinking about it, okay? I'm not just your friend because we were assigned to the same room, you know."

She glanced her way, smiling wryly.

"That just makes getting into trouble with you way more convenient."

"Just, like, a little????"

Though that was amusing, it really was.

"I don't know, I just... like, he called you and not me and then finding out on radio that day, after Sabine telling me she hadn't thought I was the kind of girl who liked fighting..."

Nina shrugged again.

"It got all tangled up, I guess, and... read this, okay?" She dug out her phone and fiddled with it, before offering Vette the same. "It's from him, like, after my radio. And I think he was trying to make me feel better, but it just made me feel worse?????"

Vette took her phone, and squinted her way through the words, silently sounding them out as she went. And then she glanced back toward Nina and sighed.

"Funny thing about Prompto," she ventured, "is that he's just as bad at this stuff as we are, I think."

Didn't think. Knew.

"I think there are going to be a lot of people who are surprised at what you can do," she continued, "because you're you, and what 'you' are includes ruffles and ringlets and enthusiasm and way too many people confuse that sort of thing for being gentle, or easily intimidated. I mean... I'm small," she wasn't even going to pretend otherwise. "I get it all the time, back home. I use it to my advantage, but sometimes it's there whether I want it to be or not."

She held Nina's phone back out to her.

"I don't mind when it's me, though. The best part of being underestimated is the look on people's faces when they realize I'm not at all what they figured."

Nina took her phone back.

"I didn't mind, I don't mind, not really, not usually," she admitted. "But when it comes to you and to him, I do. And... and I'm not used to that..."

Tabantha Frontier, Hyrule. [12/26].

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