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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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..."

"Well, for what it's worth," Vette offered, "I know you can hold your own. I didn't call you to the shelter partly because we had it handled, and partly because I figured you were having fun running around town beating up snowmen. We were snowed in, backed up againt a generator all week."

"That does make me feel a little better," Nina admitted, swaying to nudge Vette with her shoulder. "I just..."

Another shrug.

"I was being stupid."

"I'm gonna let you get away with that just this one time," Vette informed her, "but next time I'm gonna have to take drastic measures. I'll dye all your dresses black, just watch me."

Vicious. Cruel, that Vette.

"Talk to me next time, okay? And if you need to still be alone for a while now, I get it. I really do. But if you're feeling up to it tomorrow, I want to go find those rude guys outside of the town, the ones that kinda look like a Gamorrean had way too much fun with a gundark..." Like those words made any sense to anyone but her. "And then if they come after us I want to make them sorry they thought we were easy pickings."

Edited 2018-12-27 02:51 (UTC)

"Rude!!!!!"

The threat, not everything else.

"And, like, I think... I think that sounds okay, for tomorrow, but that also maybe I should... do you think I should find Prompto and talk to him??????"

Vette nodded a little, smiling faintly her way.

"I think he's probably confused," she offered. "And worried. And he has no way of knowing any of this stuff, either. He's your friend, too. He'd probably kick himself if he knew he'd hurt you. But if you don't tell him, he's never going to know."

"I don't want him to kick himself," Nina sighed, "but I'll talk to him, I guess????"

"Tell him what you felt and why you felt it," Vette said softly. Encouragingly. "Tell him what you told me, about how it felt like nobody thought you could handle things. Heck, challenge him, sometime, prove you can hold your own. But things are never going to change if he never understands, you'll just avoid him until he avoids you back, and that would be an awful way to lose a friend."

"What if he laughs at me??????"

Which didn't really sound like Prompto, except when it did, because he was awkward and nervous at the best of times.

"Not out of being a jerk, but..."

"He's not that kind of buttface," Vette replied. "And if he is that kind of buttface, beat him up and he won't laugh at you again, will he?"

... Sorry. Vette's upbringing sometimes gave her a very interesting moral code.

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