Fandom Library, Wednesday, February 4th

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

Arden couldn't skip two weeks of work, even though she felt 'bitten by a gremlin' was a really good excuse for missing one, and so she was back behind the circulation desk today. With a book. And determinedly ignoring everything the gremlins did, so long as they were doing it more than five feet away from her. See if the little jerks got any attention from her for awhile.

Comments

Re: Talk to the Aide

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

"Elves aren't anything like the shoemakers, Keebler, or Santa Claus elves in popular media," Arden said darkly. "They're a predator species. Humanoid, yeah, but still predators."

She was just going to take her own sip of water here. No rea--okay many reasons.

"Dead Queen? Sounds like something Professor Vess would call herself," she said, recapping her bottle. "But...damn, Caleb, that all sounds awful." She reached out to pat his arm in sympathy. "Not even being able to eat? Shit, I had it rough, but not that rough. But...why a permanent child? Or is that more bait?" Another sip before she started a rant on this so-called Dead Queen and the kind of children who use children for bait.

"And don't worry, okay? About the whole trauma-dumping thing. It's really okay--if it weren't, I couldn't say so today, could I? I know how it is. When magic upends your whole life and ruins it. Glad you feel comfortable talking about it with me. I was here almost a year before I opened up to anybody."

Re: Talk to the Aide

[not_a_haint]

He'd always felt like he'd actually had it better than the other kids in the Cradle. For a number of reasons, not the least of which, he got mail. He still had people on the outside who cared about him. Not everyone had. Granny Amburgey had asked him and the few others with connections to keep them to themselves, and it had become, though he didn't know this concept, somewhat of a conditioned response to not talk about himself in that way.

Which was partly why he was able to hold onto all that long enough to take another drink.

"To be honest I dunno if I'd have done that if it weren't for whatever is goin' on right now, but thank you. Everyone back home had a horror story of their own and Granny discouraged us from tryin' t' one up each other." Well long enough to at least boil it down.

"You know I wonder if some o' the haints in my world are elves. Now that I think of it Granny Amburgey had a book from the old country about 'The Good Folk' but them stories didn't make 'em sound all that good."

Re: Talk to the Aide

[afraid_of_marshmallows]

You could have it better than some and it would still suck.

"There's a difference between trying to one-up one another and just getting something off your chest," Arden said. "I don't get the feeling you're trying to get me to pity you or anything like that, either. You went through something legitimately awful and traumatic, and having the chance to just air it out and let it breathe really helps some time. Like giving a wound some time in the air and light, you know? Sometimes, you wanna talk about it just to talk about it, sometimes you wanna talk about it so the other person knows you've seen some shit, too - different than theirs, sure, but still rough. There's some stuff that people with good, loving families and childhoods just can't get, some stuff you can only tell folks who've been there, you know? And none of that is playing Oppression Olympics, it's just saying, yeah, I've been hurt, it sucks."

She took another sip, this time not because she wanted to stop talking, but because she'd talked so much.

"The Good Folk are usually fae, at least in my world," she added. "Dunno about yours, of course, but in mine, elves and fae are very different. Elves'll shoot you for even suggesting otherwise."

Not that it took much to make a marshmallow shoot somebody anyway.