Despite the lack of official business to address, Alice and Zaria continued to meet nightly in the “dream room”—as Alice had dubbed it. Alice had stopped trying to have their meeting spot perfectly recreate Zaria’s room, and instead, redecorated the room to their liking. Zaria’s side remained mostly the same, though Zaria asked for a bigger bookshelf and desk. The other side no longer was cluttered with Brandi’s clothes or alchemy projects. However, Alice was still deciding how she wanted to decorate her side of the room, so it looked different every night, sometimes just being completely empty.
It didn’t really matter what Alice’s side of the room contained, though, since most nights Zaria just wanted to lie in her bed.
“I don’t get it. It was so easy to talk to Gemma and Starlight.” Zaria buried her head under her pillow. “Why is it so hard to talk to my own father?”
Alice sat at the edge of Zaria’s bed. “It didn’t look easy, and I don’t think most people would find this to be an easy topic.”
“But it’s my father!” Zaria pulled the pillow off her face and clutched it. “It should’ve been easier.”
“Things are what they are, and that’s all they ‘should’ be. It’s nicer when they’re better, but it’s okay if they’re not what you think they ‘should’ be.”
Zaria pulled the pillow back over her face and mumbled something unintelligible into it.
Plunging herself into her studies, Zaria was able to get her brain focused on something other than coming out to her family, her guild, her friends, the public, everyone, anyone… Okay, maybe she still thought about it. A lot. And yet it still couldn’t make any sense of it.
At least work made sense. That was where she knew what to do and how to do it well. She wished this was the only thing she had to worry about.
The only other thing she did with her days was visit Gemma or Starlight’s room. Whenever Zaria needed a break from studying psychic magic, it was a convenient way to get out of her room without really travelling that far.
The two were also fun conversationalists, but lately, Zaria hadn’t felt like talking. Outside of humoring her friends’ attempts at bringing her into their conversations, she just sat quietly. Usually, she took one of the seats by the window, where she could watch the city streets or simply gaze at the sky.
Today was a stare at the clouds kind of day. At some point, she heard someone say: “Psst, Zaria.”
“Hmm?” Zaria turned to see Gemma. Apparently, she had been standing there for a while.
“You okay?” Gemma asked.
“Yeah, I was just—” Zaria looked back toward the window. “—zoning out, I guess.” It felt like she threw out this answer often. Maybe because it made enough sense when she couldn’t really remember what she had been doing mere moments ago.
In the dream room, a canopy draped over a circular bed large enough to fit five people dominated the space. The room had clearly been expanded to be able to compensate. An abundance of pillows and blankets were piled up nearby.
Zaria grabbed the first blanket and pillow she could before collapsing on the bed, still as a corpse. Alice knelt down next to her, reached for Zaria’s hand, and gave it an affectionate squeeze. Zaria squeezed back.
They remained like this for a while. Judging time was difficult for Zaria lately. Everything felt like an eternity—and worse, an eternity doing absolutely nothing.
Finally, the silence was broken.
“Have you been eating well?” Alice asked.
“Yeah, the cooks know how to feed adventurers. I usually eat in my room.” If at all, she added. She hoped her psychic magic was finally trained enough to block out a succubus’ natural telepathy. Considering how her studies seemed to have significantly slowed lately, she doubted it. Alice would never tell her.
“That’s good. You might’ve felt more drained than usual as your body is working through your transformation, so just be conscious if you need to eat more than usual.”
“I haven’t really felt that hungry lately, honestly. Maybe my transformation is weaker than normal?”
“Aw, you’re doing fine, trust me.” Alice gave her hand another squeeze. “It’s going to be okay, Zaria.”
“Okay…”
Zaria knocked on Gemma’s door. She had gotten pretty good at predicting which room she could find her friends in, but today was an easier guess. Yesterday, the two planned something to do with painting—Zaria couldn’t remember exactly what since her mind was somewhere else at the time—and usually Gemma is more open to hosting messier activities.
Gemma’s voice immediately answered. “Hi, whichever friend is at the door! Our hands are full, so just see yourself in.”
So Zaria did.
The two friends were sitting at the stone table in the center of the room. Zaria once asked about the table. It was nothing fancy, simply a round slab over a base, and the cylindrical stools that went with it were equally unassuming. Yet there was obviously lots of care that went into making every piece perfectly circular and smooth. Gemma was always a jolly person, but something beamed brighter in her smile when she got to explain her great-grandfather made it. Apparently he was a huge perfectionist, something Gemma admired in him—and in Zaria.
Of course, he wouldn’t love to know his perfect creation was covered in colorful stains from his great-granddaughter and her friend’s nail polish collection.
Gemma hastily finished coating her nail so she could look who came in. “Ah, good to see you, Za—” She glanced to make sure her door was closed. “—ria. Sorry, sister. I promise I’m still working on not getting too excited and outing you.”
Zaria shrugged then moved to sit with them.
“Good afternoon, Zaria,” Starlight said. “Would you like a cushion? I took the one from that seat.” He stood up to reveal the two cushions on his stool. “I would hand it over, but I just put on another coat.”
“No thanks.” Zaria sat on the cold stone.
“Very well.” He sat back down. “Would you like to try painting your nails with us? I just bought a new set.”
“Yeah, you gotta try it! It’s all glittery and shit!” Gemma fanned out her nails. Of the half that were already painted, each was a different color. “There’s so many colors, too. I was able to close my eyes and pick a random color for each nail.”
Starlight fanned out his. “I used one of my favorite polishes, a dark blue that matches the night sky, for most of my fingers, and then I used one of the new silver ones on my thumbs to represent the stars.”
“Oh, that’s pretty neat. Um, both of you two’s nails,” Zaria said.
Gemma used her elbow to nudge the new box of nail polishes over to Zaria. “There’s a purple in there that neither of us used. It’ll match your cool wizard cape.”
“Okay…” Zaria picked up the purple bottle. “Um, how do I do it?”
Starlight opened his mouth, but Gemma was already scooting her stool closer. “Nuh uh, you can teach her to shave her legs or something. I get this one. Okay, Zaria, just lay your nails flat on the table first…”
---
“…and ta da! You did it! See, you’ve got the same steady hands as my great-grandfather. That’s a really good first coat. Right, Starlight?”
“Definitely better than Gemma’s first time,” Starlight teased.
Gemma blew a raspberry. “Enough about me. What do you think, Zaria?”
Zaria shrugged. “It looks okay.”
“Hey, ‘okay’ is a pretty okay place to start.”
Poor girl, coming out is hard
Time for the group nail polish night, So cool.
Group nail polish is unexpectedly fun and silly usually, just the thing to draw someone out of their own head
I've been wanting to write them doing their nails together since I came up with the characters. Figured Zaria needed it now.