Fandom Post Office, December 8 (Tuesday)

[filleauloup]

The holiday decorations were up in the lobby again, complete with the fake snowdrifts piling up in the corners, and Éponine certainly hadn't put them there. The bowls of tiny candy canes were cute, though, which was more than she could say for the sweater she had on.

Oh, well. It was warm at least, and god knew she'd worn worse, and besides, she could distract herself from it by making tiny snowmen right there in the lobby, because apparently the indoor snow was especially realistic this year.

Comments

[throughaphase]

Kitty walked in with a Christmas sweater over her suit and a box in hand and looked around.

"...I just need to mail something."

[filleauloup]

"Isn't it just your luck, that's what this place is for," exclaimed Éponine, abandoning her latest tiny snowman (this one had the cap from a squirrel-sized rum bottle for a hat) and standing up.

She dusted her hands off on her skirt and took a long look at Kitty. "Well! That's quite the getup you've got there, only I think your sweater's a bit nicer than mine."

She wasn't particularly thrilled by the tiny jingle bells that all the embroidered dogs had on their collars; it made more noise than she liked just walking around.

[throughaphase]

"I would trade you in a second," Kitty said. Though that would also mean she couldn't touch anything, sooo.

[filleauloup]

Éponine frowned slightly. "That might be difficult, I take it? I thought I heard a few things on the radio. I ought to scold you, but . . . well, you've got a parcel that needs to go out, so let's just say I did." She was speaking just a little too briskly, the way she did when she was trying not to act like she'd been worried.

[throughaphase]

"You definitely don't have to scold me," Kitty told her. "I promise I have only done awesome things."

[filleauloup]

Éponine didn't say anything for a few seconds, and just hummed softly to herself before nodding. "That, I'd believe of you, yes!" she declared. "But it's good to see you, all the same."

[throughaphase]

Kitty paused, and said, "If you were worried, you could have called. Or texted, since I don't know what to talk into anymore. Or asked Clint."

[filleauloup]

Éponine at least looked slightly guilty at that, if also a bit surprised, as if that hadn't occurred to her. "S'pose I didn't want to know for sure," she admitted finally, looking down at the counter. "It's easier, you know, not having friends, I'm almost certain of it. What's it matter if there's bad news? It's the same to me, it all is, that's just how things always go, what do I care? Then people like you've got to come along and complicate things. It makes things difficult, d'you see?"

That was . . . probably not terribly coherent, but like she knew anything about functional interpersonal communication.

[throughaphase]

"It's kinda hard to feel special when a whopping one of my friends ever even asked if I was okay," Kitty admitted. "Which I am. I swear I didn't cone here to get into this."

[filleauloup]

"And I'm glad, I am," Éponine said, still looking down. "Though I'll still thank you to be more careful in future, seeing as I can't stop you from doing what you hero sorts do. Don't s'pose I would, either."

[throughaphase]

"Yeah, no way to really stop me there. Especially when I'm maybe permanently stuck in uniform. I mean, what else am I gonna do in it?" Kitty joked.

[filleauloup]

"The sweater only covers so much," agreed Éponine. "Bit hard to hide that thing on your head, at that."

[throughaphase]

"Hey, I am basically an astronaut in this thing." Which was both funny and infuriating considering what she'd been doing lately.

[filleauloup]

"Only you aren't hopping from place to place, sticking flags in things, like those videos I saw from the moon. That's got to do with gravity, I know --" and she sounded proud of having learned that -- "so it'd only tire you out here. I think it would, at least. Have you tried it?"

[throughaphase]

"Bouncing around? Yeah. Not on the moon," she said, "but when I was a kid it was easy to convince people to turn the gravity off for a second."

[filleauloup]

Éponine might not have a good grasp on science, but she'd gathered enough to guess that gravity wasn't something one could typically expect to turn off.

"You must know some important people then," she said, shaking her head.

Because she also knew better than to apply her world's logic to Fandom -- or Fandom-adjacent worlds -- any more.

[throughaphase]

"Some," she admitted. "I know people with spaceships, mostly. My life's super weird."

[filleauloup]

"And here you are, in Fandom, making it even stranger." Éponine shook her head. "I'd say that makes you a bit mad, but d'you know, I think we like you that way."

[throughaphase]

"Only a little bit mad? That's disappointing," she said.

[filleauloup]

"Oh, you were quite a bit mad before that," Éponine amended quickly. "This is only added on top of that."