Day 08 - Role Models

"First of all, why on Alrest would anyone want to be like me? Second of all, why on Alrest would you want to be like me?"

"Why on Alrest?" Nia repeated, momentarily coy.

Cole groaned. "Why on earth..."

"But anyway." By rights, she should have been a lot more nervous than she currently was, eh? Lot more fretty about it, and sort of pathetic. But she wasn't. Good, yeah? "You're like...perfect."

"Nia, I'm a mess."

"You're a perfect mess," Nia said, and meant it. Of course she'd wished a hundred thousand million times to have been born in a different body, the other body, the right body, but she'd also grinned a hundred thousand million and one (didn't need the extra one, did she? but it just went to show) each time she passed just a little better than she did the day before, and got complimented, and when she wore her sundress even fussed over, just a little bit, and...

Well, really, what she wanted more than anything was to grow old the way Cole had, maybe with her insides going haywire, sure, as the Flesh Eater binding fell apart, but never running out of love for her friends, and her family, and her self.

She wanted to tell stories. She wanted to raise kids. She wanted to help people, even if they didn't know it - maybe especially if they didn't know it!

More than more than anything, she wanted to be to some kid in the far-off future what Cole had been to her.

A perfect, lovely mess. A podge of wrinkles and old scars, and maybe even some parts she'd sort of...fashioned in herself.

A story long or short or completely, blessedly irrelevant as her hair, and all the little peds of meaning in between.