Inbox (1)

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For Minoth.

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"Oh, my god. What the hell is this?"

"Everything alright there, Mythra?"

She shakes her head from side to side, negation, but soon enough her chin starts to oscillate along the y-axis as well.

"I hope you're laughing?" And not crying? But soon enough after the soon enough, it's both. Minoth raises a tired eyebrow, glances at the clamshell hinges on both their laptops to gauge how much ground he can gain while remaining seated, then relents, stands up, and walks around to peer over her shoulder.

"...you don't of?"

"Apparently not," Mythra gets out between ungraceful cackling snorts, wiping messy tears from her cheeks with the fingertips of both hands.

Still confused, Minoth repeats the contents of the text box displayed in Mythra's currently-focused browser tab under his breath. "This shit some garbage...you don't of...bitch write better you--"

Up goes the eyebrow, again. "They think you're a '30-year-old Tumblr woman'?" He indulges in scare quotes, for good measure.

Mythra snorts, more composed now that the freshest shock has worn off. "I guess so. To be honest, I always wonder what gender identity people are going to think I have - do the straight people assume I'm a man, because that's like how they automatically see success reflected, or something? Do I seem feminine, because I type in lowercase?" She shrugs. "I dunno. I don't keep much info in my profile."

"Still..." Pretty amusing for them to be wrong by ten years, at least one website, and a whole host of gender confusion - well, exploration, let's say, to be kinder, as there is definitely a considered set of pronouns to use, but she's not yet sure which she likes in which settings, dynamics, relationships, and it would simply in all honesty be a little obfuscatory here.

From what little Minoth actually knows of the intricacies of Mythra's writing - that is to say, how she drafts her concepts, the ways she likes to tag it and otherwise prepare its presentation, how she interacts with those who interact with it - he would guess that it's patently obvious that she doesn't write like she's 30 and quasi-gainfully employed but living alone.

Rather, she writes like a 20-year-old ex-homeschooled-except-not-really engineer in the (debatably, arguably, questionably) wrong field who has a whole host of mental issues she's learning to grapple with. Learning every day how to better interface with her new social circles, too, but if he had to bet he'd say she's not coming across too much of an issue with that on the non-profit creative writing hosting website where she doesn't even get that much stranger engagement. Most of the time.

He turns to study the inane comment again. "Wait a minute...what the...?" He's not so much of an old fogey that he thinks touching laptop screens is okay, but he puts out an incredulous finger dangerously close nonetheless.

"'Minoth'?"

"Huh? What are you--" After a beat, Mythra follows it in. "Holy sh- epherd's Purse." Thanks for saving the rating there, even if "Minoth" already blew the cover.

The forum section of all posted works allows for guest comments, with a valid email address provided alongside, and this one is signed with a plain-serif flourish as the very playwright himself.

"Hang on, don't sites like this usually have, what do you call them, profile pictures?"

Mythra blinks, trying to stitch this in to context, then bounces once in her seat. "Right, yes. I have them hidden using a site skin. Makes for less clutter, especially when they're GIFs." So saying, she does not click open a new tab to her profile and editable list of the described piquant preferences, but instead dives into the HTML inspector to uncheck the recently-applied CSS styling rule that sets the images to none display with superlative importance. In pops the avatar.

"Huh." The picture is blurry, uploaded with a meager quantity of allotted pixels and resized to be even less clearly visible, but from a distance it looks like their not-cowboy, alright. "Where'd they get a picture of me?"

"I could try to download it and see if there's anything in the metadata?" Mythra offers, sounding simultaneously excited and daunted by the prospect.

"No, no, that won't be necessary. I mean, you can easily tell it's not me. The guy's...pretty ugly, if I'm being honest."

"Wow." Not as if he's wrong, but it's the first time Mythra's heard Minoth's trademark biting bluntness enacted with any actual mal-intent in quite a while. She watches his face, studies what he must be so slyly thinking, and then they're interrupted just as the crux seems to come by a knock, and subsequently an entrance, at the apartment door.

"Addam?" The word leaves her mouth before she can school the slight irritation that accompanies its undertone, but if Addam's bothered by it, or even recognizant, she can't tell. So much for being intimately observant of every detail that goes around so she can make sure she's never misstepping. Awesome. Great plan, Mythra. If you would just think once before you speak--

To Mythra's immense relief, Minoth takes over the conversation with immediacy. "Prince, you won't believe what our deadbeat relatives are up to now."

"Oh?" Hanging up his coat and scarf while scrubbing his oxfords vigorously over the doormat (he looks positively idiotic doing the both of those tasks at the once, is why I mention it), Addam peers interestedly over, but not closely enough to hear Mythra whisper, "I thought we agreed you'd never try to make this a group event."

Minoth shrugs, taps the bottom of a closed fist over Mythra's tensed-up hand clutching the table. "The afternoon is your time, but after five o'clock's fair game." An unusually long visit, they had had this time, then. "Come on, are you really gonna get yourself in a twist over this happening once?"

He's right. Of course he's right. She's never going to get over her petty apprehensions if she doesn't roll with it sometimes. So Mythra slouches down in her seat. Well. Whatever. What're the dastardly duo of zettamalthus (look, the uneven capitalization would bother her, okay?) doing crossing paths with her authorial hobby? That's gotta be more pressing, if she's being realistic.

But Minoth doesn't do much explaining, merely points (Addam follows the direction much more immediately obligingly than Mythra had, after clapping his hands far too enthusiastically on both their backs) and comments, "Way too much time on their hands."

Addam squints. "What, is that Zettar? With a greasepaint scar?"

"I think so," answers Minoth. "I mean, sure, he looks like me, but he also looks like a rat. I have to applaud the effort, but that's about all."

"So," begins Addam, as he's starting to catch on, "you think my half-uncle and your not-uncle were sitting up at 6:30 in the morning last night dreaming up hatemail signed under your name to send to Mythra?"

Mythra and Minoth stare blankly back at him. It sounds stupid - like, really, really stupid - when he says it straight-out like that - but. It's funny, right?

Yes, it's funny. The more he contemplates the concept, the tighter Addam grasps the both of their shoulders, until at last he lets out a laugh and a shout: "Why, that's ridiculous! I mean, look at the emojis here - what right does he think he has to deride you for being gay when he's literally cohabiting with another man?!"

The seated pair roll their eyes, but make no motion to shake off Addam's overenthusiastic grip. "He might as well have walked into my office wearing a cowboy hat to proclaim, oh, I don't know..."

Suddenly, he affects a sniveling, stale-mouthed demeanor, and stands with arms ramrod to side. "It is I, Minoth! Addam Origo is ugly and his father doesn't love him!" Before they can complain of the frightening resemblance, Addam becomes himself again. "Amazing."

Amazing. Really, we can practically imagine it. Amalthus, lying bored and languid on one side of the bed in the half-light, proposes, "If you're so bothered by the girl's prolific output, why don't you tell her so?"

Because Zettar, screwed into a tizzy by the sheer calm quality and volume of Mythra's oeuvre - brilliant, snappy concepts, brillianter, snappier execution - and her patronage by not only his nephew but also that insufferable long-haired, broad-shouldered platonic attachment of his, has complained about her presence on the public archive for just about every single day of the past six months since she arrived thereon.

"It is an archive, you know," Amalthus chides. "It's not her responsibility to police your viewing of the tags she populates. I think you're just jealous."

"Jealous!? Oh, I'll show you jealous, darling." The rat-faced man starts typing furiously on his phone (ridiculous that he's got a tab open for the most convenient viewing of her works, isn't it), muttering about absolutely nothing important to himself.

"Here." He shoves the completed masterpiece into Amalthus's face, separating the pale man from his pristine issue of National Catholic Register. Amalthus scans it quickly, then ever-so-subtly wrinkles his nose.

"Ah."

"Ah?"

"It's missing something. Oomph, as they would most likely call it."

"Oomph," repeats Zettar wonderingly, though still dismissively. "And just what would you suggest?"

"She idolizes Minoth, does she not? Input his name, and add a couple of those fujoshis for good measure."

Zettar blinks. "Do you mean emoji?"

"Ah. Yes, those."

"Hmm..." After his judicious salutatory addition of "yeehaw", Zettar scrolls through the list of colorful compact images with a single long-nailed finger. "Isn't there supposed to be a cowboy in here?"

"It's with the yellow ones."

"And not with the other occupations? Ha. Fitting, isn't it."

"Oh, and add the nail polish emoji as well," Amalthus advises, apropos of nothing.

"Why?"

"You know why."

"Dear Quaestor, you know he and Addam aren't...dating."

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't." It's the most mischievous Zettar has ever seen his bedmate. "But it's funny all the same, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes. Your wit is all too powerful." Okay, enough. Zoom out, close the scene on that dismal, abysmal abode.

"So. Are you gonna reply?" Minoth is leaning back in his chair, stopped from falling flat altogether by Addam's chest catching the back of his head, and he closes his eyes to listen for Mythra's decision.

She knits her hands together to keep them from flapping nervously over the keyboard. "Why would I? They're not gonna care if I tell them it's mean."

Really, this small gesture doesn't tell all that much about its perpetrators, known or not, but it's obnoxious in about five or six different ways, so maybe they should be treating it more seriously, especially given the way those they most suspect have treated their group as a whole in the past.

"I got a good laugh out of it," Addam muses. "Maybe you should thank them for their generous service."

Now Mythra smirks. "You're right. It was really pretty funny of them, wasn't it? Real stand-out comedians."

She bangs out a reply, clicks the submit button, and then watches sadly as the counter on her inbox ticks back down to zero. "It was only my second guest comment ever, not counting my one friend who just forgot to log in that one time. Weird."

"What was the story about, anyway?" Addam asks conversationally.

"Oh." Mythra blushes. "It was, like, a magical girl AU starring Nia and Pyra."

Minoth rolls his eyes, flicks a finger at the underside of Addam's jaw. "I love it, but in that context the Tumblr diagnosis wasn't entirely out of place."

Of all the nerve... "As if you've never written something self-indulgent."

"Mythra." Minoth's tone promises to be just as wry as it is dry. "Everything I write is self-indulgent, because I love what I do. I know you feel the same. If anyone ever tries to tear you down for it, you know who they've got to answer to."

Rolling her eyes likewise, Mythra points back at the screen. "Yeah. Minoth."

Across town, Zettar lets out an unholy screech of frustration. "You won't believe it. This...cretinous girl thanked me! She said it was 'hilarious'. Hilarious!"

"Oh?" Amalthus is ever-unperturbed. "Why don't you leave a few more, then?"