Georgia and Kir
May 25, 2019 12:24 AM
Let's face the music by Georgia and Kir
“Georgia," Kir didn't hesitate long, because little as he wanted to have this conversation, a line had just been crossed, "I think you frightened him.""Oh come on. Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm not being ridiculous!" Kir found his voice coming out with a somewhat lesser degree of cool than usual. "You know that actual invisibility is virtually impossible to achieve, right?"
"Yes. I have learnt some things about the magical world in my seven years here, thank you," Georgia spat back.
So we did you just tell Dorian to make it happen by Friday? He bit back that question in favour of a larger one. Because he thought Jozua might be right and that dealing with the underlying cause might be more effective. He felt he was taking the brunt of it. It hadn’t spilled over into affecting everyone else. Much. Yet. He was pretty sure they’d all got the impression that Georgia wanted it to be perfect but she was generally just… brusque. Driven. She worked them hard at rehearsals, and Kir had taken it as his job to deal with the feelingsy part of that and make sure everyone felt valued and was still happy being there. As the concert drew nearer though, he was scared that was in danger of breaking, and he didn’t want Georgia to alienate people. She’d been getting progressively snappier with him during their discussions.
"What's going on here?" he asked.
"Well, I thought we were putting on a conert act," Georgia replied sarcastically.
"Yeah. Well, I thought we were trying to represent Teppenpaw values," Kir glared. “So how about you live the songs we’re singing?” Except instead of being a well reasoned argument, like it had been when Jozua said it, it came out snappy, like a criticism.
"Oh good. More vague and pompous-sounding philosophy. That's just what we need. Can you ever just say what you mean?"
"It means we're singing all these songs about valuing each other and supporting each other, and you keep wanting to take control and freaking out if it's not perfect."
"Oh, so as well as not knowing how magic works, now I'm a bad Teppenpaw too?"
"I never said you're bad at magic," he sighed, "But at this point, yes," Kir snapped. Because heck, he’d come this far, and whilst part of his brain knew that personal criticism had no place in a civilised argument, part of him wasn’t really bothered about keeping it civilised any more, and she’d asked.
“Oh, so being Kir, champion of everyone’s feelings, extends to everyone except me? Thanks a bunch.”
“You’re being mean.”
"Screw you, you self-righteous tree! You keep acting like it's not a big deal. Like so long as we all get on, it doesn't matter if it's crap. Well, it does! Someone’s got to push for this to actually be a halfway decent performance!” Kir was driving her crazy. He kept acting like this was summer camp, or just for fun. Like they weren’t all going to be up on stage in a few weeks, and it was fine so long as everyone was having a good time. He didn’t know how to run rehearsals, so he just kept sticking his oar in to talk about everyone’s feelings. It was irritating. It made him seem like he was the good guy when she was the one who was putting all the work in. And she didn’t need rehearsals derailed or people thinking it didn’t matter. “It's alright for you! This isn't the only time your parents get to interact with what you do here! This isn't the only thing you've got going for you!"
"What are you talking about?" asked Kir, lowering his voice, back to his usual gentle and concerned self because Georgia looked like she was on the verge of crying.
"It's easy for you. You have a nice girlfriend. Your family....knows about magic. You get good grades. This is the one thing I'm going to get to do at school that my dad can properly and totally understand. It's also the one thing I'm really good at. I don't get any other chances to shine, and I probably never will."
Kir stopped, stunned. He had been so busy trying to take care of everyone else, to avoid any collateral damage from Georgia, that he hadn’t considered that she wasn’t ok. She seemed so bold, so confident when she was running rehearsals - to the point of being kind of awful - that it hadn’t seemed possible that she felt like this. Now she was crying.
"Okay, that's just not true,” he assured her, “You're going to do plenty of things that are awesome, and plenty of things your dad can relate to."
"I have literally zero life plan. I'm going to go and get whatever crappy desk job people with mediocre grades get in this world, and even I don't know what that actually means."
"Perfect. It's a blank canvas then. And you can be some dazzling entrepreneur who invents something brilliant. Or go save an endangered species. Or get a job in a coffee shop and complain about the customers. They're all things your dad is going to get. And you can meet someone and get married, or not, or have a million cats cos men are trash. And he'll be there, and he'll get it. The big stuff kind of stays the same. And a lot of the small stuff. How someone swiped your last coffee sachet and you might stab them. How your boss is a hard-ass. How grocery shopping sucks. All these adult joys you have to look forward to. How some self-righteous tree is driving you crazy," he tried for a smile, and got one
“I’m sorry I called you that,” she apologised, wiping her eyes. “Is it really… gonna be like that?”
“Yes,” he promised, “I’m sorry I called you a bad Teppenpaw.”
“You might be right. I… I don’t want to upset everyone. I just want them to be good.”
“I don’t think you’ve done too much damage. Just… let’s make sure it doesn’t get worse before it gets better?” he suggested. Georgia nodded.
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Georgia and Kir
Let's face the music
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Georgia and Kir
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