It was simply majestic! [Marissa] on At Home

Valentine Duell

January 14, 2022 8:42 PM

It was simply majestic! [Marissa] by Valentine Duell

Valentine Duell simply could not help herself. When the wagon landed to drop her back off at home she threw herself into Papa's waiting arms and he spun around with her a few times before setting her on her feet. "Good trip?" He asked simply with a smile as she was already turning to Mama.

"Yup!" She replied as she wrapped Mama in a hug as well. "The ball was wonderful Mama!" she exclaimed. Papa got her luggage from the wagon and began moving home, he knew this routine well enough, let the girls have their mother-daughter time. Valentine continued without taking much notice. "Everyone looked so wonderful dressed up!" She beamed uncontrollably, pulling back from the hug so they could walk. "You should have seen Bonabelle!" Her girlfriend had looked simply stunning and went on to describe the girl's dress, nails and makeup in great detail.

"We had a great time! I danced with Bonabelle first, and then Wally. Oh!" Val suddenly remembered. "We got pictures taken!" Then from her pocket she pulled out the picture that she and her dates had taken at the ball. Val was in the middle, smiling gleefully with her arms wrapped around the waists of Bonabelle and Wally on either side of her. She admired it a moment before showing it to Mama, then a thought struck her. "Do you have a picture of you and Papa from your dance?"

2 Valentine Duell It was simply majestic! [Marissa] 1490 1 5

Marissa Duell

January 16, 2022 3:44 PM

A memory to always treasure. by Marissa Duell

Somehow, Marissa thought, it seemed that Val had become just a little bit more overflowing with energy every time she came home than she had been at the homecoming before. She couldn't, however, decide if that was true, or if she, Marissa, was just getting old and slow.

"Oh, that's the Ball for you," she said with a smile as Val talked about seeing the student body all dressed up. "I bet no one ever looked better than I'm sure you did," she added, chucking Val affectionately under the chin, "but most people do put on a show, and some of it might just be seeing a group of people all together wearing colors other than green!"

Val began to gush over Bonabelle specifically, and whipped out a picture of the two girls and a boy all together. "Oh, my, she did look pretty," said Marissa. "And yes, I'm sure I can dig one up somewhere - here's hoping the dress isn't too easy to put a date to. So...did you and everyone just decide to go as a friend group? That's nice."

Val hadn't explicitly mentioned a date in her letters before now, so Marissa hadn't asked. As popular as Valentine was - a trait she was both proud of and terrified of - the fact remained that there were usually not nearly enough dates to commit to any given one. She had also had other worries since Val had told her about liking boys and girls. What if some brat decided to be mean to her? And specifically, to do so before something Val was looking forward to so much? And she'd known that things had been...complicated...with Bonabelle at some point on top of everything else. It had just seemed more prudent to let Val tell her what she wanted to tell her...with the result there were certain things about Val's plans she wasn't yet aware of.

OOC: Subject of Val's failure to mention "yep, two dates" discussed with her author.

16 Marissa Duell A memory to always treasure. 147 0 5

Valentine Duell

January 16, 2022 6:42 PM

Do you have lots of them? by Valentine Duell

Val blushed a bit at Mama's compliment. She suspected Mama was a bit biased, but she could play that game too. "Well Papa says I get my looks from you, so if no one looked better you're the one to blame." She giggled and gave Mama a squeeze. "There were a lot more colors than green," Val agreed, "You should have seen the Brockert girls." In terms of dresses, there hadn't been any competition between Val's and anything they had been wearing. Such was the way of things though. Everyone had looked magnificent. Even Billy had cleaned himself up for the event.

The younger girl let out a squeal of delight when Mama said she could probably dig up a picture. She was planning on following that up with some other comment about how lovely her mother probably looked in the picture, when Mama shifted the conversation over to the people in the picture. Right. She knew this was coming, and for some reason she was nervous. It had been easy to put it off and ignore it, trying to explain something like that through owl post was ridiculous, it'd have to be done in person. Well... apparently now she was in person.

It was weird though, at school it just didn't seem like 'a big deal'. Well, except to maybe Lavender. There were just so many 'non-traditional' types at school and there was a club all about it.. but here, back home? It seemed strange. Mama and Papa had a 'normal' relationship, Grandpa had had a 'normal' relationship. Aunt Paige... well, she wasn't exactly sure about Aunt Paige at the moment. Even Aunt Jhonice had a.. well, mostly 'normal' relationship, sort of. Val was sorely tempted to be purposefully vague, but she didn't really like that idea either. This was Mama she was talking to after all.

Her face had sobered and sunk into contemplation as she considered her response. "Sort of... but... not really." She said slowly obviously trying to pick her words carefully. She glanced at Mama quickly before returning her eyes to the picture. "It was going to be my only ball, I wanted to go with..." she paused, "with not just friends." She sighed then, there was no other way around this. Thankfully Papa was far enough ahead of them with her things that it was just her and Mama. "I took both Bonabelle and Wally as dates to the dance. Bonabelle is wonderful and Wally is great as well, nothing like his brother." She paused again then finally actually looked up at Mama, "I like them both an awful lot."

2 Valentine Duell Do you have lots of them? 1490 0 5

Marissa Duell

January 20, 2022 6:38 PM

It would be sad if I got this old and didn't. by Marissa Duell

Marissa laughed as Val pointed out the vanity potentially implied by her statement. "Well played, well played," she said agreeably, returning the squeeze. "Though you're not done growing yet - we'll have to wait a while to make a final judgment. If your hair was a little darker, you might look at least as much like your aunt Giselle as you do like me." She thought Val would like that; not only was Giselle quite beautiful, but Val also seemed to admire her aunt greatly.

Sort of...but...not really. There was a combination of words which, in context, seemed potentially ominous...Marissa focused on keeping her expression as neutral as possible as she said, "Oh?" and left Val to explain.

It was quite an explanation.

"I...see," she said finally, though she still wasn't completely sure she did. When she thought of people in relationships that involved more than two people, she thought about that time she'd made her mother angry by asking her Sunday School teacher how Jacob could marry both Leah and Rachel, and then about nasty excuses for men who married a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls and got busted by the F.B.I. Maybe, just maybe, about trashy rich men with a couple of much younger women. Those things, however, were...all nothing like what Val was saying she was involved in, or at least, had better not be anything like what Val was saying she was involved in....

"I guess I'm not too sure what to say, baby," she explained. "You've...caught me a little off-guard here. Are you saying you're planning to date them both now? Where did you get this idea?"

16 Marissa Duell It would be sad if I got this old and didn't. 147 0 5

Valentine Duell

January 21, 2022 6:02 PM

And there are still so many more us to make by Valentine Duell

Valentine laughed with Mama, it felt good to be home again, she had missed Mama and Papa a lot. She always did while she was at school. Val did roll her eyes just a bit at the mention of Aunt Giselle, with a playful smile. "She could be a lot more pretty if she tried a little bit." The younger girl thought back over the time she'd spent trying to organize her aunt's wardrobe with color tags and sorting out what pieces would go with other pieces... and as far as she could tell Aunt Giselle ignored them for the most part and just put on whatever she found first. Valentine was actually starting to wonder if she was doing it on purpose. After all, if she was randomly selecting things, at some point she would have had to have gotten something that matched eventually. "Maybe she does it on purpose though for some reason..." her voice drifted a bit on the thought before she pulled herself back to the conversation. "I did help get her looking pretty good for the ball though!"

Val herself had never really been one to focus a lot on looks. She certainly wasn't careless on that front, but it hadn't ever seemed all that important to put a lot of extra attention there. This past year had been a little different, she liked the way Bonabelle smiled whenever she had done herself up a little extra. Plus, she was pretty sure they boys wouldn't mind. Turns out it didn't seem like Wally had minded.

Mama on the other hand, seemed... uncertain. Valentine had grown up with Mama, if there was one person on this planet that she understood, it was Mama. As she tried to explain things, Val could see that Mama was doing her best to stay calm. That was not encouraging. She was half tempted to backtrack, to say they were just friends, not to worry, everything was fine. It was probably just in her head, but she thought there was a very slight accusatory tone in Mama's voice when she asked where she had gotten the idea. It wasn't like Mama at all, she had to be imagining it.

As for an answer to any of it? What could she say that would make Mama happy? She wanted Mama to be happy, she didn't like making people in general unhappy much less Mama and Papa. Where did she get the idea? Ness, Evelyn, Ellie. She thought back a few years to the one time a bunch of the gamers had gone to some big party hosted by Ness' family, she'd been 'to young to go'. If Mama decided she didn't like this, and another one came up... would they be a 'bad influence'? What if Mama and Papa decided they didn't like Ellie's cafe at school? They wouldn't tell her to stop going would they? They wouldn't make a fuss about it to Professor Skies would they?

Suddenly realizing that she hadn't responded yet to Mama's questions, Val sighed still uncertain how to respond. Lying had never been an option that entered her mind, and it still didn't. "I.. I'm not sure?" She began a bit quietly, "Maybe?" It was most definitely a question. "We all had a good time at the ball together..." she sighed again and looked imploringly at Mama, "Do you think it's a bad idea?"

2 Valentine Duell And there are still so many more us to make 1490 0 5

Marissa Duell

January 22, 2022 8:01 PM

Indeed. by Marissa Duell

Val did indeed know Marissa very well, at least in terms of picking up on emotional cues. The flip side of that was that Marissa also knew Val very well. She therefore got to feel a surge of guilt when Val almost visibly started having second thoughts about her confession. So she'd screwed that one up; the last thing she had ever wanted was for Val to feel it had been a bad idea to tell her something....

Her first thought when Val asked if she thought the whole arrangement was a bad idea was still, though, that of course it was a terrible idea - even aside from what people would say and think (Marissa had, after all, been correctly Sorted; even when she didn't want to, or ultimately decided to not care, she couldn't help but imagine what people would say and think), how could it ever work? The other two would be bound to get jealous, or insecure, or who knew what, sometime, and then they'd hurt Val. Which was against the rules - the important ones. So, the case for the arrangement being a bad idea seemed pretty darn solid to Marissa.

Unfortunately, though, if she said that, then she'd hurt Val. Which was even more against the important rules.

"I don't know if I know what to think," she said. "You're talking about something I...haven't really heard of before, at least outside of stories about cults - and I'm assuming you're not in a cult." She had made serious errors of judgment at some point if her daughter somehow managed to join a cult from inside her boarding school, and had managed to do so without Marissa ever realizing something was wrong first.... "I really can't imagine, off the top of my head right now, how what you're talking about would work," she said. "I'd have kicked your papa out so fast his butt would have ended up in orbit if he'd ever asked if he could be with me sometimes and then be someone else's boyfriend at other times - but then, I also can't picture romantic-dating other girls, and you can. So I don't know yet," she concluded.

"I'm glad you're telling me, though, baby," she added. "You know that all me and Papa want in the world is for you to be happy." That was a firm, well-established point to touch base with before attempting to navigate any new terrain. "You just might...have to give us a minute sometimes to get our heads around things. I think too much public handholding was still considered mildly scandalous sometimes at Sonora when we were there, at least with some of the other Crotali." She was exaggerating, but was unsure by how much. The one thing her parents had liked about Sonora was how utterly repressed everyone had been. It was amazing, really, how rapidly things seemed to have changed. It was a good thing, of course - rule one was that 'nobody hurts Valentine,' and but she wants to go to dances with girls wasn't an adequate excuse for making an exception in Marissa's book - but also still a hard one to believe.

16 Marissa Duell Indeed. 147 0 5

Valentine Duell

January 23, 2022 12:21 PM

Do you have a favorite? by Valentine Duell

Mama didn't think it was a good idea. Otherwise, she would have said so. Still it sounded like she was open to listening, that was good. Val just wasn't sure how well she could explain what she was still trying to figure out herself. However, she did shake her head definitively at the suggestion of joining a cult. Cultists were bad with their sacrificing innocent victims for their 'end of the world' rituals. That's why adventurers needed to stop them. Granted from the sounds of what Mama was talking about, her view of cultists may be a bit skewed from real ones. Still, unless Ellie's cafe counted as a cult, she was pretty sure she hadn't joined any.

She smiled slightly at the thought of Mama kicking Papa like that. She wondered if it would have felt different if it had been Wally that came up to her and asked if she'd go to the ball with him and he was already also going with... her mind searched for an appropriate other person. Not Bonabelle.... Mab? Hmm.. not quite right for the analogy, Quincy. Okay, Wally and Quincy were already dating and then Wally asked her if she'd like to come because he liked her as well. How did she feel about that? Well, arguable to keep it consistent, Quincy would have had to have asked her and Bonabelle to go with both of them in Tumbleweed and then Bonabelle would have had to have kissed Quincy and now this was getting a little ridiculous as analogies went. Still, how did it make her feel? Just as confused as she had been.

Val blushed just a bit at Mama's 'romantic-dating other girls' comment. She really couldn't see where the difficulty was in picturing that. Girls were people too. Mama's words of reassurance wrapped around her like a warm, comfy, familiar blanket. She snuggled up tighter to Mama, "I want you to be happy as well." She did not want to disappoint them, or make it seem like the failed in raising her properly. "I tried to explain things to Lavender," she gave a slight shrug, "I'm not sure how well it went. I'm still not sure about things." A thought struck her. "Lavender is a Crotalus as well." Her eyes looked down the path towards Papa, she thought she'd probably get more Papa then Teppenpaw out of him during this sort of conversation though. Perhaps despite being a Crotalus, Mama was the place to start.

"Once upon a time," Val began with just a hint of her usual playfulness tempered with a fair bit of caution and uncertainty, "Somewhere around the middle of February, about fifteen years ago now, you and Papa had a baby." She sighed. "A lot of things happened until one day she went on a pretend date with her pretend girlfriend to Ellie's LGBTQIA+ Cafe at her school. There were snacks and pamphlets of information from the McLeod Foundation and discussions with the pretend girlfriend and..." Val hesitated again, "It didn't go great, but it set her on the path. She is still figuring things out, but at the moment..." Valentine grimaced with a worried/hopeful expression as she glanced at Mama, "She thinks she is a polyamourous bisexual female." Then, afraid to let those words hang in the air to long by themselves, she continued quickly, "She doesn't want her Mama to worry to much thought because she isn't doing anything.. umm.. 'advanced'... or anything bad, just trying to figure out what is going on and how things work and what she's doing and wants to make everyone happy and doesn't want to disappoint anyone..." The words flooded out of her and she unconsciously gripped tighter onto Mama. "Plus there's the career and future planning, CATS next year..." she finally began to slow down again. "Also, I need a new campaign for the gaming club."

2 Valentine Duell Do you have a favorite? 1490 0 5

Marissa Duell

January 24, 2022 5:33 PM

Many favorites. by Marissa Duell

"I was thinking more about how I'm old and behind the times," Marissa remarked when she was told that Lavender didn't really understand, either. "But being a Crotalus might not be helping. I'll do my best to catch up, though."

She couldn't help thinking of what people would say about any given thing, but while she preferred for people not to gossip about her and her family, it wasn't the most important thing. That was Valentine. So if sticking to her daughter wasn't compatible with being a respectable member of society, well, then society would just have to get an attitude adjustment about what constituted respectability. Or else, perhaps more realistically, she'd just continue to render the question largely academic....

I want you to be happy as well. Was that normal for a fifteen-year-old girl to worry about? Or was she right, sometimes, to worry that Val was too dependent upon her approval? Had they - with the best will in the world - screwed Val up somehow by...Marissa fumbled for a word to even describe what it was they had done which might have screwed Val up in this department. Been themselves? It had at least seemed inevitable, that she and Andrew had ended up perhaps somewhat...intense...parents, even before the fiasco in Greece. Marissa had the kind of mind doomed to get deeply occupied by something like the responsibility of bringing up a person, and Andrew's family situations - it had not been a surprise that he was overprotective of Val. And Val was a wonderful child, so clearly, they hadn't done everything wrong. Some things had gone well. But was she as wonderful as she was because she just...was, or out of some unreasonable fear of disapproval?

Marissa couldn't help but chuckle at the note Val ended on. "You have a busy life," she agreed. "And you don't need to worry about disappointing me - though you're enough like me that you probably will anyway," she acknowledged. "But try not to worry about that. I've always been proud of you, and I don't see that ever changing, whatever words you settle on for yourself." She smiled and added, "it's probably another Crotalus thing that I'm relieved there are words." Words implied definitions, which implied the capacity for organization. "I think I'd be a lot more worried if you didn't have pamphlets and you had to try to sort everything out without words." Marissa approved of pamphlets as a rule. There were exceptions, but most of the time, pamphlets were good.

16 Marissa Duell Many favorites. 147 0 5