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Still dressed in her casual clothes from earlier, Anneliese sits on the grass in the Freehold hollow, singing softly as she plays her violin. She's got a piece worked out; now she just needs to practice it. And get a printed copy of the tune made at some point, not just the one on her phone's staff paper app.
Charlie comes walking through, a pensive look on her face. She's reading up and down a text conversation on her phone and is barely cognizent of the world around her. Of course that all changes when she hears the lovely music. Her head perks up and she almost instantly recognizes Anneliese. "Oh!" she says, trying to be heard over the music, "You're Annabelle, right? From the bar?"
The music slowly fades out when Charlie starts speaking, allowing her to be heard easily. "Anneliese." She corrects, smiling gently up at the other woman. "And you are Charlie, yes? What brings you here?"
"Oh, um, I'm looking for a place to think that's not my place or somewhere where people are staring at me," she sits down on the grass near her. "I'm, um, going through some stuff right now."
"Oh? Is this stuff you wish to talk about, or would you prefer to simply sit in company?" She glances over to the other woman. "I can continue playing while you process your thoughts, if that is something that would help?"
"If you're okay listening, I'd really appreciate someone to puzzle this all out with. Especially someone who, um, is also gay," she puts in an effort to say gay differently this time but it comes out less natural and more like a child whispering a naughty word to their brother and hoping not to get caught by their parents.
"Of course I am okay listening." She gives Charlie a reassuring smile. "I take it this is about your sexuality?"
"Well, sort of?" Charlie flops onto her back, a weird pose for someone with wings. "I, um, I might be dating that girl I talked to in the bar? We had a text conversation and it, uh, it really gave some mixed signals? She's really been nothing but confusing signals though. Not in a bad way! She's a perfectly nice person! But, um, I don't know how to like be a partner?" She grabs a handful of grass and plops it down on her t-shirt, which has an ad on it for a blood drive in Blue Run, PA.
Anneliese makes encouraging noises as Charlie rambles. "How does the idea of being her partner, not just a partner of some hypothetical person, make you feel?"
"Really good! Like super good! Like angels should be singing about it good. I just, um, don't know if she agrees?" Charlie sighs and stretches out her wings as far as they'll go. "She thinks I deserve better, which is like completely wrong, I deserve way worse, but I can't tell if she's saying that because she actually means it or because she's trying to spare my feelings?"
"So she thinks that she is not good enough for you? Is that what you are saying?" Anneliese inquires.
"Yeah. She thinks that she's not honest enough for me, which, um, seems really wrong since I lied to her a bunch when we, um, well I don't know if it was a date or not but we got sushi together. Did you know that sushi is raw fish? And that's legal?" She groans a little and plops some grass on her face. "Sorry, I'm getting off topic. She won't believe me when I tell her what a bad person I am also."
Anneliese leans over to pat Charlie's shoulder gently. "Why do you think you are a bad person?"
She kinda squirms when touched. It's not every day you're pat by the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. "I sin constantly for one. And I'm a liar and I use people and, um." she suddenly gets quiet. She's been having a nervous loudness to her voice that suddenly shrinks to nothing, her accent vanishing along with it. "I didn't even escape my keeper. It let me go."
"Lying about what? The law may forbid us to bear false witness, but it does not instruct us to reveal information that would endanger not only those we tell, but ourselves and others." Anneliese says, turning to face Charlie properly. "As for how you got free, that is no concern of anyone here. You have sworn to the Freehold and a Court; no Loyalist could do so without revealing themselves."
"I lie about all sorts of dumb things. When normal people talk to me I just get really nervous and start saying things even if they're not true at all. And it's not that I think you'd think I'm a loyalist," she pauses again, looking away from Annie. "It's that, um, I'm a coward who had to wait to be thrown away instead of leaving."
"Normal people? Do you mean mortals? Because there is nothing abnormal about being gay. Hashem created us in Her image; would you deny Her the right to be gay if She so wished it?" Anneliese pauses for a moment, chewing her lip as she considers what to say next. "I spent four centuries in the hands of the Gentry. Does that make me a bad person, that it took me so long to gain my freedom?"
There are a lot of theological concerns there that Charlie doesn't want to get in to. She bites her tongue to avoid saying anything stupid, before opening her mouth again, praying silently that she won't shove her entire foot into her mouth. "No! No! I'd never call you a bad person! You escaped! You survived! But, um, you escaped and that's one better than me."
"Did I? It took my Keeper assigning me to patrol the borders of their realm before I seized the chance to leave. Is that escaping, or merely a more oblique form of them letting me go?"
"You need to have more faith in yourself!" Charlie says, unintentionally hypocritical. "You're plenty strong! You work at a night club. And you know you're gay, which isn't bad for someone from the 1600s! Wait, you're actually that old?" Charlie asks, her brain catching up to her, "that's so cool!"
Anneliese just gives Charlie a Look at the comment about needing to have more faith in herself, then sighs. "By the Christian calendar I am..." she pauses, clearly doing the maths in her head. "428 years, chronologically. Subjectively, well. My girlfriend is less than a tenth that, and yet appears older than I."
"Sorry if this is a sore subject. It's just, um, that's honestly really really cool." Charlie sits up, her smile nervous but her eyes lit up. "Are you okay though? I was only there for 4 years and I have nightmares." The light in her eyes fades, as she goes right into caretaker mode.
"I think so? I do not remember having nightmares, at least." Charlie's attempt at caretaker mode gets a wry smile. "Though I have been seeing a therapist mortalside, which helps. Even if I cannot tell her everything." A shrug.
"Well, if you want someone to talk to about the stuff that you can't otherwise, I'm here! We're both fairest so we have that in common. By the way, what court are you? I haven't seen you around Winter." Her legs suddenly twitch, moving positions rapidly before settling back to normal. "Oh, um, sorry."
The twitching legs get a raised eyebrow from Anneliese, but no direct comment. "Think nothing of it." She smiles at Charlie. "I am pledged to Spring, so it is no wonder you have not seen me around Winter." Pausing, she takes a sip from her water bottle before continuing. "What made you choose Winter, if you do not mind my asking?"
"Oh, no! I don't mind it at all!" Charlie shifts into actually sitting now, her legs criss cross applesauce, which both she and her narrator wish there was a better term for. "Because, um, there's nothing we can really do? My Keeper could just snap Its fingers and then I couldn't move. There's no fighting that. Better to just hide and not make waves, you know?"
"I am no Summer, but sometimes making waves is exactly what is called for. Running scared just lets Them continue to control us." Anneliese shrugs again. "And remember, they can be beaten. Our ability to build communities is living proof of that."
"I can't beat them!" Charlie reaches into her pockets and pulls out a pair of brass knuckles. "This is all I have to fight with! You have to be crazy to think these are going to work." She notices that her hand has been tapping out an erratic rhythm on her bent legs and she pulls it back. "Plus, um, I'm not running. I'm hiding. If I have to fight someone else's huntsman, I'll do it. I just, um, don't want to take risks I don't have to?"
"But you are not alone." Anneliese pats the other woman's shoulder gently. "Do you not wish to make anything of your life? You are not the same person you were Before, none of us are, but that does not mean you are not a person. You have the right to build something for yourself."
Charlie loves the shoulder contact. Wow, a lot of very pretty women have been touching her lately. She can get behind this. "I..." She freezes for a second, lost for words. "I don't know what there is to make? Before, I, um, I didn't have much of a plan? I was going to stay in a run down town and end up marrying some guy because its what my mom wanted. I don't really have any, um, skills or anything. I don't really have a way to get into college with, um, another me out there complicating things."
"Well, I am sure there are ways around that. Have you considered attending under another name? I believe the Midwinter Steward would be willing to help create documentation to enable doing so."
"This might be, um, surprising to you considering you've, um, only seen me here and at a bar, but I, um, have a lot of days where I can't leave my house," she admits sheepishly. "Just, um, a lot of people out in the world, you know? And I don't, um, know if that'd make it possible to go to a class where a teacher would be staring at me?"
"...That could make attending difficult, yes." Anneliese ponders for a moment, taking another sip of water as she does so. "Have you considered online classes? There is a lot one can learn with the Internet."
"Oh, um, maybe!" She stretches out her back as she ponders that. "Thank you for being so nice to me. I really need to pay you back somehow."
"Glad I could help." A wicked grin crosses her face for a moment. "As for payment, telling Wren that you do not care if she is a bad person, you still wish to date her should suffice."
Charlie blanches. "No! Please don't tell her! I don't want her to think I betrayed her trust by telling you. Not that I know she said not to? I just, um, I don't know?" She stops to think for a second and says, "How, um, how do you know Wren? Like how did you meet?"
Anneliese looks confused for a moment. "What... Oh, no, I meant for you to tell her that." She pats Charlie's back reassuringly. "It is not unlike how I met you, actually." A shrug. "The bar I work in seems popular amongst our kind. Possibly because I work there, come to think of it."
"...by our kind, do you mean lesbians or Changelings? Because, um, you're really good looking and I feel like you'd probably pull in lesbians like a magnet?" Charlie barely manages to squeak that last part out, her face looking like the floor dropped out from under her.
"Changelings, but I thank you for the compliment." The squeak gets an odd look. "Are you feeling okay? Do you need something to drink?"
"No, no, I'm fine, it's just weird telling someone you just met that they're really hot?" Charlie puts her face in her hands. "Please don't think I'm hitting on you. You're just, um, very pretty? Like objectively pretty. Not to me. Not that I think you aren't pretty! Just not specifically to me?"
"Charlie." Anneliese's voice is gentle as she reaches out to take the other woman's hands. "You are allowed to flirt with me, you know. My girlfriend will not object to it."
The handholding is unexpected but not unwelcome. Her hands are weirdly squirmy at first but they settle down. "I'm really not trying to flirt! I just start talking sometimes and suddenly I'm saying the dumbest things in the world and I can't stop even when I try to fix what I was saying. I'm the worst at keeping it together."
A slow nod. "Have you considered speaking to someone about that? It seems something you are unhappy with, but there may be ways to help you control it."
"Who would I, um, talk to? Like I feel like it's more, uh, a flaw of me being dumb than anything else. And I don't think there are doctors who make you smart," she looks away, feeling awfully ashamed of her stupidity.
"Well, even if it is not a neurological condition, even simply talking to a professional can help." Anneliese says softly. "And you are not dumb; the fact we have been having a lengthy conversation without resorting to sign language demonstrates as much."
"I'm seeing a therapist, so if that's the kind of professional you mean, but I really don't know if, um, she can help?" Charlie mulls over that last statement for a while, before she puts 2 and 2 together. "No, um, I mean I'm stupid. A moron. A dummy."
"Well, you will never know if you do not try." Pragmatic, that. "...Why would you say that about yourself? You are perfectly articulate. Being shy does not change that."
"I mean, the problem isn't that I'm shy, the problem is that I don't shut up when I need to. A smart person would know how to, um, think before talking and then say the thing she was thinking without horribly messing it up." Charlie lets out a little groan, "why don't people believe me when I tell them bad things about me?"
"I cannot speak for Wren, but for myself, it is because I like you, and wish for you to feel good about yourself." Anneliese says softly. "Constantly putting yourself down does not help you."
"It helps me be honest," she says with a bit of a huff, before adding in a soft voice, "is it, um, alright if I go home now? I, uh, I'm kinda running out of, um, energy to talk? I can give you my phone number if you want that. Not because I'm trying to get your number to hit on you!"
"Of course." She gives Charlie her number, checking the other woman has it correct before continuing. "Do not be a stranger, okay?"
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