strangetrip | [GP] Check-In Day: What a nice surprise; bring your alibis

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[GP] Check-In Day: What a nice surprise; bring your alibis

Every check-in day conjured memories of her first, and all of the others, which inevitably meant she spent the day with Lara on her mind, and Petey, Illyana, and Wyatt. She'd been blessed with dear friends and loves arriving, and yet she never stopped hoping she'd figure out the mess that was this pocket universe and get home.

It was starting to become complicated, though, almost a year later. It would hurt to lose the people she'd grown fond of here, almost as much as it would be good to get home. She didn't know what to do with that feeling, but it was what it was. All she could do was tend the bar with patience and understanding, and keep an eye on the readings her crude energy measuring devices out on the road sent to her.

For all the people that came in and out, it was a quiet day. So between drinks, she spent most of it bent over a notebook with a cup of coffee in her hand, trying to design better instruments to dismantle Yana's shackles. Maybe Percy could help her build them.

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"Nice to meet you." Sunny answered, not thinking too hard about what other tongue Lilli might mean. She knew more than a little about communicating in a second or third language. And people here were supposed to come from all manner of worlds. Was there anyone here from Ginen? Maybe she could finally learn what her knife was actually made of. "I'd assume it means the same thing. My parents singled me out to be the only kid with an English name, I can only wonder what they were about."

"It is nice to meet you," Lillith agreed and so terribly interesting too. "Although I could wish it had been under different circumstances."

She frowned pensively, lips pressed lightly together. "I do not know this 'English', unless it is another word for the language we speak now. For me it is called 'Common'. It would be no insult to be named in Common in my world, although there was no kindness in my given name, Lillith. It means 'of the night'."

Sunny didn't understand why that should be an unkind name--other than of course the religious connections that she didn't think this girl would make if she called English by another name. "My brothers have Igbo names. Igbo is our ethnic group. You name your child something that tells your family's story, or your hopes for the future. Chukwu. Supreme Being. Ugonna. Father's pride. And then there's me. I think at one point Mama wanted to name me Nnenne, mother's mother, but my father wouldn't have been wild about that."

"And Sunny has no meaning in Igbo?" What would that feel like, to be named as nothing, literally? "Or does Igbo have no word for those who are stripped of color?" She realized that to be a somewhat impertinent question, so added, "That is why Lillith is an insult. I am pale and my family is dark." She might have admitted to being an albino, but then she would have to admit to being disguised or magical. She wished to know more of Sunny and the Igbo first.

Sunny blinked at this description, and then she started to smile. "I wanna show you something," she said, pulling out her phone. As she scrolled through her pictures, she explained, "There's names that mean similar things in Igbo... best I can figure, because my family had moved to a new country where people speak English--Common--my parents thought it right to give me a name reflecting that." Why 'Sunny' specifically, though... well, part of her always figured it was an appeal for the universe's mercy against her paper-white skin that used to burn at the slightest touch of strong sunlight.

The picture she showed Lilli was a shot of her between two men, dark skinned but ignoring that the stamp of shared blood was on all three faces. One of the men had a natural swagger to him even in a still image that the other lacked. "Me and my brothers. Chukwu's the one who looks like he thinks he's God's gift to women."

Lillith contained her eagerness to examine the image device, but she feared her excitement showed in her eyes. Never had she seen such artifice. She must learn how it was made.

The image she was shown confused her emotions. To know another like herself was joyous. But she felt both terror at the thought of her sisters, envy for this sibling bond, and longing for her bolder cousin. "My sisters are also dark and beautiful. But they are not kind. Your brothers are good men, no?"

Sunny took a lot of abuse from a lot of people for looking the way she did, as if being born without melanin was somehow her fault. As if she somehow wanted to be a freak and an outcast. Her father could be terrible, but because he loved her mother so much he was rarely actually cruel to her. And her brothers... she thought of Chukwu when they were still just kids, teaching her how to line up her fist when she punched so she wouldn't break her wrist.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "Family should be the one place you're safe from cruelty."

Lillith shook her head to dismiss the misunderstanding. "I was different, but my sisters, they tolerated me as long as I kept to myself." They had thought her peculiar, with her pale pink horns and hooves, and her abiding love of colors, every color she could find. "Others, they did not. The privileges of rank, they took them too far. It was not until I disagreed that blood was drawn."

It was the truth that she could tell without exposing her true nature. As much as she wished to like Sunny, she did not know her at all.

Sunny didn't understand, not really, but here and now was not the time to pry. She only nodded and slipped her phone away again. "My brothers are idiots," she said. "But they are good." And here was when she would normally say and they can never know I said that. Except with her here, they wouldn't. She swallowed that down.

"I have known few men who are not idiots." Lillith shared with Sunny a conspiratorial smile. And then, after a beat, "Most of them are here. I understand I am lucky in that respect. Have you run into friends here since you arrived?" Either way, she believed she would introduce Sunny to Vox Machina and Kashaw soon. They would make her feel welcome, just as they always had her.

Sunny froze. That had been one of the first questions she'd had herself, but... "No. I checked at the desk. I'm alone."

It was a risk, Lillith knew, but with Vox Machina here, she felt safe enough to take it. "No." Since she had refreshed her Alter Self spell not long ago, Lillith released her hold on her coloration but retained her human form. Her pinkish-red eyes and colorless skin showed through. "Or at least, not anymore."

Sunny's mind made a move she wasn't sure she could explain, looking first to the medical rather than the magical or the emotional. Contrary to what the melanin-having population might believe, there were several ways to be an albino, different ways your genes could be effected. For all that Sunny herself generally lacked pigment, she did have some very tiny amount. It allowed for her hair to be blonde, her eyes to be hazel, even though she should have been dark brown all over. Oculocutaneous albinism type 2, her mother had called it. What Lillith was showing her, she'd bet, was type 1A. The kind where you had no melanin at all. Because she knew she red-eyed in photographs more than most, but actually having red eyes took having no color in the iris at all.

And then the next wave hit, and she realized that while she had read things and talked online with people, she'd never actually physically met another albino before.

And then the third wave, when she realized that that had been magic. Specifically, the removal of a kind of glamour. She'd already talked to Coby about it, but the fact that she may not have to--may not even be able to--hide for once in her life seemed so much more real.

That she noticed these things in this order told Sunny a lot about where her head was right now. That being, no place particularly enviable.

"Thank you," she whispered.

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[GP] Check-In Day: What a nice surprise; bring your alibis

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