strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-in Day

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[GP/EP] Check-in Day

It was a musical day at the Madonna Inn, both inside and out. Curnen had taken her usual place up on the roof and was singing charms to the sky to keep any wanderers from getting lost (though that part of it was not immediately obvious). Unrelated to that, Sunny was on the dance floor in the bar, summoning songs of her own with her knife to keep her moving before she went to do her shift at the library later. It was one of those days where if she thought about it too hard she’d start thinking about that empty bed in her shitty room and the person she most wanted to be there.

This of course eventually seeped into her magic. She knew better. Maybe she’d even wanted that to happen.

Because just once, between different pop hits and dance beats came a rather unexpected French love song. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but the exasperation didn’t last. Before the lyrics started up she was waltzing. By herself and not caring how it might have looked. And for those three and a half minutes, she dared let herself hope for the slimmest chance that Orlu might come through that door.

She didn’t let herself hope too hard, though. There was admitting to feeling things and there was setting yourself up for certain disappointment. She’d lived too long with disappointment to do that to herself.

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Somewhere Kenzi was making a joke about Bo and dancing 'professionally'. She resisted the urge to eyeroll at her own thoughts.

"That's nice." She smiled a little. "That you have something you can do to remind you of your aunt.... the only dancing I know is the kind that has no dance move names... well, I don know the sprinkler and the fishing line."

Sunny smiled. "That's most of what I do, too. But I also know ballroom, some folk dance, and even though I never took ballet myself I know some of the terminology. Aunt Chinwe cared more that I was having fun than following in her footsteps." She was the family's other black sheep. Chinwe wasn't albino, but she had bucked her father's expectations for his daughters by both becoming a dancer and marrying an American. Sunny adored her.

"Sounds like the right way to go. I don't think I'd like anything I was forced to do if I wasn't having fun with it." Bo was stubborn like that. "You ever thought of like, holding lessons for people? Maybe more people would dance more here if they felt more confident." The thought amused her a little, but it was also sort of true.

"It's a tradition she started," Sunny said, her smile soft with affection and her eyes bright with admiration. "Her father wanted her to be a doctor. She wanted to dance. So she got a doctorate in dance, and to this day she'll say that he never said what kind of doctor she had to be."

"I like your Aunt." Bo smiled. "Sounds like she had her priorities in place." And Bo was all for people who held their own destiny and made their own choices. "I have a friend who's like that. She makes her own path in life. Kenzi." And Bo missed her the most.

Sunny continued to sip her water, then idly stirred the lemon slice around with her finger. "Some of the family thought she was very selfish to do that, against her father's wishes. Most of them warmed to it eventually. My grandfather is still disappointed."

She frowned a little, somehow upset for a woman she never met. "Why the hell is it her responsibility to fulfill her father's wishes?"

"Eh..." Sunny thought of how best to explain this. "The mindset that you go out into the world and do your own thing and screw what other people want is actually not all that common. America does that. Canada, Australia, and the UK. Other parts of the world are less into that way of being. Most African countries are pretty low on that index.

"On top of that, Nigeria hasn't achieved the kind of stability the western world has, because yay the legacy of colonialism. Better off than many parts of the continent, but it's a work in progress. My grandfather's dream for his daughters was for them to be well-educated, successful, and safe from poverty. For their sake, and for the family as a whole. He thought a medical career was the best guarantee for that. The idea that she could do those things with dancing was crazy."

That made some sense to Bo and she knew her experience was nothing like someone from Africa. Even though she had a less-than-stellar upbringing, she was still fortunate enough to be from Canada. "But was she successful at dancing? Did it matter in the end that she wasn't a doctor?"

Sunny grinned. "Oh, she's very successful, as a teacher and a performer. Moved to the states, has two boys. I've got video of some of her performances saved on my computer."

"I wish I could see it." Bo bet her aunt was good. "But good for her - are you like her? Breaking the mold?"

Sunny spread her arms as if to say, 'look at me.' "I came into the world looking like this. I had no choice to be anything else."

Bo laughed. It wasn't at Sunny so much as an acknowledgement of the way things were. Bo's presence in the Fae world was much the same. Most people didn't like her being around. An unaligned Fae was bad for business. "A lot of people back home think the same thing about me. I don't really like playing by the rules."

Sunny considered that. "I prefer to follow the rules in such a way that nobody can punish me, but people aren't happy with me either." This usually applied to her father. Since she couldn't expect the man's approval, she liked to think about how to spin perfectly innocent situations to get his goat.

"You're smarter than me. I usually just piss people off with my decisions since I'm pretty honest about what I think." Which bit Bo in the butt more than once for sure. "Dyson would agree too, but don't tell him I admitted it myself." Bo winked.

"Oh, I'm honest," Sunny assured her. "I just prefer to fight my battles smarter not harder when I can. If I fought every stupid thing in a day, there'd be nothing left of me by nightfall."

Bo could hear Dyson and Trick shouting at her to take Sunny's words to heart and while she did, while she wanted to pick her battles, Bo knew she wouldn't be able to keep her big mouth shut over most things.

She nodded though. "At least here there's less of that huh?"

"Amen," Sunny agreed, finishing off her water. She set the glass down on the bar. "I think I'm going to get back to dancing. Unless you're about sick of my music choices."

"No, they're good choices." And Bo did refrain from saying it was a nice view. She mentally told herself not to leer. "And it makes this place more lively.

For a moment, Sunny thought about saying something. But ultimately she set the idea aside, summoning another song and heading back out onto the floor to dance.

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[GP/EP] Check-in Day

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