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lup knows she is lup.
lup knows she likes magic.
lup knows she has curly blonde hair and dark skin and freckles and long pointy ears and jagged teeth and she hasn’t seen anyone who looks like her before.
(she did, once, she thinks, but when she thinks it she can’t hold onto it and the inside of her head gets loud and crowded and fuzzy, and she sits down in the dark and closes her eyes and waits until it goes away again.)
lup knows she likes the color red more than any of the others, and that the violin makes her happy, and that she loves animals and that cinnamon tastes like home. lup knows she likes kitchens and wood and coins and spices and soft cloth and fire and the night sky. lup knows she likes braids and raindrops and grassy fields and candles and pointed hats and umbrellas and words like The Best Day Ever.
lup knows that sometimes she thinks about something and the inside of her head gets foggy and crackly and crowded and loud and she knows that it’s scary and she knows the way to make it go away is to make yourself small and close your eyes tight and wait. she knows that lucretia helps, she knows that lucretia is safe, she knows that lucretia can protect her and she knows that lucretia loves her and wouldn’t hurt her.
(sometimes she feels like she did hurt her. that thought hurts in a different way than the others.)
lup knows the things she loves. lup knows the things that hurt and the things that feel bad. lup knows that people like her. lup knows her curly hair and dark skin and long ears and pointy teeth.
lup knows she is lup.
lup knows she likes magic.
lup knows lucretia keeps her safe.
***
lup draws pictures sometimes. she likes pictures more than words. she can’t explain with words too well, it feels like she doesn’t have enough of them. too few words, too big thoughts… she can show things better with pictures.
she draws her. she draws lucretia. she draws the moon. she draws the sky and the animals she sees. she draws someone who looks like her, same skin, same ears, same freckles, same blonde hair, but braided, and wearing a pointed hat, and smiling wide and they’re standing together and-
and-
and lup is sitting alone in a closet and waiting until the feeling in her head goes away again.
***
three people come onto the moon, and lucretia is kind as she always is and asks lup for her help as she always does, and lup comes out to help and she sees the strong man a little fuzzy and she sees the short man a little fuzzy and she sees a man who looks like her and he hurts to look at in a million different ways. and she starts to shake and the static is coming back and they look confused and scared and it’s too loud and too much and the way to fix it is to make yourself quiet and small, she knows that, she knows that, she knows that.
and she’s sitting on the ground with her knees to her chest, heart pounding and hands shaking, and lucretia says she’s sorry and hands them their gold, which lup was supposed to do, and lup knows now is the time to get up because lucretia is leaving. so she stands up, head foggy and whirling with static, and she walks back into her room and she finds a dark place to sit.
lucretia is there soon after, and she sits next to lup and comforts her and braids her hair, and it still doesn’t feel like it was braided the way it should have been, but it’s close.
it still feels like home.
***
the man who makes her head hurt, whose name she can’t quite understand, comes in one day holding a tray of cinnamon sugar cookies. he offers her one and says it’s his aunt’s recipe, and she has one and it tastes so much like home and safety and security that she takes another, and he laughs and sets down the whole tray on the ground in front of her and says it’s for her and that lucretia told him it was her favorite.
“happy candlenights,” he says, and she tries to wish him a happy candlenights back but, as always, all that comes out is her name.
and he stops in his tracks and looks confused and holds his head for a second, and then he looks around. and he shoves his hands in his pockets and walks out.
***
lup is getting more and more used to the fuzzy feeling in her head she gets from magnus, merle, and the one whose name is hard for her. she still has bad days sometimes, but they’re her friends. sometimes they go out on adventures, and when they come back, they say hello, and she gives them their payment, and sometimes on other days they will play a game or something. sometimes lup loses, sometimes she wins, but either way it’s fun.
lup didn’t have many people to do fun things with before.
she still draws, too, and sometimes she shows them and they give little compliments and it’s good. everything is good. they’re good.
lup knows that they’re good.
***
it’s storming outside, and people are angry and loud and scared and lup is in her room holding a bottle of something that makes her head spin to look at.
lucretia gave this to her, said that she would need it, said that she would explain later. she told her to drink it.
lup knows lucretia is right and safe and brave and wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
and she drinks it.
and suddenly she knows so many things, and she’s trying to slow down her brain to understand them all. merle and magnus were her friends - her family. lucretia was, too. davenport, her captain, some kind of strange surrogate father. her ship. her home. the hunger. the planes, outer space, her aunt, the best day ever, cinnamon sugar cookies, her robe, barry, the love of her life, the mongeese, her kitchens, living on the streets all those years ago, her umbrastaff, her magic, the candles, the sky, the mongoose plane, taako’s braids, taako’s stupid hat, taako-
taako-
taako-
her brother, taako. her twin brother. taako.
lup knows she is lup.
lup knows she likes magic.
lup knows she has curly blonde hair and dark skin and freckles and long ears and pointed teeth, just like her brother.
lup knows she has a brother who means the world to her.
lup knows she has taako.