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The rain had finally stopped, but the ground was still satisfyingly muddy and squished underfoot. Pepper clomped her way up the lane, then squelched across the garden, and finally landed on the front steps, where Anathema was sat, working on braiding a yarn charm bracelet.
“Hey,” Pepper said.
Anathema smiled at her. “Greetings, my liege,” she said. “Ye of the well-worn rain boots.”
They both took a respectful moment to admire Pepper’s rain boots. They were bright green and shaped like frogs, and were definitively better than the boring rain boots the rest of The Them sported.
“My mum says to invite you to our place for hot chocolate and cookies,” Pepper said. “Everyone’s already over there. Plus,” she added, suddenly worried that Anathema might think she, Pepper, didn’t actually want her there, “I made sure there’s brownies, too.”
“That sounds lovely,” Anathema said. “If you want, you could run back along and tell your mother I’ll be over in a few, just as soon as I finish this up?”
Pepper plopped down on the step instead. She put her knees to her chest and her chin on her knees. “What’s that for?”
“It’s a good luck bracelet,” Anathema said. “I’m making it for Newt to wear to his job interview on Friday.”
Pepper wrinkled her nose. “How’s it work, then?”
“I soaked the threads in an elixir overnight, then braided them with a strand of my own hair,” said Anathema. “Usually you’re supposed to use the hair of a family member or a romantic partner, but... well.”
That caught Pepper’s attention. “I thought you two were, you know, Doing Stuff,” she said. Adam had said, and Adam would have known.
Anathema blushed. “Agnes wrote about it,” she admitted. “But she only said we would—do stuff—once. And, well, I’ve been rather busy...”
Pepper considered this for a moment. She tapped the toes of her rain boots together a few times. “Did you like him?”
“He is a perfectly agreeable man,” Anathema said. “I think he’s very sweet. And he did help to save the world, in a roundabout fashion, I suppose.”
“People’re s’posed to like each other if they’re going to be Doing Stuff,” Pepper said firmly. She and the rest of The Them were of the collective opinion that romance and things like that were best left to the grown-ups, who seemed to enjoy that sort of thing, but even The Them knew there were rules for it. Adam had talked a lot about the importance of consent for a week straight after reading one of Pepper’s mum’s books about women’s rights.
“I like him well enough,” Anathema said. Her cheeks were still pink; it made her look very pretty, Pepper thought. “The charm wouldn’t work otherwise.”
“Does he respect your womanhood and individuality as a person?” Pepper asked.
“Of course,” Anathema said, and smiled. “I think maybe it’s just that I’m too busy to be in any sort of relationship right now, and it was easy to make promises to someone when we all thought the world might be ending.”
“Right,” said Pepper, who didn’t relate whatsoever, but wanted Anathema to feel heard.
“Besides, if Agnes thought it was best for me to be in a relationship, then it probably would be best,” Anathema said gloomily.
Pepper sat up straight and snapped her fingers, a trick she had been trying unsuccessfully to teach Wensleydale for nearly two weeks now. “That’s it, then!”
“What is?”
“I know what the problem is,” Pepper announced, with a grandiose air. “It’s heteronormativity, is what it is.”
Anathema blinked, startled.
“That means when you think you’ve got to Do Stuff with blokes,” Pepper said conspiratorially. She had learned the word from a back issue of Womyn’s Weekly that her mother had kept hidden in the bathroom. Pepper appreciated the magazine very much, mostly because there were pictures of ladies kissing and holding hands, and no boys allowed, which was how she thought most things should be. She found it her solemn duty to inform Anathema of the possibility of women Doing Stuff with other women. “You know, like kissing an’ touching an’ holding hands, and stuff.”
“Yes. Well,” said Anathema, looking rather faint. “Quite.”
“Did you want to do all that stuff with Newt?” Pepper demanded, intensely curious. “Or was it, was it, the societal pressure of conformity that made you think you wanted it?”
Anathema didn’t answer right away, just looked down at the half finished bracelet in her lap.
She looked sad, which wasn’t what Pepper wanted. Pepper thought everyone should be happy, and be able to be themselves, even if that meant almost destroying all of space and time (Adam had fixed it, though, so it was all better). She hadn’t meant to make Anathema sad. She’d mostly just wanted Anathema to know it was okay if she didn’t do everything people expected her to do.
“‘S okay either way,” Pepper said, awkwardly patting Anathema’s knee with one grubby hand (she’d been digging for worms with Brian, Wensleydale, and Adam, with Dog supervising). “You don’t have to know everything all at once.”
“Yes,” said Anathema. She put her hand over Pepper’s and squeezed it. “Thank you.”
Pepper ducked her head, embarrassed. “’S just stuff,” she muttered.
Anathema gathered the bracelet from her skirt and stood, brushing herself off. “What do you say we walk over to your house together? On the gravel path,” she added, catching Pepper’s dubious look at her more sensible house shoes. “I think I can smell the brownies from here.”
“My mum makes really good brownies,” Pepper said, mollified. “And she’s got loads of books about This Stuff that you could read, if you want.”
“I might take you up on that,” said Anathema. She tucked the bracelet into her skirt pocket and patted the pocket, then took Pepper’s hand in hers. “You ready?”
Pepper nodded.
“March?”
“Fall in!” Pepper yelled, waving her arms wildly, and took off down the lane as fast as she could march, pulling Anathema along behind her.